Button shows that not even the stench of death can deter one happy bride

Jul 29, 2010

By the time their wedding day comes around, most women have dreamt about it and visualized it over and over and over again. The dress, and the ring, and the cake, and the music, and the invitations, and the flower girls, and, oh yeah!, even the groom...for most brides (and certainly for whoever is in charge of planning the wedding) that special day is one for which all the t's must be crossed, the i's must be dotted, and even the tiniest curveball can be cause for concern and consternation. So you might that think that even the most even-keeled bride would turn into a bridezilla if they had to deal with what Jessica Zabala feared she would have to deal with on her wedding day. And what is that, you ask? Oh nothing...nothing at all...just the smell of death emanating from across the street, nefariously infiltrating the noses of everyone in its vicinity. Ms. Zabala's reaction? Wear a button that says "I Love Lois" in honor of the famous "Corpse Flower" from whence the smell was wafting. Here are Ms. Zabala and her fiancee Jonathan Smith proudly displaying their buttons:

Photo credit: David J. Phillip via KansasCity.com

We told you about Lois in or last Customer Spotlight. The Houston Museum of Natural Science used ABM button making supplies to create buttons commemorating the rare blooming of its Amorphophallus titanum, otherwise known as "Corpse Flower" because of the awful sewer stench it emits to attract the flies and beetles it needs to pollenate. Most of these flowers only bloom once and their blooming is difficult to predict. Thus, when Zabala decided to have her wedding across the street from the HMNS she had no idea that Sue. R. Stench (get it?) might be end up crashing the party. Surprisingly, or perhaps amazingly, Zabala did not flip out when informed of the possibility that Lois' blooming could coincide with her nuptials. According to a story in the Dallas Morning News:

"I don't need a florist anymore," Zabala laughs. "I've got Lois." ... "I did not know that Lois was quietly sprouting in the greenhouse across the street," Zabala said, donning an "I Love Lois" button given to her by the museum.

This is the point during this blog post at which we take full credit for Ms. Zabala keeping her cool and not, well, doing this. That's right, we're taking credit. Clearly the "I Love Lois" button served as an assuaging olive branch that defused a potentially volatile situation. Once Ms. Zabala was wearing the button, and thus publicly professing her love for the odious flower, how could she be upset with it? Once again, buttons have proven themselves to be among the most wonderfully potent sources of joy in the world...capable even of overcoming the most unreasonable, uncompromising force known to nature: a bride on the week of her wedding. Okay...so maybe we're exaggerating, and maybe we're exaggerating by a lot. Ms. Zabala by all accounts sounds like a perfectly reasonable bride and we certainly have no experience with any other kind of bride (right honey?). We are actually just very proud that our buttons were used to commemorate Lois' blooming and that they warranted mention in the article about Ms. Zabala.( Now we just hope that the wedding went off without a hitch...or a stench...as there were no articles available that updated the story post-bloom and post-wedding.) The moral of the story? Buttons rule (of course) and Jonathan Smith is appears to have made himself a very wise decision.

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