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Mr. T and I got some crazy looks at Safeway last night as we bought 14 pumpkins from them. The price was just so good: $3.99 per pumpkin! The lowest price I got from the pumpkin farms I emailed was $5 per pumpkin, and that would've also meant a long drive out to pick them up. Still, I bet the pumpkin farms would've had prettier pumpkins than Safeway. In the photo you can see that some of our purchases have...character.Because of that, I also went to another store and bought 8 more pumpkins--they were more expensive, but also prettier. Those will probably end up on the tables. The other ones will be glued and glittered and become pretty much unrecognizable as their former selves in order to take on their role as our aisle pumpkins.I also got some small pumpkins to scatter on the escort card table and other places, but we need to get a few more of these. So, we're not entirely done, but 22 pumpkins feels like an accomplishment. It also makes our house look like a deranged indoor pumpkin patch. The cats don't know what to think.And, happily, we only spent about half our pumpkin budget. Hooray to saving money!
If anyone's wondering what $1300 worth of alcohol looks like...
There you go! Our original budget for alcohol was $1500, so we came in $200 under budget AND we also bought 8 bottles of wine for the rehearsal dinner, which was not in our initial alcohol budget at all.
We will probably end up returning some, but we just didn't know what folks would want to drink. Beer? Wine? If wine, red or white? If red, pinot or cabernet? If none of the above, vodka or tequila? And so on...so, we probably overbought, but I really, really don't want to do a beer run in the middle of our wedding. We also bought toasting champagne (excuse me, sparkling wine!). We'll have 3-4 bottles of champagne for guests to drink before the toasts if they prefer to drink champagne...those are Moet, left over from Mr. T's cousin's wedding. The toasting ahem, sparkling wine is Gloria Ferrer, which was a recommendation from my codancer who loves champagne, so we totally took her advice with no hesitation. We are also serving the same chardonnay (Benziger) and pinot (Castle Rock) that she served at her own wedding, so thanks, Rachel!
For the cabernet we went with Smoking Loon, which Mr. T likes, and for beer we went for two more of his faves (and also locally brewed!) Anchor Steam and Trumer Pilsner. He also picked the vodka, of course, which is Ketel One, and I obviously picked the tequila, which is Corralejo (Herradura is my fave but was a tad expensive, unfortunately).
Buying the alcohol took all day. First I placed an online order at BevMo. I saved 5% because it was my first online order (Score!). We also got our chardonnay for essentially half off because of BevMo's five-cent wine sale (buy one bottle, get the next bottle of the same wine for five cents, on selected wines! Double score!). After we placed that order, we had to wait an hour for them to get everything together so we could come pick it up. So we went to Safeway, because they had an amazing deal on wines. A discount for 6 or more bottles of the same wine, PLUS an additional 10% off for 6 bottles of any wine, period. We saved $110 on 24 bottles of wine. Excuse me while I pat myself on the back for suggesting going there as our first stop! Triple Score!
Our next stop was Trader Joe's. Unfortunately they were sold out of the margarita mix, but we did buy the rest of the wine for the rehearsal dinner there, plus the remaining bottles of pinot (Safeway didn't have enough in stock).
After Trader Joe's we swung by BevMo to look at beer and pick up our order. We bought two cases of Anchor Steam there, and at this point my credit card was declined. "Oops," I thought, "I should've called them." I bet hundreds of dollars of alcohol purchases in an hour raises some red flags. So I put the purchase on another card, and we picked up the online order. The woman who helped us out to the car complimented us on our wine and tequila selections (patting myself on the back again...and Rach, you should too, since you picked the chardonnay). "It's for our wedding," I confessed with a smile, and she congratulated us. All day I told people about the wedding, whether they wanted to hear about it or not, since we were getting a lot of attention around our massive alcohol purchases.
We dropped off all the booze thus far at home and I called my card and reassured them that yes, it was me, buying crap for my wedding, nothing to worry about. The operator congratulated me and restored my card to good standing and we were off again! [Lest anyone worry about my credit card spending...no worries, it's just on the card until I can transfer money from our savings account, which takes a couple of days. We're a no-debt wedding! As a matter of fact, we have extra in our wedding savings. Hooray!]
Next we took a break from alcohol and went to Target. We bought CANDY for the candy buffet. $100 worth of candy is a lot of candy, but unfortunately I didn't get a pic of that one to show you. We also bought coloring books for the niece/nephew. I had a crisis in the middle of the lane at Target. I literally could not pick up the coloring books with the Disney princesses on them. "There must be something else," I kept muttering. I had no idea I felt so strongly about this issue until I was confronted with corrupting my niece with them. Finally Mr. T suggested Dora the Explorer and I grudgingly went along with it. He of course had it easy and picked out a superhero coloring book for his nephew. Anyway, we also picked up frames for the parent gifts (we're going to give them wedding photos, so they'll get the frames with "picture coming soon" signs in them), plus tooth whitening kits (yes, we're vain), and I got some cute Halloween tees for myself for $6 each, which I thought was a score. As we checked out the checker (who reminded me of Kristin Wiig's character on SNL) asked if the candy was for trick-or-treaters or if it WAS ALL FOR US. And then she said people sometimes told her they were going to keep the candy for themselves. We're talking about 20+ bags of candy, here. That's frightening!
Our next stop was another Trader Joe's. They did have the maggie mix, and by making nice with one of the employees, we got it in an unopened box. Hooray! After that we went to another BevMo, and since we were under budget, Mr. T approved the purchase of the Crystal Head vodka that I'd been dreaming about. It's going to look so awesome on the bar!
Plus if we run out of vodka we can crack it open.
After BevMo #2, we proceeded to Michael's, where we bought flower petals for our flower girl, spray paint for some of the used frames we bought for venue signage, more glitter for pumpkins, two types of glue, and other random stuff.
We were also supposed to make a stop at Pet Club for the littles but it was closed at this point. It was probably for the best, since we were soooo tired by then.
And finally, we stopped at Andronico's for two things:
- Individually wrapped candy corn packets--we love candy corn and had to have it at the buffet, but we don't want any open candy, just wrapped. Andronico's was the only store we found the packets in!
- The Trumer Pilsner beer, which was on sale, and because of the sale, they had cases in stock, which they normally don't. Quadruple score!
And then we went home and collapsed.
So, the MOH and I went to my semi-final dress fitting on Saturday. The dress looks amazing! All they need to do now is line the skirt, and finish all the edges, and a few other finishing touches. I am in love with it. Mr. T and I have been practicing our first dance, and it's become obvious that there is no way I can dance in my skirt. As soon as I step backward, I'm going to step on the train and it will all be over. Or Mr. T is going to step on my train and it will all be over. Oops. That's what I get for going for drama!
Now I'm pondering either buying a cute skirt to change into right before the first dance, or having my dressmaker whip up a shorter skirt in the same material, if such a thing is even possible or remotely attainable on my budget/within our timeframe. Hm.
We had a wedding whirlwind weekend, and among the things we did were: taking the envelopes to the P.O. to get weighed, buying postage (we picked the king and queen love stamp, above, and we were actually pleasantly surprised by how they looked on the black envelope), hand stamping each envelope with our return address, addressing the remaining invitations (I'd done about half already), affixing postage to each envelope, sealing the envelope with a sticker, setting envelopes out to dry, and, this morning, dropping the finished product off at the post office! Woo-hoo! We still have about 4 addresses to track down, but for my purposes (and sanity), invitations are firmly checked off the to-do list.
The return address stamp was a good idea in theory but bad in practice. It was hard to align, and the silver ink from the ink pad just WOULD NOT DRY. We left those out for 36 hours in 80 degree heat, and they were still smearing when we touched them, and even after we blotted them with paper towels. So, if you are our wedding guest, and you have silver ink all over your envelope, my apologies! If I had it to do over I'd have spent quadruple the amount and gotten an embosser instead of a stamp. Oh, well. In the meantime, there is silver ink all over every surface of our home. I'm mighty glad to be done with those! We've gotten one RSVP already (we hand-delivered a couple of invites this weekend), and I can't wait for the rest to roll in. Exciting!! It's nice to see all our hard work taking shape.
This weekend we also went to Michael's because I decided I didn't trust the glue of the envelopes and I wanted something to seal them with. We ended up using the seals we initially purchased from Martha Stewart Crafts for our favor bags: little grinning skull and crossbones--they are black and white, and they glow in the dark! And then we bought other stickers to go on the favor bags at Michael's. Halloween is in full force there and it was hard to stick to our shopping list. Well, for me anyway. I really wanted the silver sign with the skull on it (with jeweled eyes) that said "Beware of Bling", but Mr. T wouldn't let me. But seriously, how perfect would that have been??
While we were there I did talk Mr. T into one frivolous purchase. No, two. They were both Martha Stewart "mad scientist" products. She just has such a nice Halloween aesthetic. One was favor bags, to mix in with the ones we already have. The second was labels for the wine bottles that will go on the tables; they say "Poison" and stuff like that on them. See below; aren't they cute? I promised Mr. T I wouldn't have to go back to Michael's again before the wedding, for the sake of our budget. Ha!
Recently I reacquainted Mr. T with my plan to create all of the bouquets, corsages, and boutonnieres for our wedding VIPs (he'd forgotten about this). I was explaining how the bouquets are made the day before, and the bouts/corsages have to be made the morning of."That's crazy," he told me. "You're not going to want to be doing all that work at the last minute. I don't think you should do it." I scoffed, but then I started thinking about it. We're going to have 5 bouts and 4 corsages. That's 9 things to make that morning. Hm.So, I did what any good American would--I decided to outsource the labor, and I also decided to go with fake/dried flowers so we can get them done ahead of time. The good news is, we'll likely be at or under budget for these, so I'm not blowing our budget with this decision...just saving myself some anguish.I pored over Etsy options and finally decided on a likely vendor. I like how she uses real dried elements in her work. We're going to make ours look "less harvest and more Halloween," but I think she's going to rock them. Here's a sample of her stuff:
Those are real dried lotus pods, and the pumpkin is real too!So, I'm still committed to making the bouquets, but there are only three of those, and now my wedding morning has been freed up (I was having visions of getting up at 5 a.m. and hunching over flowers and floral wire...).Phew. Mr. T heartily agrees with my decision, as you thought he might.I love Etsy. Sigh.
Mr. T was amazed that I was reading a financial book of my own accord, but this one was recommended on Offbeat Bride, so I checked it out of the library.
This was an excellent book; very well-written and full of useful tips. Of course, most of the questions he says to ask your partner have already long since been discussed in our household, but I didn't mind the review. Perhaps more useful to me were his thoughts on joint bank accounts: don't do it till after you're married, which we haven't. His other opinion was that having one joint bank account offers the most financial transparency in the relationship. He offered that you could each keep your own individual account, but that having the joint one, period, keeps everyone honest and is more of an investment into the partnership of the marriage. Mr. T and I have been debating about this and it's likely we'll combine our finances into one joint checking and several joint savings, depending on what we're saving for--vacation, emergency fund, yearly expenses, etc. One thing that this seems to preclude is surprising each other with gifts, though. I'd be curious to hear how you all manage this in your relationships: One account? Three accounts? If it's one, how do you surprise each other? With a credit card purchase? Even that's tricky, assuming you have transparency when paying the cc bills...
Regardless, buying gifts for each other isn't any kind of reason not to combine finances, so we're probably going for the one joint account.
The book also has a section on how to create a household budget, which I took notes on! Mr. T and I have not had to really formally budget for a household, and I think it's a good idea when two people are dipping into the same bank account. I volunteered to do this since I do budgets for work and I've also been keeping up our wedding budget.
Anyway, the book offers much, much more and I totally recommend this one to any couples--married or to-be married--who want a healthy financial future.
Mr. T and I are enjoying the calm before the storm. It's amazing how many items on our to-do list need to be done the month before the wedding, if not the week before.
This weekend I addressed about half our envelopes in my own dubious handwriting, although Mr. T was very complimentary about how they looked. I told him he was biased, but it was still nice to have a cheerleader there.
Mr. T worked on some of our other paper products: icons for the escort cards, and the drink menu for the bar. Those are looking very stylish, and without the pressure of the invitations hanging over our heads, they seemed to flow very quickly!
We should get our invites back from the printer soon, if they really are working as quickly as they thought they would. I haven't heard anything yet, and today's the exact 2-week mark.
I also created a more detailed alcohol budget. We had a general budget, but after we went to BevMo this weekend and priced what the bottles of vodka and tequila are likely to cost, we had a guideline for how much we have left to spend on the wine. That was very helpful, actually. It's unlikely we'll have enough in the budget for Tru Blood soda or Crystal Head vodka, sadly. I'm still holding onto the idea of one bottle of the vodka for display at the bar. A girl can dream, right?
We also went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond and picked out flatware. Of course the style we liked has no corresponding hostess set. I put a hostess set by the same manufacturer on the registry for now, but I'm not entirely satisfied with that decision. We might have to revisit our choice.
The printer says we can do black paper! Yay! and I've found some that won't break the bank, so we're still under budget. I'm learning all about paper--pounds versus gsm, and how cover stock is different. I think this might actually help me with my day job!
Now that we know we can do black paper with silver type, Mr. T's gotten re-inspired about the invites (again) and has gone in a new direction--we're no longer just doing a type design. This weekend he was working on a monogram for us with little success and a lot of cursing. It's funny, we've both come full circle with what we wanted for invites at the very beginning of our engagement: I wanted black paper, and he wanted a silhouette of us against a moon, with our two cats and a big tree. Last night he went home and worked some more on the invite with that in mind and I have to say, it's looking really good! I felt very positive about us achieving this one. Phew!
We still want to do some blind letterpressing as part of the design, and that may prove tricky, but we'll deal with that when we come to it...
On Friday we went out suit shopping again. We only had two places on our list, and we had better luck than when we had a ton! Go figure.
Well, we initially also had Burberry on the list to check out, but they got such mixed reviews on Yelp, Mr. T was turned off.
First we went to Neiman Marcus. No one there seemed to give a damn that we were in their store, fondling suits worth thousands of dollars. Finally we found an associate just standing around and asked for help. He found one three-piece for us, an Armani with a decent fit. They didn't have Mr. T's size in-store, but he's having the suit transferred to that store so that Mr. T can try it on and see if he likes it. The cons are that it has a pattern (Mr. T didn't want a strong pattern) and it's expensive.
Next we went to Saks, where we were greeted immediately. The salesman was attentive without being obsequious and seemed to get what Mr. T wanted in terms of look right away. He put Mr. T in 4 different jackets, and while none of them had a vest, Saks apparently has a "Made to Measure" option on some of the lines where you can request custom fits and things like vests. He also offered to check to see if they're expecting any Dolce & Gabbana three-piece suits in for Fall, so Mr. T could get his inspiration suit from the GQ cover. I think this is the route he'll probably take, although he does want to try on the Neiman suit still.
Although Mr. T's suit budget has gone up considerably, we're both OK with it. I thought he should've raised it before, and I believe he's come to terms with it (even though he's the more frugal one out of the two of us).
We both felt a lot better about this trip than our first one. It pays to keep shopping!
Here's Mr. T in an Armani jacket, which we both liked a lot:
This weekend I made an actual personalized to-do list for me and Mr. T. I know, it's long overdue, but we were getting by using the lists in our various wedding books. However, it became obvious that not only are we unusual in terms of the normal wedding in terms of what we're NOT doing, we're also unusual in that some of the things we ARE doing were nowhere on these lists. And I started to get worried that if I didn't get all that stuff out of my head and into a list, I'd forget something at some point.
So, I sat down and spent a good hour or two creating a list that had well over 100 things on it--more like 140! Mr. T and I promptly started bickering as he tried to eliminate things ("Do we need favors?") and I tried to keep them on there. Sigh. There's definitely a not-so-pretty side to wedding planning, and its name is stress. I admitted to Mr. T that my stomach has been hurting every night for the last week, and I think it's wedding-related. He told me he'd been feeling the same way. As it is, since we only have 4 months (OMG FOUR MONTHS) until the wedding, so our list would seem to have us doing more than two things per day, which realistically is never going to happen. But we're keeping everything on it for now.
The list did motivate us to check off a few tasks; I booked our photographer's flight, and Mr. T started legwork on the alcohol quantities and the mini-moon. I told him I don't want to know anything about the mini-moon; I just want it to be luxurious and I want at least one massage. Despite my protests, he's told me that he's considering Big Sur, but I stopped him before he could get any further with the information disclosure. Really, after planning this wedding, I have zero desire to plan anything after the wedding! I just want to show up and be pampered!
The other super-fun task we did was sit down with the budget to find out what the heck was going on--my reconciliations showed a difference between our spreadsheet and what the bank statement was actually telling us. Sadly, the bank was right (as I figured they would be!); I'd misplaced a decimal point in one entry and entered two entries twice! This is why I work in publishing, not accounting...anyway, we're not done saving money, as we'd hoped, but we're pretty close.
We are still looking for rehearsal dinner venues, and are leaning toward Chinese or Vietnamese, because they're local and have banquet rooms. And, we eat a lot of both, so they reflect our style and aren't random choices.
Next weekend I made it our goal to register and also to go suit shopping, part two. It's a three-day weekend, so hopefully we can get both done! The clock is ticking...
In one of the most out-of-order wedding decisions I've made to-date, I bought my wedding shoes this weekend!
It seems odd to buy shoes before I've even been measured for my dress. However, I'm not totally crazy. I do need to know how tall my shoes are in order to determine the length of the skirt, so that will actually come in handy during the measuring process. Also, I brought the dress design with me to the shoe store, plus the fabric swatch, and I was in very, very good hands once I got there.
You see, I went to the store my good friend M. manages. She is a shoe guru and gives you the kind of customer service you dream of: those shoes run small, those run wide, those can be stretched, those are comfortable, those are cute but hurt your feet; she can recite a litany like this for every shoe in her store. Plus! M. is another of my bride-to-be friends and she is having the same dressmaker work on her wedding dress, so, in addition to having the sketch of my dress design, M. knows the dressmaker's work and has a good feel for what would look great with the dress designs.
Funnily, M. pointed me toward two pairs of shoes that I'd already been ogling online, so this was good confirmation of my advance research. After trotting around in both of them, I declared I couldn't decide, and thanks to having a gift certificate from a friend and a little help from M.'s employee discount, I didn't have to: I bought them both. Now I just need to decide which will be my wedding shoes, and which I'll wear to some other wedding-related event. ;-)
May I present to you: Sheer awesomeness in shoe form:
Shoe #1:
These shoes are hot, and they look hot on. M. said they're surprisingly comfortable, also. The MOH said they made my legs look great. mmmmsexy shoes.And shoe (boot, really) #2:
Le sigh. These fit in with the Victorian feel of the corset and are amazingly comfortable thanks to the low heel and lovely padded insole. They were a little tight on my monster calves (thanks, San Francisco hills!), but M. says the store can stretch them for me. She recommended waiting until I'd lost all the weight I'm going to before deciding on that (once again, excellent and expert advice).I've been so careful about spending money that this seemed really extravagant to me, but the shoes quickly made me feel better. Sigh. Shoes. The hard part will be waiting until the wedding to wear them!
Wow, those are big numbers up there!
Last week I justified only going to the gym once since I was taking 5 hours of belly dance workshops. However, I would've been better off going, as I only lost a half-pound last week. Sigh. I think part of it was that a couple of my classes ended up being more lecture than dance. Also, it's hard to exert yourself in 90 degree weather. I don't think I was functioning at my best, frankly! Live and learn. I'm back in the saddle this week, though! Mr. T and I worked out this morning.
I was pretty good at the festival and only bought one pair of (freakin' cute!) pants and a tee shirt. I had told myself pants were okay, but the tee was unexpected. Still, I don't feel bad. It was easier not to spend money this year, as opposed to last year, when I felt agonized about it--I guess I've trained myself!
This week Mr. T celebrates his birthday! I will try to behave myself among all the cake and delicious cocktails. Mmmmcake.
Mr. T and I have decided we're serving two signature cocktails, wine and beer, and champagne for toasts. The venue is letting us bring our own alcohol, so we're hoping to take advantage of some cash savings in this area.
The problem is, I have no idea of what quantity to buy. Most wedding articles are either for wine/beer/champagne only or for a full open bar. What about for signature drinks? It's mind-boggling to try to do the math.
I was looking up costs for 1.75 L bottles of vodka and tequila, and they're much cheaper, but Mr. T thinks they're too hard to work with behind the bar. I kinda don't care if the bartenders have a hard time with our bottles. Is that terrible of me? I mean, it's a significant savings between two 750 mL bottles and one 1.75 L bottle.
Luckily (although, we're still paying for it, but I suppose we're lucky in that it's just taken care of and I don't have to add all this into my calculations), the hotel provides bartenders, non-alcoholic drinks, glasses, napkins, etc. So we're just looking at booze, really. Oh, and margarita mix, because I refuse to use the high-fructose corn syrup kind.
Mr. T is going to ask his brother (the chef) for help figuring this all out. His bro caters weddings frequently, so he might know or at least help us estimate.
Another 2 pounds lost! That makes 7.5 total so far. I was thankful not to be chastised by the WW tracker again this time.
I would've gotten to the gym earlier today, but we discovered that ants had found the cat food overnight. So we built a moat out of a cookie tin (thanks to Heather and Erik for the idea). The cats were super freaked out by it, especially Dobby, but hopefully they get used to it. I hate ants. Anyway, I didn't do my full workout today, but I only had to cut a few things.
Regardless, it was a good workout this morning. Warm weather makes for loose muscles! Friday's workout was really good too. mmmmwarmth. The older I get, the more cat-like I become. The cats and I basked in the weather this weekend. Ahhh.
This weekend was relaxed but we also got some wedding stuff done. First, we walked all around the UC Berkeley campus looking for likely wedding photo sites. This was inspired by Offbeat Bride's recent ad for Lilia Photography. I looked at Lilia's site, and found these lovelies:
Not only is UCB my alma mater and a nostalgic location for me, OMG dinosaur bones!! Or a casting of them, at least. How cool would that be for a Hallowedding photo shoot? Mr. T likes the idea too, so Saturday we went in search of fossils! It took some tramping around...apparently I never had a reason to be in the life sciences building when I went to school there? We eventually found it. Unfortunately the campus was having some sort of open house that day and it was packed. We can only hope Halloween is a little calmer. The campus is lovely and would provide a number of good locations, not the least of which would be the top of Sather Tower (seen in the first picture).Feeling virtuous not only about getting wedding stuff done but also all that walking, I persuaded Mr. T to take me out to dinner at one of our candidates for the rehearsal dinner, a seafood restaurant in Berkeley (and no, not Spenger's). Sadly, although the restaurant was beautiful and my margarita kicked ass (had to use some extra WW points on that one!), my halibut was dry and overcooked. And for a seafood restaurant, that was just sad. Mr. T liked his crab cakes, but the halibut was a deal-breaker for me. As my day-of-coordinator might say...they had one job. And they blew it. Disappointing.
Sunday I worked on doing data entry into our spreadsheet; I entered in all the addresses I have and tried to track down some of the ones I don't. We still haven't sent out save the date emails but I feel closer to doing that now that I have a list of email addresses (with some gaps).
I had been waivering on whether to invite my mother's whole side of the family, because we're not super close, but I felt that politeness dictated it since I took a trip out to visit all of them (mostly my grandma, but we ended up seeing everyone) last Fall. I decided to just go ahead and add them to the list and stop stressing out about it, which means adding more money for food and cupcakes, etc., etc., but it's not all that much more, and plus now we have time to save up for it (since we were almost done saving money for the wedding anyway). So, if they come, we're covered, and if they don't, we have some extra, and I'm relieved to have just decided.
We are almost at the 6-month mark, and need to really tackle some of the bigger things like registering, invitation design, Mr. T's suit, etc.!! I'm feeling anxious about it.
This weekend we're attending Mr. T's cousin's wedding. His cousin's fiancee has trusted me to create the wedding bouquets, corsages, and boutonnieres! That's a lot of trust, and I hope I don't let her down. Granted, it's an intimate family wedding, but still, it's hugely important. I'm thankful to have a chance to practice my workshop skills! It already feels like that was so long ago.
I found this one courtesy of the tacky weddings blog. Sheesh, those girls have balls.
OMG, yum. We had our fifth cupcake tasting on Tuesday night. Fifth!! Believe it or not, I think Mr. T and I are done. We have at least two more vendors on our list to try, including one vegan baker that comes highly recommended, but Mr. T and I don't think we can do anymore. We need a cupcake break! Luckily, we have some good options to choose from.
We tasted carrot with cinnamon cream cheese frosting, chocolate with vanilla buttercream, lemon, and 2 red velvets, one with extra rich cream cheese frosting and one with vanilla buttercream. Unlike the other bakers we've tried, we did not have to pay for the tasting, and we also got to choose our flavors! I appreciated both of those things. The carrot was super tasty but we liked the killer carrot from one of the other bakers better. However, the other cupcakes were also great, unlike the other baker--we couldn't think of another flavor of hers that we really enjoyed! This baker's chocolate cake was moist (all of them were moist), not too rich, and the vanilla buttercream was so tasty. I loved it, and usually I'm so-so about buttercream. The lemon was nice and tangy but not too tart. The red velvet was great, and again I liked the buttercream even more than the cream cheese frosting (Mr. T liked the cream cheese). We liked that none of them were uber-sweet, also--we didn't feel sick or jittery afterwards.
Before the appointment Mr. T said, "Unless we love this place, let's just go with the other baker," (the killer carrot baker) and I agreed. After we left, we had changed our minds. We haven't officially decided, but I think we've found our cupcakery. Exciting!
Prices in comparison to the other place are about the same. The baker from Tuesday does decorations for free, while the other place charges 50 cents per cupcake for them. The big difference is the delivery and setup fee, which is a steep and unbelievable $250 from the baker we're now thinking of going with. Mr. T asked me, "Aren't cupcakes supposed to be the cheaper option?" I think what we're going to do is have a friend pick them up and set them up for us, which means we'd save that money. It's a lot to ask of a friend, but folks have offered to help, so I guess it's time to test that!
I get an official proposal from this baker next week, and then we'll decide. Hooray! Check that off the list, which is growing exponentially every day...
So, while I'm on the cupcake discussion, I found this photo on some bridal blog and thought it would be perfect for us. It's not Halloween-related, but Mr. T is a drummer, and his drumset is currently sitting unused in our front hallway. And hey, we'd save on cupcake tiers!
...but mostly good, I think.
So, our spreadsheet has been acting funny since we switched to a Mac and I've been having to fix the formulas. I finally figured out the formula for "money left to save" last night, which had said $5,000, but that didn't seem right when I did the mental math (although, with my math skills, it could've been. You're talking about the bride who added an extra "zero" onto the postage and put tax in twice as a line item). So anyway, the newly corrected Excel document now says we have a mere $2,000 left to go! That's really exciting.
The bad news is, many things are costing us more than I budgeted. For example, when I budgeted for cupcakes, I didn't budget for tier rental, decoration, or setup/delivery. Also, we budgeted for 8 hours of photography, but thinking about how that day will go, I believe it will be more like 12 hours, so we'll have to add more there. Things like that. So I don't think it's really just $2K that we need to save...I'd rather just keep throwing money in the account and figure out what to do with any leftover money later (such as...a honeymoon?).
However, even though it's a bummer that I underestimated, we do still have seven months (OMG only 7 months!!!!!!!!Yikes!!!) to save up, so I feel good about it. And I feel very good about the thought of not going into debt for our wedding. Hooray!!
Postage is going up again on 5/11/09, so unless Mr. T and I want to invest in the ugly "Forever" stamps before then, it means we're paying an extra two cents per invitation. The man is totally trying to keep us down.
The good news is that because of this I was browsing usps.gov for stamp options and discovered this beauty, perfect for our Hallowedding:
That's right, it's Mr. Poe himself! The site says:On January 16, 2009, in Richmond, Virginia, the Postal Service™ issued a 42–cent, Edgar Allan Poe commemorative stamp, designed by Carl T. Herrman, Carlsbad, California.
In 2009, the U.S. Postal Service® commemorates the 200th anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allan Poe, one of America’s most extraordinary poets and fiction writers. For more than a century and a half, Poe and his works have been praised by admirers around the world.
I think it strikes just the right note: spooky, without being gory, plus I like the added literary connotation. I hope they offer them in the 44-cent stamp, but with my luck, I'll end up with hearts and flowers.
As April approaches, we're all scrambling to get our taxes filed (well, I've already dropped off my taxes at my preparer's business, but Mr. T is scrambling, as are many others). What folks aren't thinking about is that April represents something else regarding taxes: Sales tax is going to increase. In the county where we're getting married, the sales tax is going up a full percentage point, to 9.75%. That means an extra $100 on our budget (plus hidden costs like higher sales tax on items we purchase for the wedding).$100 isn't so bad, but I can't help wishing that this had happened on 11/1 instead of 4/1.
The MOH agreed to take a DIY flower arranging workshop with me in a few weeks. Since it looks like we're now having flowers on the tables, as well as my bouquet, the two bridesmaids' bouquets, and boutennieres for Mr. T, his best man, our officiant, the dads, PLUS corsages for the moms (and my grandma, if she comes), and it also looks like we dumbly decided to do it ourselves (with Mr. T's mom's help), I thought some training was in order.
The workshop is $75 per person (supplies are provided), and they walk you through all of the items mentioned above. While I think it's worth it, I also think that the MOH shouldn't have to pay for my bright ideas, so that's $150 added to our budget...which I'm wrestling with. I know it will all be cheaper than hiring a florist to do these things, so I suppose I just need some perspective. Right? Plus, if we're just hopeless at it, that will be a nice warning well ahead of the wedding, and we can start replanning our tables and talking to florists. So I guess it's a worthwhile investment. Right?
Speaking of bouquets, I just love feathers in them. Here are some fun photos from the interweb:
I really love the idea of feather boutennieres and corsages. We can make them ahead of time, and then use those same feathers in the bouquets to tie everything together.
Regarding the centerpieces, we've been struggling with how to incorporate the candy jars into the centerpieces, now that we've added pumpkins/flowers into the mix. I couldn't help but be interested in this candy-themed wedding on Weddingbee. First, I love their invites--candy bars with a golden ticket inside! Who wouldn't love that??
Second, for their escort cards, they used images of candy to convey the guests' dinner choices. You can barely see it, but the cards were clustered atop different boxes of candy--whatever candy your card was on coordinated to the table where you were sitting. High-concept, but I guess it worked for them:
Here are some pictures of their centerpieces:
I love the bright colors and how the candy is also in the vase with the flowers! Nice.Here's a picture of a menu on the table...they put a different quote from Willy Wonka on each table's menu. I love these people!
I've been talking about my love for papercutting...look at these great numbers and letters I found via Weddingbee, for an Etsy vendor:
I love these! Sigh. Maybe we can recreate something like this on the invites...I found another great pumpkin image, sort of like the Martha Stewart pumpkins I've been admiring:
I also found some great cake images during my search for cupcakeries. Look at the amazing Corpse Bride cake, complete with cake topper to represent the two brides:
And look at this great Hello Kitty zombie cake! Obviously not a wedding cake, but I love it:
And finally, speaking of HK, I love this pic of a Hello Kitty wedding done in Japan! The bride and groom run the Hello Kitty museum in Germany. Look at the top of her dress!
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