Just Dance....

[Note: It is officially 2 months until the big day!]

Our DJ is going to be pretty awesome....  We went with Bandstand Music based in Omaha.  They had the best prices I could find, and they were really helpful when I was first starting all of my research. 

We met with the people in charge over Spring Break and they were amazing - really helpful, and really nice.  We all got along swimmingly.  Not only will they be doing all the normal DJ-y things, but they will be our MC, and we're doing karaoke!  I am the most excited about the music because so many of our guests love to dance and have a good time.  I can't wait to relax at the reception. 

We are still trying to figure out what the song for our first dance is going to be, but I have had the ceremony music picked out for months.  My dad is choosing our father/daughter dance music, and that is abuot all that I have figured out for that.  But I will share with you the song that will be sung during the lighting of the unity candle. 

It is called "Love Never Fails" by Brandon Heath, and I will have two of my friends from the music department singing it for me.  It should be beautiful just because they are both so talented.  Here's the video, Enjoy!

I'm Still Alive... Barely.

I apologize for the lack of posting lately.  The last couple weeks have been spent working around the clock on one of the biggest class projects of my life.  Literally everything else in my life has been put on hold until this project is done, including planning my wedding.  I guess this is one of those situations where life takes over, and I just have to let it.  I should be back on track by Thursday of this week, as we are presenting everything to our client in Kansas City on Wednesday. This also means that I should be getting to bed before 2 am, cooking dinner again instead of getting Taco Bell all the time, and having more free time than I know what to do with. 

Until then, please enjoy this ad - it is genius and worth seeing.  Make sure you watch the whole thing! The payoff is great.

Burnt Out

The past week of my life was Wedding Planning week.  It was also Spring Break, but I never anticipated having much of a break - and I didn't.  It was wedding 24/7, and I am officially wedding-ed out.


Items accomplished this week:

• Met with caterer and finalized rehearsal dinner, reception and day-after brunch menus
• Met with facility manager for another walk-through and logistics discussion
• Met with DJ to ask questions and get input
• Met with the Cake Gallery to sample and finalize flavors (if you remember from last week, we were deciding on the flavor for the middle layer.  We went with the vanilla cake with champagne filling. It will be awesome).
• Placed tux order with Men's Wearhouse
• Ordered Anthony's wedding ring at Zale's (they have a great warranty that covers your ring for just about anything, and it is good for the life of the ring)
• Made invites for the rehearsal dinner and day-after/Father's Day brunch with my mom (all homemade, super cheap and easy. Plus they are cute!  Hobby Lobby has a ton of scrapbooking stuff, so we got creative and made them all at home)
• Printed the official invitations at Office Max, labeled envelopes and had an envelope stuffing party. Sort of.  There wasn't anything "festive" about it, but we did have some wine, and that made it better. 
• Inventoried all of the wedding stuff that has been slowly accumulating in my grandparent's basement since Anthony proposed. There was a lot of wedding crap down there.
• Agonized over the guest list, as the space we are getting married in is on the small side and may not be able to hold all of our guests. Still working that one out.
• Got overwhelmed by all of the tiny details that I had to think about and decide on this week. I am not a details kind of person.  I am much better with the big picture. Especially when all of the tiny details are things that I just don't care about.   
• Doctor's and Dentist's appointment (taking care of these while I am still on my parent's insurance!

Something I did not accomplish was any of the work for school that I really needed to do. Oh well.

Big Things to do before Graduation:

• Meet with florist to discuss bouquet
• Schedule salon appointment for wedding day
• Choose jewelery for myself and my bridesmaids (I am having it made by a friend of a friend).
• Buy more flowers
• Meet with musicians
• Schedule dress fittings
• Other stuff that I can't remember right now because of the whole "tiny details" thing I mentioned earlier 

I will be taking a break from all things wedding-related from now until Finals Week as I feel I have exceeded my quota for wedding stuff. 

I will update you all over the next few weeks about the various vendors I have linked above, as I am very excited about all of them, and they deserve their due recognition.

Til then!

Having My Cake, and Eating it too.

Okay, so my technical issues from last week have been fixed because I went and got a new laptop from the campus computer people.  This laptop works just fine, so I am going to continue with my intended post from last week.

Since I am fighting my sweet tooth right now, it seems only appropriate that I discuss my cake.  (This also gives me a really convenient opportunity to discuss an awesome, unrelated to the wedding, site that I visit daily). 

I am using Omaha's Cake Gallery as my cake bakery.  The Cake Gallery is an Omaha legend, and they are known for producing some delicious cakes.  They do cakes for all-occasions, not just weddings, but wedding cakes are their specialty, and they have an entirely separate site devoted to it.

They are known for their signature ULTRAMoist cake that practically melts in your mouth, and with such flavors as Pink Champagne, Chocolate Fudge and Italian Cream, it will be the perfect dessert for someone like with a perpetual sweet tooth.  And you get a lot of cake with their tiers too, because they use four layers of cake and three layers of filling (and the fillings vary from normal vanilla to Bavarian cream, and even Gran Marnier. Yum....).  


But enough about the bakery itself. You all are probably dying to know what my cake will look like, and what flavors will be inside, and I aim to please.

My Cake!

This is a picture of the display cake in the bakery.  We will be doing three tiers instead of four, and the flowers will be blue to match everything else (they actually match color swatches from David's Bridal, so they will be cornflower blue).  Our cake will feed 75 guests.  We're doing cupcakes, too, but more on that further down the page. 

The bottom tier will be the Chocolate Mint flavor, which tastes exactly like Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies.  It is so incredible, and it was the sample we finished off first.  The top tier (the one we keep) will be Strawberry Cream Cheese.  It actually has little pockets of cream cheese in the cake itself, which are heavenly when combine with the moist Strawberry cake.  Our middle layer is still being decided on.  I would really like something summery, with a lemon-raspberry flavor, as that is one of my favorite summer flavor combos.  But the Cake Gallery has a really good basic vanilla cake that we both like.  We will be taste-testing over Spring Break, and I'll let you know what we decide. 

To supplement the cake, we are having cupcakes to.  Right now, we are expecting about 175 guests.  Our cake is pretty expensive because it is fondant-covered, so we are cutting costs by providing chocolate and vanilla cupcakes as well.  Those will most likely come from Hy-Vee, since they should be cheaper than the Cake Gallery, but we will be checking into prices over Spring Break.

So, in a nutshell, tat is my cake!  I am very excited about it because I have had Cake Gallery cake before and it is SO good.

On a related (sort-of) note, you should go check out Cake Wrecks.  It is a blog devoted entirely to the moments "when professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong".  I check it every day because Jen (the blogger) is hilarious, and she always has something unexpected and awful to share.  On Sundays, she does "Sunday Sweets" to highlight really well-made cakes and those are always fun to peruse as well.  She has lots of posts devoted to wedding cakes, so I am hoping that I don't find a picture of my cake on there in a few months!

But I don't think I will......  I'm still hopeful that everything will be perfect for my wedding day. 

Don't worry, you can laugh with me when it isn't. 

We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties...

Hey gang....

I had a lovely post all worked up for you about the fabulous cake I have selected for my wedding, but computer has decided that it is going to shut down every 10 minutes for one of two reasons: 1) it is extremely overheated, even though I have it on an elevated stand AND a fan is blowing on it, or 2) the power cord randomly decides that it's not actually plugged, and that I am on battery power, which, by the way, is dangerously low, and needs to be switched to AC power. Even though it is plugged in.

Needless to say, the last 2 hours of messing with this has been a hassle, so I am getting very frustrated, posponing my cake post until next week, and switching out this piece of crap as soon as I can get myself to the Electronic Support Center on campus.  Rewriting this post 6 different times because Blogger doesn't want to save a draft for me is really getting old. 

I am sorry that you will be missing out on all of the detail about my cake, but I will fill you all in next week, when I have a new computer.  

Until then, have any of you checked out (The Customer is) Not Always Right?  It is a website with stories about extremely stupid or frustrating customer stories, and if you have ever worked in a customer service-related position, you will laugh until you cry at some of these posts.  And other times, you will ask yourself how some people manage to survive on this planet with so little brainpower.  It's awesome.  Not Always Right.  Fill the time between now and my next post checking out those stories - I promise you will love it.

Enjoy!

Reading my Mind...

It's funny that I am blogging to you all about my vision for my wedding, when Anthony asked me before I started "So what exactly is your vision for the wedding? Because I have no clue."  Apparently he has not been reading my mind as well as he usually does, but I don't blame him.  I wouldn't want to wade through the miles of tulle and acres of flowers to figure out what exactly this wedding is going to look like.

And to be completely honest, I'm not really sure of that my self. 

I have some general ideas, and I do have a theme, colors and and overall feel in mind.  Most of the time, I try not to define it, because then I limit what I might come across that could give me some cool ideas.  What I am going to do with this post is give you a basic breakdown of the direction I am heading, and Then I am going to overload you with picture that evoke the look, style and atmosphere that I am ultimately going for.  I may or may not implement everything that I mention in this post, and that's okay.  All these images are doing is giving me some guidelines.  So, without further ado, I (rather unceremoniously) present:

MY WEDDING

My Colors
Cornflower Blue (specifically the one found on David's Bridal)
Grass Green (this is open to interpretation)
Lots of White
Some black accents as needed

My Theme
Pride and Prejudice meets The Secret Garden

So I will be using lots of greenery, lush flowers and pretty much anything that falls under the "vintage" category (the extreme vintage, like late 19th century vintage).  Here are some images that really given me a jumpstart on ideas:

 

    

  

 

  

Of course this doesn't even scratch the surface for all of the ideas that I have.   But I hope it has given you a little insight into what I am thinking.  Very eclectic, imperfect and comfortable.  I want it to feel like I didn't have to work too hard at putting everything together (even if I did).  Because that is the kind of people Anthony and I are - we aren't very fussy or uptight, and our wedding should reflect that. 

If you are wondering how I ended up at this theme, I'm not really sure.  It was a slow process, and it stemmed from me just looking at wedding/decor websites and saving pictures that appealed to me.  I didn't have any focus or anything - I just saved as I went.  And when it came time for me to really get the look finalized, my mom and I decided on the Garden theme, based entirely on the direction I was already unintentionally heading.  It was not a perfect science by any means. 

I'm really excited to see it all finally put together.  Because right now, it is mumbo-jumbo in my brain, and  I have no clue how it is all going to work together.  So on my wedding day, I am going to be surprised as everyone else with the final look!

Good thing I like surprises......

Finding Inspiration - Part 2

So I left you two weeks ago digging into The Knot, and weighing the value of having a summer wedding instead of a winter one.  Then I pulled a 180 and focused on something completely different.  Growing up in the glory days of MTV, I find my focus and interests don't last too long, so thanks for bearing with me.

Back to what I intended to talk about last week......  Finding the inspiration for your wedding.

In the previous inspiration post, we discussed the importance of doing your research (will it ever go away?  What am I saying - I'm in Advertising! Research is my life!) and contemplating the seasons.

This week, I will focus on Color and Theme.

COLOR

Any wedding-related website you find will show you the importance of selecting the right colors for your wedding.  Any of the sites I referenced before have gobs and gobs of information relating solely to color.  The Knot has thousands of pictures that are categorized entirely based on color.  So you can easily find galleries titled "Blue Weddings", "Pink Weddings", "Orange Weddings", etc.  David's Bridal has a Color Coordinator, where you can look at different color combinations to see if you like them.  Heck, one of the first questions you are asked right after your engagement (other than "Have you set the date?" and "Can I see your ring?") is "What are your colors?"!!  It's important that you don't procrastinate on selecting your colors, and that you don't take it lightly.  Color drives a lot of the decisions you will have to make over the next few months (or years) before your wedding, so they need to be ones that you enjoy. 

It's pretty likely that you already have an idea of the general colors you want to incorporate.  It might be your favorite colors, the color of your favorite flower, or in my case, the color of your fiance's eyes.

The most important thing is that you are happy with the color choices.  You are going to have to look at them A LOT over the course of wedding planning, so you might as well be looking at something you like. 

THEME

You may decide that having a specific theme for your wedding is the easiest way to decide on the vision for your wedding.  It certainly helps with deciding on colors, fabric and the overall feel of your wedding. 

I know I reference The Knot a lot, but that is only because it is the premier site for getting ideas for your wedding.  Some of the articles they have are a little eyebrow-raising, but the images they have (and they have thousands) are worth looking at, just so you can visualize what you want based on things that other people have done. 

So, The Knot has the ability to categorize images based on themes, as well.  There is are tons of options to choose from:  Beachy, Modern, Garden, Rustic, Eco-Friendly, the list goes on. They even have ideas for brides wanting to plan a Halloween, Christmas, or Fourth of July themed day. 

I found that choosing an overall theme has really helped drive the decisions I am making.  The floral arrangements, favors, reception decor and bridal party attire are all working with my theme in mind.  It has given me a focus so that I am able to concretely come up with ideas about what I want.  Plus, just by Googling my theme, I was able to find a ton of examples and ideas to go from that weren't found on The Knot.

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Regardless of what you use as your inspiration (and you will most likely use all four of the methods I mentioned together), be flexible with it.  Based on availability and time, you might not get everything exactly as you want it.  But it is during times when you can't find a vendor that sells cheap tablecloths or inexpensive LED candles, that you really start to get creative.  And in those moments of desperation and panic, truly unique weddings are formed.  

Next week, I fill you all in on the vision for MY wedding, now that you know how to go find yours. Until then, tell me what you dream wedding would look like!