Aug9

Cake Tasting!

Posted on by
Standard

Mmmm cake! So Friday was our very first meeting with a wedding vendor. Mom, MOH Lauren, and I went to Once In A Blue Moon Bakery in Cary and looked at, talked about, and tasted cakes. Blue Moon is our go-to place for cakes and they make some really delicious cakes in all kinds of flavors.

After we’d looked through picture books of cakes they have made we got to try some samples. I believe that if you start from about 1 o’clock and go clockwise you have: chocolate cake, white cake, yellow cake, hazelnut mousse, mandarin orange mousse, lemon mousse, raspberry mousse, chocolate-raspberry mousse, chocolate mousse, and strawberry mousse. The three in the middle are buttercream icing, almond-buttercream icing, and cream cheese frosting. They also brought out carrot cake with cream cheese frosting for us to try (that’s Chris’s favorite!)
Mom and I both LOVED the hazelnut mousse and all three of us were really jazzed about the chocolate-raspberry. The cream cheese frosting and the buttercream were really good too, and all three of us kind of agreed that the type of cake didn’t make much difference. I’m not sure if our ratios were just way off or what.
So when faced with all this wedding cake goodness how is one to choose just one flavor? Or even if you assume you can get a new flavor for each layer, how is one to choose? This tasting didn’t go over our favorite Blue Moon specialty: margarita, or our all time favorites: german chocolate, carrot cake, and devil’s food cake.
Solution: cake bar!

We can still have a small 2 tiered cake to cut but then we can have all our favorites on display around it. We’ll probably end up being able to choose 10 flavors or so, and although we might double up on some there will still be plenty of options for everyone! Hurrah cake!

Aug2

Oh the Madness!

Posted on by
Standard

Well the wedding planning madness seems to have begun! I got back from New York this morning and was greeted with an inbox full of responses from wedding vendors. Just today I made appointments with a band, a caterer, and a bakery for cakes. I also have a photography meeting lined up! All of these will be the first meetings of their kind so hopefully they will help me know exactly what to look for and get a feel for the options available.

So with 11 months (to the day!) until the big day what’s on my to-do list?

1.) Continually be seeking out inspiration online or in magazines on all things weddings. Especially be looking out for cheap projects that I can do myself.

2.) Work on the wedding website. This needs to be up and running before we can send out save-the-dates and since so many people have to travel I’d like to have them sent out as soon as possible.

3.) Book hotel blocks. This needs to be on the website before save-the-dates go out.

4.) Prepare for meetings with caterers, bakers, and photographers. Have lists of questions ready as well as clear ideas what we do and don’t want.

The list could oh so certainly go on but this is really quite a lot already. My first meeting is Friday morning with a baker who will provide a sample plate of the flavors of cakes available. I thought everyone would jump at the opportunity to skip work to taste cakes but neither Chris nor my father want to. Weird. This is without a doubt the vendor meeting I’m most looking forward to, and even if I can’t have a Sylvia Weinstock cake or the $11,000 cake Chelsea Clinton had, at the very least I will get a small sample plate. Yum!

Sylvia Weinstock cake, all of those flowers are edible sugar flowers.
Jul26

Getting Organized!

Posted on by
Standard

So I have returned to the good ol’ US of A! It’s nice to be somewhere with air conditioning again… oh wait my father doesn’t believe in air conditioning, so never mind.

Now that I’m back there should be a lot more going on on the wedding frontier. Knowing that the first thing on my to-do list was to find some sort of binder to organize all my notes, magazine clippings, fabric swatches, phone numbers, etc. and I casually mentioned that to Christopher over breakfast (Chic-fil-A breakfast, one of the things that really sets America apart.) His reply was that he was pretty sure someone had already mailed me one! I was super excited to rush home and find this:

Mindy Weiss’s Ultimate Wedding Organizer. I had no idea something so perfect could exist. My Aunt Carrie, who had a completely gorgeous wedding, sent it to me and I’m super excited to put all my wedding findings in it! Plus, it’ll make a great keepsake for after the wedding and when I have girls getting married I’ll be able to pull it out and show them how things were done back in 2011. I also had the opportunity to buy some cute thank-you cards and send my very first wedding related thank-you note! Let the games begin!

Jul14

Blacksburg

Posted on by
Standard
I know several other Virginia Tech couples getting married over the next year or so but so far Chris and I are the only ones I’m aware of getting hitched in Blacksburg. It seems to be super common to get married in the bride’s hometown and here are a couple reasons why that didn’t make sense to us.

1) I don’t have a “hometown” as much as many people do. I mix up where I say I’m from but really Sumter, SC probably has the biggest claim on my childhood, but I haven’t lived there for 6 years! Taking those 6 years I was in Cary, NC for 3 of them and in Blacksburg, VA for 3. Chris has much, much stronger ties to his hometown. He spent his entire life in Charlottesville, VA and up until 4 years ago had never lived anywhere else. Now Charlottesville is an absolutely beautiful town but it would have been difficult to plan a wedding there knowing nothing about it and c’mon, it’s a Wahoo town.
2) Both my family and Chris’s are pretty spread out. In a manner of speaking anywhere we choose was going to be a destination wedding. Knowing this just meant that we didn’t need to feel confined to certain areas so people wouldn’t have to travel.
3) Being from different places meant that if we chose one hometown over the other there would really be an imbalance. If it were in Cary more of my friends would be able to make it and everyone on his side would need to find hotels and rent cars and do all that without knowing the area.
So any of these things could be overcome if we really wanted to get married in one of our hometowns. Enter the second list: reasons to choose Blacksburg.
1) The obvious: this is where we met and fell in love.
2) This is where we live now so I’ll be able to talk to vendors and plan things throughout the school year without having to travel.
3) I freaking love Blacksburg! Chris and I attend what I swear is the most beautiful school in the world! The summers in Blacksburg are especially beautiful and it is a three day weekend so if anyone wants to explore the area there really isn’t a better time. We are both so excited to have all our family and friends together in a place that is so special to us.
4) These images really don’t do justice to how beautiful Blacksburg is:

Burruss Hall is our main administration building and where many concerts are hosted throughout the school year.

I guess there won’t be any Hokie football going on during the summer but I am very much interested in finding out what it would take to be allowed to take pictures inside the stadium…
The Cascades are a popular hiking and swimming spot. They’re 15 minutes away from campus and feature two hiking options: 2 miles rigorous or 2 miles very very mild. If you’re going anytime other then the summer be prepared for extreme cold, and even in the summer that water won’t be warm!
McAfee’s Knob is considered by some to be the most beautiful point along the Appalachian trail. There’s something like a 270 degree view and it’s breathtaking. It’s a little further at about a 40 minute drive and a 4 mile hike, but for the outdoorsy it’s definitely worth the time.
There’s so much more in Blacksburg that is picturesque and blog worthy but you’re just going to have to trust me that it’s a beautiful town and a wonderful place for a wedding!
Jul13

Our Venues

Posted on by
Standard
So after deciding on a wedding in Blacksburg we did some online research into locations, but I really had a pretty good idea what I wanted from the beginning. There are some stunning venues in the New River Valley area but these are the ones that really fit for us as a couple.
This is the church Chris and I attend and we went through quite a few before we found one that we both liked. We spent an entire semester going to a different church every Sunday and we never agreed on anything! We didn’t even get close to an agreement until we found BUMC. It had everything we wanted: great pastors, a phenomenal music program, a very service driven congregation, and it is located on Church Street which makes Christopher very happy. It’s within walking distance of our apartments and it’s really a beautiful church.
This is Christopher’s fraternity house. That sentence alone was almost enough to scare me away from the whole idea. However, they are a very highly respected service fraternity in our area and their house is absolutely beautiful. It’s big enough for us to have a sit down meal for ~160 people with a band and dance floor and it has the added bonus of being sentimental to Chris and I. We went on our very first date to a party here and have been to countless more since.
Here we are at a winter formal back in 2008, I was hoping I’d have some good pictures of the manor but turns out I don’t. Everyone will just have to quiver in suspense until next July!
So there you have it. Our church is 5 minutes away from our reception venue and any hotel you could possibly want which is a huge plus. Both of our venues have been a big part of our relationship for the last couple years and it’s going to be a lot of fun to work with them to create a place for us to get married.

Jul12

Yellow and Gray

Posted on by
Standard
So what will my wedding colors be? This is probably one of those questions that either takes forever to figure out or you know in an instant. Personally I knew that I wanted yellow flowers. I took Floral Design last year and was teased quite a bit for choosing to work with yellow week after week, but there really are very few things in the world as happy and uplifting as yellow flowers. So I knew yellow would be one of my colors.
Then I saw this:
I really recommend clicking on the link because the picture did not come out nearly as big as I would like. It’s the first picture at the top that really took my breath away. Gray? Gray is not a wedding color! Yet I love the gray with the pink shoes and flowers and I began to wonder what it would look like to have gray with yellow shoes and flowers. So I turned to the interwebs to discover if such a thing was even possible, and lo!

So is it possible? Yes! Is it beautiful, sophisticated, and modern? Yes! Is it unique? Actually, no. The internet is overrun with pictures of beautiful yellow and gray weddings and apparently they’re quite the trend right now. Well (some) trends are popular for a reason and I absolutely love this color scheme. So when I tell people that one of my colors is gray I may get some raised eyebrows but I think when everything comes together it will be quite lovely.
Jul12

You're Sentimental, Cause So Am I

Posted on by
Standard
I’ve been reading wedding blogs since before Chris proposed so I’ve had an idea in my head that I would like to blog about my own wedding planning experiences. Even if I’m just blogging to myself I think it would be a nice way to commemorate this time. As I write this I am studying abroad in Greece and in the next year I will be completing my undergraduate degree, participating in undergraduate research, planning a wedding, finding a job, graduating, getting married, moving, and starting a job. It should be quite the year and I have high hopes so this is me attempting to chronicle what will be a quite a monumental year in my life.
And now for a short description of the name of the blog.
The night is young, the skies are clear
And if you want to go walkin’ dear
It’s delightful, it’s delicious, it’s de-lovely
I understand the reason why
You’re sentimental, cause so am I
It’s delightful, it’s delicious, it’s de-lovely
Pretty early on in our relationship I started to despair that Chris and I didn’t have a song. I would hear songs and ask him if they could be “ours” and he would be completely unimpressed both by the songs and the exercise. The closest we would come would be various R&B songs that we both liked and somehow always managed to be about cheating on or leaving your significant other. Never the type of thing you could even play at a wedding, much less have your first dance too.
For Christmas this year my Mom gave me a movie based on the life of Cole Porter, a composer who mostly wrote musicals, and I watched it with Chris. In general it was very disturbing but the music was fantastic and at the end as the credits rolled Chris turned to me and said that this should be our song. Without further ado, De-Lovely by Cole Porter as performed by Robbie Williams.
It’s de-reamy, it’s de-rousy, it’s de-reverie, it’s de-rhapsodie
It’s de-regal, it’s de-royal, it’s de-ritz, it’s de-lovely