Majweski & Sons

The Official Funeral Home of Cesarzville

We created Majewski & Sons using our dining room and front entry hall.  We wanted to accomplish a few things in this space.  First, we wanted to create more than just the somber look and feel that people expect to see when they attend a viewing we wanted to have a slightly creepy or “uncomfortable” feel.  Second, we wanted to visually separate the space from the rest of the party creating a “pass through” to the speakeasy.  Lastly, we wanted to use the funeral director’s office to seamlessly tie the two parts of the party together. 

To create the somber look and feel of the funeral home we relied on a couple of big pieces, and a lot of little details.  While the big pieces definitely created the space and there was no question you were in a funeral home, the details are what gave it the somber “comfortable feel”.  The largest and most undeniable piece of décor was a 6 foot long coffin.  We didn’t want it to look like a Halloween decoration, so Alex built a simple rectangular pine box and added some trim, handles and a cross.  The lid actually lifted up, and we used it to store extra food, and cold drinks.  We used a basic black tablecloth and set the coffin on top of the dining room table.

We added a traditional funeral wreath.  I looked into actually ordering a fresh one, but decided that was just too expensive.  We bought a prefab spring wreath on sale at Michael’s and added some additional flowers to fill it out.  We placed in the corner using a basic presentation easel and added the In Loving Memory ribbon that we made using gold vinyl and the Silhouette.  We added a few other small details to the wreath.  The arrangement was made and delivered by Scholfield’s Flower Shop and was from the O’Banion family. Since, our funeral wreath didn’t give us the overwhelming floral smell you would expect in a funeral home we added a few star-gazer lilies.  More effectively, we added three different floral scented candles around the space.  

We added a few additional details around the room including a Bible verse in gold vinyl letters to the mirror.  We also switched out a friendly family picture for a somber lightning landscape. 

We didn’t want the usual bright lights, but also didn’t want the room to be too dark.  We ended up switching out the lights in the front hallway dining room and the desk lamp with yellow tinted light bulbs.  

When our guests arrived they were greeted by our funeral directors, and asked to sign the Guest book (this was also created by adding gold vinyl lettering to a simple black journal).  The funeral directors also gave the guests an “Order of Service” for the deceased (Krzysztof Cesarz isn’t real, but that is my great-grandfather.) The “Order of Service” also contained information the guests would need for the game and other activities at the party. 

The second major goal we needed to accomplish in the space, was to create a visual division between the funeral home and the speakeasy.  There are two points of entry in this space: the main hallway that opens into the living room and a pass through from the dining room to the kitchen. These entry points were also our best place to add the hidden room entry by password aspect to the party.  We put up a curtain road and hung floor to ceiling red curtains in the hallway.  This worked well in this space, because the hall is open, it architecturally has “three sections.” One that really feels like an entryway, the space directly in front of the dining room and the space between the dining room and the living area.  We put the curtains between the dining room and third area, allowing us to create the illusion of an office space that was between the front of the funeral home and the speakeasy.  

We wanted a more creative solution for the dining room, so we added “secret door.” This was done via a sliding bookcase.  We mounted sliding barn door hardware above the doorway, and attached a bookcase to it.  We had two things we needed to work through here, the bookcase needed to fit on the railing and it couldn’t be too heavy to slide.  Alex built the bookcase using plywood and 1x4s.  Most books don’t fit on that size shelf, so we made “books” out of different sizes of wood.  We painted some and used book binding tape on the edges, and glued classic scrapbook pages to others to add some variety.  As a fun “Easter Egg” to our friends, we added books that referenced other parties from the Cesarz Party Universe (CPU) including a Cesarzville High School Yearbook, Rye and Prejudice, and the Need for Speed by Pete Mitchell.  A quick note on this, vinyl doesn’t adhere well to book binding tape, so we did end up with some incomplete titles.  We added some other details including a couple of paintings and some candles.  We kept the door closed,and when guests arrived they would tell the funeral director the password, and be let in through the secret door.  If they didn’t know the password, the funeral directors would make them stay and pay their respects for a few minutes, but would eventually let them through.

The last piece we needed to accomplish with Majewski & Sons was to naturally tie the funeral home space to the Mockingbird Lounge.  We did this by creating the funeral director’s desk or office.  We utilized the hallway space right behind the red curtain, where we also happened to already have a desk.  The key to decorating this space was to include a mixture of props that would have been used by a funeral director and items that would be a part of the speakeasy. We did some internet research and found some bottles that would have been used in funeral homes around the 1920s.  We created labels on cream card stock and glued them onto Amber bottles.  We also created a few invoices from Schofield’s Flower Shop and added letters of thanks and obituaries (these were real obituaries we copied from the internet).  The ledger book contained the names of our guests and the membership number that they received in their invitations.  The last main piece here was the phone, we actually purchased a candlestick phone for the desk.  However, we wanted the phone to actually work as part of the game, and between the phone technology and what we need to make a landline phone operate with a cell phone it just didn’t work.  So, we pulled out our faux rotary phone and put it to work.  Crates under and around the desk, contained both “embalming” liquids and various different bottles of wine and liquor.  It was definitely a lot of detail for the small space, but our guests took time to read through what was there, and really soak it all in.