Menus--Check!

Last night I spent the night printing, cutting, and gluing our menus. I wanted to have menus at the tables as an added touch the guests will appreciate since we are having a plated meal. Originally I was going to do 1 menu per guest but we decided to do 3 menus per table instead to save on paper and ink. There will be 10 people at each table so 3 is a good number to do.
I used Fairway Green Metallic card stock from Paperandmore.com and cut the 8.5x11" sheets in half for the mats. I also used the same graphic from our invites on the menus to add a pop of color. I had some leftover glue dots that I used to attach the menu to the mat.
Here's what's on the menu (sorry, bad blogger--no pictures of the food!):

• Soup: Tortellini Soup
• Salad: House Salad with Peppercorn Parmeasan dressing and Balsamic Vinaigrette
• Entree: Chicken Florentine OR Pasta Primavera
• Sides: New potatoes with fine herbs, green beans/red peppers/carrots, fresh rolls
• Wedding cake: white cake with vanilla buttercream and raspberry french custard
• Dessert: vanilla ice cream with chocolate or strawberry sauce

I really love the way they turned out!

Snowgasm

We are officially in Blizzard 2011. People are calling this storm "catastrophic"; we're suppose to get 20" of snow by tomorrow morning and we're in a blizzard warning until 3pm Wednesday. K got off work today at 3 and should have a snow day tomorrow. Me? I work from home so no snow day for me but work should be fairly light regardless. The bonus of K having a snow day though is he gets to do some crafting for me! On his list for Wednesday? A whole lot of paper cutting. Cutting 12x12 paper down to 6x6 sheets. Cutting sheets of cardstock in half. Cutting the one insert I have printed of our invitations. Hey he gets to watch daytime tv while doing this so he's fine. How are you spending your snow day?

Nom Nom Nom...Cake!

We went to pick out our cake last weekend. Our package at the reception hall includes our cake and we have the pick of 2 bakeries: The Baking Institute and Domino's Pastries. We chose to try The Baking Institute first because they have gotten good reviews and use natural sweeteners in their cakes which we liked. I took a few pictures of cakes I liked with us as well as some inspiration pictures of flowers so the baker could see what we were going for. I gravitated more towards cakes that had texture and that were all white.
A few images I brought with us were:



I already talked to my florist about using fresh flowers on the cake but the baker advised against it since the flowers would be put on the cake around 3pm but wouldn't be cut until almost 8pm. So we discussed sugar flowers and he said he can recreate the white dahlia in my flowers! We chose a combination from 2 of the above pictures and neither one had a lot of texture. Our cake will have the shape of the last image (round top tier and 2 square tiers) but with the addition of the green ribbon from the 3rd image as well as 7 white sugar flowers.
Each tier is made up of 3 layers of cake and 2 layers of filling. We chose to do all tiers the same flavor, white cake with a layer of vanilla buttercream and a layer of raspberry french custard. The cake will be frosted in buttercream as well--no fondant for us! We're really happy with what we decided on and am excited to see the cake in person! Now we need to decide if we want a cake topper. I'm really on the fence on this one, I think I would like to have one but it's not necessary. At least I get to window shop on Etsy to help me decide!

Dressing the reception

Let's take about decor at the reception hall. Oh, I haven't shown you our room? Well here you go!
And here is the layout of the room:

So as you can see we will have 20 tables for the guests plus the head table and cake table. Each table sits between 8-10 people but really we have 19 tables for guests because one table will be the Vendor table. I showed you the 3 different centerpieces in an earlier post that will be spread out amongst the tables. Our reception hall offers ivory tablecloths and napkins as part of our package but we decided to outsource the tablecloths and chair covers so we've hired The Chair Couture to provide linens.
When we first met with Czarina, we only discussed adding in ivory chair covers, a navy chair sash and a navy table runner so tables would look similar to this:
However the more I thought about it, the more I did not want that table runner. I did not want a cookie-cutter looking reception. We have a lot of people traveling in for our wedding and I wanted that WOW factor. After having dinner with my fab photographer-turned-friend, she showed me pictures of wedding that Czarina did with colored tablecloths. Since our flowers are all white with punches of green, I wanted to bring more Navy to the reception. I'm super excited to have a 2nd meeting with Czarina to discuss having navy tablecloths, ivory napkins, ivory chair covers and a navy sash. This is the look I'm going for:
I think it adds drama and the WOW factor I want. Plus it won't be too costly to do and will keep the clean look we are going for. I cannot wait for our next meeting and to see how everything turns out!

Gifting the girls

So after the trauma of last week, the stupid thief came back to the house on Friday 12/31 and broke the glass storm door at the back of the house but was not able to get in. Scary though cause I was in the house in the shower! I had cops knocking at the door within minutes of getting dressed, turns out my neighbor behind us saw the guy jump and fence and called the cops. Our next door neighbor also saw him leaving our yard and the cops picked him up a few blocks away, thanks to said neighbor being able to ID him. And tonight I met a detective at a pawn shop and successfully claimed 2 of the missing watches that this same guy sold! So progress in the home invasion front. Oh and the glass door is replaced with a nice and strong double dead-bolted steel door--Thanks Tim for installing it!

Now onto the subject at heart...gifting my fabulous ladies. I don't believe in buying bridesmaids things they have to use for the wedding because more often than not, those gifts may not be used again! I tried to find something personal to each one and then something that ties them to the wedding. Where did I go to find such item? Etsy of course! I spent a few hours searching for jewelry options that I liked and that spoke to me for each girl.

Here are my lovely finds:

For my MOH, she has 2 sons (my favorite ring bearers!) so I found this mother's necklace that will have their names hammered into the rings. Tiny Tokens Designs has a lot of great stuff in her shop, mostly personalized if you are looking for something!

For Maid A, who is my only single maid and is constantly searching for love, I found this beauty at Luxe Deluxe, who has the most wonderful items in her shop!

For Maid J, who is my most spiritual friend, I found this modern take on a cross necklace at Julie's Adorabowls. I love that it is traditional but unexpected.

For Maid L, who is one my oldest and dearest friends, as soon as I saw this necklace I instantly thought of her. She has this tattoo on her ankle so I know she'll love this piece from Winterberry Jewelry.

And finally for Maid M, I had a harder time finding something for her. I found a few pieces I liked and finally decided on this gem from Luxe Deluxe (told you they had great stuff!).

And then to tie their role into our wedding, I came across these wine glasses at The Cute Glass and the owner is going to make 8 for me total--5 bmaid, 1 bride, 1 MOG (mom of groom) and 1 MOB (mom of bride) so we can all celebrate in style while we get all glammed up! Each glass will have their name on the top and the date on the bottom of the glass.

Are you getting your girls something they can use at the wedding or something specific to their personalities? How much do you love Etsy!?

Scared of the unknown

I'm not sure what I should title this post. You see, after my last post on 12/22, I left my house to grab some last minute gifts and when I returned home, I discovered we had been robbed. The thief somehow got into the house via the back door and into our apartment via the back bedroom. He took some laptops and watches. The police were called and they found footprints and fingerprints so hopefully they will help catch whoever broke in.
It's so scary to know someone you did not invite in was in our house. That he went through our things. What kind of person decides to rob someone at Christmas time? I feel sorry for whoever he is that he is that desperate or greedy that he felt he needed to rob us of those things.
My mom keeps saying that they are just things and can be replaced. And she is right, they can be replaced. However the things on them cannot be replaced. The feeling that he could come back at anytime is so scary and unsettling. I don't feel safe in my own house right now. Every night something else pops into my mind about the data I lost that was on the computers. My wedding files, the invitation files, my work information. I luckily found a somewhat recently updated version of my master wedding spreadsheet in my sent emails which is just missing a few addresses--let me just tell you I about cried when I found it because I was so happy. I also have recovered some images I lost from this site and some other wedding sites. I have an external hard drive that was not taken which has most of my data on it (pictures, music, resume) but because I don't fully know what was on the computer, I won't ever know what all is gone.

Have you ever experienced a robbery? How did you get past it?

Things that smell good

I love flowers but know absolutely nothing about them! I know I like peonies, tulips, lilies, and dahlias. I know I really like the bouquets at Trader Joe's because they are gorgeous and cheap and tend to last for a good amount of time. So when it came down to our wedding flowers, I was clueless. Of course like a lot of brides, I saved photos I found online of arrangements that I liked and after awhile, I had a lot of images. What I noticed is in the early days of collecting, I liked arrangements with daisies, specifically Gerbera Daisies. Now on any given day, I like to have a bouquet of these fun and playful flowers in a vase in my house but on my wedding day? I don't think so. They just don't say 'wedding flowers' to me.
When I finally met with my florist, the awesome Kristen at Kio Kreations, I showed her some of the images I liked and she took that to a whole new level. Kristen works out of her house and with a wholesaler on floral design and she does graphic design as well which because she is the owner and operator, she is very budget friendly and very creative! So what did we decide on? Here we go!

We are doing 3 different types of centerpieces:

#1 are short round vases mixed with ti-leaf wrap inside, green berries, dahlias, football mums, green roses, green cymbidium orchid accents, green or white hydrangea and Lady's Mantle/Bupluerum foliage.

# 2 is 5 cylinders of various heights with submerged orchid heads and hydrangea and floating candles at top and bear grass wisps inside.

#3 are tall 24" cylinder vases with apples inside, rim of white hydrangea at top with Bells of Ireland, White dendrobium orchid sprays.

This is the inspiration for my bouquet but it will be all white.

The first image is the image that this whole look came from. From this one image, Kirsten came up with the 3 styles of centerpieces and my bouquet. The main flowers for our wedding are white dahlias, white hydrangeas, white spray roses.

I love the all white flowers with the punches of green! I think the flowers are fresh and very clean looking and will really pop against our navy tablecloths! So after knowing nothing about flowers, I am excited to see how everything comes together.