What's Your Flavor?

It's cake tasting time!

Zac was very excited about this part of the planning process. He has been anxiously awaiting the arrival of cake tasting day. (He's also looking forward to trying out all of the yummy food we can expect to have at our wedding when our venue hosts it's annual open house in March.)

We chose Barb's Cakery to make our cake. The bakery offers 12 flavors of cake and 12 different fillings. Zac and I don't care very much for fruit fillings in our cake so we decided to just stick with testing out cake flavors with traditional frosting. We knew that we would be getting red velvet since we both LOVE a red velvet cake. In addition to the red velvet (which we knew would be delicious) we decided to get a sample of chocolate chip (as it was recommended to us), and spice. Last week we called and set up a time to come pick up our cake samples.

Don't they look yummy?!

The cake samples were each a pretty decent size, so I decided to cut them up into smaller pieces for us to try. Zac brewed some coffee and we sat down to taste some cake.

*Spice in the front, followed by chocolate chip, and red velvet in the back.*

All three cake flavors were amazing and the icing was perfect. Barb's really knows what their doing. As to be expected, we loved the red velvet. We decided right away that we would get this flavor as the top layer of our cake. If we're eating year old cake on our anniversary it's gonna be red velvet!

The other two flavors were really delicious but we were blown away by the spice cake. It might be because fall is getting closer and spice cake seems perfect for the colder weather we're experiencing, but the spice cake quickly became our favorite flavor.

In the end we decided on red velvet and spice. Our cake is going to be three tiers. We've decided that the top and middle layers will be red velvet and the bottom layer will be spice. As much as we love red velvet, we thought the spice was absolutely amazing. We decided that since the cake cutting will probably be the only cake we get that night, spice sounded pretty yummy.

As for the design of our cake, I found this picture on Pinterest (of course) and fell in love:

I really loved the fondant flowers on it. They look a little like the fabric flowers I've made for my garter belt. (I'll share details about that as soon as it's finished!) The blue flowers will of course be grey instead, and the cake will be three teirs instead of two. We opted not to have a cake bigger than three tiers because we're going to be offering our guests a variety of other desserts as well.

I'm excited to see how the cake turns out, and now that we've had a taste, I can't wait to have another bite!

Our Vendors

In efforts of getting the majority of our wedding planning done as soon as possible (both to give us a sense of where our budget stands as well as to make things easier on us in the long run) Zac and I have been working to book all of our major vendors. For the last few weeks we have called several vendors, compared prices, and set up appointments. Attending the Premier Bridal Showplace Bridal Fair last Sunday was a great opportunity for us to meet vendors, see sample work, and get price listings. As of Friday, we now have all of our major vendors booked and can now focus on the smaller details of the wedding, like table decorations, ceremony programs, etc.

So here's a little roundup of the vendors we've booked. We're happy with our selections and we're excited to be working with all of these amazing people.

Venue: Wolf Lakes Park

Earlier this year Zac and I picked our date and chose a venue. Wolf Lakes Park is a beautiful venue with a view of the lake and well manicured landscaping. In addition to the atmosphere, the location also takes care of the set up and clean up, offers catering, and provides help with questions and planning as well as a coordinator the day of the event. After we reserved our date, Wolf Lakes provided us with a list of vendors that proved to be helpful in our planning process.

Photographer: Van's Photography

Before we selected a venue, we had decided on our photographer. Van's photography does amazing work, and having been in two weddings in which Van and Tess have taken photos, we felt comfortable with our decision to book them for our own big day. After seeing our engagement photos we're excited to see what images these two photographers will capture at our wedding.

 

DJ: Haro's Entertainment

As I mentioned just recently in this post, we hired Haro Entertainment to dj at our wedding. Adam Haro has great reviews and having worked with our venue on many occassions we are confident that he will help keep our wedding running smoothly and make the night a fun one for our guests. Planning the music for the evening has been fun and we look forward to dancing the night away after saying 'I do'.

Florist: Brown Bunny Flowers

Originally we weren't planning on having a florist take care of our flowers. For Sarah and Donnie's fall wedding we got sunflowers from the grocery store and created some beautiful bouquets with black ribbon and pearl pins. Since our wedding is in the spring we were sure that we could find some flowers in our color scheme and make bouquets for all the girls. My mom was less than enthusiastic about the idea. She was a little worried that we were leaving this detail to chance too close to the wedding and we wouldn't be able to find the right flowers in time. We started looking around for florists and Brown Bunny Flowers came highly recommended. After talking with the owner, Amy, we could see why. She is such a sweet lady. We emailed back and forth for a little while before meeting in person at the Premier Bride Showplace. After going over our color scheme, and our favorite flowers, Amy came up with a few different bouquets. I'm looking forward to see how they turn out.

Bakery: Barb's Cakery

 Zac and I really want to have variety for our guests when it comes to cake and dessert. We thought that the perfect way to have this would be to create a dessert table with several flavors of cupcakes, brownies, cookies, etc. We found a place that would be able to create a dessert table for our guests with the variety we were looking for but unfortunately not for the price we were hoping for. So, we're planning on creating the table ourselves with help from family and friends. In addition to the dessert buffet, we wanted to have a little something for the traditional cake cutting. At first we were thinking that we would pick up a 7" Red Velvet Cake Cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory and call it a day. We both love that cake, I get an employee discount, and our guests will have plenty of other dessert options with the table of treats. According to some people however, "a wedding cake is not a wedding cake unless it has more than one tier". So, Zac and I started looking for a bakery to get ourselves a "wedding cake". We didn't have to look far. Both Sarah and Donnie as well as Scott and Amy used Barb's Cakery for their weddings and we loved the way their cakes looked (Sarah and Donnie's cake is pictured on the left, Scott and Amy's on the right), and even more importantly how they tasted. I started looking at pictures of wedding cake designs with our color scheme and found something that I really liked. On Friday, my mom and I went to Barb's Cakery to talk details and put a deposit down on the cake.

Hair and Makeup: Hair and Makeup By Emily Johnson

The Premier Bridal Showplace was a great way of seeing what hair and makup artists are out there. Our vendor list from Wolf Lakes included a few hair and makeup artists on it's list, but nothing like what we saw on the vendor list for the bridal show. After walking around and picking up fliers here and there, we came across Emily Johnson's hair and makeup booth. After looking over her price listing and checking out photos of her work via her Facebook page, we booked Emily to do my hair and makeup the day of the wedding.

Transportation: Royal Coach Limos

Back in April, Zac and I went to check out a car to take us from the wedding to our hotel at the end of the night. We found a 1961 Jaguar at Royal Coach Limos that we loved. I'm planning on having a bridesmaid sleepover at my house the night before the wedding. In the morning, the car will come to pick me and my bridesmaids up and take us to the venue to begin setting up and get ready. At the end of the night the car will return and Zac and I will have a few pictures with the car before taking off to our hotel.

So there you have it! We are relieved to have our major vendors decided on and booked. It's nice to know that these details are taken care of and we can focus our attention on the smaller details. The next project will be working on our save the dates. I just received a reminder from Project Wedding (the host of our wedding website) saying that the save the dates should be going out by the beginning of October. I already have a design in mind for these announcements so hopefully it won't be too difficult to create. More details later...