Our Wedding - Where to get the Goods

I have had a couple of questions lately about where to get some of the supplies I used for our wedding decor. I thought I would just go ahead and post the details so all could see.

MAP

The map included in our invitations was made by me. I used Adobe Illustrator and printed the file on cardstock at Kinkos.


STATIONARY STAMPS

The stamps I used on the Thank You notes and our Save the Dates is from the Martha Stewart line sold at Michael's Craft Store. It is called Wedding Cake. Isn't it delicious - I sort of want to lick the paper after using this one. Each design is a separate clear stamp that you put on a stamp block (sold separately) in whatever arrangement you want. Worked pretty well but the intricate design didn't always work with embossing powder like I did with the STDs.


CUPCAKE STANDS

The cupcake stands are from Martha Stewart's craft line sold at Walmart. Sense a trend of my design inspiration? I snazzed them up a bit with ribbon and papel picado stands like our theme.



MEXICAN CANDY

I got the Mexican candy from a Mexican Party Store in Phoenix called Dulceria Pico Rico. I didn't actually buy any candy for the candy buffet on-line like many wedding advice sties recommend. I found the on-line stores sold only in ridiculous quantities and Sam's Club along with the Mexican party store had better prices (and no shipping costs). We weren't going for a monochromatic color scheme though and wanted to feature our favorite candies - not just those that would look good. If your looking for candies that you can't normally find in the store the on-line sellers would make more sense.



If interested in knowing any other details just let me know!

Cool Find of the Week

Wouldn't this make and unusual and amazing wedding cake?



Imagine a gorgeous all white tiered cake covered in fondant. With detailed piping and maybe even some white sanding sugar to make it sparkle. And once cut the amazing bright colorful center is exposed! I think it would make for amazing photos and cause everyone to be surprised.



You wouldn't have to go all out for the Rainbow theme. Doing just a few of the wedding colors would also be great.



All photos and cake tutorial from the fabulous Hostess with the Mostess

Mini Cakes are Always Better than Big Cakes

As previously mentioned we have decided on Sprinkles Cupcakes for our Fiesta Reception. We definitely wanted something fun and whimsical for our wedding dessert. A traditional white cake with ribbon and flowers was really not our style. We had wanted to design a cake to look like some of the Southwestern prehistoric ceramics Matt studies in grad school. But this turned out to be a pricey option and we were getting the impression that it wouldn't look that close to the real thing anyway. We have some pretty knowledgeable archaeologists on the guest list that would scrutinize every aspect of the cake, hotly discussing how it was a mix between Tularossa and Kiatuthlana pottery types for example. But that would be impossible because they date to different time periods.

So, Sprinkles it is. Now the hard part is deciding which flavors. Our friends S and S (another adorable initial sharing couple) gave us a half dozen to try for our birthdays last week and we made a trip a week ago to try them out. They are delicious, especially the frosting.

My friend Chris and I enjoying birthday Sprinkles.

I am all for each dozen we ordering being a different flavor. But now comes the hard part - choosing which flavors from thier long list! We are restricted to the flavors that are made on Saturdays. Bad news because no lemon- my fav. But helps cut down on the decisions.
Matt's top choice is peanut butter chocolate chip and mine is chocolate marshmallow. To help us decide the other flavors I am setting up a new poll. Whatever 3 flavors get the most votes will make it to the wedding.

Success!

So the last two weeks have been the most successful of the entire wedding planning progress. I am so excited to share all of the progress and completed DIY projects. If you have been following along I took the last two weeks off of blogging and blog reading (well sort of) to actually get some things done. We are at the 4 month mark to the ceremony and Fiesta reception and I was panicking. I love reading blogs of other brides because they give me such inspiration but they also make me feel like I am completely behind!

So here is a short list of what we accomplished and a sneak peak of what is to come over the next posts.

1) Ordered my dress!! So excited about this one. Dress shopping has included lots of stress, anxiety, and tears. Now that I found it I couldn't be happier and can't wait for the 8-10 weeks until delivery to be over.

2) Decided on cake order. Sprinkles Cupcakes it is! I also celebrated a birthday during my hiatus (along with Matt the day after mine) so there was lots of opportunity to try out different kinds.

3) Decided on photographer, flowers, and the specific location within Red Rock Crossing for the ceremony in Sedona with the wedding planner.

4) Finished Invitations for Fiesta! This was a big job and included lots of design and working decisions for all of the inserts. Here is a sneak peak including my DIY custom map design. I am so excited about this map and am considering going into business. Sorry about the poor quality photos - camera was having issues.













5) Completed all sorts of DIY projects including a "Just Married/Thank You" banner for photos and later announcement and thank you cards, stamp for candy favor bags, started photo albums for reception (instead of slide show), card box, and some serious list making toand supply shopping finish up everything else.

More regular posting and updates to come!

Making Progress...

I have decided to take a break from blogging in an effort to actually get some wedding tasks done instead of just talking about them. I am even going to cut down on my regular blog reading. Oh the horror! Believe me this makes me sad. I actually love working on wedding stuff. I just can't seem to get many things finalized and checked off the list. I made progress on several things over the long weekend and want to keep up the momentum. We are just a few days away from the 4 month mark (which is also my b-day!) and I am beginning to panic. So when I return I hope to have the following tasks completed:

1. Order my wedding dress. I hope it looks something like this....

Photos from here.

2. DIY project - a cardbox.

My inspiration is from a great bride blog: With this Ring.

Check out the instructions and more photos here.


3. Finish Fiesta Invitations. Okay let's be honest in 2 weeks I hope that about 3/4 of them are done. I would say I am about 1/5 of the way there. At least I finally decided on the final version and have all the supplies. Still need to finalize the map with directions to the reception site.

4. Address and mail Nebraska Reception STD. This will involve some cooperation from my mom to get me some addresses. I may have to wait until I am at home for Christmas.

5. Purchase the groom's wedding band (or at least a plan for when and where to get it).

6. Test another recipe for Dessert Reception. I am going to try making pates de fruits (a fancy French gummie) for a holiday party.


Photo from Martha Stewart.





7. Finalize Cake decision. Currently we are leaning towards Sprinkles Cupcakes. We had high hopes for a Southwestern Prehistoric Pottery cake to pay tribute to our dissertations but this is looking to be to an expensive option. Since we don't really want a boring white traditional wedding cake we are considering cupcakes to keep with our fun whimsical vibe. Sprinkles even has an option to add a sugar saguaro on top. And I could DIY a cupcake stand I thought about a few weeks ago.


Well I think this list is ambitious to finish over the next week and weekend. But necessary to make some progress. Wish me luck...

Cake!

Last weekend we did what Matt calls "the best wedding planning moment so far" or what I like to call "one more thing to check off our To-Do List". It was our cake tasting. We are ordering our cake from Honeymoon Sweets and are able to get a sweet deal through our location (Antique Wedding House). And they do amazing work. Check out this ocean inspired cake:














So at about $18 a slice we decided not to go with the ocean cake but rather are doing our very own design courtesy of Matt and the cake baker.

I have to agree with Matt that the cake tasting was one of the best wedding planning moments thus far. We were given several cake and filling choices to try. We decided on one tier of white cake with Bavarian cream and strawberry filling and one tier of chocolate cake with white chocolate filling. Yummy!

It was really hard to decide. We thought about going with carrot cake and cream cheese filling or lemon cake with raspberry. But decided to keep things simple. (Remember I am marring the guy who likes plain flavored cake.) I had a total crash later in the day after eating all of that sugar but it was fabulous. Notice in the aftermath that neither of us touched the espresso filling. Yuck! But we gobbled up the white chocolate, lemon, and cream cheese.

The decoration of the cake we will keep that under wraps. Matt is in charge and a hint is that the design will feature some of his favorite things. And no, it has nothing to do with video games. We also nixed the idea of a Wii inspired cake topper. I thought my mom was going to have a heart attack when I brought that up. Probably no topper for us but we will have a unique cake cutting utensil. Stay tuned!