Inpiration v. Reality: Cake

I want to do a series of posts that show my inspiration pictures and compare them to the actual photos from my wedding.

First up:  Cake!

Fairly early on in my planning I happened up this picture of a cake and I fell in love.

My search for a cake design ended right then and there.

I was so blessed when it came to my cake.  A family friend who worked with my youth group when I was in high school makes cakes and offered to make our wedding cake as a gift.  I was so, so happy because she makes DELICIOUS cakes and they are very pretty.

I gave her this picture for inspiration and we decided on lemon pound cake with lemon filling and buttercream icing.

And on our wedding day she delivered the most delicious cake which was exactly like I pictured it.

Here's our cake on our big day:

So what do you think?  Inspiration and reality were pretty darn close, huh?

Invitations

I felt fairly certain from the beginning that I would print our invitations myself.  I felt that this would be one way that I could definitely save some money. 

My dad's office has a great piece of equipment called a Riso HC5500.  I used to work for my dad, and so I was really familiar with the Riso.  It is basically a full color printer that prints up to 120 pages per minute!  And, it is EXTREMELY easy to print on nearly any size paper.  I was lucky enough to get to use the Riso to print my invitations.

So, I knew that I would print them, but I also knew I didn't want to design them.  And I didn't want to use invitation kits.

As I browsed online, I saved photos of invitations that I loved and that inspired me.  Here are some (if any of these photos belong to you and you would like me to credit you or would like me to take it down please let me know).

As I was browsing Etsy (as I did quite frequently for wedding related items) I found the perfect solution for me.  I stumbled upon Ellas Paper's shop and loved her designs.  She had so many beautiful invitations.  She prints her invitations and other pieces, but she also has DIY pricing.

She took the Mosaic invitation and customized the wording for me and designed it in the perfect shade of yellow for me.  She also designed matching RSVP and Reception cards for me.  She and I worked together and messaged back and forth to tweak every little thing for me until I was 100% happy.  I was able to have complete control over every detail of my invitation suite, but not have the stress of designing it myself.

For .pdf files of my invitation, RSVP card, and Reception card I paid only $40.00.  I could not have been happier with my experience with Ellas Paper.

I ordered all my paper and envelopes from Paper Source and armed with my .pdf files took to the Riso and printed everything.  And then all that was left to do was assemble them (which wasn't as bad as I feared).

In the end I was so glad that I decided to print them myself, and I was very happy with the final result!

Thanks again to  Ellas Paper!

Finding the venue, Part II

First, let me say how sorry I am for my recent absence and lack of updates!  I've been a busy, busy girl!  I'll do my very best to keep the posts coming!

When we left off I was a bride without a venue, and planning time was flying by...

Well, after my first major bridal meltdown (and I mean MAJOR) my mom was the one who kept things on track, or rather got things back on track.

As I was more or less throwing my hands in the hair in desperation, my mom convinced me to give her the phone numbers of all the venues that I had looked at online before deciding on the 3 that we had visited.

She told me she would call some places and report back to me.  In my terribly negative mood I was convinced that she would find everyone was booked, or too small for our guest list.

Well, little did I know that everything was about to fall right into place.  As my mom says it was "a God thing."  My mom called me and told me that she thought she had found the perfect reception venue.  I of course, stuck in my negativity, was suspicious.

The first (and as it turns out, only) place that she called was The First Lady of Suffolk.  As she talked to Mickey, one of the owners, she began to feel that this was where Joe and I were supposed to have our reception.

She found out that we could meet with them that night to see the venue, and discuss all the details with them.  She also found out that July 31 was the only Saturday they had open all summer.  It certainly felt like things were pointing toward this being the place for us, but I still wasn't convinced.

That evening my mom, Joe and I went to The First Lady to meet with the two owners, Mickey and Jen.  They were fantastic and we fell in love with the venue.  We also felt so comfortable with Mickey and Jen and came away feeling that they would do everything in their power to make our venue everything we wanted and more.

As it turned out, I was so happy that we ended up at The First Lady.  I had originally wanted a unique, out of the box venue, but had more or less settled for the hotel.  As it turned out, that falling through was one of the best things that could have happened.

I absolutely LOVED working with Mickey and Jen and I LOVED our reception venue.  I loved that the historic mansion allowed the party to spill from inside, out onto the porch, and then out onto the lawn.

So, after my Bridal Meltdown, I had an amazing venue, and was so glad that our first venue didn't work out!

What what was your biggest Bridal Meltdown about?  How did you find your venue?

Finding our Venue, Part I

After we set the date, our next order of business was to find a venue for our reception.  We knew we wanted to get married at my church, but had no idea where we wanted to have our reception.


After looking into a few venues that were either out of our price range, or were booked for our wedding day, we made appointments with three different hotels in the area to meet with their event coordinators to see their ballrooms and talk about different packages and menus.


After visiting all three, we decided to go with the Hilton Garden Inn, which was the closest to our house, and where we felt we would get the most bang for our buck in regards to food.


We were happy with our choice, and we breathed a sigh of relief that one major thing was crossed off our list.  We had found our venue...or so we thought.


Before we booked with them I really wanted to have a food tasting.  They wouldn't let me taste the food before booking.  I went round and round with them for a couple of weeks before they finally said we could have a tasting.


After the tasting I definitely knew why they didn't want us to have a tasting.  With out going into details, we were definitely unhappy with the food.  One of the entrees was not what was listed on menu.  It was a very cheap cut of beef that they called by the name of a much more expensive cut of beef.


Part of the package that we were going to get was hor ‘oeuvres during our cocktail hour.  When I asked how many pieces there would be per guest, their event coordinators talked all around the question.  When I was persistent and asked multiple times until I got an answer I was appalled at the answer.  If I were to have 200 guests they would provide 100 pieces of shrimp (for shrimp cocktail) and 100 chicken skewers!  So my guests could have ONE shrimp OR ONE chicken skewer!  Of course guests would not know that and would rightfully think they could have several pieces and the later guest would be left with nothing.


So those two issues with the food, along with the issues of communication (I could never get answers from them, and had to play phone and email tag with them) caused us to part ways with the Hilton Garden Inn.


After spending about a month trying to work out issues with the Hilton Garden Inn, I was about 2 months into my 8 month engagement and found myself back at square one with no venue!


Next up, Finding our Venue, Part II it will have a much happier ending...stay tuned!

Your Dream Dress and MY dream dress!

As promised, this post will be all about THE dress!

Had I done this really in chronological order, this post would have come before my last post about setting the date.

That's right, I got my dress before I set the date!  Craaaaazy, right?

Let me tell you how that came to be:

As you know by now, Joe and I got engaged on December 15, 2009.  I decided that I wasn't going start any wedding planning until after the holidays.  I just wanted to enjoy being engaged and enjoy the holidays before diving into all the wedding details.

BUT of course I couldn't stay away from all the wedding websites and blogs out there!  In my browsing I saw an ad for a website called yourdreamdress.com and clicked to check it out.

Your Dream Dress sells only couture dresses that are samples in excellent condition, new, overbuys, or cancelled weddings.  None have been previously owned or worn or altered.

They also offer something that I've never seen at any other wedding dress site.  They allow you to have three days from the time you sign for the package to decide if you want to keep it or not.  If you decide you don't like it, or the fit is off or anything you can ship it back to them and they will refund you the full purchase price, and all you will be out is the shipping cost.
As I was browsing their dresses I went to the clearance section of the site (of course!) and found a dress I was instantly drawn to.  It was  Anne Barge 374.

The dress was beautiful, but not at all what I thought I'd like in a dress.  But I loooooooved it!

And because Your Dream Dress has such amazing dresses at even more amazing prices this gorgeous dress was only $450.00 and originally retailed for almost $4,000.00 (it came out 87% off!)

But I was very nervous to buy from online, and I really didn't think it was "time" to buy a dress yet.  So I told myself to hold off.

However, the next day or two I just couldn't get that dress out of my mind.  I knew that if I took my sweet time and went back to order it and it was gone I would have really regretted it.  So, after talking to my mom I ordered the dress.  After all, if it didn't work or I didn't like it in person I would only been out shipping costs.

So, I ordered the dress and planned to have a seamstress look at it to make sure the needed alterations could be made before I decided to keep it.

Well, I ordered the dress on December 22 and the evening of Christmas Eve my dress was at my door!  I was shocked!  And a little bit stressed!  I really didn't think that it would arrive until after Christmas.

As I said I had 3 days to decide to keep it or ship it back, and my three days were Christmas, the day after Christmas and the following day (the 26th and the 27th were also a Saturday and Sunday).  I was worried that I wasn't going to be able to find a seamstress to look at it by then, so I emailed them and Kimberly emailed me back and was very understanding and was more than willing to give me some extra time to decide.

I had a overall amazing experience with Your Dream Dress!  They communicated with me so well!  I emailed them with questions about the dress before I purchased it and the question about extra time to decide after I received the dress.  Both times they answered me personally, promptly and were very helpful.

As it turned out, a seamstress was able to look at the dress and the proper alterations were able to be made.

So very quickly, very unexpectedly I had my dress!  I didn't have date or a venue, but I HAD MY DRESS.  And it truly was (and still is) my dream dress--and at a dream price!

So without further ado here's the dress on my big day:

This was the perfect dress experience for me, but it might not be for other brides.  I'm a very indecisive person, so big shopping trip with bridesmaids, my mom, my mother in law and lots of opinions would not have been the best for me.  I thought that's what would happen, but in hindsight I'm glad it didn't go that way.

Had I had to buy the dress sight unseen with no return policy I would NEVER have been willing to buy it, but because I could look at it, have it seen by a seamstress before making a decision I ended up with a gorgeous dress that made me feel beautiful!

Would you ever buy a dress online or do you need an in store shopping trip?

Setting the Date!

As soon as you get engaged there are two things you will hear non-stop: "Let me see your ring!" and "Have you set a date?" 

The first question of course is no problem since all newly engaged ladies are thrilled to show off their rings.

The second question however can be a bit frustrating to brides early on.  I know for myself setting a date was the first thing to be done, and it feels like you can't do anything else until you set a date.

There were a few issues that made setting a date a bit difficult for us. First I had in my head that I wanted our engagement to last about a year.  Which would have meant getting married in December 2010.  This however, was quickly thrown out the window.

Around the time of our engagement one of my younger brothers applied for an overseas program which would have him living in Egypt or Turkey from August 2010 until January 2011.  So, since I couldn't (wouldn't) get married without him there, we were left with the decision of getting married before August 2010 or waiting until sometime in 2011.

Well, long story short(ish) we decided to have a summer wedding.  July 31 fell into place because I wanted as much time to plan as possible (remember, I really wanted a year to plan) and we didn't know when in August my brother would have to leave.  So, I cut it as close as I could.

As it turned out, Matthew wasn't accepted to the program, but our date was set, and it was absolutely the right date for us.

Now, I can't help but think that I was sooooo glad to be married, and not still in the final planning stages.  I was so glad that we didn't wait.  I'm so glad to be enjoying our newlywed life instead of still anticipating the wedding!

As it turned out I had more than enough time to plan.  But, I fully believe that had we had a longer engagement I would have still been just as busy, and had just as much to do.  I would have just taken on more DIY projects, added more details, and made myself crazy.

So, now that you've heard how we set our date (and made it through a blog post with no fun pictures) we can start on more fun stuff, like my dress!  That's the topic of my next blog post (and there will be more pictures with the next post...I promise!) so stay tuned!

First things first...

I figure my first post should give you a little bit more background on Joe and I.

Joe and I met in January 2006 when I transferred from Appalachian State University back home to Virginia to go to school at Regent University.  When I transferred I needed a part-time job and I started waiting tables at Olive Garden (I can just hear you all now..."Oh I loooooove Olive Garden!  The salad is so great!") and Joe was working there.

We went on our first date before I was even out of training and the rest, as they say, is history.  We've been together ever since.  Above is a picture from very early in our relationship.

Joe asked me to be his wife on December 15, 2009.  It seemed like I'd been anticipating and waiting (not so patiently) for him to pop the question forever! But as it turns out it was the perfect timing.

Believe it or not, I don't have any pictures of us from that night on my computer, but here's a picture of my ring from our Engagement shoot.

So, the ring was on my finger and the planning thoughts were starting to swirl through my head.

This is where the planning process beings.  Our first step was the first step for most brides, setting the date.  That will be the topic of my next post.