re: Red Carpet Birthday, the final post

I know, I know. I have practically turned 31 in the time it has taken me to get these photos together, but I still wanted to share the pics from my Red Carpet Birthday Party. Maybe you want to know how to throw your own?

First.
You have to invite people. We goccoed these postcards and mailed them out to many friends to lure them out on a chilly Tuesday night.

On the back of the postcard, I glued a small coin sized envelope (a pretty color, from Flax) and inside included two movie tickets and details for the party.


Second.
The space! I sweet-talked a good deal out of the Victoria Theatre by renting it out on an evening in between their scheduled shows. It helped to find a theater that wasn't a movie theater with regular programming, AND one that has been around since 1908, so it has that old classy feel to it.



Third.
Feed people. The theater let me use their popcorn maker, so the whole place smelled like hot butter, and we stocked the place with lots of soda and classic boxes of theater candy. (Make sure not to invite any friends that are overly health conscious).


Please note - people like food better when presented to them on trays held by lovely ladies. Luckily I know a few that come with their own fishnets - many thanks to Mandy and Meredith, my cigarette girls for the evening. The trays were custom made and painted by the ever talented worker of wood, Jared Rusten.

Be prepared to have real San Franciscan pimps hear about your party and want to attend. (We didn't exactly shoo him away, did we?)

Get some tough (or just tough looking) bouncers to make sure the pimps stay outside on the red carpet. Where they belong.

One of my favorite treats were the custom fortune cookies that I had made. I wrote a bunch of "fame" and "film" based fortunes and had the Fortune Cookie Factory lady in China Town make them into a big bag of personalized fortunes, right in front of me. I let my cigarette girls walk them around on the night of the party, and it was fun to see people's reactions to the fortunes that I had written.

My favorite:
"Darth Vader is your father too. Surprise!"


Fourth.
Take lots of photos of people! This is important for proving to everyone later that people actually came to your birthday party. I had the help of many talented photo takers. Aubrey Trinnaman took the paparazzi pics outside on the red carpet.




Paul Ferney took some lovely candids inside.

And Juliann Wheeler ran our photo booth. The pictures turned out great. (It didn't hurt that I told the bouncers not to let anyone ugly inside the theatre).





(If you are lucky, friends from far away will travel many miles to be at your party.)

Fifth.
Watch alot of really amazing films made by some of your favorite people ever, many of whom are in attendance.

For those that didn't get to attend (and actually, those that did), this was the finale film that wouldn't play right on the theatre DVD player.

turn it up! it's a Mary Cox and the Pop Rocks singalong:



Sixth.
Make sure to serve the marzipan iced birthday cake of your dreams (thank you, friends), and have a quick dance party to end the evening on the right note.

Pretty much, this was the best night ever.

See all the rest of the pictures here. You people are beautiful.