Engagement Photos Have Been Blogged!

Two weekends ago, Eric and I met up with Carmen of Carmen Fong Photography, to cash in on the free engagement session we won last year. We met down in College Park, on the UMD campus, to show some alumni school spirit. It was a miserable, rainy, cold day, but Carmen was awesome and trekked around campus with us. Eventually it stopped raining, but I don't think the sun ever came out until we were driving back up to NJ/PA later that evening. It's OK, though; I've heard a few times, and Carmen agreed, that cloudy days are good for pictures because you're not worrying about glare or shadows or squinty eyes. That's the silver lining!

Carmen was awesome to work with, and I'm really sorry we're getting married in Louisville and that we already have a photographer booked, because I would love to have her as our wedding photographer! Unlike the other engagement session we had a long time ago, in which the unexperienced photographer we modeled for made me stressed out beyond belief by not giving us any instruction whatsoever, Carmen was very cognizant of the fact that Eric and I have no clue about anything photographically related, and gave us very clear instructions to help make us not look like idiots. Professional models we are not, no matter how much America's Next Top Model I watch.

After a great photo session, complete with an outfit change for me, and tons of help from my sister Laurel, I blog stalked Carmen ritually, even during last weekend, when she told me she would be in Las Vegas.

And yesterday, my stalking was rewarded! We've been blogged!

Here are my favorites, stolen off of Carmen's blog. All credits to Carmen Fong Photography, of course!

Once I realized the forecast for the weekend included rain, I packed my new rain boots and bright yellow jacket and figured I'd make the best of it. I got this jacket at Gap a few years ago on clearance, and I always receive compliments on it. I love it. Laurel brought the awesome umbrella, which immediately got earmarked as a prop.


I like this one because it showcases what I call the "M Circle," which visitors coming through the main campus entrance see and which gets replanted in Maryland colors periodically. I was initially a teensy tiny bit disappointed to see that it was yellow and not red (my favorite), but it matches my jacket perfectly! I love the composition of this shot.

We asked Carmen to take a photo of us that conforms to the New York Times wedding announcement guidelines:

Couples posing for pictures should arrange themselves with their eyebrows on exactly the same level and with their heads fairly close together. Couple pictures should be printed in a horizontal format.

Talk about specific! I submitted our wedding announcement the week before our photo shoot, and now all I need to do is submit the photo. Whether we get in or not remains to be seen, but it's exciting to think about!

Here's one of the photos from our NYT pose:

To be honest, I hope some of the others in that series turn out a little better, but not because of Carmen's photography. My face looks a little fat (I'm going to have to remember that's not the best angle for me!), my hair looks a little wet (smallest of the problems), and Eric's eyes look a little tired (he WAS tired, though). Or maybe I'm just being hypercritical. We'll see how the others turn out.

Eric really likes this one, as evidenced by the fact that it's now his Facebook profile pic:

We're so excited about our photos that we've even been discussing whether to scrap our original plan for a guest book -- a coffee table book of Louisville -- and make a photo book of our engagement photos instead, to share with everyone at the wedding.

Go check out the rest yourself! We had a great time working with Carmen, and I can't wait to see the rest of our photos! If you're looking for a photographer in the DC area (or anywhere -- she'll travel!), I highly recommend getting in touch with her. Thank you, Carmen!!!

Cake!

So we finally booked a baker! I know I told you I tasted some cake a couple months ago, and then I let the issue drop.

At the end of January, we went to visit Eric's sister and her new baby. It coincidentally was also Eric's sister's husband's 30th birthday that weekend. I decided it would be good to have some cake, so I set up a couple tastings to pick up and bring with me.

One was from Adrienne's, and they asked me to pick out six flavors to try. I was amazed when we opened the box:

This is the after-we-devoured-cake shot, but I think you can tell that it was six full slices of cake. They were actually all put right next to each other and then iced to look like one complete cake, so I didn't know what to expect! We tried white, lemon, strawberry, red velvet, raspberry, and Italian cream. You can see the 3-0 candles we picked up to celebrate Brian's birthday, too. Free sample cake for someone else's birthday... ghetto, perhaps, but that's how I roll. It was fun to get to taste everything with Paige and Brian, too.

Strawberry was the clear winner, although it is a very shocking pink. After I got back, I set up a consultation with Adrienne (she does her consultations after the taste test, which is awesome), and got pricing and design info. Adrienne is awesome and very friendly, and I'm happy I met with her.

Everything stayed in limbo until Eric came to visit last week for Match Day. I arranged to pick up tastings from 4 bakeries: Plehn's, which I had previously tasted by myself, Bussmann's, Williams, and Adrienne's (for a comparative taste test). There was another tasting but it turned out it would have cost us $20, and I figured there are enough bakeries that will give us free cake that I didn't need to worry about a place that would charge us for a tasting (plus, I already knew their prices and they were the most expensive yet!).

Here's what we collected and assembled at the apartment:

Plehn's, yellow and strawberry:
Since they knew I was picking up the tasting to taste later, they included their icing in a little waxed paper cone for us to dispense ourselves. That's my icing handiwork pictured. I've always wanted to do that!


Williams Bakery, yellow iced with chocolate and chocolate iced with white/yellow:


Bussmann's, 2 chocolate cupcakes and I think 4 yellow cupcakes. The fact that there are 4 made me think that maybe I actually ordered 2 yellow and 2 something else (lemon?), but I didn't taste any difference, so I'm not sure what happened there...


And Adrienne's, where we picked up a slice of strawberry cake. I was totally going to pay for it, since it was a repeat tasting, but they gave it to us for free!


And here is the aftermath:
From left to right: Plehn's, Williams on the plate, Adrienne's pink strawberry, and Bussman's cupcakes in the box.

The clear winner was Adrienne's. it was moist and flavorful, absolutely scrumptious. Plehn's was not too far behind in second -- very moist and light cake, but their strawberry wasn't as flavorful as Adrienne's. Adrienne's was also the most expensive, but we're so happy with the cake that it's totally worth it. (It's still within our original budget.)

So it's going to be a three-tiered strawberry cake with whipped cream filling, iced white and decorated with fresh flowers. I'm really excited for wedding cake now!

Cake for me!

I've been putting off looking for a baker for our cake, for a variety of reasons. First, I just knew it was going to be expensive -- I had checked out a couple local bakers who put prices on their website and I just couldn't stomach it. $3+/slice? It just seems ridiculous when the slices are so small and you can buy a whole box of cake mix for less than $2. (I'm aware that $3/slice is pretty standard for wedding cake, at least in this area, and I can only count my blessings that I'm not getting married in New York.)

(It's probably pretty clear, but I'm not a cake snob. My favorite cake is any sort of from-a-box chocolate cake. No icing.)

Plus, since Eric no longer lives here in Louisville, it would be so depressing to go to all of these cake consultations by myself, and just not fair for me to get to taste the cake without him. Delicious, but not fair.

But this weekend, with the calendar ticking away before my eyes, I got serious and started the research end of things. I made a list of as many bakeries as I could find in town, and made a few phone calls. It turns out a lot of bakeries are closed on Mondays, which I didn't know. Anyway, I ended up with an appointment for two days from now for a consultation and tasting, and I just figure that if everything works out OK price-wise and initial tasting-wise, I can always bring Eric back the next time he visits for a confirmatory tasting.

I called another bakery who gave me a price quote over the phone, and I asked about the often-mentioned strategy of having a small display cake and sheet cake to make up the difference. It turns out this is pretty economical, so I was excited and invigorated to do more cake searching.

Then I spent the rest of the evening pulling together pictures of cakes to send to Eric, in order to get his opinions on decorations, before I go to these consultations. It just wouldn't be nice of me to order a big purple cake covered in pink sugar flowers, you know? I'll share my inspiration photos with you later.

But today, when I was out running errands, I drove by one of the more well-known bakeries in town. I decided to pop in and see if they could just give me information -- I wasn't expecting to taste cake or anything like that. And the consultant was nice enough to sit down with me and write up a quote for me on the spot. This bakery doesn't price by the slice; instead, they start with the appropriately sized basic yellow cake with white icing and standard, unfancy decoration, and go up from there for colors, flavors, fillings, etc. But still, their quote was very reasonable, especially with the small-cake-plus-sheet-cake strategy, and I started to warm up to the whole cake thing.

And the best part? She offered to give me some cake to go! "Just a second and I'll ice a couple pieces for you. Just tell me what flavors you'd like."

And so I left Plehn's Bakery with a yellow cupcake and a piece of strawberry cake.

Mmmmm. The yellow cupcake was really really really really good. Light and moist. The icing was pretty standard buttercream -- I don't really like icing, so I scraped it off, but it tasted like good buttercream. I ate it for -- I mean, in addition to -- my lunch, because it was lunchtime. (Seriously, I stopped at Whole Foods and picked my way through the store sampling the freebies, pondered for a long time over the prepared foods bar, and settled on some sushi. After I ate the cupcake.) I had the strawberry cake just a little while ago, eating it in front of the webcam for Eric to see (and envy), and it was pretty good. It wasn't particularly strawberry-y, and it wasn't quite as moist as the yellow, but that might be because it sat in the box all day, I'm not sure. Still very good cake, don't get me wrong.

So, depressing single consultations and unfair solo tastings? Who cares! I'm going to keep tasting as much cake as I can! Who knew there were all these perks to planning a wedding? This might have to become a habit of ours in the years to come.... ;)

Free photography!

I can't believe this, but we won an engagement session with the fabulous DC photographer Carmen Fong! To win, I had to submit our engagement story, and while I love me some spotlight, it's a little embarrassing to have our story on someone else's blog. It's so personal, you know?

Well, whatever. If it gets us free stuff, so be it :)

Here's the catch: I'm in Louisville, and Eric's in AC. We have to figure out a time to get down to DC for the photo shoot, but in between all my residency interviews back east, I'm sure we'll find a time that works for everyone. (By the way, I've gotten a bunch of interviews, which makes me very happy!!!)

In the meantime, I have to start brainstorming ideas for places in the DC metro area to have the photo shoot, keeping in mind that it will probably be November or December. Tidal Basin? National Mall? There won't be any cherry blossoms, but those are still my favorite spots ever. Too bad the triceratops is long-gone from outside the Natural History Museum, or else there would definitely be a triceratops shot in the bunch. Georgetown at Christmas time, which is another one of my favorite things? The UMD campus? The zoo? Ideas, please!

Also, go check out Carmen's awesome photography skills on her blog. I'm so excited!

Ooooh, Letterpress!

I have not yet lauded the delights of letterpress stationery -- specifically, letterpress wedding invitations -- but there will be time for that later. I promise.

Right now, I must alert you to this very awesome and cool contest going on over at The Dingbat's Agenda, a blog about all things delicious and letterpressed and stationer-y. Up for grabs is a full wedding letterpressed invitation suite! SWEEET!

Go enter yourself! Or don't -- a better chance for me!

See all the details here:
The Dingbat's Agenda: GIVEAWAY 3, A Sweet Suite

Archivers Bridal Showcase

Before I left Louisville for my extended trip all over every where, I went to a wedding craft workshop at Archivers. It's a pretty neat store, dedicated to scrapbooking, card making, and other paper crafts. The workshop was pretty straight-forward: a representative went through some pictures and ideas for wedding invitations and associated stationery projects, a lot of which I had seen before, but it was nice to see the emphasis on DIY. Some were really easy, and even someone with no card-making experience could pull them off; there were also a lot of projects that involved stamping, embossing, and other card-making techniques that I've never attempted, but again, don't look incredibly hard (but I bet it becomes an expensive hobby!).

Then we got to try out some of the fun stuff: paper punches, markers and pens with different types of inks and tips, and we got to ooh and aah over their line of invitation stationery. I do love touching pretty paper. We also learned how to line an envelope, and got to try it ourselves.

It's not too hard; Paper Source sells plastic templates for tracing out liners, and I've also read that an easy way to do it is to measure out a template that is exactly 1/8" smaller than the actual envelope. At Archivers, they suggested a different method: tracing the envelope directly to get the right curve for the flap, then trimming the two vertical sides down to fit. It worked really well, and here was my final product:


One important lesson I learned was to not use a liner paper with a line/graph pattern unless you're REALLY into being anal and making sure all the lines are parallel/perpendicular to the envelope. No, thank you.

The other cool tool I used to make the liner was the Scor-it, which allows you to score paper to create a nice fold. You can also use a bone folder, and while I've never used a bone folder myself, the Scor-it was SO easy to use that I was completely sold. It's a pretty solid example of a unitasker, and while Alton Brown might object, I may be purchasing one of these in the near future. Gah, what wedding planning can convince you to do!

The only real problem with my lined envelope above, which you can see if you look closely, is that the liner is kind of crooked. That's because the adhesive tape I used was really sticky, and I positioned it badly. Fortunately, I also learned that there is a repositionable adhesive that becomes permanent only after 24 hours, which would be very useful. I also have a supply of Zots and other sticky dots that I'm sure I'll be using for various wedding craftiness.

So all in all, I would recommend the Archivers Bridal Showcase workshop. They offer it on a continual basis (at least, I see it on the calendar through July), it's less than 2 hours long, and it's FREE!

And speaking of Paper Source, the Weddingbees all write about it like it's some sort of paper mecca, which definitely makes me to want to check it out. Unfortunately, there's not one anywhere near Louisville, but there is one in D.C. and another in Alexandria -- I think I'll be making a visit while I'm here on the east coast!

**Update: I forgot to mention another tip the Archivers lady shared with us. If you buy cardstock/paper that's pre-cut in small sizes, and you need to print on it, it can be hard to feed it through a printer easily. Instead, use a removable glue dot to attach it to a full-sized sheet of paper, then feed it through the printer that way. When it's done, just remove the glue dot and it should come out perfectly!

Ladyfingers Catering Tasting Event

Looking for a caterer in Louisville? I got this email the other day (unfortunately, I won't be able to attend, since I'm still here at the beach):

LADYFINGERS CATERING

12901 Old Henry Rd

LOUISVILLE KY 40223

Ph:502-245-773

ladyfingers@iglou.com www.ladyfingersinc.com

For Your Upcoming Events…

Wedding, Christmas Party, Company Picnic, or Gala

We would like to invite you to our Open House Tasting

Thursday July 17, 2008

6:00 PM to 8:00 PM

Please RSVP include event date or coordinators name/company

*If you have any special request for the tasting please let us know when you RSVP*

Limit 2 tickets per Party – additional tickets available at $15.00 per person

Donna Brown
Marketing Director
Ladyfingers Catering
12901 Old Henry Rd.
Louisville KY 40223
502-245-7734

Proud Exclusive Caterer for The Barnstable Brown Party and The Kentucky Bourbon Festival

It sounds like it's free for up to 2 people. Good deal for free food (which every medical student is always on the lookout for)!

Darcy Miller at Macy's

Last week I read in one of the wedding blogs in my Google Reader, DIY Bride, that Darcy Miller and Wendy Kromer, both of the Martha Stewart Weddings empire/machine, would be at the Louisville Macy's today. I knew I was going to be post-call today, but I went ahead and RSVPed, figuring that if I was exhausted at the last minute I wouldn't go. I don't know how they advertised the event locally (I don't get the newspaper anymore), but there were probably 50-100 people there. I was, sadly, one of the only people there by myself, but such is life.

Now, I like flipping through MS Weddings magazine for the diy projects and clean photo layouts, but I find the MS empire a little disturbing with its emphasis on perfection. I also don't like famous people putting their names on subpar versions of otherwise-great product lines, a la Emeril and All-Clad. I think Martha Stewart at Kmart is a gimmick and why on earth would I buy Martha Stewart Wedgwood (or even Vera Wang Wedgwood) rather than "real" Wedgwood? Is that weird? I'm not sure, but I'm sticking to my guns. Anyway, I think Martha sets up unreasonable expectations for a lot of women, whether they be brides, homemakers, or craftspeople. No one can be that perfect! If you're aware of your lack of perfection, though, then her crafty projects can be great inspiration.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. I wasn't going to go all ga-ga for Darcy Miller (MS Weddings editor) or Wendy Kromer (makes all the cakes for the MS wedding empire), but I had nothing better to do today (other than sleep) and I figured there would probably be free food of some sort (I was right). Plus, if hundreds of other brides would kill to be in my place, maybe I should see what all the fuss was about...

When I got to Macy's (they set up the event in the Home Store), they asked me to set up my registry (I declined) or sign up to be contacted later about setting up a registry (I complied). Then I entered a drawing for 4 settings of Martha's new Wedgwood setting of my choice (if I won, I probably would have sold it on eBay because I wouldn't want to get 8 more settings of any of them to fill out the set). I'll spoil the surprise: I didn't win, although my raffle number was only 7 digits after the winning one... if only I had gotten there 3 minutes earlier!

Then I found a seat kind of toward the front and off to one side, which had a gift bag full of free swag: a copy of the current MS Weddings magazine (sweet! I didn't buy it at the airport when I had that long layover last month!), a copy of the current Louisville Bride magazine (sweet! I didn't buy it at Borders last month because I convinced myself it wasn't worth it since I could read the whole thing online for free!), a $10 Macy's gift card (I was a bad girl and snuck the gift card out of the bag on the chair next to me also, since no one was sitting there. There was a Macy's nazi snatching up all the un-claimed bags as soon as the event was over, though, so no other thievery for me), and a couple of useless coupons, ads, and a perfume sample.

Darcy Miller was up first, and she gave some really general advice about wedding planning. She showed pictures from the current MS Weddings issue about the couple who won the Today Show wedding. Since it was televised live, the ceremony was at 8 am, and that meant the bride's call time was... wait for it... 3:30 a.m.! I can't imagine that. Not that I've never woken up that early, but the whole point of a wedding day being the couple's special day means, for us at least, that we get to sleep in; hence a late afternoon ceremony for us. She also talked about and showed pictures from her own wedding in 2001, which had lots of cute little details and was featured in the magazine back then.

Darcy does her bit.

Then Wendy Kromer talked about cakes and showed lots of cake pictures. Most of it was nothing I had never heard or seen before, either, but it's always fun to look at pretty cakes.

A traditional, white-on-white cake with intricate piping. Wendy referenced the book the Lambeth Method of Cake Decoration for this cake. Apparently it's a book that people who are "sick with love for cake decorating" own.


I harbor fantasies about cakes like this, especially strawberry shortcakes. I love fresh berries on cakes. [Sorry for the crappy cake pictures, btw; I was taking pictures of the screen that was projecting the slideshow.]

I LOVE the whimsical look of this cake. The borders of the tiers are ladyfingers dipped in something or other, and the tiers are covered in waxflower. I like dainty patterns like that a lot, like this cake from last month's cake episode of the MS show inspired by a calico print:


I'll probably have a plain-ish cake decorated with fresh flowers, myself, assuming that intricately decorated things like the calico cake above are unquestionably out of our budget. Strawberry shortcake is still a possibility, though!

Then they let us loose, and encouraged us to buy the MS wedding cake book for Wendy to sign ($60, no thank you!) and talk to Darcy and taste cake samples provided by a local baker. The cake samples included an espresso marble cake with mocha filling (too strong of a coffee taste for me, but still good) and a butter cake with bavarian cream filling (DELICIOUS! I may have to call them for a consultation).

Peach tea with remnants of the butter-and-bavarian-cream cake, perched delicately next to a display of Kate Spade china.

There were also some yummy hors d'oeuvres: sirloin cube and grape tomato on a skewer; grilled shiitake mushroom on a rosemary stem skewer (awesome idea I'd love to use!); shrimp with avocado and creme fraiche on a little pastry of some sort with caviar; and a cute take on potato skins: half of a small red potato with creme fraiche, a bit of bacon, and leek.

Sirloin and tomato skewer and shiitake mushroom skewer. The mushroom was grilled with rosemary, so the whole thing was delicious and woodsy.


The potato appetizer. I ate like 5 of these things. They were delicious. The leek bit was practically as large as the potato so it looked a little funny, but whatever.

While we were waiting around for them to draw the door prize, everyone was perusing the china and kitchen stuff. Although I wouldn't buy the Martha Stewart line just because it was Martha Stewart, and definitely wouldn't buy it if I had something with tried-and-true quality in mind instead, she does have pieces that are unique and adorable. Like wooden cutting boards in the shape of a mouse (to serve cheese and crackers on!) or rooster, or a wire cupcake stand. Anyway, I ended up getting these two teensy dishes, which I'm going to use as ring dishes in the bathroom and kitchen. And they were essentially free, thanks to my gift card!

The leaf for the kitchen and the flower for the bathroom. My ring will look adorable sitting in either of those, although not as adorable as it looks sitting on my finger, of course!

I'm not sure what these dishes are supposed to be... the letter abbreviations on the UPC sticker seem to reference "salt cellar" but these are definitely too small for a salt cellar. Is it possible one is supposed to have tiny individual salt serving dishes on a properly set table? I don't remember any such thing from Miss Manners (yes, I have read it), but you never know...

Overall, it was not a bad afternoon at Macy's!