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?

At Last, Color Me Happy 

Here it is. Okay, these photos maybe don’t show the color as accurately as they could. It is a biscuity brown, soft, like a pale coffee ice cream. The detail at the back of the bookshelves was inspired! And was the brainchild of my painter, Paul Flessa. It’s a deep raiseny plum, almost like a rum raisin, so the whole living room is a little like a big bowl of ice cream, and what’s wrong with that? 

You’ll see, too, that I had the window leading painted black, which involved a great deal of sanding, priming, and other activities I don’t want to know about. All I know is the painter was here a lot. And now, it looks great and my bank account is further depleted.  

Next up: the hallway, the windows in the other rooms. I’ll let you know how it goes. 

But let’s not linger there; instead, let’s talk more about green giving, as the holiday season is now just about to swallow us whole. 

You can buy recycled holiday cards, and that doesn’t mean hoarding the ones you got last year and then scratching out the name of the person who sent them and writing in your own. That is known as recycling, but it’s also known as extremely tacky. Instead, check out the cards made from recycled materials at Holiday Classics.  

For a mind-boggling list of websites that sell eco-friendly gifts, go to Ecomall. 

And don’t forget that often a home-made gift is the best one to give, or to receive. If you’re artistically inclined, now’s the time to get to work on making a present, but remember too that you don’t have to be an artist to make a gift. A CD with favorite songs, a photo album with photos of the family, a box of cookies will all make the recipient happier, probably, than another plastic Santa Claus singing “Rock Around The Christmas Tree.”  All you have to do to step away from that Santa is think of a landfill towering with the things. 

And then for the person who has everything, there’s the gift of green. Yes, that green, as in greenbacks.  

Often people who don’t need any more stuff are thrilled to receive a donation to a worthy cause made in their name. Just make sure you match the cause to the person, so that you’re not giving Uncle Dave the Dog-hater a donation.

You won’t believe it, but I’m really making progress on the wall color situation. Look at this new color I found! It’s called “rich cream.” It’s made by Benjamin Moore, and no, they’re not paying me a cent to say that. 

I started putting it on the wall, and loved it so much I went out and bought two gallons, in the Aura paint, which is environmentally, you know, happy-making. Makes you happy as it doesn’t release toxins, makes the world happy because it’s harvested from organic paint-bushes or something. Plus, you need less of it, rather than more, so in an ironic, shocking twist, it actually costs less to do the right thing. 

I started putting it on, and just as I was hitting the wall of painting fatigue, wondering why I was doing this instead of doing my own work, the phone rang. It was a friend of a friend, saying he is a painter between jobs, and our mutual friend had said I may need someone…. 

So he’s coming today to finish it off. 

You can see here that I’m still somewhat undecided about the hallway.

Now, this Aura paint, combined with the Holiday Season which now has us in its grips, got me thinking about to do if you’re in a gift-giving, party-throwing, card-sending frame of mind and yet you quiver at the thought of those polar bears up north going without ice next winter? Yes, I’m talking climate change. And I’m talking waste.  

Becoming aware of these two things doesn’t mean you have to live in a state of deprivation. It’s been proven time and again that deprivation and negative reinforcement doesn’t work—you know that when you go on a diet that requires no sweets, the first thing you do is rush to the cookie box.  

And God knows I’m the last one to ban, for example, parties.

But the madness has to stop!  

And you can do this with a generous, positive outlook, by giving green—and no, I don’t mean doling out cash to everyone on your list. You can think about how you’re actually doing something to help stave off the utter destruction of the planet. And, like with buying Aura paint (really, they aren’t paying me to say that) it actually can save you money. 

One place to start would be with a new book on making wrappings that are environmentally friendly. In Simply Green Giving, Danny Seo offers suggestions that will soothe your soul while cutting down on wasteful paper use. 

For me, I find that just the good, old-fashioned method of wrapping gifts can work two ways: by reducing the tremendous wave of useless paper that washes into the house each day, and by not buying more paper with which to wrap gifts.  

Here’s an example: the calendar I just got in the mail from my bank. This isn’t the tacky bank calendar with bad photos of kittie cats and puppies, or static shots of barns and beaches.  This one has gorgeous photos from around the world. It’s really nice.  

But I don’t use a wall calendar. I use a desk calendar. And I don’t want this thing on my wall. I don’t really want it at all.  

But these photos would make terrific wrapping paper. 

So here is the calendar, before: 

And here it is, after, in its new life as wrapping paper: 

If you have any other bright ideas on how to green up the holiday, please write in. Those polar bears need all the help they can get. 

Decoration has gotten a bad rap, and so has the appellation “decorator” as opposed to “designer.” There is a very real distinction between the two terms, mostly in that some states license designers, but let decorators go willy-nilly into that great world of paint color and fabric swatches without state approval. This distinction has led to some ugly (yet beautifully mocha-toned, with a cream trim) mud-slinging  between the two camps. 

Often, there is a bit of an assumption that decorators aren’t quite as serious, or as well-trained, as designers, with everyone wanting to insist that they do more than just decorate. 

And this raises the question: what’s wrong with decoration? Snubbing decoration is, in my mind, a bit like snubbing reading fiction, or looking at art, or enjoying rap music. Isn’t life to be enjoyed, in all the wild and wacky variety we humans have evolved to keep ourselves entertained? 

Sure. At least, Steven Heller agrees with me. Or, to be more accurate, I agree with him.  

On a less contentious matter, Patti writes in about the mattress question, with a link to a source for mattress information and a question: “I was thinking I’d test-drive the mattresses and then order the one I liked online or from one of those discount phone places (1-800-mattress or whatever). Any thoughts on that plan? I’ve heard mixed things about discount places.” 

Well, as a matter of fact, I do have some thoughts there. First of all, I do not like the check-it-out-in-the-real-store-then-buy-online method if you’re talking about a small, Mom and Pop store. But there are so few of these left that chances are you’re not. The Internet, after all, and the advent of online shopping, was certainly the cause of the sudden demise of so many of our beloved little shops in
America.  

But, assuming we’re talking about just another mega-store, I vote yes. In fact, I use this method often myself, and got a great deal on some Wegner dining chairs by going online, but, smart shopper that I am, first I tested them out in the store.But the whole mattress-buying venture has proven so confusing, so intimidating, and so discouraging that I advice you to just stay with your futon on the floor and find a good chiropractor.

Patti also says: “Oh, and did you know the etymology/history of “mattress”?  

Pretty neat. 

This is about the weirdest thing. 

No, that’s a tremendous exaggeration. There are many other weirder things. But really, going into a bed store in mid-town Manhattan, mid-day, and taking a nap in nearly-silent, windowless room, is right up there. 

Apparently not so weird, however, for the clerks at the Dux store. There, the clerk happily remembered my appointment and escorted me into the room, showing me the hook for my clothing, assuring me I wouldn’t be disturbed. 

The only thing I was disturbed by was the utter weirdness of the experience. But my napping ability won out, and I got into the bed, and actually managed to doze off for a few minutes, lulled by the distant hum of bed-buyers in the show room. There was something both thrilling and very creepy about taking a nap there, with all these customers walking around just on the other side of the door, having no idea there was someone napping mere feet away.  

That said, I bet what you really want to know is whether the bed was comfortable.  

Well, it was. I thought I could, indeed, feel that it was kind of absorbing my weight in a way that my own bed doesn’t. I could feel that I could sink into the bed more, and it felt just delicious. 

But maybe it feels delicious to lie down anywhere in the middle of the afternoon. 

In the end, I left the showroom not entirely convinced, and decided to follow up with a trip to ABC Carpet and Home, the great palace of design here in Manhattan. I’ll tell you about it next time.

Once Sam and I had collected ourselves after our ill-fated Bedgate at Macy’s, I started noticing that indeed, I was waking up feeling tired and stiff and unhappy—the primary symptom of need a new bed.  

So I more seriously launched into the research on this whole question of buying a bed, and discovered something called the Sleep Number Bed. 

And the Duxiana Bed.  And then I was heading down the road into a world I never thought I would enter, the World of the Rich and the Very Rich, or at least the world of the beds of those people. Essentially I no longer even cared about Sam and The Bachelor and their bedding problems. The more I researched beds, the more I realized that I myself was in dire need of a new one. So, why not trot myself back to Macy’s and shell out? 

Well, like all things in décor, it isn’t quite that simple. Okay, first there are regular beds, as we’ve seen.  Mattress, box spring, coils, hand-tied, you know. The things you get at Macy’s or some other department store. 

And then there are the beds that operate on a completely different system, such as some kind of foam stuff or air pumps or even, gadzooks, horsehair. 

These start with the Sleep Number Bed. Go into a Sleep Number store and chances are the clerk will launch an elaborate demonstration to show you how the bed works, which essentially is by pumping air into and out of the chambers in the mattress. She’ll also hand you a little brochure with pictures and mysterious phrases like “Dual Foam Layering System.” 

If you’re thinking this is just a fancy air mattress, you’re thinking like me. Now, I did take it upon myself to go into the Sleep Number store and lie on the bed and I did find that as a matter of fact (or could I say “as a mattress of fact”?) it felt pretty good. And if you sleep with someone, there’s the advantage that each side of the bed has its own pump, so you can have a firmer or softer mattress than your bedmate, which presumably prevents marital discord. 

Let’s not go there right now. 

But even though the clerk assured me that this wouldn’t mean getting up every couple of hours and pumping up the bed again, I just couldn’t quite buy it. Plus, what if something sharp, like a clawed cat, jumped on it too hard? (By the way, I don’t think my cats would tolerate those things you stick on the claws to prevent torn up sofas and such.  

And I just want to go on the record here as saying that while de-clawing a cat is nowhere near as terrible as waterboarding a human being, it’s a really, really, bad idea.)  

Another thing that turned me off from the Sleep Number Bed was the hokey name. The Sleep Number Bed is made by Select Comfort. Both these names are hokey, and why are there two names for one company? I don’t like that.   I like a good old-fashioned name for a bed, like “Beautyrest.” That’s a name that makes you feel nice, like the bed is actually going to make you more beautiful while you get some rest.  

But most of all, I was bothered by the visions of my brother waking up after a night on my air mattress in my living room, which had slowly flattened to a thin piece of rubber between him and the cold, hard floor. He looked neither beautiful nor rested. 

So even though the clerk was helpful and the price was comparable to the higher-end regular mattresses, there was just something a little too cockamamie about the whole thing.  

Next I’m working my way up to the more expensive mattresses.  

Meanwhile, in case you’re wondering, I’ve completely abandoned my other home decorating projects. I’m starting to kind of like the stripes on the wall from trying out all the paints, and there’s something artfully charming, I think, about the exposed plugs since the electrical work was done and not done.  

So next I’m going to the Duxiana store. I’ll let you know how that turns out.

So, Sam began bed shopping. 

One drawback to having a fully and happily employed boyfriend (okay, maybe the only drawback) is that he is busy a lot, and so Sam asked me, Stylehound that I am, to accompany her on her preliminary search for a new bed. The Bachelor would be brought in as necessary at the end of the search. 

The first place we went was Macy’s. I should have known when the elevator got stuck on the way up to the top floor that this would not go well, and it didn’t. 

While we waited for the elevator to start moving again, we decided we would turn down any salesman’s attempts to talk to us before we got a chance to just look everything over.  

As soon as we walked into the bed department, a salesman came over to us. I told myself that the fact that he bore an uncanny resemblance to Richard Nixon did not necessarily mean the beds here would be untrustworthy, and I boldly said, “We just want to look first,” and he muttered, “Sure, sure, of course,” and crept away.  

“That was easy,” Sam said. 

“See? Stick with the Stylehound. I know how to handle these guys.” 

We lay on one bed, a Sealy.  

 $1600. It was really quite comfortable, but it’s a little hard to tell, you know, when you’re lying there in your jacket and boots. Still, it felt great, but maybe that’s just because it always feels great to lie down, especially after lunch.  

As we were whispering about the quality of the mattress, Nixon appeared.   

“I just want to tell you that these beds are all on sale, about twenty percent off.”  

“Okay,” we said, and struggled to our feet.  

“What kind of mattress are you looking for?” he asked. He seemed to be wringing his hands a little bit, but maybe that was my imagination.  

“Medium,” Sam said, and then we were in it, Nixon leading us from bed to bed. We duly threw ourselves onto each one, lying there as he stood over us, telling us about the springs and coils and foam until I had no idea anymore which bed was which. 

We staggered out of there and back to the elevator, and then Sam turned to me. “Listen,” she said, “we’d better take the escalator.” 

On our way down, she ran down the mattresses, their prices and quality.  

“But you know,” she said when we reached the first floor, “there wasn’t any one of them that I Rathed.” 

“Rathing” is a term coined by Sam’s mother, one of those expert shoppers. It stands for “Really Have to Have.” Sam’s mother always said that you shouldn’t buy anything—whether it’s a sofa, or a t-shirt, or a pair of socks—unless you feel passionately about it, unless you love it so much you want to wear it out of the store, unless you Really Have to Have it. 

“Well, there are other kinds of mattresses to look at,” I said, realizing even as I was speaking the words that I was getting myself into an extended job here.  

We went through the revolving door, which spit us neatly back onto 34^th Street. 

“Plus, there was something about that salesman that just seemed a little like a crook,” Sam said. 

Okay, does anyone mind reading about romance in order to get to the current decorating saga in my life? 

Unfortunately, this is not my story of romance. As you know, my life is consumed with contractors, electricians, and testing out terrible wall colors.  

This is the story of my friend, Samantha. Samantha is one of those chronically single women, even though everyone who meets her and then learns she is single has the same response: how on earth is it that no one has snapped you up yet?  

Sam is, in short, great—loads of personality, clever, witty, generous. And I don’t mean by that that she isn’t good-looking (you know, when someone is setting you up on a blind date and they say “he’s terrific, has a great job, he’s really funny ….” and they don’t mention looks, it means looks are not going to be exactly his selling point.) But Sam is also gorgeous, with a wild mop of naturally blonde hair, great athletic figure. You know, she’s that woman in yoga class you look at enviously even as the yoga instructor is saying “we are not here to compare….” 

Okay. So Sam somehow has made it into her 40s without ever getting married. Not that she hasn’t wanted to—she has very much wanted a husband, but has never quite hit it right. So she’s got a terrific apartment in a great neighborhood, which is larger than most New York City apartments because she’s been living there forever and moved in back when a normal person could actually afford an apartment in New York City, a real apartment, with a separate bedroom and a kitchen that actually fits comfortably a dining table.  

Sam is also one of New York’s star editors, with a high-powered job at a big publishing house. She makes a good salary, and she’s been able to furnish her place very nicely, so it’s pretty much perfect. 

And her life is great—going out to expense-account lunches with agents and editors, getting invited to fancy publishing parties, the works. Sometimes she invites me along to those parties, and let me just say that they are the parities you want to be at, even though no matter what you do you feel dreadfully underdressed. 

So, her perfect life had this one blemish: she really wanted to find a man to love and share it all with, but kept striking out. They all seemed great at first, but then turned out to be married, gay, or incapable of intimacy. Or, in one rather stunning case, all three. 

Until now. Along came the Bachelor of West 86^th Street.  A lovely guy, still never married at fifty. All Sam’s friends pointed out to her that this was a red flag, probably indicated that he would most likely never, ever, want to even go near the topic of marriage or commitment. 

But she kept seeing him, and he was delightful. We all fell in love with him. He took her out dancing. He spoke French. He took her to charming restaurants. And then he asked her to marry him, and we all just about fell off our chairs.  

Once they started talking marriage, they started talking about beds and bedding. And not in the way you’re thinking. The thing is, he had a tiny apartment with a double bed in the tiny bedroom. She had a much bigger apartment with — you guessed it — a double bed in the big bedroom. The Feng Shui experts reading this will probably come in to say what I myself told Sam long ago, which is that if you don’t want to be single anymore, start by getting a bed that’s big enough for two.  

The Bachelor of West 86^th Street was, like Sam, quite athletic, but this meant he was muscular, and he was tall to boot. So sharing a double bed soon seemed like torture to both of them, and quickly they launched into a search for a nice, comfortable, and most of all larger, bed. 

Check in next week to see what happens next.