Chasing Cars - The Traditions

I mentioned that Matt and I ate our entire meal.  But we did kind of rush through it.  We wanted to be able to say hello to our guests.  The room where our reception was held, the bus gallery in the basement, was set up like this:

18 tables of 8, split in the middle by the dance floor.  It worked out - numbers-wise - to put our friends on our side of the dance floor, and our family and parents' friends on the far side.  Unfortunately, we started on our side of the dance floor when we started saying hello to everyone, and we never made it over to the other side.  Oops. 

Anyway, while we were greeting our last table on our friends' side, David came to tell us it was time for our family photos.  We had requested a big photo of each of our extended families.  It's so rare that all of our family members are together, in one place, so we wanted to take advantage of the opportunity.

Matt's family

My family

I cannot tell you why Matt and I aren't sitting together.  It just happened so quickly, everyone was in the same room, we smashed together, and snapped the pictures  Done.

While this was happening, the DJ started playing "You Can Call Me Al" by Paul Simon.  This is a favorite of me and my sister, so we took the opportunity to reenact the music video.  We also did this at my bachelorette party. 

Yep.  We're huge goofballs.  We also took a moment to get a picture with Matt's Pop Lou and his girlfriend.  Pop Lou passed away in February, and I know it meant a lot to Matt that he was able to make it.  I'm so glad we took a few seconds to get this photo.

Up next, it was time to cut the cake.

We were having a hard time figuring out how to get the slice out

Success!

And the last of the traditions (for us) - the Parent Dances.  Up first, my dad and I danced to "Father and Daughter," by Paul Simon.  We've always listened to Paul Simon together, and when I heard this song, there was no doubt in my mind.

Dance lessons paid off!

 

Matt and his mom chose to dance to "You'll Be In My Heart," by Phil Collins.  It's a really sweet song, and a great option for the Mother/Son dance.

When the song ended, Matt's dad and brothers joined them on the dance floor for a group hug.  It was a very touching moment.

Up next, pictures from the Kissing Game and the dance floor gets hot!

*All photos courtesy of Everlasting Images

Vendor Review - Linda's Cakery

Our cake was not something we'd planned on.  During our first meeting with David (coordinator extraordinaire from JDK), he asked us about the cake.  We weren't sold on having a cake-cake.  I always thought the tradition of cutting the cake was so weird - nobody really wants to stand around and watch people cut cake.  We considered cupcakes, but I felt like cupcakes were so trendy (not just in wedding world, but in the real world, in general).  So David suggested doing a display of petits-fours on sticks.  Like Cake Pops (which I've totally made and are absolutely freaking awesome)!  We loved the idea.  So began our search for a bakery who would be willing/able to do this.  I must have contacted about 10 bakeries, and each time I was told they couldn't do it, or it was out of our budget.  Finally, I got in touch with Linda at Linda's Cakery.  She said she could do it for about $1.50 per petit-four.  Banking on about 150 people, 2 pops each, we were looking at $450.  Well within our budget!  We made an appointment to meet with her to see what she could do. 

When we got to her bakery (the basement of her home), we were less-than-pleased with what we saw.  The petits-fours were enormous (about 3x3x3", not 1x1x1" like we'd been picturing, and they were covered in a messy chocolate ganache rather than a nice smooth fondant.  They looked majorly W.T. and we were hugely disappointed.  Luckily, Linda herself admitted they looked terrible and said that she realized she couldn't do what we asked.  Again, hugely disappointed, but really glad for her honesty.  She asked if wanted to look through samples of her previous work.  At this point, I was just anxious to make a decision about the cake, so we said sure.  We ended up really liking with this one design, and after discussing our colors and such with her, we came up with a good plan for a cake. 

Based on our estimated guest list, we ordered a 3-tier cake plus a 1/2 sheet cake.  We tasted several different flavors, and ultimately ended up choosing 3: chocolate with peanut butter filling, french vanilla with raspberry ganache, and pink champagne with strawberry whip filling.  Each would be covered in white chocolate buttercream.  After telling Linda our colors (navy blue, peacock teal, apple green, and brown), she suggested marbling the colors together in order to make it more interesting.  OK, so if you remember, this was our inspiration picture:

(source)

Here is what we ended up with:

(source)

(photo from my mom)

LOVE!  Not only did Linda make a beautiful cake, but it tasted amazing, as well.  And JDK did a great job with adding the flowers/feathers.  We ended up with just the 3 tiers - 2 pink champagne and 1 french vanilla.  We cancelled the 1/2 sheet cake because our guest list ended up being smaller than we'd anticipated.  Initially Linda gave us a hard time about cancelling it - she thought that we would run out of cake.  I spoke to David, though, and he assured me that it would be enough.  

Looking back, I wish I would've taken Linda's advice so that we could have saved the top tier.  We really didn't want to save the top tier, because it sounds just gross, but my sister and her husband also had JDK and she said they wrapped it so well that it still tasted fresh on their year anniversary.  Oh well.  We still plan to go out and have a wonderful dinner with a beautiful dessert.  And I'm actually considering ordering a tiny cake from Linda to surprise Matt for our one-year anniversary.  

In the end, I would definitely recommend Linda's Cakery.  She wasn't overtly friendly; in fact, I found her a bit brash.  But she made a beautiful, delicious cake, and we were really happy with the final product.  And the cost was perfect - well within our budget!

Cakes I Wish I'd Seen First...

O. M. G.  I follow Cake Wrecks blog because it's hysterical and snarky and the cakes are just so pathetic.  It features pictures of professional cakes that have gone "horribly hilariously wrong."  You can't help but love it.  But every Sunday they do Sunday Sweets, which actually features really amazing cakes.  This weeks Sunday Sweets?  Peacock cakes!!  I so wish I'd seen these before we designed our cake.  These are just incredible.  Check them out:

Holy hand-painted-ness!

I love these feathers

And the gold and ivory on this is so pretty and simple

I love how abstract and geometrical this looks

Ack!  Mosaic!  I die.

 

And these feathers?  Awesome.

Seriously, you guys.  Those cakes are amazing.  I heart them.  And I'm a little bit jealous of the brides who had them at their wedding.

*All photos from Cake Wrecks.

Food! Part 3 (The Cake)

Sorry! I did the first 2 food posts and then got caught up with everything else that was happening wedding-wise! So here we are, back to the food for the event... You've seen the dinner choices and, if you're anything like me, you've drooled over the appetizers. So are you ready for the cake? Cuz it's gonna be awesome.

Ok, well, aesthetically it's not going to be all that special. It'll be something like this:

(source)

Except just 3 tiers - round, square, round. All three tiers will be white, but they will have that swiss dot decoration. Obviously the flowers will be different. And the ribbon around the bottom of each tier? One of the best parts - navy blue, apple green, and brown fondant, all braided/mushed together to make a tie-dyed awesome-ness of color to match our wedding colors!

We're getting our cake from Linda's Cakery, in Mt. Joy. She offers tons of flavors and fillings, and as I perused the website, I was thinking, "Seriously, how do I even choose?" When I spoke to her to schedule our tasting, she said she'd come up with some good options for us to try. I trusted her. Everything I read on the internets told me I should, so...I did.

And boy am I glad. She started us off with...well, honestly I don't remember. We tried a few, but the first one that really stuck out was a turtle cake, which she'd just made specially for a bridal show she was doing later that day, but she let us try a piece. It was good, but...meh, not quite what we were looking for. Next she brought out a french vanilla cake with raspberry ganache. It was all downhill from there...and I mean that in a really good way. Man, that cake was awesome! Then she gave us the pink champage cake with strawberry whip filling. It was all. over. Holy crap, that was honest-to-goodness the best thing I've ever tasted in my life.

So, we decided to do the following: a sheet cake of chocolate cake with peanut butter filling (this is a favorite among many people in our families/friends). Then, the bottom tier of the "real cake" will be the french vanilla and raspberry ganache, and the top 2 tiers will be the pink champagne and strawberry whip. All of them will be covered in Linda's white chocolate buttercream icing, which is for-real to-die for.

On a side note, we decided to skip the whole save-the-top-layer-and-eat-it-a-year-later thing. It just sounds absolutely disgusting to us. Plus, we save a ton of money by not having her make a layer that is just going to look pretty and then sit in our freezer for a year. We decided we'd rather go out and get a nice dessert somewhere in the City. Don't get me wrong, I understand the appeal of pulling out your wedding cake a year later, remembering how pretty it was and how awesome the day was, but...that's what pictures are for. I don't need to eat stale/frozen cake to remember how fantastic our wedding was. I'm fairly certain that October 23, 2010 is a day that I will never forget.