100% Chance of Joy

Doing Business In Berkeley

Blog-a-licious in its own right, our wedding site (the Brazilian Room) is a very popular site for weddings and large parties. The building is a lovely stone structure with wooden beams, french doors, a huge fireplace and lots of windows to look out on the hillsides and redwood trees in Tilden Park.

But the rules and regulations one must abide by with such a facility are a volume of walls for even the most creative. In particular, one wedding tradition is the showering of the couple with bird seed or rice as they exit the ceremony. Here's a humorous perspective on that from Fox News. They would make opening an oil well up to shoot crude 80' into the air acceptable as a recessional ceremony if it were left to their creative devices!

The article also includes some good ideas about what to do for the ceremony. I've seen the butterfly thing and when they were released at a friend's wedding, I deliberately caught one that landed near me and put him on a flower. Starved or immature, the poor things definitely acted hurt, young or impaired in some way when released.

Most traditional ideas presented are not allowed at the Brazil Room- no petals, no seed, no rice, no confetti, no balloons. In the event suggestions handout, it also specifies trying to limit the behavior of children attending events- even specifying to try to prevent them from putting hand and lip prints on the windows. Ahhhh, doing business in Berkeley. It's not just like this at the Brazil Room, it's everywhere. But we can have bubbles. I can see a future where that option goes away due to more stringent environmental regulations.

Our good friend and fantastic photographer Zoe suggested last weekend that we have people blow kazoos at the end of the ceremony. At first, I thought I would piss my pants from laughing at that visualization. I loved the idea. Silly, tacky, and a much needed break from a rather intense ceremony- at the time we all thought it was perfect.

But then the kazoos actually showed up this week. We'd thought multi-color would be fun. Instead they were gross colors and, having grown up a girl where the most similar instrument I got to play as a child was the recorder, I blew in and couldn't get these cheap plastic things to make any sound. It's because you have to hum into them.

All of a sudden- what we'd done hit me. It just wasn't elegant enough. And besides, look at these colors with the big Honer logo on it- would you hand that out to your guests (no, it isn't actually the wedding favor- but still)? In the program I was planning to mischeviously instruct guests to "blow their kazoo (the one we gave them)" at the end of the ceremony. David told me I couldn't print that.

Our kazoo kudos to Musician's Friend for graciously taking 135 non-returnable kazoos back with only a 15% restocking fee. Wedding blunders.

So we've actually settled on a better option. To wish us well, all will be led to Simon and Garfunkel's "59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)" as our recessional. It's just easier (except for the rule that only quiet ceremonial music and singing are allowed to happen (weather permitting) for ceremonies occurring on the patio.

The forecast Weather.com gives is that in that zip code in March, 7-9 days of each month are clear, 8-9 days are partly cloudly and 12-13 days are cloudy. Average temperatures range from 61 degrees to 47 degrees. It typically rains 8-10 days out of a month and average rainfall is 4.08". Sunset will happen at 6:19PM (we'll have advanced onto to Daylight Savings time one week prior) and the moon will be waning.

There will a slight change to the last verse of the song:

Got no deeds to do,

Some promises to keep.

I'm dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep.

Let the morning time drop all its petals on me.

Life, I love you,

All is groovy.