Planning Planner

For anyone who knows me fairly well, you know that my whole life is in my planner.  I always have one to keep up with my church commitments, social life, work schedule & school assignments...like the ones that I should probably be doing instead of writing this blog post.  If you know me well enough to know about my OCD with my agenda book, you also know that I am a master procrastinator, which is how I began making this particular little project.

When I first got engaged, a lady who had recently been married gave me a stack of wedding magazines at least a foot tall.  I think I counted once & there were 20-something magazines.  These things are not cheap, so I considered this a rare and extremely generous gift.  She told my mom that I could keep them & do whatever I please with them...dog-ear page corners, rip pages out, throw them away...whatever.  I began by tearing pages out of things that I liked & that I thought would like to see in our wedding. 

Well I suddenly noticed that abundance of engagement ring advertisements in these wedding magazines.  That struck me as odd because people who are planning weddings generally already have the diamond?  Whatever.  Anyway, I decided that these images were too beautiful to just let sit in a pile or throw away, so I ripped all of the pages out, convinced that I would use them for something in the future (the artist/pack-rat/teacher in me was screaming at me to save them). 

I ended up buying a planner specifically for wedding appointments, payment dates, & anything special about the planning process that I think I'll want to remember someday when I'm telling our kids about our wedding...this is another thing that I can check off that to-do list that I posted earlier.  I tried to get something cute that matched our colors, but the selection was really limited & I ended up purchasing this ugly green one.  One day around midnight, procrastinating on both schoolwork & sleeping, I finally came up with something to do with these pictures!  I collaged them onto the wedding planner, on the front & back covers, both inside & outside!  At that point, I still had some pictures left over, so I chose to glue them onto the calendars at the beginning of every month to leave myself special surprises inside :)  There's also images around the week & day that our wedding will take place! 

This late-night collage session has led to a huge inspiration for another DIY project that I want to be at our wedding...have I mentioned how special & handmade I want it to feel?!  For everyone that we are fortunate & blessed enough to share our special day with, we (I) can't wait for you to see this project  & be part of it!

Hopefully I'll be posing at least once a month (if not more), & I'll probably post a picture of that month's calendar in the wedding planner like the picture directly above the text in this post :)

Last quick thought...so random!  At church on Sunday our pastor (Rodney Hall) was wearing this fantastic turquoise button-up shirt & I asked him if I could take a picture of it because I like that for the blue I want for our wedding colors.  Everyone always asks me & I have such a hard time articulating exactly which hue I want it to be.  So I decided to take matters into my own hands & just get a photograph while I could!  Not sure I want it to be exactly this, but it's always good to have several choices.  Pretty sure he thought I was a little crazy but that's okay...sometimes I am :)

Cake Fail

Yesterday was the big move-in day.  I had pretty much waited until the last minute to start packing (Sunday).  Things just got so crazy with working that I barely even knew summer was over.  I did most of the work on Monday while Anthony was at work before we went to dinner with my dad and Julie.  We ate at Ippolito's, which was really good, but it took kind of a long time & is a good distance away.  I do have to say (spoiler for later) that we had Chocolate Chip Oreo Cheesecake for dessert & it put Cecilia's to shame.  Maybe we should just have that as our wedding cake!

  When we got back home, we got as much done as we could.  Anthony was super tired from work & cutting up a tree at my grandparents' house on Sunday, so he left & I finished up the packing.

On Tuesday morning my dad came over to help us move.  We left by 8:30 & got to Athens around an hour later.  Everything was moved in by 11 thanks to dad & Anthony working really hard in the heat.  We got some unloading & organizing done & left for lunch.  While mom, Anthony & I went to The Last Resort to get our names in, dad went to Cecilia's to get a card for us to be allowed to taste cakes at the restaurant.  We waited for forever for our food but it was soo good!  My favorite place to eat in Athens by far...I've never eaten there for lunch so that was a nice treat.  On the plus side, we had time to pick out which cakes we wanted to try off the bakery menu while we waited.

After lunch was over, we gave our waiter the list of cakes we wanted to try (we were allowed 6): Strawberry, Chocolate, Apple Nut, Chocolate Tiaramisu, Caramel, & Red Velvet.  As it turned out, the restaurant only had two of these cakes that we wanted to try (Strawberry & Caramel), neither of which we were actually interested in having in our wedding cake.  Instead, we got Spanish Lemon, Carrot, & Chocolate Mocha...yeah, that equals 5 slices, not 6.  I really don't like the way the bakery does things, having tastings at a restaurant instead of in-house.  I think that for the amount of money you have to pay for a wedding cake, the bakery should let you request the cakes you want, make miniature ones for you, and let you taste them in the bakery.  Hope that doesn't make me a bridezilla!



Anyway, back to the cakes.  For a bakery as well-known & raved-about as Cecilia's, I expected a lot more.  Like, just sooo mediocre.  Pretty much every flavor we tried was not up to par.  I guess it'd be better to go cake-by-cake. 

Strawberry: My grandmother makes a beyond amazing strawberry cake, using pretty much the same ingredients/concept.  It beats Cecilia's by a mile.

Caramel: Again, I guess I know too many people who make great cakes.  A woman from my old church made the most wonderful, mouth-watering caramel cake...so much better than this.  The icing was pretty good (maybe a little too thick & too much caramel?) but the cake was super dense & almost too moist.

Spanish Lemon: Ever since I ate way too many lemon bars once, I can't eat any lemon-flavored dessert without feeling sick.  The only reason we ordered this one was because dad wanted to try it (& the restaurant didn't have anything else to choose from).  From what he said, I would have been glad not to eat it.

Chocolate Mocha: I love chocolate cake, so I expect a lot from it.  I mean, this one was pretty good but not as rich & flavorful as I would have liked.  The cake itself was really good, but it was almost like "light" icing or something.  That said, it was probably my favorite of the 5 we tried.

Carrot: This isn't me or Anthony's favorite flavor of cake, but we liked this one okay.  I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that I could have eaten a serving of the icing plain.  If there's one good thing you can say about the bakery, it's that they knock cream cheese icing out of the park.  Therefore it's tied with chocolate.

Weird that I liked the cake on the chocolate but not the icing & the icing on the carrot but not the cake...

I think it's safe to say we're definitely going to have to look for another bakery.  Maybe I'm totally off-base & wedding cakes aren't supposed to be all that great, but I want to look around a lot more & try to find something that we & our guests will enjoy.  Plus, there's nothing bad about lots of free cake, right? :)

One Year To Go...

So, at the beginning of our engagement I purchased a wedding planner book.  I sat in the floor at Barnes & Noble for literally an hour and a half looking through all of the different planning, advice-giving, & look-books (see picture above!).  Talk about getting overwhelmed then realizing how late you're running for your brand new fiance's softball game!  At the end of it all, I just had to pick the hot pink one and get on with it.  (Good marketing, publishing company). 

In the front of this book is a checklist for different time periods throughout the engagement.  Currently, we're on the "Nine Months and Earlier" chunk of planning--& quite honestly we're knocking it out of the park!  Let's take a look...

x Announce your engagement. (Done the night of & morning after)
x Select a date for your wedding. (We only had one weekend next summer available between Anthony finishing school & my starting it)
_ Hire a professional wedding consultant. (No need!)
x Determine the type of wedding you want to have: location (The Cotton Warehouse), formality (semi-formal), time of day (early evening), number of guests (under 150), etc.
x Determine the budget and how expenses will be shared.
x Develop a record-keeping system for payments made.
_ Consolidate all guest lists: bride's, groom's, bride's family, groom's family, & organize as follows:
1) those who must be invited
2) those who should be invited
3) those who would be nice to invite
(Working on all of the above right now)
x Decide if you want to include children among guests. (We probably won't be inviting kids just because our limit is so small & we're already stretching to invite as much of our church family as possible to share in our day)
x Select & reserve ceremony site. (TCW)
x Select & reserve your officiant. (We asked Jay Mooney to marry us even before we got engaged)
x Select & reserve reception site. (TCW)
_ Select & order your bridal gown and headpiece. (I think I'll be needing to take advantage of the gym at Ramsey for a while first before I want to try finding my dress)
x Determine your color scheme. (Oasis blue & apple green)
_ Send engagement notice with a photograph to your local newspaper. (Not even sure if we'll do this)
_ Buy a calendar & note all important activities: showers, luncheons, parties, get-togethers, etc.
_ If ceremony or reception is at home, arrange for home or garden improvements as needed.
x Order passport, visa or birth certificate, if needed for your honeymoon or marriage license. (All of ours were already up-to-date)
_ Select & book photographer. (We have a meeting on the second weekend of September with Melissa Hume Photography & we are SO excited about it!)
_ Select maid of honor, best man, bridesmaids, groomsmen & ushers (approx. one usher per 50 guests). (Haven't quite gotten to that point yet!)

Even though it suggests 9 months+, we're only at the 12-month point & have gotten so much accomplished! I'm really happy & relieved about that because we decided early on that we needed to get a lot done before we both had to go back to school.  It's been almost 3 months; between working & planning things have been crazy.  I can't believe that summer is almost over & that so much has happened in what feels like so little time.  Everyone told me that time would fly, but I didn't believe them!  I thought 14/15 months would drag on & I would deeply regret setting a wedding date so far away...not the case at all!  I'm so glad that I'm going to have a little extra time.  I want to do a lot of things (invitation calligraphy, favors, etc.) myself--you all know how much of a DIY/artsy person I am, so I want to make the day even more special by making things like decorations and favors by hand.  I think I'll really be grateful for the extra time I gave myself when things get closer!

Stay tuned for more progress & good news that we want to share over the next year.  I would start a 365-day countdown, but 2012 is a leap year :)