Since Wedding Belle, wedding advisor to the whacky, asked for exteme wedding ideas in her post a couple of days ago, I figured I’d chime in here with two words sure to strike fear in the hearts of wedding guests everywhere: Renaissance Wedding.

It was my cousin who did it. Some people, including the bride, her mother, and a few guests with too much time and money on their hands, actually rented costumes. The rest of us just cobbled together what we could out of velvet skirts and brocade jackets, throwing in a quick trip to the crafts shop for braided trim and veils.

I was not looking forward to this.

And yet. And yet, it worked. It was really fun, everyone was quite spirited (well, the mulled wine didn’t hurt), and it was one of the most festive, fun weddings I’ve ever been to.

I mention it here because it has a lot to do with design, and how we think of design. The wedding was outdoors, so there wasn’t a lot of decor to consider, but all the flowers were loose, casual bouquets, and the other decorations, like table cloths, were simple white. So the design, as it were, just served as a blank slate on which the color and creativity of the wedding party and the guests could splash.

So you don’t need, for example, a castle in order to have a Renaissance-themed event.

And nor do you have to be up on your history—most people, with a little research, will be able to dress for the occasion, without being able to tell you which famous painter died in 1564.

While you’re thinking of whether you’ve been to an extreme wedding, have you ever had a themd party or event? Have they succeeded?

It’s easy to find great design—I mean, all you have to do is flip through a copy of Architectural Digest at the dentist’s office. Or go to a really fancy benefit party in someone’s fancy home. Or, one way that is cheaper than the dentist or the benefit, and that doesn’t require knowing anyone with scads of disposable income, is to hop around to some open houses.

Open houses are a great source for design inspiration, or can be if you hit them right.

But finding bad design is a bit more of a challenge, especially when you’re asked to post a description and a photo to a blog. For example, to this blog in particular.
That’s just what I’m doing. I want to hear your stories of bad design. If you can include a photo, all the better. It could even be your own bad design (God knows I’ve admitted some of my own mistakes right here)—and maybe someone will write in with a solution for you. We have at our fingertips a fleet of designers, specializing in residential design, feng shui, and design for weddings.

(Okay, maybe it’s not exactly a fleet, but it’s a small boatload.)

Okay, it’s several brilliant minds.

So, let’s have at it. Bad color choices, poor lighting arrangements, terrible sofas only a sofa’s mother could love. We’ll try to figure out together where the designer (or, more likely, the hapless home owner) went wrong—which is, after all, a great way of figuring out how to do it right.

Just click on “comments” at the end of the post, and then leave a reply.

Apparently a couple in Alaska recently hosted their wedding at a swimming pool. Not just AT the pool, but actually IN the pool. Instead of a walk down the aisle, the bride slid down a 136 foot slide into the water to meet her groom.

Alaska + March + Swimming pool = Wedding?

Thankfully, the pool was both indoors and heated. The bride and groom are both fitness fanatics and their wedding guests were treated to a pool party after the ceremony complete with a pool shaped cake (which is what… oval? square? kidney shaped?).

Even still, this is one of those off-beat nuptials that one hears about from time to time. Like the couple that gets married in mid-air after jumping out of an airplane or while snowboarding down a Colorado mountain. Has anyone ever attended one of these “extreme” weddings? I’m interested to hear a first person account of how it went down. Were all of the guests behind the couple’s choice? Did people enjoy it? Were the bride and groom pleased with the adventure, I mean, day? Perhaps I am most interested to find out how many of you would have a wedding like that for yourselves?

Let me know!

Whenever I visit one of these home design shows, I’m always on the lookout for the unusual, for the bold design, and for something functional also. After all, when you live in a space-challenged city apartment, you want furniture pieces to multi-task too! I wandered around the recent Architectural Digest Home Design Show with a skeptical mindset. I saw beautiful furniture everywhere but they really belonged to a mansion in Beverly Hills or at a penthouse suite.

I was looking for something to perk up my humdrum hallway when you enter my home – you know the type: a hallway too small to put anything really functional like a desk or a bookcase in it yet big enough that you can’t ignore it. There’s always mirrors and artwork but it’s not very original. Most people entering the hallway barely give it a look.

Then I came across the Perczek exhibit. Furniture designer, Jaime Perczek, has designed Art Deco style pieces, some large-scaled, some a more cozy size but all very striking. I saw their black and white bench. Now this can stop traffic. Bold graphics, sophisticated shape and colors give it an Art Deco feel yet its legs have a tribal, earthy look – unusual, striking combination. It shouts I may be beautiful but I work hard too! Yes, a very good place to sit while I put my dancing shoes on…

A McDonald’s restaurant in Southern California has taken the bold step of getting a Feng Shui makeover, a move which at first glace may seem a little like trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear—or in this case, a silk purse out of a cow’s ear.

Feng Shui is based partly on the idea that the physical world influences our internal world. It supposes that the physical things of our world—wall color and furniture placement, whether they are mirrors in the living room or a big TV in the bedroom—can have a tremendous influence on our psychological, mental, and spiritual lives.  The good news is that we can have some control over this, by having living plants in our homes, by using certain colors, or by placing particular elements in certain spots in a home or business.

Everything I’ve heard about Feng Shui—which, granted, isn’t much—sounds good to me.  Although Feng Shui is a complex and ancient system of looking at the world, that can’t be explicated in a few short paragraphs on a blog, much of it just seems like common sense. We know that it’s more difficult to sleep in a room that’s brightly lit than in a dark one. We know that we tend to feel cooler or warmer depending on the wall color.

Well, I think it’s great for McDonald’s to take this step. As long as there are McDonald’s, there will be people eating at McDonald’s—I mean, if the nutrition information (now readily available on the McDonald’s Web site) doesn’t scare people off, nothing will.

Given that, if you’re slurping down an artery-clogging clump of greasy fat, you may as well be doing it in lovely environment.

So kudos to Mark Brownstein, the owner of the restaurant in suburban Los Angeles. Even if the redesign was just a ploy to bring in more customers in the heavily Asian area, a little Feng Shui goes a long way toward making the world a better place.

Maybe next the designers, Feng Shui Grand Master Dr. Chi-Jen Liu and his daughter, Master Jenny Liu, will take on designing the operating rooms where the triple bypass surgery is done.

By the way, this is what I found while researching this item, from the McDonald’s Web site:  A quarter-pounder with cheese has 510 calories, and 26 grams of fat. Add a small order of fries to add 250 calories and another 13 grams of fat. If you’re thinking that maybe you’ll save some calories by ordering the chicken McNuggets, think again: ten pieces have 420 calories, 24 grams of fat, so if you’re really craving the beef, you may as well suck down that big burger.

Most people can maintain their weight by eating about 2000 or 3000 calories a day—depending on their body size and their exercise amount. And most people only need about 50-100 grams of fat per day. Let’s say you’re on the small size, and don’t exercise much. A quarter-pounder with fries gives you 760 calories and 39 grams of fat. What can you possibly eat for your other two meals that day? A carrot?

To be fair, let me also mention that a walnut bran muffin at Starbucks has 430 calories, 18 grams of fat. Together with a latte, you’ve got 620 calories and 25 grams of fat, and that’s not even really a meal.

In case you’re still reading, even though I have gone so far afield from design and Feng Shui, a banana has about 100 calories and no fat. And a slice of whole wheat toast, 76 calories and one gram of fat. (This information from the www.nutritiondata.com.)

Okay, I know this isn’t a nutrition blog, but I couldn’t help it. McDonald’s is such an easy target. But even I have to admit that those fries are delish.

At this weekend’s wedding I experienced something I never expected…well really a few things I never expected, but here’s just one of them. Adam was quite surly all evening. Suzy wanted a massive dance party that went on all night. When it was time to do the chair dance and the Hora the (Jewish) groom had no desire to participate. The (Chinese) bride was obsessed with making sure that it went off perfectly.

This dynamic made for a pretty thn line for us to walk that evening. We had to get everything in that Suzy wanted, without pushing Adam too far. And we were pretty successful with the first dance, the Hora, the cake cutting, etc. Adam was grumpy, but did what he was told. But then the evening was drawing to an end. At midnight Adam made no bones about wanting to leave. The reception was slated to go until 12:30 a.m., so Suzy was having none of it and kept dancing. I was in charge of calling a car for the couple at the end of the night and knew it would take at least 20 minutes for the car to arrive. I told Adam I was going to call a car and have it here ASAP…then I ordered it for 12:40…and I told Suzy it was coming at 12:30.

Did I care that I told each of them a white lie? Not at all. I knew that Adam would feel better knowing there was light at the end of the tunnel and I knew Suzy wouldn’t want to leave one minute before 12:30 but that it would also take her a while to actually get out the door. In the end, they both got what they wanted and were none the wiser.

Coda: If you’re like me, you’re wondering why Adam was such a pill at what is supposed to be the happiest day of his life. Well, it turns out that they had already had a big wedding in China and he’d been sick for the past week. The poor guy wasn’t being a jerk, he was just partied out.

I’ve got tile on my mind.

I know, many people may have more pressing concerns—global climate change, the presidential elections, what to do on Saturday night. And it isn’t like tile has been on my mind long. I mean, this isn’t a life-long obsession.

Here’s what happened. I went to an Open House on Sunday. That was my first mistake. I’m perfectly happy with my apartment, and never want to leave it. In fact, I work at home as much as I possibly can so I don’t have to leave it. For one thing, I feel I’m getting more of my money’s worth the more minutes I’m here. I love my place, especially now that I’ve put some work into it and it’s really looking nice.

But the lure of the Open House remains. Does anyone remember the dark ages when, if you wanted to see what was for sale, you had to call the real estate agent and make an appointment? That was a bad time for people who just like to browse. Now, there are several Open Houses on any given Sunday, and you don’t have to prove you’re a serious buyer; you can just drop in and get some design ideas.

So that’s what I did this past Sunday. And that’s when Tile Mania hit.

There was one apartment that had a new kitchen and bath. This was in a building built in 1924. Sometimes, I’ve seen bath and kitchen updates in old buildings that are just hideous; thanks to an insistence on creating a modern look without acknowledging the overall look of the apartment.

And yet, one does want an updated kitchen and bath. For example, look at this terrific tiled bath:

And this one:

(I wish I’d brought my secret spy camera to the Open House, but these will have to do instead. You get the idea)

The owners of the place I saw managed to create a kitchen and bath that looked new and bright, and yet they fit in with the pre-war look of the apartment. The kitchen had tiny green tiles for the backsplash, and the bathroom had plain white tiles, similar to the original, only larger. The floor was tiled in simple, new, black and white.

So this is what I want to know. Why does my bathroom look so terrible? Here is the shower:

You may say this is a nice, old, pre-war look but I’m afraid it looks a little too prewar. But how much do those tiny tiles cost? In the world of luxury, I know that smaller means more expensive (think baby carrots versus regular grown-up carrots, or adorable little mini eye-shadows). Would I even have a chance of affording something this lovely?

This little girl has no idea how lucky she is to have such a stylish tub. Well, maybe I should just get some of those rubber duckies.