Hey That’s A Nice Life

When we first launched our wedding Web site, we mentioned that the Friday evening Welcome Picnic would feature entertainment by those in attendance.   This was an idea that Don casually mentioned one day, and that I immediately loved.  Probably even more than he expected.

It came about when Don pointed out to me that in addition to all the talented wedding elves who would help us make invitations and take photos and just be all round helpful before, during and after our wedding that we happened to know an extraordinary number of people with talents in the performing arts.  He thought it would be cool to ask all of them to perform the night before the wedding instead of asking one of them to perform during the ceremony.  As soon as he said, I was determined to make it happen.

So we started by casually mentioning it when someone would mentioned his/her talent.  Then last week, I updated the Web site with actual information about the “Talent Showcase”.  But the full court press started today.

This morning we had some folks over for brunch.  After we had plied some of the talent with lots of mimosas and bloody marys, I started in earnest.  And surprisingly, everyone agreed.  Some really got into it, making plans for acts and making notes about what numbers they would perform.

Others agreed reluctantly, and if you’re one of those people I’m telling you now that we don’t want you to be uncomfortable and will not hold you responsible for anything you said today.  Well, most of you anyway.

Here’s a list of some of the things people agreed to do:

EP - Sing opera
KD - Maybe play a secret new instrument and perform a lounge act with MD
MD - Perform a lounge act with KD
TB - Emcee and perform a 5 minute comedic stand up
TB - Sing
EW - Play the flute
LW - Play the guitar
KW - Irish dance
KH - Sing

We have some out of town friends attending with similar performing abilities that we’re hoping to recruit as well.  EG has said she will sing and play guitar and we’re hoping CVR will sing as well.  FBIL2 also is working a little number for us.  

The best part about today was that we learned about talents people had that we didn’t even know about and were reminded about talents that we had forgotten about overs the years.  So, I bet some of you reading this blog who will be our wedding have a talent that you’d love to show off - it can be serious or silly - and we’d LOVE to include you.  Drop me e-mail (susan at fussellwhiteside dot com) and let me know what you can do.

We going to show off our talents, too.  Don is considering a little juggling act for Friday night, in fact.   As for my talent, well … you’ll see it in the wedding invitations, the programs, the menus, the escort cards, the Save the Date cards, the thank you cards, and so on.  It’s hard to perform, but you won’t be able to attend this wedding and not notice it.

An official e-mail will be sent about the Talent Showcase AFTER the invitations get mailed after which time we’ll need to know what you will perform for our lovely emcee, but feel free to tell me now if you’ve already made up your mind.

Thanks to TheKnot.com it’s practically unheard of to have a wedding these days WITHOUT a wedding Web site. Since we know a little something about Web sites (well, Don does at least), we thought it would be a good way to pass information to our guests.

You’d think that Don would have taken charge of this project but somehow it fell to me. This probably traces back to the days when we were starting Nice Mirror and Don was working on Web sites full time for his previous employer. Understandably, he didn’t want to come home every night or spend time on the weekend working on yet another Web project … but we needed a site, so I stepped in. It’s not very good, and you can’t actually order anything from us, but it’s there.

These days, Web projects account for just a fraction of Don’s total workload, but I already have the position of Family Web Master and that doesn’t seem likely to change. Don also spends a lot of time working on the excellent hyper local blog with which he’s involved and I think he finds that a little more stimulating than making maps of shuttle drop-off sites and inserting information about hotel blocks. On the other hand, I actually care about what people are going to wear and what the weather has been the last five years on May 2, so it makes sense that I head up the project.

The bad part is that I’m basically a one-trick pony so you’ll see a lot of similarities between Nice Mirror and our wedding Web site. That’s the bad part. The good part is that framework is there and while we’ll have to add information as we get closer, there’s a lot there now for people to discover as they get our Save the Date cards in the mail. Yay!

Here’s what the site looks like:

You can also just visit it. A little knowledge (and I mean a LITTLE knowledge) of HTML and access to Photoshop is a dangerous thing.

Let me know what you think.