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Weelll…I had hoped to be finished with our masterpiece, and have a complete and total package to show you this week.  But paint takes time to dry, and the nice days where you can play a game of golf are limited! (Mom had a 4 pm tee time) Nevertheless, we completed the final steps, and short of assembly, the masterpiece is complete.

You’ll remember last time, our ingredients were:

4 planters, each with 2” PVC poles cemented inside

4 1 ¼” pine dowels, stained with Red Barn (yuk yuk) stain

Well, in the meantime, Mom had gotten busy with the gardening. And by “busy” I mean “busy making these pots sing with floral decadence”. To wit:

So we had but one mission: Make those silly orange planters look less like $7.99 from Home Despot, and more like a million bucks.  ON WITH THE SHOW.

Step 1: a muted metallic glaze

Step 2: Sea sponges

Step 3: Dapple the planters with the metallic glaze, giving them both a toned-down appearance and a bit of glitter.

One by one, they’re all done!

Now to the canopy.  My late grandmother, Peg Rossi, the most kickass lady I ever knew, gave this antique lace banquet cloth to my mother, which will be the canopy under which Steph and I will be married.   It’s a fitting aspect of our wedding, since the chuppah symbolizes the home we will build together…and nothing was more important to my grandmother than the home.

We have to find a way to make the canopy hang properly without being pierced or cut; again, mom wins the invention prize with her foam ball idea:

Wad a volume of foam into a ball around the top of the pole, securing it with a ziptie.  That becomes the anchor around which the canopy will be secured, using a cloth ribbon.

We made sure that the ends would hang properly, and they do. (Don’t worry – that’s not how the drape will end up!)

Once the paint on the planters dry, and the flowers have finished taking root, our journey will be complete…my quest to build our wedding chuppah will have been realized…and Mom becomes the indispensible gardener who makes it all blossom.

Steph’s grandfather’s Tallit will be the crowning piece of our multi-generational, multi-traditional chuppah.  Everyone who we love, everyone who we wish could be there…will be there. 

See you under the canopy, Fredders!