The Paper Virgins First Time

You probably want the wedding whirlwind recap to be over as much as I wanted the day to be over while it was happening. I was exhausted by this point, and not interested in the least in the idea of dragging myself over to Paper Source. You see, I'm what you might call a paper virgin.

Paper Source does know how to cater to an audience. This paper and ribbon wedding dress on display perked me up a little bit.

After admiring the paper wedding dress, I spent a little time looking at the sale rack to break myself in. I then spent some time browsing through the notecard section, but wasn't quite sure what to do with myself once I turned the corner and saw this.....

So. Much. Paper.

I am working with someone (to be revealed shortly) on my invitation design, and I was glad they had taught me about the two different types of paper to look for, Paper Source and Luxe. The price estimate they sent me showed a difference of $170 for total supplies between the two paper types, and I was sure that I would want to save the money and go with the Paper Source stuff. I thought that the Luxe was an unnecessary expense that no one would notice.

Then I grabbed two sheets of cream and held them next to each other and realized my mistake. When you compare them side-by-side, there is a noticeable difference in both the texture and appearance. In the photo below the Luxe is on top, and the Paper Source is on bottom.

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It took several tries, but I was able to capture a shot that illustrates the difference between the two papers. It may look subtle, but you can instantly tell the difference when you run your fingers across it. The texture on top is that of the Paper Source, and below that you can see the porous and dreamy Luxe.

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I can now see why everyone gets so excited about this store, once I got over my initial apprehension I could have spent a few hours browsing through all of the products. After I came out of the store my mom revealed that she knows of a wholesale paper warehouse, Paper Zone, where we should be able to get the Luxe quality without the primo price tag. She is going back over to Seattle to pick everything up for me this weekend, which means I will begin printing and assembling next week!

Simply Delicious Cake

After the Hotel 1000 tasting came cake tasting time. If you didn't realize it before, cake buffet is a good idea. I don't think I realized how much I love cake until this experience. I, sadly, ended up throwing a lot of this cake away because I was attempting to finish all of these on my own as I live in a household of gluten/dairy/egg free people and I could NOT use the rule of moderation when it came to this stuff.From left to right, Chocolate White Chocolate, Strawberry White Chocolate, and Chocolate Fudge Cake.

Simply Desserts in Seattle gave me a list of flavors and I am overwhelmed by the 17 options I have to choose from. So you choose 8 options for me.

I'll list the flavors, and the top 8 choices win! Isn't this fun?

• Chocolate White Chocolate Cake
• Chocolate Truffle
• Milk Chocolate Truffle
• Chocolate Caramel Cake
• Chocolate Raspberry Rhapsody
• Chocolate Mint Dream
• Chocolate Fudge Cake
• Bittersweet Hazelnut Cake
• Mexican Chocolate Cake
• Strawberry White Chocolate
• Orange Pumpkin
• Carrot Cake
• Lemon Blueberry Cake
• Lemon Poppyseed
• Lemon Coconut
• Chocolate Velvent Torte
• Chocolate Fudge Torte
  

A Taste of 1000

After wholesaling and antiquing came my favorite part of the day, menu tasting. I chose 4 appetizers, 2 soups, and 3 entrees to sample. I also brought along a sister who is allergic to gluten/dairy/egg (you know, basically everything), and a mother who is allergic to dairy. This meant a lot of extras left over for me.

Poached lobster with avocado mousse on cucumber rounds, and miniature baked brie with fruit compote.

I wish I could build a menu completely out of appetizers. Not only do I like when food is served in teensy tiny portions, but you are able to get so many flavors in your mouth before you start to feel full. The baked brie rounds were a little hard to eat, so the chef is going to make them even smaller for us. Won't they look cute?

Seasonal bruschetta, and seared rare beef tenderloin on crostini with grain mustard.

Asparagus with tarragon creme fraiche

Ahem, there may be multiple soup cups surrounding me because I enjoyed it so much that I took the extras from all of the people that couldn't eat them (read: every person at the table)

I'm enjoying some roasted tomato bisque with creme fraiche and basil in this shot. Yummy.

We actually chose neither of the soups they brought out for us. My dad is an organic farmer, and his specialty is onions. Hotel 1000 is going to create a soup just for us, using onions we provide from our own farm. (If you are one of my guests, don't tell, we are going to keep it a surprise until the night of the wedding when he sees his name on the menu!)

My mom dutifully took notes. I was too busy eating to write anything down.

Roasted king salmon with wild mushroom risotto, baby spinach, and a pinot noir jus
Orecchiette pasta with rapini, radiocchio, pine nuts, golden raisons, gorgonzola, and olive oil
Grilled new york steak with roasted garlic mashed potatoes, baby spinach, and red wine jus

To be honest, I wasn't that impressed with any of the main dishes we received. Compared to the appetizers and soup, it seemed a little lackluster (although the steak was cooked to perfection). We might go with these, and we might end up ordering some completely different dishes and hoping they work out. It's hard to eat at the restaurant, and then eat the catered food because things can never taste as good when they are prepared en masse. I'm still very happy with Hotel 1000, and I don't expect anything less than the best for our wedding, but maybe I set my expectations a little higher than what can actually be met.

How did you personalize your menu? And what did you do if you weren't wowed by the food?

Unexpected Inspiration

The next stop in our wedding whirlwind adventure was my favorite antique store in all of Seattle. While browsing the aisles I passed by this postcard display. I haven't decided for sure yet, but there is a chance that I will be basing my guest book on this tree. We will attach vintage-eque postcards that we create using photos from Washington and Poland and have guests pluck their favorite option and write some well wishes. The postcards will be all ready with postage, and my mom will be in charge of dropping one or two in the mail every few days for us to collect over time.

I *LOVE* pictures, and I could likely use all kinds of fun ones for this project, even a few childhood shots of the Mr. and I from when we were kids.

In what unexpected locations have you stumbled upon wedding inspiration?

Wholesale Has It All

The day after I flew to Seattle, it was "Wedding Whirlwind" Thursday. I actually live in central Washington, 3 hours from any type of civilization, and so whenever I do wedding things I have to stuff them all into one trip. In one day we bought the reception/ceremony decor, did some antiquing and found a necessary guestbook component, had our tasting at Hotel 1000, found the bakeries for both our convention and gluten/dairy/egg free cakes, and visited Paper Source. I was almost too tired to do some guest list revising on the way drive like I had planned.

My MOH Shay brought along her camera because she knew I would want all of our adventures photo documented for blogging. We dressed alike and had an impromptu photo shoot to start the day.

We mapped out several different wholesale warehouses that we wanted to visit, but we ended up only visiting Northwest Wholesale Florists because it had everything we wanted. Apparently my mom is a card carrying member of the wholesale floral club, which allowed us to get stuff at unbelievable prices. I will warn you though, if you decide you want to handle all of the reception decor yourself, and you figure out how to get it all wholesale, the experience can be a little overwhelming at first.

You walk in and at first all you can see (and smell) is the flowers. They are so organized and pretty, and MOH Shay and I had so much fun walking up and down the rows inventing bouquets for ourselves. I took a few notes to remind myself what flowers I liked most.

We walked back a little bit farther into the warehouse, and that was when reality struck. The place looked like a jumbled mess to me, and I wanted to run back towards the entrance and bury my face in the pretty flowers and relax.

All of the sudden my mom was everywhere, pointing out things to me as we went to get my opinion. A kind of a theme began to emerge, and soon I was running around as well, grabbing elements I thought might work and adding them to the pile. I still can't believe what we came up with for the decor in just an hour or two of browsing. I won't be revealing the outcome to you until we create our table mockups, but it just may involve some of the feathers that you see MOH Shay peeking out from below. (I am a feathers bride! I never thought it would be true!)

Let's finish up this post with a lesson. As the MOH is demonstrating below, just because an item comes in your wedding colors, it doesn't mean you HAVE to have it.

Anyone else forgeoing the florist completely and using a wholesale warehouse to design their decor?

Guest Post for Bridal Guide

I was able to write a guest post for Bridal Guide on any topic of my choice, and I decided to write a little bit about cultural wedding traditions. This post details different Danish and Polish wedding traditions I have been looking into lately. Head on over and check it out!

The LDS Temple Ceremony

I have known that I wanted to be married in the temple since I was a very young girl and it's kind of hard to believe that after so many years of waiting to go inside, my time is almost here!

I must admit that this is a post I have been apprehensive about writing, as the private religious ceremony which occurs in Latter-day Saint temples is a confusing topic for many that I am not quite sure how to explain. I hope that my fellow LDS readers will help me in the comments section as I attempt to explain what we do, and why we do it.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the LDS church, also known as the Mormons, has 140 temples built or in construction around the world. To quote the mormon.org website directly "Inside [the temple], members learn more about the purpose of life and make covenants to serve Jesus Christ and their fellow man. In addition, they participate in religious ceremonies that reach beyond mortality, such as baptisms on behalf of deceased ancestors and eternal marriage." Due to the extremely sacred nature of these buildings only worthy members of our church who have obtained a recommend may enter. Any member of our church can get a recommend by answering a series of questions to assess personal worthiness during an interview with a church authority. Men usually receive a recommend before they serve a mission at 19, and women receive theirs if they serve a mission at 21, or right before they get married.

Only members with a current temple recommend are allowed to come inside the temple for the sealing and the marriage ceremony, which means that the majority of our friends and family will be unable to witness our marriage. Some of you may be familiar with this concept if you have had friends or family members getting married who have told you that you would be unable to witness the marriage. As a couple, we have had to deal with this personally, since That Groom's parents are not members of our church and therefore will be unable to attend the sealing/marriage ceremony.

It is very difficult to tell someone that they will be unable to personally witness such an important event, but That Groom's parents have been very understanding and supportive of our decision to marry in the temple. The private nature of this ceremony is actually the reason why we are having a separate ring ceremony as well. This ring ceremony will allow us to share our feelings for one another and about marriage with all of our guests, whether LDS or not.

What goes on inside of the temple is so sacred that it is not discussed with anyone who does not have a recommend. This means that I have never seen or participated in the sealing ceremony that I will be doing with That Groom on October 11th. Although some brides might lament the loss of the ability to personalize the ceremony, I believe in this process and have never wanted to be married anywhere else. I want to be sealed in the temple because I believe that a marriage done by sealing will last forever, and that we will never have to say "till death do us part".

The Faulty Florist

My florist just fired me.

Source

Let's go back to the beginning shall we?

I sent out an email that sounded like this:

I am working with a color palette of dark green, gold, bronze/rust, ivory and black. I am not set on only using those colors, just that general color palette.As far as what I want, I am looking for funky, creative, eclectic and creative. I want to use fruits and vegetables, leaves, branches, dead things, alive things, turtle shells (really I saw a picture of this the other day), and whatever else you can think of. Lambs ear, succulent, monkey tails, button mums, I love them all. I only want items that are in season, I think it's a waste to be flying in items from all over the place when their are so many beautiful things located all around me.
Overall, I am looking for someone who is willing to think outside the box. Do you think this could be you?

We emailed back and forth a few times, she seemed willing to work within my budget and think creatively, and she even looked at a google notebook I created and made comments about the ideas I was considering. I put her check in the mail on the 12th, emailing her immediately to let her know I had sent it out with a SASE and that I would appreciate being notified as soon as she recieved it and to send me a copy of the contract with her signature on the bottom as well. She still hadn't emailed me back to tell me she had it 2 weeks later and so I sent her the following email:

I am beginning to feel concerned because it has been almost 2 weeks and I still have not heard back from you about the check. I'm a very organized bride and so it is important to me that I have vendors who will keep the flow of communication open and current. You have not yet cashed my check and I would like to know whether you have received it. Please let me know if you will be willing to maintain the kind of relationship I am interested in keeping up.
I will be canceling the check on Wendesday if I do not hear from you by then.

She replied within 1 HOUR telling me:

I have received the check and I have deposited it. I will be returning the amount to you however as you are not the kind of bride that I enjoy working with. I will mail you a cashier’s check on Friday.

Although I am frustrated that I am going to have to start the process all over again, I am glad we were able to realize our incompatability 75 days before the wedding instead of 5. It's back to the drawing board once again.

Long Distance Lovers

The Recent Timeline:

Sunday
8:00 AM-Get Engaged
9:00 PM-Learn that That Groom will be going out of town for work

Monday
7:30 AM-Drive That Groom to the airport
8:00 AM-Last kiss goodbye

Wednesday
4:00 PM-That Bride boards a plane for Washington and moves home until the wedding

Result: 1 happy mother (as shown)

and a very lonely That Bride.

Is anyone else attempting to have a long distance engagement? Does ANYONE believe that the we can go from now until 2 days before the wedding without seeing each other as planned (because my family sure doesn't)?

Bridal Shoot: Behind the Scenes

My last post on the bridals was already ridiculously long, so I thought I would split this off and do a little "behind the scenes" coverage for you on what doing a bridal shoot in Rome is really like. If you thought it was all glitz and glam those dreams are about to be dashed my friend.

We spent all of our money getting ourselves from Washington state to Rome, and so I ended up walking from place to place in my dress instead of riding in a taxi. I got a lot of strange looks and a lot of whistles.

Don't I look so relaxed and happy, like I'm in my own little bridal induced world? Scroll down to discover the shocking truth....

As you can see, there were HUNDREDS of people at the fountain when we were there. And they all thought it was a good idea to start clapping when we finished shooting at this location. I gave a little bow and a wave because I wasn't sure what else to do. Before we started taking pictures, my Mom and I just turned to each other and said "We can do this, we didn't drag this dress all the way out here to turn around and go home right now."

The later it got, the more angry my face started to look in all of the photos. Definitely not blushing bride material. I took as many chances as possible to rest my mouth and my eyes.

Drunk Italian men LOVE brides. This character asked if he could kiss me while his friend took my picture. I communicated (in Italian) that it was acceptable as long as he didn't slobber all over my cheek.

In Italy, the peddlers roam the streets near the landmarks trying to sell flowers late into the night. That dress acted as a homing beacon for them, and they would NOT leave me alone. This was definitely a time where speaking Italian really came in handy.

I was happy to accept a rose from these nice gentleman, and even told them they could get in one of the photos in exchange for the new prop.

Sometimes when it's 3 am, you make faces like this and think it is sexy.

Best of all, sometimes when it is late at night, you wrap yourself up in your veil like a mummy and think it is a good idea. My mom lowered the camera and shook her head when I struck this pose.

This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity made possible by both MILLIE and my mom!

Thanks mom!

What did you learn about the tough life of a model when you were posing for your bridals, engagements, wedding, or TTD sessions?

All photos by Denise Andersen, dress by MILLIE.