My mom’s getting remarried in two weeks. I like her fiance Rob, so that’s all good. The only not good part has been that I’m not a fan of weddings and all the heteronormative activities surrounding them, and I’m my mom’s maiden of honor.
Of course, I’m a good daughter, and my mom may have pulled the “I gave birth to you and supported you through your expensive private liberal arts education where you majored in creative writing and then you stayed so far away in Seattle, don’t you love your mother?” But I don’t remember as this was back in January.
Instead of buying them something for their wedding, I agree to build them a wedding website. Now while, they never managed to provide me with a lot of content for it (and the Big Day is fast approaching), I did manage to bring together what I consider a pretty solid design. And I pulled off some Photoshopping that might have gone a little too far since I removed some of Rob’s childhood scars. Who knew?
As with any new web site, I made some inquiries to friends to view the site on their computers and their browsers. (There’s only so many times I can open it in Firefox, IE, and Safari on my Windows XP PC at work and at home.) And everyone’s comments were: OMG, the colors! They burns us!
Belatedly, I realized I should’ve put the disclaimer that those are the wedding colors. Those are what my clients wanted. While, they wouldn’t be the colors I would’ve chosen, they were the requirement. I tried to put as much white space as I could to rest one’s eyes.
Compared to other wedding websites, it’s definitely brighter and less somber/classy. But this is my mom’s second wedding (and she’s had three children), so we’re dropping all the virgin-white subtext, and Rob wants to basically have a big party. Heck, the best man and my brothers, who are giving away my mom, are wearing Wranglers. Yeah, did I mention there’s a cowboy-theme underlying all this and how the reception is going to be in my mom’s new barn?
Design isn’t always what the designer thinks is best, even though we push our ideas, outlines, and platforms. Oh, don’t worry, there are always some client ideas we stop before they get out of control. Sometimes, it’s all about the client, the context, and the product. Especially if I’m building a wedding website for my mom as a gift. I’m just going to bite my tongue and ask her if she likes it. Which she does.
Now if I can get out of e-mailing her back over if she should get hot pink and black cowboy boots or hot pink camouflage-print cowboy boots to wear under her wedding dress.
