Friday, February 25, 2011

Meet the Vendors!

So, its a Friday night and I am bored. (No "Four Weddings" on TV tonight and must wait for the 10:00 showing of "Say Yes to the Dress". Am I wedding-obsessed, or what?)

It is now less than 3 months before the wedding. Lots of things checked off our list, lots of the little bitty details yet to take care of. My D said to me recently that these little details are stressing her out, and wedding planning seems like a full-time job nowadays. But, she is on the home stretch of her college career, doesn't have classes on M-W-F, and her fiance is out of town working an internship job, so I say, let her do her "Thang"! I am interested and involved of course, but the more she is willing and able to do herself, so much the better! Repeat again here ...it is not my wedding...!

Flowers are now arranged -- we are using our weekend-of wedding coordinator, Denise Harlan, to also do the flowers. Don't know how that will work out -- since she will be busy setting up centerpieces, etc. at the reception how much will she really be helping with day-of wedding coordination? Well, she says she will have an assistant, so fingers crossed, it will all work out! But we keep adding more flowers all the time...cake topper, second bridal bouquet for the bridal portraits, etc. (more on that later.) To top it all off, we found out that any emails I sent the lady were going to her Spam email box. No wonder we would not hear back from her for weeks after we emailed her! To her defense, whenever I call her on the phone, she always calls back within a few hours, and is very gracious and assuring.

Wondering who we are using? Here's a link. http://weddingeventconsultant.com/ She is actually listed on the Knot.com as a preferred provider - so I guess we did good!!

In lieu of a wedding cake, we are doing cupcakes. My daughter first considered a personal friend of her groom's from New Braunfels, Texas who is trying to break into the cupcake business. (And is that ever a big business right now!) But, my daughter decided that due to ease of transport, it would be best to obtain the cupcakes from the more-established Patsy's Bakery of West, Texas. (a neighbor of Waco.) http://www.patsysbakeshop.com/ Being a small-town baker, Patsy will make, deliver, and set up the cupcakes, but she does not have any sort of cupcake stand in her inventory, at least not for a wedding this big. So, after doing some Internet research on cupcake cake stands, and initially having sticker shock at the price of most of them, we found this website: http://www.cupcaketree.com/ where there are affordable, customizable, corrugated cardboard cupcake stands.

A personal friend and wedding invitee of my daughter and her fiance offered to make cake balls as a wedding gift. So, that is what we are offering in lieu of a Groom's Cake. Another smaller stand was ordered from cupcaketree.com to display these. Due to these cake offerings and the Ice Cream Sundae bar which we are also going to feature as part of the wedding reception, we figure there may be some leftover cupcakes and cake balls, so we are looking at ordering some cute litte boxes to put these in, to offer as take-home favors for late-staying reception guests!

My daughter ordered the invitations this week from a young gal in Waco (a Baylor Grad!) Jordan Browning, who is a wedding consultant and also offers wedding invitations and other wedding-related merchandise. Her business is called "Ever After": http://www.weddingseverafter.com/

The Invite stationery suite will carry through the blue and off-white color theme (although we had to go with gold lettering as the off-white offering.) Viewing again photos of our reception venue, with its gold and blue carpet, I think this will work out just fine! The stationery will arrive around Spring Break time, hopefully, so...guess what we will be doing in mid March?

The Wedding Portrait venue has been reserved. I am excited about this...The Earle Harrison House and Pape Gardens, a historic home and adjoining gardens in Waco. Here is a link to the venue: http://www.earleharrison.com/ They say the gardens will be in full bloom in mid-April, which is when the portrait session is booked for. My daughter specifically asked me to travel down to Waco for this event. (Yay!) She will need someone to help her get dressed. The wedding day photographers, Chapel Hill Photography of Waco, will be shooting the bridal portraits as well.
http://www.chapelhillphoto.com/

Speaking of dresses -- my dress arrived at David's Bridal about a week ago! I was worried that the color of it would be too electric blue -- I worried in vain. The color is perfect! Can't wait to get it altered by the same lady from my building at work, who is doing my daughter's wedding dress alterations- Penny Schnitzius of Lewisville, Texas! (972) 436-0485.

Shower season is coming up... more on that coming up soon!