One of the single most charming things I’ve ever seen is this video, in which actor Brian Cox teaches a bit of Shakespeare to toddler Theo, who does a jolly good job with the material! Enjoy.

A combined Josie/Elizabeth post. First, Elizabeth:
One of the best things about events like the booksellers’ conference we just attended (the American Booksellers Association’s Winter Institute) is the opportunity to visit with authors and illustrators during dinners or parties hosted by publishing houses. These are very special evenings, because the bookseller/author ratio is pretty low, so we all get a chance to chat with artists whose work we admire, alongside the publicists who work so hard on behalf of their books. It’s also great fun to meet and chat with other booksellers, something we all too rarely get a chance to enjoy. On top of all that, the food is always tasty, the lighting is flattering, and wine happens.
Last Wednesday evening, I had the great pleasure of celebrating Ed Young and Brenda Z. Guiberson’s new picture book, Moon Bear (Macmillan/Henry Holt, May 2010), with both of its creators. They were actually getting their very first peek at the finished book that evening; the book had been flown straight from the bindery to make the event. It was a small magical moment to see Ed and Brenda huddled together, leafing through their book page by page. It’s a beautiful book. In fact, all of the attending booksellers were laughing in agreement about how easy it will be to sell: all we’ll have to do is set out a stack; they’ll sell themselves. It doesn’t hurt that the language is lyrical and repetitive in just the ways young children love, while sneaking in a whole lot of information about this rare Asian bear. Some of the proceeds from the book will go to AnimalsAsia, an organization that works to rescue and rehabilitate moon bears from pretty horrific circumstances. Two representatives from AnimalAsia made a very moving presentation about their cause. They circulated a fabulous book about the rescued bears, called Freedom Moon.
When it was my chance to talk with Ed about his book, he pointed out secret silhouettes he’d hidden in the moon bear’s white neck bands: on one page, his wife; on two others, his daughters; on a fourth, an honored teacher. Booksellers—heck, all readers!—love hearing this kind of thing. Brenda spoke about revealing the bear’s personality through the adjectives she chose to describe him. Booksellers love this kind of thing, too.
The evening ended with a lovely art print from the book the Macmillan/Holt folks gave us to take home, and a unique gift from Ed Young: hand-painted eggs, each sporting a different study of a moon bear! He had made them while figuring out how to paint his contribution to the Open Fields School Goose Egg Auction in May. The chicken eggs he gave us were autographed, and each one had the recipient’s name on it. *And,* he had painted his own facial silhouette onto the moon bear’s ruff on each egg. Yes, if we had died right then and there, we all couldn’t have gone to a happier book-lovers’ heaven. What cracked me up (yuk yuk; or is that yolk, yolk?) was that he brought these eggs nested in their little cardboard carton, and here we were, a dozen booksellers who couldn’t believe their luck, petrified by the task of getting these treasures back home to the four corners of the country without breaking. Would we need to put them through security at the airport in their own grey bin, and cradle them in our trembling hands all the way home? Fortunately, the restaurant had perfect little containers, and our fears were relieved. At least we could carry them back to the hotel in one piece. Honestly, I’ve been afraid to peek into my container since arriving back in Vermont. When I get the courage to check, I’ll take a photo and post it here.
Now for Josie’s dinner notes:
On Thursday night, about ten booksellers were treated to a very a good meal courtesy of Egmont USA. While Egmont is one of Europe’s largest publishers, it’s relatively new here in the U.S. The dinner was to introduce us to David Patneaude, who wrote Epitath Road, a dsytopian young-adult novel that captivated me during all my down time on Friday. David’s story idea is very creative: a virus has wiped out 97% of the men on earth. Now women are in charge and there is most definitely a new world order. I can’t wait to finish this. [Elizabeth adds: we had an interesting conversation about the book cover, which has been changed from the one you see at left. Both covers are arresting, and booksellers were only semi-joking when we said they should print both as an experiment, since they appeal to very different readers. I can’t wait to read this book, too; I love a good dystopian novel!]
Doug Pocock, managing director of Egmont USA, is a lovely British guy, who unabashedly loves middle-grade fiction. I thought that was pretty cool. Egmont is slowly planning on growing into the U.S. market. Their list right now, while small, is full of some great (and great-looking) books.
Friday night, Bloomsbury took about ten of us to dinner, to meet the author Dr. Cuthbert Soup, author of A Whole Nother Story, a mystery along the lines of the Series of Unfortunate Events, full of humor and fanciful touches. I was struck by how many creative things Dr. Soup has done along the way to becoming a children’s author. What struck me the most was his writing for movies, some of which you’ll know, but I’m not sure I’m allowed to say. I asked him which profession he liked more and without hesistation he said kids’ books. “You can have more fun,” he said. This surprised and delighted me. Dr. Soup is charming and Bloomsbury has him hard at work on the sequel, so we’ll have more to look forward to. I have to admit that both dinners were at the same restaruant which left me wondering if there are no other places to eat in San Jose. I can happily report that the stuffed chicken with mozzarella and prosciutto was equally delicious the second night. I was saddened, though, that we had to leave for the airport before dessert, because the creme brulee was fabulous. (Elizabeth adds: In a rep book talk at the conference, Bloomsbury’s publishing director George Gibson said that “this wasn’t usually [his] kind of thing” to read, but he laughed out loud at every page. After meeting the author, I believe it. He’s hilarious, and you can tell he’s terrific with kids at school visits.)
Back to E:
One last appreciative note: It’s heartening to know that, in this economy, children’s books are one of publishing’s bright spots, and that children’s book departments are a bright spot in general bookstores. Even so, it’s a tough climate for independent booksellers, so special evenings like these bring us back to the magic of what we get to do, and make us excited to return to our stores and recommend books to kids who will love them. Thanks, everyone, for the delightful evenings, to the authors and illustrators, and especially to the gracious and fun hosts of the dinners: Joy Dallanegra-Sanger, Mark von Bargen, and Kevin Peters at Macmillan, Mary Albi and Doug Pocock at Egmont, and Deb Shapiro at Bloomsbury. We know how much work goes into those evenings.

I’m in San Jose, California, for the ABA’s fifth Winter Institute, a gathering of 500 booksellers seeking two days of bookseller education. Here are my highlights thus far.
The morning started off optimistically with a keynote by Jack McKeown of Verso Advertising, who gave us a breakdown of a survey that his company did about book-buying behavior (the whole survey is available here). It was a fascinating presentation, full of good news in terms of book-buying habits. Baby boomers and retired folks read the most and they love indies. I’m giving you the down and dirty, but that was the upshot; read the whole survey to learn more. One great thing Verso Advertising is doing is creating and processing a survey for ABA in time for presentation at BEA; the best part about this is, booksellers can contribute questions at the website. Links for all of this should be up on Bookweb.org as well as the Verso site. People left the breakfast not only well fed (eggs and two kinds of meat) but encouraged.
After this I headed to the small/medium store roundtable discussion. I love these gatherings with other booksellers. We all come ready to share what’s working and what’s not. About ten tables with eight booksellers per table gathered and covered topics ranging from staffing and how to have robust events to how best to deal with local authors. The ideas were free-flowing. Staffing issues focused mainly on hiring practices. Some stores have a quiz that prospective applicants must fill out by hand, others have typing tests (never a bad idea), and the best thing I took from the hiring part was to let other staffers participate in the interview process.
The discussion really took off when authorless events were discussed. I was blown away by the creativity of some stores. One store is having an Undead in the Dead of Winter event and they’re bringing in a mortician to talk about natural deaths. I believe the store owner said this event was already sold out. Wow. What a fabulously creepy and great idea. Other stores have had cookbook nights with a local restaurant cooking from six of its favorite cookbooks and speaking about the books. Forty people attended the dinner and each bought around $100 of cookbooks. Simple, off-site and a great partnership with a local restaurant, this event was a winner.
Lunch was Rep Speed Dating. Every fifteen minutes a rep would come booktalk their favorite books from the coming season. A quick but informative session. The galley grab after lunch was very busy with folks eagerly trying to get the books they had heard about.
Winter Institute is always a whirlwind of activity that gets me thinking creatively about bookselling in a way that nothing else can. A gathering this large of booksellers who’ve come to learn is exciting and fun.

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” This famous quote has been attributed to Einstein and many business professionals. Who said it is far less important that what it means to a bookstore. Yes, we all have computerized inventory systems (at least I think we all do), but what does that actually tell us?
Well, I thought I knew my POS (point of sale) system pretty well and could navigate it smoothly. Then they went and upgraded on me and now I’m awash in a numbers fest that I’m loving. In one single report I can see the inventory turns (essentially, the number of times times you sell the dollar amount of your inventor. See this website to learn more about it).
Why are turns so important? Well, for one thing, they give an accurate view of what’s selling in your store. The misleading thing about turns is: unless you can see each section, rather the store as a whole, you don’t really know what’s working. I think we all have a sense of what sections do well, but do we know what sections are really not earning their shelf space? Does reference earn its keep? Are you surprised that the how-to section had six turns last year? These are very important numbers to know during lean business times.
In looking the number of turns per section from last year I can see that I should stop buying so many bath books and spend more time making sure that my board book section is jam-packed with goodies. I was surprised at how well the Vermont section did, the message that regional books sell well was reinforced. The Vermont State award books for kids also did very well last year. What this tells me is this section will continue turn over as many times as I restock it. So, armed with this information, I’ll be better able to monitor stock levels and take advantage of publisher deals when they pop up. Sections with high turns mean you can try more things there. Take a chance on a new author in the mystery section if the turns are good. If sections did poorly last year, was it because your selection was bad, or were you just overstocked, or did a new garden center open up down the road with a great book section?
Some of this might seem elemental to savvy bookstore owners and managers, but it’s always good to look at your store a different way if you’re the owner or manager of a smaller store. I don’t number crunch well or often enough. Now the report that used to be a hassle to produce,  I see in seconds. Consequently, I can better manage my inventory, and hopefully in so doing, can make some more money.
I’ve set myself a challenge this year: increase the turns in several underperforming sections by the summer or consolidate or get rid of them and give higher performing sections more space. It’s always hard to trim a section, but when you see in clear numbers that your travel section is not doing very well, then maybe you don’t need a travel section. Better to have all sections be amazing than have some duds that are taking space away from others.
So, I’m off to Winter Institute armed with the newfound knowledge of my inventory. I’m hopeful that while I’m out in California, I’ll learn even more ways to make the most of all my shelf space.

Poet Taylor Mali is pretty well known in educator circles, and I’m guessing half the world’s teachers have his poem “What Teachers Make” taped to their walls. (If they don’t, they should.) It was only recently, though, that I discovered his poem “Reading Allowed,” which is too good NOT to share here.
Embedded below is a video of Taylor reading “Reading Allowed” aloud. I will warn those of you watching at work that, um, the start of this poem is pretty sexy. If you’re worried someone will overhear and be offended, keep the volume low at the beginning, then turn it up! If you’re worried someone will see you blushing, then… Best watch this one at home.  ; )

Warning: Inappropriate humor! (But I just can’t help myself…)

Today I discovered that whenever someone purchases Mo Willems’ book The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog from our store, the title is truncated on their receipt, so it looks as though they’ve purchased a book that is, um, not appropriate for the picture book section. (Take the last 4 letters off the title above and you’ll see what I mean.)

Inappropriate as it may be, I can’t help picturing the image, rendered in Mo’s playful style, that might appear on the cover of such a book. Or the text balloons on the interior, which (to be honest) wouldn’t have to change that much from those in the Pigeon books. Here’s a page from Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, so you can, um, see what I mean…

I know, I know. It’s terrible!!

But I’ll bet several of you are laughing.  ; )

I am lucky to be going to the ABA’s fifth Winter Institute this week. Wi5, as it known, promises to be several days of focused bookseller education and a chance to see old friends. While I’m not crazy about flying San Jose, California (it’s a whole day of travel from Vermont), a break from the Arctic weather will be welcome.

The timing of WI5 is good. After a crazy busy holiday season, the regular slow days of January always cause alarm, so it’s good to learn some new things, get fired up again. I am regretfully, now that the whole Macmillan, Amazon, iPad, etc, news has taken hold, not going to be there for the technology day. However, I’m glad that every participant will be given a memory stick of the session handouts (way to save the planet, ABA!) so I can read what I missed. It’s good that both Elizabeth and I will be going, so we can divide and conquer and go to as many sessions as possible.

Sessions I want to attend include:

– Graphic Novels: An Amazing Marketing Event & Opportunity for Independent Retail. Folks from Diamond Book Distributors will help us learn the graphic novel market and how to really promote graphic novels in your store. I know there is only one section of my store I’m afraid of and it’s graphic novels, so I welcome a chance to learn from experts.

– Edelweiss for Fun & Profit. I just need to learn more about the new ordering capability of this program from the folks at Above the Treeline. I have been a little daunted by it thus far, so a session devoted to it could make my life as a buyer so much easier.

– Handselling 201: Using the Digital Age to Your Advantage. I’m not even sure I understand the description, but I’m intrigued enough to go.

B- uying and Selling Non-Book and Gift Items: Let’s talk about getting products in your store with better margins. Someone from the National Association of College Stores will speak about what’s hot on college campuses, and give tips on how to choose non-book items.

This just covers Thursday — phew! Add to this mix breakfast, lunch, drinks and dinner with friends and it’s a great day.

Friday promises to be just as full with sessions on renegotiating your lease (in this economy, who wouldn’t benefit from this); and creating and maintaining a magazine section — something I’ve thought about, but wondered if it would work in my store. ABC (Association of Booksellers for Children) is presenting The Gen Z Reader: Understanding the New Reader of the Post-Electronic Age. I’m looking for inspiration with this session, as I’m despairing about customers who have become "the electronic reader," and I’m not sure what to do.

Let’s not forget one of my favorite parts of WI: Rep Speed Dating. Twice during the Institute reps will show you the highlights from their lists. All I know is I’m at table 11 for both "dates" and am dying to know what the rep picks for the season will be.

Winter Institute gives booksellers a chance to learn and get inspired for the challenges of the year ahead while strenghtening the friendships made through the year with other booksellers. Seems like a win-win if you ask me.

It’s book buying time. Every January and February I spend a fair amount of time ordering books from the publisher’s summer 2010 catalogs. It’s always a little strange to be thinking about summer when we just got two feet of snow, but it’s also a great contrast to sub-zero temperatures.
I’m lucky that, with very few exceptions, I actually get to see sales reps in person. I find the face to face meeting to be more collegial (not that my telephone reps aren’t great, but it’s easier to build a relationship over coffee than on the phone) and probably more profitable for the publishers. Before I meet the rep, I usually get a sales kit in advance. This allows me time to actually look at the F&G’s (this means folded and gathered sheets, and it’s the galley equivalent of a picture book) without being rushed. I never have time to look at these kits at work, so I take them home. I learned a great trick from a fellow bookseller: I read through all the books in the kit and then two days later I go through the catalogs. Books that I remember get my attention, books I can’t remember, I don’t need to order. If I can’t remember it two days after reading it, then it doesn’t belong on my shelves.
Hardcover picture books have become increasingly difficult to sell, so I tend to buy only the books that I feel extremely confident I can handsell. I try to approach every buying session with several things in mind. Budgetary constraints do loom large these days, but I’ll never pass on anything I love. What budget issues do is make me really think about passing on books that I’m wavering on. Sadly, this usually means that the mid-list books, the books I might have gotten one or two of a few years ago, I’ll pass on now.
So, now I buy fewer titles, but more copies of books. This is risky, but there’s a comfort level customers see with multiple copies of a single title. It sends a message that we like this book enough to have five on hand. Multiple copies are also easier to display, thus making them easier to see and to buy.
In a perfect world I love every book I buy, but every buyer must keep their customers in mind. There needs to be consideration for the breadth of your collection. I don’t really care for tractors or trucks, but my customers do. So, it’s my job to make sure I have the best of the transportation books. The same thing goes for the princess and fairy books.
A picture book needs to work on many levels for me to buy it. I need to love the art, or at least see why a child would love it. The story has to be good, the rhyme needs to not be sing-songy. It can have a message, but not be preachy. There are lots of intangibles that go into me loving a book. Stunning art works for me: The Lion & the Mouse has rapidly become one of my all-time favorites. The level of detail is stunning. Funny books are a favorite of mine as well. Arnie the Donut is a favorite: full of fun art, great humor, this book pleases kids and parents alike. Skippyjon Jones is another treat because Skippy is such a great character and the story is great to read aloud.
Lastly, I listen to my rep. If I’m not in love with a book but she is, well, I’ll give it more consideration. Getting to know my reps and letting them get to know me and my store makes for a lovely relationship. After working together for years, I have reps who know exactly what will sell in my store and what I can pass on. They work for me and highlight local authors who might be available for store visits and whose books might be sleeper good sellers.
I love buying picture books. The only problem for me is, as I get older, I find ordering books six months before they come out means I won’t necessarily remember them until they come in. This makes for a lovely surprise when the boxes get unpacked, and that makes it fun all over again.

After months of promising you a proper post about Gareth’s and my summer camp wedding, today’s the day I deliver. What follows is a snapshot of our wedding day, with an emphasis on the more “bookish” elements. While books weren’t exactly the theme of the day, we couldn’t help but include them!

If after you read this you want still more info. about how the day went and (better still) more photos of what it looked like, visit the beautiful wedding blog Green Wedding Shoes, where our wedding is being featured today, and read the post about our wedding written by our amazing photographers, Heather Gilson and Jon Almeda of One Love Photo. (Unless otherwise indicated, all photos you see here are were taken by this beyond-talented duo!)

Gareth and I tied the knot on a VERY rainy Saturday, September 12, 2009 at Camp Wing in Duxbury, Massachusetts — a children’s summer camp we rented for the entire weekend (Friday afternoon through Monday morning).

Our goal in hatching this camp plan was to provide interested guests with an affordable opportunity to spend a bit more time with us than just one day, and join us for low-key, good-time activities like eating s’mores around a campfire (or, in the case of rain, the fireplace) or making lanyards and playing board games (which our guests happily did for several rainy hours on Saturday) or shooting arrows at targets, which we did on Sunday. That day it was warm and sunny enough for us to do things like swim in the pool or pile 12 people into the camp’s “war canoe” for a trip around Keene’s Pond. (Photo below by Steven Hinds.)

It felt great to spend the largest chunk of our wedding budget on such memorable experiences, and better still to know it was going to the cause of enabling disadvantaged kids to attend summer camp. Camp Wing’s parent program, Crossroads for Kids, is a private, non-profit organization that offers at-risk youth the chance to develop coping and leadership skills through educational and recreational experiences, like attending overnight camp at Camp Wing. And, as one of their goals is reducing summer learning loss, their programs also include a literacy component. (They’d welcome donations to their newly established camp library!)

The staff at Camp Wing were beyond fantastic to us, both in the months leading up to and during our wedding weekend. They bent over backwards to make all of our guests feel welcome and happy — which they did. Those who chose to stay at the camp with us slept either in the camp’s very tidy cabins, like this one, in front of which stands our wedding party: me, Gareth, Gareth’s Best Man Wes, and my Matron of Honor (isn’t that an awful term?) Elizabeth…

…or they slept in the Duxbury Stockade, a replica of a Revolutionary-era fort.


Folks staying in the Stockade had the added benefit of being able to borrow books from the temporary “Camp Library” that I assembled there for our guests, using titles from Gareth’s and my personal collections. It was great to see our books getting so much use! (Photo below by Samantha Pozzi.)

Our original plan had been to spend Saturday morning doing archery and having canoe races, but those plans had to be scrapped when we woke up to scenes like this… (Photo below by Samantha Pozzi.)

Instead, our guests hung out in the Stockade enjoying raucous conversations and becoming fast friends as they played board games and made lanyards, tissue-paper flowers, and other camp-style crafts.

Arts and crafts were, in fact, a big part of the planning and execution of our wedding, and Gareth’s talent for illustrating came in handy for several projects, beginning with the co-creation of our “Save the Date” postcards. When we made these we didn’t yet know if our wedding would have a particular theme beyond that of just “summer camp,” but we knew we wanted to incorporate birds into our wedding somehow, so began by doing that here. First we came up with a visual concept together, then Gareth created a watercolor painting that brought that concept to life and scanned said painting into the computer. I then played around with the overall design and handled the typography. The end results looked like this (click to view larger):

Soon after those postcards were in the mail I stumbled upon Robert Frost’s poem “The Master Speed,” while perusing books of poetry in search of ceremony readings. Frost wrote this epithalumium in honor of his daughter Irma’s wedding in 1926 and what’s etched beneath his wife’s name on the Frost family gravestone is the poem’s final line: “Together wing to wing and oar to oar.” When I read that line I watched the pieces of planning slide perfectly into place. Wings and oars. Click. Birds and camp. Click. Camp Wing. Click, click, click.

“The Master Speed” was the first poem read aloud during our ceremony, and “Together wing to wing and oar to oar” was the wording we used on our invitations, which we designed via the same basic process we used for our save the dates. I want to tell you that it was blissfully easy, this collaborative project, but I’d be lying. After several evenings of staring at the same design feeling wholly dissatisfied, we called on brilliant designer/illustrator/author Scott Magoon for help, asking “what the heck are we doing wrong here??” Scott, bless his brains, looked at our design-in-progress and said, basically, “What if you do this or this or maybe this?” We took one of his suggestions, ran with it, and the results (thank you, Scott!!) were poster-sized invitations that we had silk-screened (click to view larger):

Gareth, who never leaves home without his sketchbook, did actually manage to do one drawing on our wedding day, when he and Wes were fully attired and waiting for Elizabeth and me to finish the last of our wardrobe details. In the sketch you see me, standing beside our ironing board, holding my bouquet, taking one last look at myself, in the mirror, dressed for our wedding.

As for Gareth’s wedding attire, my favorite piece of his “wardrobe” might very well have been the boutonierre he was wearing that day. I had asked our fantastic florist, Erin Carpenter of White Gate Gardens, if she might able to incorporate a few paintbrushes into whatever she created for Gareth. What she delivered was a stunning combination of rose, clover, succulent, cockscomb, and paintbrushes. It was so beautiful! AND a delightful surprise, considering that I knew nothing about Erin’s talents.

When it came to flowers our main priority was wanting to give our business to a local, organic farm. Through the website of the Duxbury Farmers Market I found White Gate Gardens, and wrote to Erin, outlining our moderate (if not meager) floral budget and low expectations, saying that we basically just wanted fresh-cut, organic flowers – whatever was in season. I didn’t know she had a background in floral retail, and I had no idea she’d create the most beautiful arrangements any bride could ask for — from the bouquets all the way to the arrangements she made for our reception and ceremony site.

Our original plan had been to have our wedding ceremony outside, beside the pond, but the rain made that an impossibility.We opted, instead, to use one of the camp’s prettiest buildings, Ziskind Hall. Between the soft glow of the lights and the sound of the rain on the roof, it was the loveliest space you could ever hope to be married in.

Our guests sat on rows of wooden benches, in true camp style.

There were three books we employed as props during our wedding ceremony. The first book was a small, red volume containing two of Shakespeare’s comedies: The Merry Wives of Windsor and Measure for Measure, out of which Gareth cut a space just large enough to hold our wedding rings and the ribbon with which they were looped together.

I glued ribbons under the front and back endpapers so that the book could be tied shut, thereby avoiding any risk of the book falling open and the rings falling out.

Our four-year-old ring bearer carried it nonchalantly up the aisle and placed it in his father’s (our officiant’s) hands.

The second book we used was Have Faith in Massachusetts, written by Calvin Coolidge. We pasted the full text of our ceremony (which we wrote ourselves) onto its pages, so that our officiant, Kelly, could read directly out of the book — or at least appear to. As for how Kelly, a native of Missouri who is neither judge nor minister, was able to officiate our ceremony? The great state of Mass. will grant a one-day license for anyone to officiate your wedding. How cool is that? It meant Kelly was actually able to say, “By the power vested in me by the State of Massachusetts…” before pronouncing us “wife and husband.” (You should have heard the laughter generated by that word reversal!)

In October I posted the poems that Gareth and I included in our wedding ceremony and/or glued to book promo signs we placed in various locations at our reception. What I failed to mention at the time was that we used NINE of those poems in our ceremony. Seriously. Nine of them, with each of them being read by a different friend. Of course, not all of the poems were lengthy, so that helped. We included three poems near the start of our ceremony, one poem at the end, and another five poems in the middle.

If this sounds crazy to you, consider the fact that the five poems in the middle were actually built in as “use only if needed” poems. Our ceremony began with a ring blessing. Kelly, our so-good-people-thought-he-was-a-professional officiant, explained that he’d pass our wedding rings through the ranks of our assembled guests, and asked them to bless the rings before passing them along to the next person. Because there were 115 people at our wedding, we knew it would take too long to pass the rings as a separate ritual, so the ring passing was designed to happen while the rest of the ceremony moved forward. The flaw in this simultaneous-passing-and-chatting plan was that we might reach the ring-exchanting part of the ceremony before our rings had made it completely through the assembled crowd, so we had to devise some way of “stalling for time.” Which is where the extra five poems came in.

We asked five friends if they would each read a poem we’d selected for them, when and if we needed to “stall for time” during the ceremony, which it turned out that we did. Through luck or really excellent guesswork, though, we wound up with exactly the right number of poems/readers to fill the necessary time. And out of what book were they reading? The answer is a very slim volume called Better Say: A Book of Helpful Suggestions for the Correct Use of English Words and Phrases compiled by James C. Fernald (Funk & Wagnalls Company, 2010). What cracked us up about this book was the idea that “Better Say” (which seems to make no sense whatsoever) was a good title for a book about, well, saying things in a more precise manner. The poems used by our “stall for time” readers were all glued into this book, their pages then nicely “tabulated” by our friends Tim and Sarah, to make it easier for each reader to find their designated poem.

Here’s one of our friends reading Robert Hershon’s poem “Perfectly Situated.” Note that we are all laughing, as he managed to strike exactly the right tone, just as Gareth and I expected. We basically let the poems themselves point us in the direction of readers. “WHO is the right reader for this poem?” we asked, and the distinct tone and voice of each poem gave us the answer.

I worried a bit that some guests might be bored if the readings went on too long, but the rapt attention of everyone present suggested that was not the case, as did the comments about the ceremony that we heard from our guests afterward, almost all of which were about how much they loved the ring blessing and/or poetry reading. (See Lorna below, holding my best friend’s youngest, and — as she recently pointed out — trying not to cry. Seated on the bench beside her is our read-everything bookseller Margaret.)

The whole ceremony was a joyful affair. Can you tell?




After the ceremony and a brief cocktail hour, guests made their way over to the dining hall to pluck their table assignments from clotheslines hung on the porch by our hard-working, decorations-savvy friends. I’d written each guest’s name and table on a heart-shaped card, and these were suspended on the lines from arrow-stamped clothespins — an homage to good old archery(and Cupid, of course). (The first photo below is by Samantha Pozzi.)


For centerpieces I grew wheatgrass in inexpensive metal trays that my best friend and I spraypainted to match the tablecloths.

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I attached floral wires to butterflies cut from colorful paper or punched from dictionary pages, so they could “float” over the grass and around the candles. The effect was even more magical than I’d been expecting!

I wanted to do something creative for placecards but was stymied until a $2 purchase at a library book sale saved the day. Using a single-volume edition of The Columbia Encyclopedia published in 1943, I made personalized placemats that added a bit of elegance to the tables and provided guests with some rather entertaining reading material too.

In addition to sporting a guest’s name, each placement featured a different wing-related word (types of birds or butterflies, mostly, then mentions of fairies or other winged-things when I started to run out of the former), called to guests’ attention by, again, a stamped arrow. Sometimes a particular bird suggested a particular person, but most of the time I paired words and guests at random.

When I started this placemat project, Gareth and I were both skeptical about 1.) how they would look on the tables, and 2.) whether or not it was worth the time I’d have to spend hunting for wing-related words in the encyclopedia.

But both after and during the reception guests commented again and again about how much they loved the placemats. At most of the tables guests read their words aloud to one another and shared the other entertaining entries their pages contained. In the end, I think this might have been the most worthwhile craft project I did for our wedding!

But there were others I was really pleased with too. Making use of book promotional signs again, I created two large displays of family photos — one for my family and one for Gareth’s. Each showed photos of our grandparents’ weddings, our parents’ weddings, and then us from early years to the present.

Much of the credit for the fact that everything went so smoothly and looked so good on our wedding day goes to our “day of wedding coordinators” Anna Alter and her husband Bruno Trindade. In what was a fantastic trade-off, we two couples agreed to play this role for one another so that none of us had to be “in charge” on our respective wedding days. Gareth and I had a great time doing behind-the-scenes work at their wedding in July, and it was an honor to have them do the same for ours. They were also kind enough to lend us their tiny photo printer, which meant our guests were able to paste small photos of themselves into our guest book, alongside whatever words they chose to write. Such a handy little piece of technology!

My own summer camp memorabilia was spread out along this table as well, including several letters I wrote to my parents from summer camps I attended as a child — letters I don’t think I’d ever seen, let alone read, until my mother surprised me with them on our wedding day. (They are SUCH a hoot!)

Finally (one more reading-related reference here), I assemebled goodie bags for all the kids at our wedding — each contained a tray of play money, glow-in-the-dark necklaces/bracelets, stickers, a party horn, flashcards featuring photos of safari animals or other “cool” things, and (of course) a book selected especially with each child in mind. At some point during the reception I realized that a couple of parents were taking turns reading the books aloud to the lively pack of four-year-olds in our crowd. Here’s one of them reading from A Birthday for Bear written by Bonny Becker and illustrated by Kady MacDonald Denton (Candlewick Press, September 2009).

As for the more traditional stuff people have on their wedding days? Well, we had that too. The camp made us a tasty meal… (Can you tell this guest enjoyed it?)

…. and we followed it up with our favorite dessert — ICE CREAM! Nona’s Homemade drove an ice cream truck right up to the front of the dining room, with the music playing, and the hard-working Tom Donohue scooped huge servings to every one of our guests.

It tasted just as good in the rain…


and I think everyone agreed it was a fun departure from the usual wedding cake!

After dessert, there were toasts (yes, I cried)…

and we danced.

Joyfully.

For more than four hours.

It would be a lie to say that our wedding day was every bit as wonderful as we’d hoped it would be.

It was several times better than that.

Which is just how we believe our life together will be.

I find myself buried in summer 2010 catalogs and spreadsheets, so stumbling on this very funny retail-based website was a delight. The Customer Is Not Always Right is a hilarious site that allows readers to add their own retail interactions with customers.  I’ve included the bookstore link. Feel free to read the whole thing; there’s something reassuring about all retail stores having the same challenges we do.

We’ve all had customers who befuddle us. They ask questions with vague details and then repeat them, endlessly, hoping against all hope that the third or fourth question, asked pretty much the same way, will suddenly shake our brains free. Not always true. This causes frustration all around.

A new thing I’ve noticed, perhaps because I never actually wear my glasses, is a customer standing twenty feet away holding a book asking me what I think of the book. What’s interesting is while they’re standing too far away for me to have a shot at reading the title, they’re shaking the book back and forth. So now all I can see is a waving blur.

Read the blog and have a good laugh and share your humorous stories, if you got some. After all, there’s nothing like laughter to help ease the tension of a slow winter day.