Honeymoon Update!!!

I told Eric that this was his job and we had originally planned to go to San Francisco and Napa Valley for a week, but he surprised me and we are taking a 7-day cruise leaving from Venice, Italy!!!

This is our itenerary:

Leave from Tampa May 28 at 12 Noon, Fly into Venice May 29 at 9:45 a.m.

We have almost two days in Venice before the cruise ship leaves on May 30 at 5 p.m.!!

While in Venice, I defintely want to take a Gondola ride!

From Venice, we cruise to Split, Croatia. Then to Corfu, Greece. I think Eric wants to go off-roading here. Then, we will go to Piraeus (Athens), Mykonos and Katakolon, Greece.

After a day of crusing, we are back in Italy to catch our plane back to the states.

Money :(

So, I’m sure we are all dealing with this problem, planning a wedding during these hard economic times, but I was just wondering why everything is so expensive as soon as you mention the word “Wedding.” Cakes, for instance, a normal cake would never cost more that $100, but when you say it’s a wedding cake, it’s automatically $300-$500! Why?!

Also, I need to rent these white garden chairs for the ceremony:

And they are $3.50 per chair! I told my bridesmaid I could buy 130 chairs for that price, if not less! And people will only be sitting in them for a half an hour– at the most!

And then, as well all know, we need chair covers and bows for the reception, for about another $3.50 per chair.

I cannot believe how much money we are spending on CHAIRS! That people’s asses will be in! That’s it!

Cake Tasting

So, FI and I had our first cake tasting this Monday night, at Sweet Cakes in Lakeland, Fl. We tried the following cakes:

Classic Cake, which was butter cake with butterum icing

Amaretto Fudge Cake, which was chocolate fudge cake with ammaretto buttercream

and Spiced Rum Cake, which was Spice cake with Captain Morgan essence and butterrum icing

She made one cake with fondant, so we could see and taste the difference. We brought along my mom and one of FI’s groomsmen to taste with us.

FIs favorite was the Spiced Rum Cake, he loved it! I liked them all. But it was a little out of our price range. It was $1,200 for a four tier cake with fondant icing, supply rental, set-up, etc. And an extra $125 to deliver outside of the Lakeland area to Tampa.

She was very nice, though, and her cakes were beautiful. The problem I had was figuring out what I wanted design-wise. I like this one the best:

What I don’t want is for it to be something people have seen before. Like, oh, look, a cake with ribbon on the bottom. That’s original. I want it to be four or more tiers (possibly fake ones), white, and circular. I’m having problems figuring out how to make it more unique.
Any suggestions? Here are some more pictures of what I like:

What I don’t like:

• the flowers coming off of the “twigs”
• painting on the fondant
• the quilted look

More invite designs

I must say I am totally enjoying having a designer for my invitations. I don’t have to stress about DIYing them and making sure they are perfect. Anyways, Diane with Sweet Stuff Designs, sent me three more designs incorporating monograms. She said she doesn’t always like to start off with those because she doesn’t want to assume everyone is changing their last name. Here are the new ones!

I really like #1 and #3. What do you guys think?

We have our first cake tasting tonight…wich us luck

Updates

So, I still haven’t found any shoes, but at this point, I think I’m just going to wait until after the holidays. Everyone at the stores I’ve talked to says then all of the designers will have their 2009 lines out then and with spring around the corner, maybe I can get a good deal on white shoes for Easter or something. I did find these ones at Aldo, but they aren’t available to buy online in my size and the store in my mall didn’t have them either.

http://www.aldoshoes.com/us/women/shoes/dress-fashion/68042397-mogalecity

And we have our cake tasting set up for next Monday.

I also started to work on my aisle runner. I traced the monogram on there and now I just need to paint it! I like to save all my DIY projects for when FI is out of town so I have something to occupy my time. I also finished my door letters. They came out really cute. I don’t have a picture of the finished product, but here they are unfinished.

I put more flowers on the J and added  navy blue ribbon.

We’ve also “checked!” a few other things off our list, including wedding bands.

FI wants the one with 3 diamonds in it, but we’ll see. It’s more than we wanted to spend on his band. He might end up getting just a plain band or one with just 1 diamond.

Other than that, I’m just bored at work.

I didn’t like them :(

So, my shoes arrived yesterday and they aren’t at all what I thought they would be like. They are peep toe style, but they only show my middle toe. Ew. So, they are in the process of being returned. I’m goin to DSW with my mom tonight to look for some more. Here are some I found that I like:

http://www.dsw.com/dsw_shoes/catalog/product.jsp?index=11&category=cat20165&prodId=174659&brand=

http://www.dsw.com/dsw_shoes/catalog/product.jsp?index=9&category=cat20165&prodId=173918&brand=

http://www.dsw.com/dsw_shoes/catalog/product.jsp?index=41&category=cat20165&prodId=166359&brand=

On a more upbeat note, I have scheduled our first cake tasting for Monday, November 24, the Monday before Thanksgiving. We are going to Sweet Cakes in Lakeland. We will be trying their Classic Cake (butter cake with butter rum icing), Amaretto Fudge Cake (chocolate fudge cake with amaretto buttercream) and Spiced Rum Cake (spice cake with Captain Morgan essence and butter rum).

FI is a big fan of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and our first date was to go see the second one (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest) so I thought it would be cute to do his grooms cake with that theme in the spiced rum cake. Maybe something like these ones:

They also make little Jack Sparrow and Will Turner Cake toppers like these ones that we may use as well:

They also make a Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann here : http://cgi.ebay.com/Disney-PIRATES-of-the-Caribbean-Wedding-Cake-topper-Top_W0QQitemZ120323205904QQcmdZViewItemQQimsxZ20081025?IMSfp=TL081025101004r616#ebayphotohosting

Having Problems…

So, my shoes are waiting for me at my house while we speak and I am so antsy! I just want to go home already! I don’t know if I can take another hour and a half of this work crap! HEHE! Anyways, so I’m going to go over to my parent’s house tonight since Eric is out of town on business and try on the shoes with the dress. It’s really just an excuse to put my dress on again!

So, my problem lies with my aisle runner. I really want a cute personalized monogrammed aisle runner like all the other Knotties have!

Problem is, my aisle runner is plastic I didn’t realize it until I asked someone I work with if they could screen print on it and she asked me what it was made out of. It’s 100% polyethelene. So, I figure I can just try to paint it and see what happens. I’m going to go to either Kinkos or Staples and have them blow up my monogram for me. And then, I’m thinking of using spray paint. Apparently, they have it for plastic surfaces. I’m going to cut my monogram out (like a stencil) and try to do it that way. My aisle runner is 100 ft. so I figure if I screw it up I can always just make it a 75 ft. aisle runner instead. If anyone has any ideas on how to do this any differently (or better!) let me know!

Shoes and more!

I have ordered my wedding shoes! They have already shipped and I got these from Zappos.com and hopefully they wil be here by next week so I can try them on with my dress while FI is out of town.

FI and I have also finalized our Honeymoon plans. We are going to San Francisco and Napa Valley for one week. We will be staying at the JW Marriott in downtown San Francisco and will be going to a night tour at Alcatrez,

to see the Golden Gate Bridge,

 

the Redwood Forest,

 

taking the street cars to Fisherman’s Wharf

 

and staying at this beautiful place in Napa Valley, Wine Country Inn. I can’t believe Eric is actually letting me stay here! We will be going to a wine tasting, of course, but I also really want to go on a hot air balloon ride.

Rhinestones!

So, this is kind of DIY, but not really. I bought an iron on from stores.ebay.com/My-One-Stop-Bridal-and- Bling-Shop for about $9.

On another note, I am in this “lull” stage of planning. All of the big stuff is done, and I feel like I have nothing to do but wait until I can do invitations, favors, etc. I think my next DIY project will be an aisle runner. I have already purchased the runner itself, but I am thinking of how to apply the monogram. Paint? Spray Paint or Acyric? Screen Printing? Sharpie Markers?

Then, after that, maybe I’ll do the card box.

I also decided to get FI’s parents a family tree for their “Thank you” wedding present. I found the one I want here: http://www.birthstonetree.com/.

I talked to my mom and got the names of my great-granparents. I plan on calling FI’s grandmother to get his side. I have also set up an ancestry.com account and am inputting the names in there. This tree can hold up to 130 names.

I’m also going to get this for FMIL: http://www.personalizedpresents.com/thank-you-for-raising-your-son-hanky.html

It reads:

(Name you specify)
Thank you for
raising your son to be
the man of my dreams.

You can personalize it with names, color of the thread and the wedding date.

 

 

Menu Tasting! :)

So, we went and did our menu tasting last night and I must say everything was delicious!

Grilled Chicken and Scallops

This dish was everyone’s favorite! The chicken was tender and the scallops were delicious! I liked the white wine sauce they came in. We did not like the rice pilaf because there were red peppers in it. The Banquet Manager said we can have wild rice or risotto instead. I think we will go with the risotto. This one came with green beans and red pepper, again FI and I do not like red pepper and I don’t like green beans, but everyone said they were very crisp and not floppy or mushy at all. This will definitely be one of our menu choice, with changes.

Garlic Herbed New York Strip Sirloin & Shrimp

  The steak was thinly sliced, almost like roast beef. It came with a mushroom sauce, and FI and I don’t like mushrooms. But the sauce itself was good. I liked the shrimp scampi. I expected it to be in a separate dish, but it wasn’t. This one came with roasted red potatoes, which were alright, but kind of plain and the veggies were julienned carrots, squash and zucchini, these were my favorite veggies of the night.

Stuffed Veal Medallions with Prawns

The veal was the most disappointing for me L I was looking so forward to it. It was much thicker than I thought and overcooked and tough to eat. This one came with mashed potatoes, which Eric loved and broccoli and red peppers, them and their damn red peppers! This one came with a stuffed prawn-much better than the shrimp scampi!

 

The favorites were—the whole first dish, the veggies from #2 and the stuffed prawn in #3.

 

I think this is what the menu will actually be:

 

Grilled Chicken and Scallops with risotto and julienne veggies.

 

Probably switching to the filet instead of the thin sliced steak with mashed potatoes and either broccoli or green beans.

 

What do you think?

 

We had a really good night, the weather was beautiful and we had a really nice menu tasting with our parents and went home and laid in bed with our furbabies…until FMIL calls and yells at FI at 9 O’clock at night while we were watching TV in bed. She basically told him he isn’t a good son to his father or a good brother to his sister.  She says he didn’t say hi or bye to his sister when she was at the bar before our menu tasting, which he did. Plus, it’s not our fault she was engaged and he broke it off with her and now she lives with her parents. I knew it would be awkward that they were with us tasting food for our wedding, and she would be at their house alone. Then she tells FI that he never sees his dad except for when we make plans for dinner or they have a family BBQ at their house. He went with his Dad, couldn’t have been more than a month ago, to go golfing for the whole day. Then, she complains he doesn’t go to lunch with her. He called her last Friday and she couldn’t go!

 

Thing is, FFIL still calls his mom every day. And FSIL and FMIL used to talk on the phone like 4 times a day. They are all up in eachother’s lives. FI and I feel like that smothering. We see them when we make plans, which I feel is normal. She was mad because we don’t go over there “just because”. It was an absolutely ridiculous phone call. Just thought I’d share vent.