Thursday, October 2, 2008

A New Image

A couple of weekends ago, FMIL and I met with my florist, Laurel Lane Florals, and had our first cake tasting. Unfortunately, both were sub-par.

First, the florist. As you may recall, I love the idea of having bright, colorful flowers -- blues, purples, and hints of magenta -- for the centerpieces at the reception. Everyone else, though, thinks white flowers are best give our extensive lighting and blue sheers. I can see their point; white flowers may reflect the specialty lighting better and "absorb" the colors. And I definitely don't want our wedding to be a "sensory overload" of colors. At the time, I agreed with the florist, FMIL and FI (who had expressed his opinion before the meeting), and we worked on coming up with centerpieces based on white. I love orchids, so we went with dendrobium orchids for the tall centerpieces and "miscellaneous" white flowers for the lower centerpieces. The more I think about it, though, the more I wish I'd stayed with my original idea. Since nothing is written in stone, yet, I have time to change my mind. But what do I want to change it to?


I think some kind of combination of white and colorful flowers will look good. Perhaps having the orchids hang down and encircle the colored flowers? With white pin-lighting on each centerpiece, I feel that the blues and purples of the flowers will show up more than everyone thinks. Regardless of what I ended up choosing for the centerpieces, the bouquets will definitely still be in the original color scheme. These are just such "happy" colors!

Next up, we went to Scrumptions, which is a cake shop in East Greenwich, RI. Many of the wedding websites I frequent list Scrumptions as a "top" cake shop, and many of the weddings posted on my photographer's website used Scrumptions for their cake. However, I wasn't overly impressed. The tasting included several different kinds of cake as well as small samplings of their fillings. The cake, however, tasted stale. I realize that you can't make a cake for every tasting, but I do think they should serve "fresh" cake. They are trying to sell it to me, after all.

I looked through their books and chose a very simple design -- 3 tier (smallest available) square cake with ribbon trimming (real ribbon provided by me) and real flowers on top (so no fancy sugar flowers or anything. I also decided to go with butter cream icing instead of fondant. We picked out different flavors and fillings for the cake, too. So, the cost of this small, simple cake? Over $1000!! I understand that wedding cakes are expensive, but if we're paying $1K for a cake, then it should at least be good. Needless to say, Scrumptions is off the list.

Next up, we're spending the weekend in RI for FFIL's birthday celebration on Saturday, and we're visiting Belle Mer on Sunday. We're also going to try the whole cake thing again on Sunday -- this time trying the Creative Cake Company. Finally, we're hoping to go aboard and tour the Majestic, which is the boat where we're hosting the rehearsal dinner. Wish us luck!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I think you should go with your instincts. They have always been very good with colors. I like the idea below the photo.

Allyson said...

What if you have colorful flowers floating in the glass vase (if you use one similar to the picture of the white flowers? Not sure how it would look in real life but it looks good in my head! But in the end, its your wedding. Screw what everyone else says and go with your gut!

Unknown said...

Atta girl Allyson. I agree with you.