Planning

Because wedding plans are really only interesting to the couple doing the planning, I have lumped all the entries into one, so you can skip it entirely if this type of drivel is not your cup of tea. As an aside, based on several online "to do" lists, I am done planning. If you do read it, and there is an area that I have missed, please let me know!

Temple
Dresses
Rings
Venue
Flowers
Food
Photographer
Invitations

______________________________________________

Temple

A beautiful location where we will be sealed.

______________________________________________

Dresses

If you haven't seen Say Yes to the Dress, then go to youtube and watch for a minute:





Ok, now that you have the proper background...

My sister and I went out wedding dress shopping. I was looking for a more fitted silloette, not a poofy ball gown. I had seen a dress on JCrew that I thought was simply elegant, and was looking for something similar. But I was also struggling with the fact that this is my second wedding, and I don't really need to do the whole white dress thing again.
After browsing online, I realized I probably wasn't going to find the perfect silver dress in a slim sillouette, so I went back to the store with a friend. The sales person pulled the dress I had liked before, and also brought a second option that was a similar. I walked out in the second one, and another customer was like, oh my gosh! you look stunning! it is just like on that show, say yes to the dress! Are you going to say yes to that dress??!? Honestly, it really was like the show. Dress 1, I was fine with, Dress 2, my face lit up like a kid seeing a christmas tree for the first time. I like to think of myself as a fairly straightforward, no nonsense kind of person, but I may have to re-evaluate after this cliched demonstration! So I said yes to Dress 2.

My sisters have been trying to find dresses to wear to the wedding as well. We have traded in store shopping for online ordering because it is so much easier to have clothes shipped to your house, try them on, and figure out what you like. Every time a new set arrives, they try them on and we say, "Are you going to say yes to that dress?"

_________________________________________________________

Rings

Another fun outing I had with my sister was ring shopping. We got asked twice if we were twins, so we just went with it and said that we were twins and we were shopping for rings so that we could pass the information onto our boyfriends, who are also twins. We found a store that just has every size of diamond in a ring so you can see how a 1 carat looks on your hand. One difference between my sister and I is that my hands are huge in comparison, so I could wear bigger, thicker rings than she could.

I would like to mention that I really had nothing to do with picking out my engagement ring. My sister and I were out having fun, but my fiance did all the hard work to select a ring for me. He did an excellent job. I have even gotten comments from random strangers on how gorgeous and sparkly it is. (Specifically, I was handing someone my drivers license with the left hand, and they were like, oh my goodness, that ring is gorgeous!)

___________________________________________________

Venue

My fiance and I decided a cultural hall reception wasn't our style, so we went out looking for other options. When I say "looking", since he is in Japan, and I am in Raleigh, we did some online shopping for venues. One beautiful location was the Cotton Room in Durham. It is an all-inclusive location, meaning the caterer owns the venue, so you have one person to work with for the location, food, setup, cleanup, etc. This gets expensive, as were several other options we sorted through. Thank goodness my mom emailed with a great location, the Page Walker House. Based on her recommendation we booked it without even seeing it. Then later my mom and I stopped by to get pictures, and it really is a great location (and will look even better when it isn't snowing!)





________________________________________________________

Flowers

Ding goes the bell over the door, and the scent of roses wafts over you. Flowers sit in buckets, waiting to be used, and scraps are strewn over a work table. Honestly, florist shops are a bit intimidating for someone who knows nothing about flowers. So I brought my friend, who has a sister who is a horticulturalist for backup. The first one I went to, the lady just kept saying I needed to know what I wanted. She kept tossing out ideas, and I thought they all sounded fine. But she seemed uncomfortable with the fact that I didn't have a firm idea, so I looked through some magazines at her store, and then I went home and started to look online, and realized I didn't really care that much. I sent several jpg images to my fiance, and then I walked around a wedding expo. At the expo I saw small glass arrangements with one flower, and calla lillies, which I decided were perfect. Replace pink with purple and you get the idea.












____________________________________________________________

Food

My mother's wedding cake was the most delicious and memorable wedding cake ever. More than twenty years later, when we went to family reunions, people would still comment on how wonderful her cake was. This is the goal of all reception food. To be memorable, delicious, and above all, not stressful. In my mind, this meant finding a good caterer. Luckily, my fiance had a friend who had worked for a catering company, and would bring samples home. So I set up an appointment to discuss options.

Here's how the conversation went:
Caterer: Do you have a theme?
Me: No
Caterer: Do you have a favorite food?
Me: I like everything
Caterer: Should we do a southern theme?
Me: That would be fine. But I need some gluten free options. Oh, and I want guacamole.
Caterer: Any other dislikes?
Me: Ummmmm mushrooms.
Caterer: Okay.... any other preferences?
Me: I don't think so
Caterer: Alright, I will send a proposal.

It was over in 5 minutes. I can only imagine that other brides come in, "I want an asian inspired bistro theme with exactly these food options, and there must be this serving dish, and it must be done at 7:32 exactly". Hahaha. The caterer emailed a pdf file with several options, so my fiance and I read through it, drooling, and came up with several good choices. I am very excited about the food.

The following items will be passed when guests first arrive:
Corn Cakes with Duck Confit in Sweet Pepper Sauce
Whole kernel corn cakes topped with citrus spiced confit of duck leg and a
sweet and spicy sauce with fresh cilantro.
Shrimp Rumaki
Fresh gulf shrimp wrapped with smokey bacon and skewered. Bake until
golden.
Mozzarella with Sun-Dried Tomato Picks
Little mouthfuls of Italian fresh Mozzarella and Sun-Dried tomatoes on picks.

Then these items will be available on buffet tables:
Mexican Dip Station
Chile con queso dip, spicy spinach dip, Mexican ten layer dip , salsa, sour
cream and guacomole served with corn tortilla chips for dipping.
Strawberries & Sauces
Fresh strawberries served with key lime dip and powdered sugar.
Mixed Greens with Candied Pecans & Chevre
Gourmet Mixed Greens topped with Candied Pecan Pralines, Chevre, Red Bell
Pepper, Cucumber and Lemon Poppy Dressing.
Quesadilla Station
This station features grilled Crab & Tomato Quesadilla with avocado salsa
and Roasted Pork & Carmelized Onion Quesadilla with Salsa Fresca Sauce.

For desert we will have:

Cheesecake & Toppings
Sour cream cheesecake topped with warm hot fudge, raspberry tamarind
sauce and blueberry sauce.
Assorted Mini Confections
Assorted mini confections may include: coconut kisses, melting moments,
raspberry linzers, brownie triangles, chocolate mousse cups,lemon curd fruit
tarts.

And of course, wedding cake.

My mom and my sister went with me to sample wedding cake options. We had vanilla, vanilla chiffon, chocolate chiffon, midnight chocolate and carrot cake. The fillings were strawberry, raspberry and chocolate mousse. Frosting was vanilla buttercream, and cream cheese frosting.

We walked in, and were seated at a table with real dishes, and the caterer poured us water flavored with berries. He had a tray with round pieces of cake (think biscuits), and then little cups of the filling and frostings. We could mix and match as we chose to create the perfect cake. Carrot cake and cream cheese frosting went really good together. The midnight chocolate cake tasted better than the chocolate chiffon, and the regular vanilla tasted better than the vanilla chiffon. Apparently chiffon in a cake just makes it mild. The raspberry filling was a stronger flavor than the strawberry, and went great with vanilla. The chocolate filling went great with the chocolate cake. So that is what we got, carrot with cream cheese, vanilla with raspberry, and midnight chocolate with chocolate, surrounded in the vanilla butter cream.

We also got to pick the linens. It was a fabulous store, full of racks and racks and racks of fabric. My mom loves fabric. Then they put our fabric choices on tables, and had us pick the plates and cups and silverware. Thank goodness there were three of us so we could break tied votes!

______________________________________________________

Photographer

I was talking to a friend of mine who got married a couple of years ago, and she said the one thing she wished she had done differently was the photographer. She is not a creative person, and neither was her photographer, so she just has straight forward pictures. She likes another friends pictures, because their photographer knew how to pose them. I thought pictures were really important the first time I got married, so I hired a photographer to do a set of family pictures. The second time around this isn't as important to me. Families change, and the snapshots you take are usually more fun than professional pictures. So I left this totally up to my fiance, and he found someone who does photography more as a hobby than a job. I am sure we will have some nice pictures to go along with our memories.

______________________________________________________

Invitations

I got a free ticket to a wedding expo, so I went looking for some ideas. If you haven't been to one of these things, it is a bunch of vendors with tables all trying to convince you to sign up for their services. I walked by an invitation table, and they had some pretty invitations displayed, so I paused. The lady working the table asked if I had selected my invitations. I had not. She asked me if I had decided on the paper type and the print type. The confusion on my face lead her to explain that there are three main print types. You can have copper plates print the letters on the paper, which creates an impression, or you can have some technology raise the letters on the paper, or some other technology that is an inferior imitation. Yes, you can tell that I don't care because I can't even remember the names of the types :) I thought about printing my own invitations, but after looking at some paper options, I wasn't interested in doing that. So after looking online for way to long, my fiance sent a great modern classic and we went with it. We went with what looked like dark grey ink, and upon seeing it live in person, I wish we had just gone with black, but at the time, we thought black would be boring. So far this is the only thing that I have a slight twinge of regret on, which I consider pretty good.

My fiance also wanted to include a photograph. While I was in Japan, we took several, and the one we went with was in front of the Tokyo Tower (an imitation of the Eiffel tower). The excellent framing and printing was all the results of my fiance's photo editing skills, and his brothers input.