Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Happy Engage-iversary!

Monday was my and FI's one year "engage-iversary." Yep, that's right -- we've already been engaged one year! I have to say, though, that this is one time in life when it actually has FELT like a year... or more. I can totally understand now why most brides get married within one year of getting engaged. For example, here's a rough timeline of emotions over the past year:

From "Yes" - 4 months: Ecstatic, excited to jump right in and begin planning everything, go wedding dress shopping, book a venue and maybe a vendor or two, pick a color scheme.

4 months - 8 months: Still very into planning, reading every wedding magazine and blog out there, buy a wedding dress, reach the "one year until the wedding" date, finish booking most of the vendors, pick out bridesmaids dresses (but don't purchase).

8 months - 10 months: Dead zone. Nothing to do since we've already booked everything that most brides do during this time, become a little bored with the situation. Start to second guess everything we previously decided.

10 months - 12 months: Send out the STDs! Then, completely redo the color scheme, meet with the florist to inform her of this, and pick new bridesmaids dresses to go with the new scheme.

You see, the problem with giving a bride such as me too much time to plan is that I'm always looking for "new" and "creative" elements to add to my wedding, which basically means that I change my mind a lot. While I'm happy that we were able to basically have our pick of vendors since we booked so far in advance, that really has been the only positive to having a long engagement. If I had it to do all over again, and law school wasn't a factor, I would definitely not wait a year and a half to get married.

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!

Post Picture Here

I know everyone's waiting with baited breath to see the STDs, but unfortunately our camera is broken! FI and I both have cameras and both are not in working order. :( To those of you who haven't received one, I decided to go with the postcard idea using Vista Print. I was particularly happy to use the heart in the sand picture with our initials (the one to the right of the posts). On the front glossy side was the picture and "Save the Date" at the top with the numerical date on the bottom. On the reverse side was "...in the Ocean State!" (yes, I'm a rhyming fiend!) and the details (names, dates, venue and our website). Overall, I was very happy with how they came out, and even more happy with the price. We mailed out about 200 of these babies and total cost for 250 STDs and postage was a little under $100. Not too bad considering the other much costlier ideas!