So You're EnGAYged

After our initial consultation with Cinderella Stories, Sandee (the owner) handed us a big bag of cakes to take home and have a party with.  I think Deborah almost exploded from the excited!  Personally, I love the idea of giving us cake to try in the privacy of our own home.  This prevents possibly awkward situations like too many people in the bakery or not liking a certain flavor. This way we were free to make comments regarding preference or taste and not worry about offending the baker who worked so hard to create what we were tasting!

The flavors from top left: White Satin, Italian Creme, Carrot Cake, Pineapple Coconut, Chocolate Tuxedo, White Chocolate Raspberry. Photo by Me.

With our six mini cakes in tow, we invited all of the in-town wedding party to come by later in the afternoon to feast on the sugary goodness.  We also splurged and bought a few bottles of champagne for everyone to have as well! If we were going to overindulge, we may as well do it with style, right? It was going to be a lovely chic little get together.

Overall, the cake tasting was great! We had an amazing time chatting with our friends and have since had a great laugh about all the things that went askew during our overindulgent sugar and icing extravaganza.  I would be a terrible blogger if I did not impart to you, the reader, the most importing things I learned from our naiveté.

1. For the love of everything wholesome, have some food available that isn’t cake.  After the second mini-bite of the Italian Creme, I instantly knew bad things would happen if we didn’t have something to cleanse our palate and cut the sugar.  Thankfully, we rummaged up through our pantry and fridge and found some corn tortilla chips and carrots.  I think it would’ve been better to have purchased some crackers and cheese, because honestly corn chips and cake is just a weird combination for your stomach.

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It is no surprise that I have been doing a lot of work planning my wedding. I never realized how much other people were noticing it though. What I mean by that is a lot of people keep telling me as of late that they are worried about me. Why? They worry about what I will do after the wedding is through. HA. Isn’t that a riot?!

Sometimes I can’t wait til it’s over so I can read a book or knit a sweater or go out with friends or stop my diet (like I ever really started one… who am I kidding?).  But then there is that great feeling of accomplishement at creating a moment – a day – heck, a whole week in Mexico that will forever be recalled by me and my partner (and hopefully our friends and family) as one of the best times of our lives.

Yes, I love planning it. I really do. I guess I’ve even let it kind of consume me. Perhaps they are right – perhaps I will miss it and feel a void once it’s over. I guess we just have to wait to find out. In the meantime, I have to keep my head down and focus on all of the things I have to get done. There is still a lot to do.

I’ll worry about the future in the future.

Our day started really early!! Our ceremony was at 11 am and the earliest we could get into the salon was 8am. So I was super nervous that we would not have enough time to get two brides and two bridesmaids ready in time! So we headed over to Gloss Salon in Asbury Park which was just about five minutes from our hotel. When we arrived we were greeted by the owner who had a feast of bagels and mimosas all set up!! It was wonderful!

After we scarfed down a few bagels and muffins the team got to work doing our hair. I wanted to play up the vintage vibe and went for a victory curl hairdo. This hairstyle required curling all of my hair… of which I have a LOT!

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When we got married in England, we had two people in our wedding party: our brothers. Our Best Men, they were amazing. And for their wedding gifts we took the more ‘traditional’ route of giving them their wedding accessories: purple tie and cuff links for Alex’s brother, green tie and cuff links for my brother. Sorted.

Our wedding party in California, however, is much bigger: we each have a maid of honor, three bridesmaids plus my best friend is officiating. That’s 9 ladies total.

For ages now, we’ve known that we want our guests to wear white knots for marriage equality during the wedding. My maid of honor dutifully tied them and stored them in a clean Tupperware box months ago for safe keeping on the big day. We haven’t quite figured out how we’ll distribute them–in baskets and handed out before the ceremony or on the table during the reception–but they’ll be there. Regardless, we knew we wanted to get fancier ones for our ladies (and probably our parents & siblings as well) from Holden Marks, The Official White Knot Collection. While I’d love it if more than 10% of the net proceeds went to marriage equality campaigns, 10% is something and the lasting awareness even more. (I’ve also just emailed them to find out what their quantity discount is as $15/pin is a lot times 9 +)

White Knot Pins by Holden Marks

But what to go with the pins? Are the pins enough?

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Most of our guests were travelling 8 hours to come to the wedding, so I wanted to make a “Welcome to Vermont” bag. At first, I played around with the idea of doing a map of Vermont design, but decided it would be easiest to just reuse the Ferris Wheel. I split the image in 2 and burned Gocco screens. I used 2 tubes of black, 2 tubes of red, and 1 tube of blue fabric ink to make 60 tote bags.

Halfway done and drying on a clothes rack:

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Us in our Vintage Attire

This past weekend Joey and I drove down to Southern California for a wedding shower that my Mom, my cousin Michelle and her wife Jennifer threw for us. A while back my mom told us the three of them were planning a shower around the ideas featured in one of our favorite books I Like You: Hospitality Under The Influence by Amy Sedaris. The book contains multiple homages to the entertaining days of the 50′s and 60′s. When every party had a Jello mold and every lunch had two martinis. A “Classier” era if you will.

We were instantly excited by this idea, little did we know they would do SO MUCH more. We walked into Michelle and Jennifer’s backyard in our vintage attire (they asked people to dress in a Mad Men style) to see an adorable vintage wonderland. The tables were laid out in multiple shades of gingham with pots of daisies and antiques everywhere. The details were so adorable, from vintage ashtrays and matchbooks (My favorite was a matchbook and ashtray from the now defunct Disneyland Tobacco Shop), PEZ dispensers,  vintage candies and magazines.

Backyard at the shower

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Finding Sam’s wedding suit was much more challenging than finding my dress. We knew there were hot suits out there to be had, but finding the right fit for each individual body is daunting!

We have been looking for months and decided to venture out with fresh eyes this weekend, as many stores have new fall lines out this month. Having decided to be open minded and basically try on every suit in the mall, we wandered around Copley Place and eventually found our way to Benetton for Men.  We were greeted by Matt, who really knew his suits and was delighted that we were shopping for our wedding. (He also informed us that he lives near our venue and might crash.) It was great to be helped by someone who wasn’t raising an eyebrow, and we were able to take our time and try out different looks. Matt was even kind enough to give us 10% off the entire suit as a wedding present! Ready to see what we came home with?

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