you say luminaria, i say farolito

in new mexico, farolitos are the paper bags with sand and candles inside and luminarias are the little (or big!) open bonfires. not at all the same thing. elsewhere, it seems, the terms are used largely interchangeably and luminaria seems to be preferred... dammit, i'm sticking with farolito!

tomorrow i leave for eugene and will be pretty much out of commission until the wedding, although i'm planning to try to take some photos of things in process and post a few more entries before the event. but so i thought today i would try to cover one more aspect i don't think i've talked about yet: lighting.

as with the flowers and everything else, there was nothing fancy i wanted here, nothing over the top. just something to set a tone - still sticking with that kind of overall rustic-y, september feeling. so farolitos are one thing i've known i wanted since day 1. firstly: how cheap can you get? a package of paper lunch bags? second, since the bags can just get recycled, it's very minimal impact. the only thing that changed that was when i realized i'd need to go with the fake plastic tea lights instead of real ones. having the open flame just wasn't going to work with a public park and then a b&b... but i decided to do it anyway, knowing the candles will get reused by my friends & family instead of thrown away.

the shelter we have has great little ledges all around where they can be set up, and a big huge fireplace that i think kind of makes the farolitos make sense. but it'll be daylight while we're at the park, so i'm thinking we'll just pack 'em up and truck them over to the b&b, where there's a great little outdoor patio and garden area that they'd be perfect for.

i thought about something like martha stewart's lacy luminarias, but decided even that was just too much.

i want it as simple as possible. less = more: