100 Days and Counting!

It's the final countdown! It feels like I will blink and the next thing I know my hand will be in dad's as he is walking me down the aisle! Thanksgiving 2011 marked the 100 day mark before the wedding. It crept up on us and the urgency begins to hit. I feel so great to have taken care of all the major things and have a plan for the smaller details.

100 days.. It definitely makes me nervous! As I explained in a previous blog, and I've actually told Scott.. I won't have cold feet about getting married, I will be nervous about standing up in front of everyone!
If you haven't seen Breaking Dawn Part 1 (I will not get into any commentary on the movie) I can definitely relate to Bella. Not even having gone into the situation myself, I thought they did a fantastic job with the wedding scene. Emotionally I felt as if I was there. My heart was pounding as hard as you could hear hers in the film. I was nervous for her! But when she saw Edward all I could do was think of Scott. I got excited, I got relaxed, I got nervous - but good nervous. It was a rush of emotions and I can't wait to experience them for myself!

Ciao Carinos

After over a year of telling everyone we wanted barbecue for the wedding envy one knows how the story goes... We changed our minds! It was sort of an odd come to my senses moment. I originally stated we wanted to get BBQ because it was cheaper. I had called like 15 places and gotten quotes. We had our placed picked out just no deposit (mostly because it was too far in advance). Well the other day I was looking around online and realized I hadn't been to Johnny Carinos in years. In fact, the last time I went was with my grandmother nearly two years ago. Perhaps that was why I hadn't returned?!

Regardless I decided to check their website for how much catering was. If anyone has been to Johnny Carinos it's great Italian but much cheaper than Olive Garden. As I was looking through the website the prices looked horrifying from the get go. I tried to calculate how much it would cost to have some of this and some of that. My total came out to be $100 more than the cost of the BBQ. I called Scott to tell him my findings and I told him I would request a quote to just see how much everything would cost and find out if they have military discount.
I got an email response two days later with a quote including delivery, tax, gratuity that turned out to be the same as the BBQ! I was so excited because we can now provide more selection of foods and take into consideration those who don't eat meat. The best part is the chicken parmigiana :) my favorite Italian dish (other than dads lasagna!)

The next step was to test the selections. :)
The Wednesday before thanksgiving this year was sort of a treat for us. We took advantage of a half day after working and did both a cake tasting and eat lunch at Johnny Carinos to taste the meals we would potentially be serving our wonderful guests. I love the restaurant too... In case you haven't been it has a very home feel to it. I tried the homemade lasagna and Scott had the lemon rosemary chicken, we each ate half the plate and shared the other. Both were delicious! We have two other dishes one being a angel hair pasta salad with no meat and the other being my favorite the chicken parmigiana. I told Scott I would bring him back another time to try it because I knew he would love it! Not sure if the bread is included in the catering but if it is I may be requesting some if that too.. If you haven't tried it is a legit garlic bread roll. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. They serve it with a oil, and fried garlic concoction that is absorbed by the bread and... Let me stop before I take another trip home to eat!

So there you have it, we have not put the deposit as of yet but our caterer will be Johnny Carinos!

Easy as Pie, or Cake!

The cake has been one of the most difficult parts of this process. With such a large group, it is almost impossible to find something less than 1000$ but we've learned some pretty important things along the way.. It all started January 3 this year. We were invited to a cake tasting in some city south of Atlanta. Not knowing exactly how far we decided to RSVP yes and found it two hours later! The cake however turned out to be fantastic. The strawberry was one of the most moist cakes and their frosting was made fresh every morning. The problem... cost. The delivery was obviously outrageous and it was sort of a mom and pop place that charge more than if we got the cake from Publix. On that note I will tell you we also checked out Publix. I have loved their cakes since I was little, but any Publix lover knows they have recently changed their icing from an actual frosting to a whipped icing and it has lost the majority of the flavor. With that being said they actually charge a lot more than you think! We checked out two other places, one actually in Lawrenceville Square and another in Norcross. The cakes turned out to be about the same prices with a crucial difference. Celso's Cakes in Norcross has been rated number 1 in The Knot a handful of times (not that that is important) but the guy was probably the most honest business man ever. Every location had asked me how many people were in attendance. When I mentioned 250 they would quote for that many slices.. Celso told us that not everyone eats cake you only need to account for about 2/3 of the guests eating cake. That makes a huge difference in the budget!!!
After the tasting we even were able to bring a free sample home for my parents to try. Of course they loved the flavors.. On of which was Baileys - for me it was interesting and I think it to be an acquired taste. Of course mom loved it though!

Anyway for what I know you have been waiting to read about:
We've decided (and this could be changed at any time!) the bottom tier will be chocolate with bitter chocolate truffle filling, second tier will be vanilla with French raspberry mousse, third will be strawberry shortcake with fresh strawberries, then the top tier will be strawberry flavor with strawberry mousse! The cake itself will be buttercream and have sugar flowers with a very unique design. None of this sheet cake nonsense... We will have cake!

The design above is a hand drawn design from me. There is a whole explanation to go along with it, however the overall design has a major difference, instead of the drapes there will be flowers - the sugar flowers. But don't get too caught up in the photo, the actual cake will be spectacular!

Stationary Stationary

Everyone tells me invitations cost so much money and to be weary. I wanted to play it smart and make my own...

It all started out on dark and stormy night.. Well more like a beautiful afternoon but I found myself in Office Depot and bought 2 packs of print your own postcards. Well I took advantage and after two hours of fighting with the printer to finally print the first save the date. I also purchased post card stamps (much cheaper than regular stamps by the way!) and maybe spent a whole $40 on the save the dates! It was such a wonderful feeling to be saving hundreds of dollars! And the story always gets better...

For a few months I am searching different websites for a place to by recycled paper in bulk in a kraft paper color. If you haven't tried.. Good luck! Anyway I had already designed the invitations (hand drawn by Momma Shearon), scanned the image, and created the wording to be just perfect. With every intention of printing my own and putting ribbons and everything I ordered paper and envelopes. Of course as everything ordered online turns out to be (with the exception of the table clothes), the colors didn't match and the project became more difficult. Mom became frustrated and asked me why I didn't just order some invitations. I tried to explain how expensive (easily $800) invitations could be and that I had not budgeted that much. But she was determined. That weekend her and daddy went out to do some searching for invites.

That determination paid off. We found a cute store in Suwanee called La Ti Da that has easily 40 or 50 invitation and stationary binders. Scott and I spent a good couple of hours looking through them. We fell in love with one - really simple ivory with a gold/champagne ribbon and beautiful font. The down fall was the invitation alone without the envelope was over $1000! Ridiculous!! I could have made it myself! I asked the store lady to help find a cheaper version and we found a comparable one for half the price that we liked more AND all inclusive with envelopes and RSVP card. Much better! It was just over budget but we were able to cut back on a couple of other things as well. It was pretty fun though to customize it to even the font of each word, color font, color of the ribbon, and wording. One more hectic thing off the list! Only thing left is to address the envelopes... Let's see who's got nice handwriting....

And for those of you waiting to see it.. Check in the mail in the next few weeks!