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!

Invitations are in the mail!

And the woman behind the counter even promised to hand cancel them, even though she told me, in her opinion, they looked better if they went through the machine. She said she'd do them throughout the day, so I guess we'll see what people end up getting.

I'm so happy to have these out of my hair! As soon as I get word that people have started receiving them, I'll give you the whole recap.

A rhetorical question

What is the utility of having 7 -- SEVEN!!! -- bridesmaids when none of them live anywhere near you, thereby making it impossible for you to command them to help you stuff invitations into envelopes?

Heck, I'd even accept the help of groomsmen. Or a groom.

The envelopes all have return addresses printed on them.
They have all been lined.
Their destination addresses have all been calligraphed.

Now, it's just the tedious process of assembling the contents, making sure the right RSVP cards go in the right envelopes, and glue dotting everything together.

I did 25 in 2.5 hours tonight. Not good. Roughly 75 more to go.

Helpers would be good. Not that, you know, that's why I asked those seven girls to be my bridesmaids or anything.

Also, the interest in stuffing envelopes wanes when you have just found out that you're moving to Philadelphia in less than three months and all of a sudden need to figure out how to buy a house. I would much rather be sorting through mortgage loan offers and perusing sale ads on Craigslist.

The one good thing about invitation assembly? I've been watching all the ER episodes I've been DVR-ing all season, and I'm very close to being caught up. I don't even want to think about how many hours that means this project has been taking me.

Invitations are done!

When I first started reading crafty, DIY-oriented wedding blogs 19 months ago, the thing that stood out the most to me was brides who designed and/or made their own wedding invitations. What a great way to infuse some of your own personality into the wedding, and besides, I figured that DIY would probably be cheaper than buying pre-made.

I quickly formed an idea of what I wanted, that would fit into our design theme, and kept my eyes out for inspiration. It came in the form of a piece of scrapbook paper at Hobby Lobby:


Whimsical, quirky, but still pretty. Perfect! Now, how to take one of those vines from a piece of scrapbook paper to a digital file I could manipulate? (This is a photo I took of the piece of paper.)

I figured I could probably scan it into the computer, but I don't have a scanner. Since I was doing all of this brainstorming months ago, I set this project on the back burner and focused on other things. At some point, I could always use the scanner at my parents' house, although I wasn't really sure when I would be able to do that. However, this past August, I ran across a classified ad on Weddingbee from someone offering to do invitation graphic design for very reasonable prices. Perfect! I emailed Laura, got some info, and sent her off a package in the mail with some of the scrapbook paper, a piece of fabric from bridesmaid dress shopping (so she knew what the right purple color was), and instructions detailing my vision. We had steady email contact over the next three months, save for one moment when I had to send her an email asking for an update, because I hadn't heard from her in some time. She responded immediately, said she had sent me my proofs two weeks earlier, but re-attached them. I know I had never received an earlier email (I even checked my spam), but I had the proofs, and they were great, and it was no big deal. I gave her my feedback and was eagerly awaiting the final design. That was mid-November.

Over the next two months, I sent multiple emails to see how things were going and never got a response. I finally resorted to Googling the girl to see if I could find some other contact info, and was able to call her in early January. After that, there was a series of emails that involved me giving her feedback, her promising me new proofs, and then falling off the face of the earth again. Finally, I got sick of it. My deadline to send invitations was quickly approaching, and I still had nothing! I laid out my own invitation suite using Paint.net and OpenOffice Draw, and everything was great except for the low-res graphics I had pulled from my proofs. Low-res won't cut it for the final invitations, but I didn't know how to turn low-res into the nice high-res I would need for printing. By this time, it was late February.

So I turned to Etsy, the place for all things crafty and creative, and placed my first Alchemy bid. It was accepted by about a billion people within a matter of hours, and I found someone I thought would be good to work with. Then followed some back-and-forth conversations between me and Sue, my Etsy graphic designer, and some trips back and forth to Kinkos to print out every new image (my old inkjet is first of all out of colored ink, and second of all very old and not of good enough quality), but within a week I had my final product. After I knew I had what I wanted, I sent Laura an email firing her, and I haven't heard anything back.

Next, I needed a printer. If you know anything about wedding invitation printing, you know that one of the crazes is for letterpress, a totally luxurious printing style in which plates of your design are created and inked, and then pressed into the paper, creating indentations. It's lovely, and I would love to have it, but I also know that most people throw invitations in the trash, so there is no reason to waste all of that money on something so ephemeral. How much money? We're talking at least $3/invitation, and it quickly goes up from there.

Another popular option in wedding invitations is thermography, in which a special powder is placed on the paper, then heated and melted and sucked upward, creating a raised effect. If you order "wedding invitations" from those big books found at most stationery stores, this is usually what you get. It's less expensive than letterpress by far, but still not justifiable in my book.

Kinkos, though, wasn't my favorite option, because they don't always take the time to look after the details that I wanted. So I turned to my new favorite paper supply store, Arvey, and asked their staff if they could recommend a printer. And they could! Last Friday I drove to all three of their recommended printers (I have Fridays off this month; how great is that?) and found a great one. A locally owned business, run by a great guy, and willing to work with me on price if I used my own cardstock. Since I need cardstock for other wedding projects, I didn't mind buying it in bulk to use some for the invitations, especially since it saved me money!

Yesterday after work I stopped at The Reliable Printing Company to drop off my cardstock (having already emailed my files to Eric, the owner), and he dropped everything and printed everything for me right then and there. It took about an hour to go through all the files, make sure they were laid out correctly, printed correctly, and cut correctly, but it was great to be able to be at his side the whole time, making sure that everything was still the way I wanted it to be. Their attention to detail was amazing! It wasn't even until I left, completed invitations in hand, that I realized he had stayed open an extra 45 minutes helping me. What service!

Meanwhile, I had placed internet orders for envelopes (months ago I had ordered some samples, so I knew exactly what I wanted) and paper to line the envelopes with, and lo and behold, everything arrived by today! So now I have everything I need to put together the invitations, and I am happily going to be working on that over the next few days. When Eric comes to visit next weekend, our goal is to get the invitations fully completed, envelopes stamped and addressed, and ready to mail.

So what does the final product look like? How did my original inspiration get translated into a wedding invitation that I love? You'll just have to wait, because I'm not going to share until after they're sent out -- another week and a half, at least!

Vendors I love:
SuBeeDesigns on Etsy, Sue Brown on the Internet
Arvey Paper and Office Products, for a huge paper selection.
Eric Hobaugh, CEO of The Reliable Printing Company, for excellent, personal printing services (including letterpress!)
ActionEnvelope.com, for envelopes
PaperMojo.com, for a great paper selection (I'm using their papers as envelope liners), and how can I resist a store with the same name as one of our kitties?

Stamp Saga

If you were planning a wedding at this time last year, you were aware of the dismay and outrage that occurred when the Postal Service announced it was raising the price of stamps by a penny. Brides who had already bought the stamps for their invitations were saddened that they might need to deface their envelopes with an extra 1-cent stamp. I made a mental note to not get upset if that were to happen to me this year.

Last year, the post office had a great stamp, the "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" stamp. It was printed in honor of the 100-year anniversary of the creation of the popular song.


As soon as I saw it, I knew it would be great for our invitations (I don't think you know yet the reason why, but trust me on this, and I'll explain more in a later post). But I also knew it would be silly to stockpile the stamps too early, in case postage rates went up again this year. And they were still available as of December.

So a few weeks ago, I was hashing out little wedding details with Eric and I brought up stamps for the invitations. We decided we really liked these baseball stamps, and I knew that it was around this time last year that the rate hike was announced, but we decided that we liked these stamps enough to use them even if we had to add a 1-center to the envelope as well. (And if memory served, I knew that the rate hike last year was announced around February, and it went into effect around May, so it might affect us, depending on our RSVP deadline.)

So that weekend I stopped by the post office for something else, and asked if they had any of the stamps. It turned out they were out of them, and when I asked if they anticipated getting more, I was told it was doubtful, because the clerk suspected a new rate hike would be announced soon. And sure enough, last week it was.

(The rate hike won't go into effect until May 11, and our RSVP deadline is probably going to be May 1, so we will be dealing with current/old stamp rates, not the new ones, so it turns out we need stamps now.)

Today I called around to a bunch of post offices, but the answer was always the same: "We ran out of those stamps a while ago." Boo. One helpful woman told me to call 1-800-STAMP-24, to see if I could order them that way. And when I called, I was told that the post office had discontinued those stamps and they had run out of them on Friday. FOUR days ago. ARGH! I just missed it!

On ebay, the stamps are selling for $1 a pop or $11-14 for a sheet of 20. I refuse to pay a markup for them on principle, so we're left with whatever stamps are currently available.

So, what will it be? Abraham Lincoln, because he was a great president who was born in Kentucky? Edgar Allen Poe, because he was from Baltimore and Eric and I have ties to Maryland? Chinese New Year for my heritage, even though neither of us is an ox? Alaska because we went on an Alaskan cruise two years ago? The Great Lakes Dunes sheet is pretty and has fun wildlife pictures, even though we don't live in the Great Lakes region. The Forever stamp works because of our ties to Philly, but it's kind of boring for a wedding stamp, I think (although I'll definitely be stocking up on these before May 11!). There's this Celebrate! stamp, which is kind of fun. Not our colors, but definitely the right sentiment:
There's always the wedding heart and the love heart, but they're so... cliche and overdone. (Now watch, that's what we're going to end up using and you'll laugh at me for being so snobby.) There are 20 state stamps in the "flags of our nation" series (well, 19 states and the U.S. flag), but they've only gotten up to Kansas so far. If they come out with the next series that includes Kentucky in the next month or so, then that would be great, but even so, I would be compelled to buy 10 times too many stamps just to get all the Kentucky ones.

Those baseball stamps were so darn perfect! And, just to let you know, I've always been the kind of person who buys special stamps to convey my likes or loyalties. I always love the Disney stamps (but I concede that Eric probably wouldn't want them for wedding invitations), or flowers. So I like my stamps to have a message attached to them, and I would like to be able to do that for our wedding invitations, too.

And never fear; our invitation suite is going to fall under 1 ounce to qualify for regular first-class postage, come hell or high water! When you're having a budget-friendly wedding, you can't let an extra $17 go to the postal service because you didn't realize square invitations or heavy ones cost extra. (Sorry, postal service, but I can't afford to keep you afloat with my money.)

So what should we do? I know in the grand scheme of things, this is really, really minor.

"Seriously, in the huge sweep of things, this stuff doesn't matter."
"What he's going to say next is, there are people starving in the Sudan."
"Well there are. ... All I'm asking for is a normal amount of perspective."

Ten points to you if you can name the movie that quote is from. And then I'll stop worrying about stamps :)

Need a venue?

Don't worry, we're not getting rid of ours. But there's a new one in town, and it looks like it would be great!

A couple weeks ago, when it was an unseasonable 60 degrees one day (that was before the killer snow/ice storm that blanketed Kentucky a week and a half ago), I took advantage of the nice weather to walk downtown to the Kentucky Center to see if I could score raffle tickets to Wicked. (I didn't.) And on the walk back home, I happened to walk past this building and noticed a sign up saying it was available for event rentals. So, because I'm a venue junkie, I had to check it out.

It's called The Gillespie, and it's on downtown West Market Street, just a few blocks from Glassworks, but more in the center of the downtown district. It was formerly a bank, and it has gorgeous Art Deco architecture and styling.

I love old buildings. All pictures from The Gillespie's website.


Even better? Although they have suggested vendors, their in-house vendor is one I've worked with before for school events and is almost always the most economical, while delivering great food and service. And on top of that, you don't even have to use The Gillespie's suggested vendors -- they'll let you work with whoever (whomever?) you want! Exactly the kind of venue I like working with.

The only downside? Their prices are slightly higher than at Glassworks, and they seem to be taking advantage of the Sunday-weddings-are-cheaper trend by giving a big discount to Sunday daytime weddings and only a slight discount to Sunday evening weddings (compared to Friday or Saturday night).

But still, go check out the pictures on their website. Look, you can take pictures in front of the old vault!

This would definitely be on my list of venues if I were looking again. Although, I'm really glad that part of the planning process is far behind us!

Flower girl dresses

I always had it in the back of my mind that it would be more fun to dress our flower girl, Lea, in a pretty purple dress, rather than dressing her like a mini-bride in white. And even if I did dress her in white, I wanted something age-appropriate, rather than a satin ball gown. I mean, really, what 2-year-old needs to be wearing a white satin ball gown? Plus, you know, those dresses that are "meant" for flower girls are pretty darn expensive! At least if I tell one of my bridesmaids, "You can totally wear it again!" (channeling 27 Dresses), it's kind of sort of true. But between appropriate occasions and rapid growth, when will a 2-year-old wear a white satin ball gown again?

So my frugal (read: cheapskate) self also figured I could take advantage of our long engagement by trolling Easter dress sales. I kept an eye out last year, but the shopping began in earnest this year. A couple of weeks ago, to be exact.

It all started when Lea gained a little sister on January 22, Susanna:

So one day a couple weeks ago I headed off for Target to look for new baby presents. (I got Susanna this adorable sheep-themed set, and a couple other things.) And wandering through the baby section led me gradually to the toddler section, and then to the party dresses, where I found this:
It's a little more purple than it looks in the picture, so I bought it. And that night, I checked out the websites of a few department stores, like Macy's and JCPenney. And on the JCP site, I found this dress:
I couldn't tell how floofy it might be, so a few days later I headed out to JCPenney to see it for myself. It was cute, but more of a dress-up-for-a-nice-normal-day dress than a special occasion one. But there were PLENTY of other dresses to look at, and I did much more than look. Within 15 or 20 minutes, I had grabbed every potential flower girl dress from the rack in a size 3T and wandered over to the infant section, because wouldn't you know it, all of a sudden I needed to dress Susanna as an honorary flower girl, too.

As I plopped 11 dresses on the counter, I have to give the salesgirl credit for not batting an eyelash, but simply asking, "Do you need gift receipts?" And the best part? All the dresses were 20-30% off!

Top left: The cotton eyelet dresses, in toddler and baby versions. Less fancy, but oh-so-cute and adorable.
Top right: The plaid collection, toddler version from Target and baby version from JCP.
Middle left: The polka dot collection. Neither dress had any purple in it, though.
Middle right: A gorgeous green dress with purple flowers on it. Can we say, perfect?
Bottom left: Another gorgeous dress, in white with pink embroidery. If this came about a million sizes larger, it would be my wedding dress.
Bottom right: The purple collection.

Last weekend, Eric and I both traveled to Virginia to visit Paige, Brian, Lea, and Susanna. In addition to the requisite visiting-my-nieces-to-be presents, I brought along the flower girl dress contenders, and everything got settled!

Which do you think were chosen for each girl?

Nah, I won't make you guess.

The green-with-purple-flowers dress was chosen in about 5 seconds by Paige. It's my second favorite of the bunch for Susanna (the first being my dream wedding dress), but since the white-and-pink one doesn't match the wedding colors at all, the purple-and-green one is clearly the best choice.

We narrowed Lea's choices to the purple one (bottom right) and the polka dot one (middle left), then held them both up for her to choose. And guess which one that super-smart girl picked? The purple one!

To check for fit, I put the dress on her over her clothes after she finished her dinner, and she loved it (and it fit!). She was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and pants, so running around in that outfit with a purple fairy dress over it, she totally reminded me of Bo from Signs. So adorable. Oh yeah, and she was running around singing Jingle Bells. A month after Christmas. Don't ask.

So, yay, we have flower girl dresses! The rest are in a bag, waiting to be returned this weekend. And I can't wait to see these two all dressed up in three and a half months (yikes!)!


So, I know I can't be the only cheapskate shopper out there. Who else bought an Easter dress for their flower girl(s)?