Where to begin???

Hello wedding-web-world! I'm back from my holiday hibernation and am back with a wedding ferociousness! RAWWWWR!

The holiday season was a roller coaster of emotion as far as the wedding planning was concerned. Filled with wonderful things like my mom buying us engraved Vera Wang toasting flutes and the matching cake serving set, engraved with our future Mr. X and Mrs. X names. (I cried, my mom cried and then we laughed at each other. It was a beautiful wedding planning moment that I highly recommend!)

My pictures:




The pretty pictures I found online:




But it was also full of the make-you-want-to-tear-your-hair-out-and-pound-your-fists-into-the-ground moments, such as a certain issue concerning our guest list (which blew up in the worst way to day. It seriously makes me sick to my stomach how presumptuous and rude our own families can be at times.)

This past weekend, however, was my favorite of our holiday hibernation; we spent the whole weekend in Carmel, planning our wedding together. I can honestly say that it was one of the best weekends of my life. :)

So I'll begin the story of the world's best wedding planning weekend with the food (I'm just going to go ahead and throw that whole chronological order thing out the window!).

OMG - The. Food. Put simply: to die for.

They brought out some really cute little aritsan rolls (Mike laughed at me when I took a picture of the rolls. I told him he'd be thanking me in a few months when he forgets if there was a bread starter or not!!)



We started by choosing a first dish:

Romaine lettuce with blue cheese, cranberries and walnuts, and basil vinaigrette. I could have eaten this baby all day long.

Runner up: Baby spinach and butter lettuce with hazelnut vinaigrette, toasted pine nuts and pears. Love the dressing, but when they brought it out I thought the pear was nigiri. I looked at Mike and asked if sushi came with the salad - nope that's the pear. Not pretty, but tasty.

Loser: Cream of Broccoli soup = yuck. Bland and kind of ugly. We both veto'd it.

Then we move on to the entree's that we choose. We weren't positive that these were the entrees that we were going to serve but they both were delicious!

Chicken Roulade stuffed with Artichokes and Mushrooms in a Roast Garlic Sauce with scalloped potatoes and spring vegetables. Oh this was soooo tasty. The chicken was moist and the gravy and the stuffing were some complimentary and sweet and savory at the same time. The scalloped potatoes could have been served on their own they were so good, perfect marriage between cheesy gooeyness and starchy potato. Delish!

This was the best, and yes I saved it for last.

Crab Ravioli with Prawns, Tarragon Sauce and Julienne Vegetables. The inside of the ravioli was delightful, it was the freshest crab, the texture of the crab inside the ravioli was such a wonderful surprise. The tarragon sauce was unbelievable, it had the slightest hint of lemon and it felt so perfect for a spring/summer Memorial Day weekend wedding meal. Love love love.

And that's all.

What? Yes, La Playa Hotel is making our cake too. Yes, we did a cake tasting. Oh you want to see the pictures from that too, oh, well, um, I sort of don't have any cake tasting pictures to share, because I, um, sort of didn't take any because I was too excited about tasting the cake. And it was gooooooooooooooddd!!

I'll post more about the cake another day, it's not really wedding food but more of a wedding art piece that happens to be edible.

Is your mouth watering? Mine is!! Did you enjoy your caterer tasting as much as I did? :)

Would you rather...

There have been some changes with our post wedding plans.

In the beginning, we were planning on doing a rehearsal dinner (well, more of a cocktail hour with appetizers, including everyone invited to our wedding since it's quasi-destination), our wedding day events and then a brunch the following morning, afterwards we would dash to the airport for our European honeymoon.



However, we've since changed our honeymoon plans to ix-nay the European honeymoon (there is just so much that we both want to do and to do it the right way would require more time and $$$ than we will have immediately following our wedding) and we will instead spend 10 days in Maui, Hawaii for our honeymoon. The problem: flying to Maui on Sunday afternoon is next to impossible or too expensive for it to be worth it. At which point the question becomes, to spend another day in Carmel (with our families and friends) or to spend an extra day in Maui (sleeping on the plane and then relaxing - probably - in our room).

I want to spend an extra day on our honeymoon, but I feel like the right thing to do is have a brunch the day following our wedding and then leave for Maui on Monday morning. Afterall all of our guests will be coming from out of town (literally all of our guests, no one lives in Carmel) and pretty much everyone is spending the night there, it seems like it would be so nice for our guests to be able to get together the day after for some mimosas and pastries the next morning.



The other upshot is that I could wear something incredible like this:


However, I could wear something like this on our first day in Maui too:



and hopefully he won't wear this:



What do you think about the morning after brunch? Would you rather have a post wedding brunch or an extra honeymoon day?

Holiday Giveaway! KitchenAid Stand Mixer!

I don't normally do this, but this giveaway is too good to pass up.

Mrs. Deal Finder is hosting a KitchenAid Stand Mixer giveaway on her site. It's a KitchenAid Classic 4.5 quart Stand Mixer valued at around $200.


Please go check it out and enter (or don't, makes the chances better for moi!) to win the awesome prize!

Good luck ladies!

C Lo: Revisited

I'm having a crazy love affair with Christian Louboutin heels.

In the beginning of our wedding process I had heard of Louboutin, but I didn't feel the desire to drop upwards of $800 on a pair of shoes (I could buy a couple of suits for that, and a pair of cute heels!) Then at some point I started seeing detailed photography shots of Louboutins and they're sexy red soles. I was hooked, I HAD to have them.

Then, I quit my job and the idea of wearing Loubies on my wedding day was one of the first things I said goodbye to.

Now, I have a new position and one of the first things that popped in my head was that I would have Loubies for my wedding! YAAAAAAY!

So this morning, I've been drooling over bridal Louboutin yumminess and falling in love all over again. Feast your eyes ladies:

Yummy shoe detail shots get me every time!

Soo cute!

The ring shot on the Louboutin heel is something that I've been in love with since day 1

Lace dress with Loubies!! Eeeek, they're so me!!

\

I think it's actually really cute that the groom is holding her shoes, unique and cute shot!

I would LOVE to have a shot like this from our wedding day.

I never knew bridal shoes could be so hot!

Have you developed any minor obsessions during the course of planning your wedding?

It's official, like a referee whistle

The future hubs and I have decided on a color scheme, and it's our final decision. There will be no more changes as far as our color scheme is concerned. Period.

Are you ready for it world? Here it is:


Mint, ivory and coral.

Why did we change it again? For a bevy of reasons, let me begin:

Future husby wants to wear a black suit (he's having a suit custom made, and he's pretty excited about it) and the coral and sand theme just didn't feel like it would work with my groom and his buddies wearing black suits.

Secondly, a very long time ago I mentioned that the chairs in our space are hideous. Unless, you're having a green themed wedding in which case, their genius.




Scratch that, I still think they're ugly but if you can imagine a beautiful table scape with mint and coral all over it I think it will really detract from the ugly chairs. (Honestly, I'm having a very hard time justifying the cost of RENTING chairs. I'd be paying at least $600 and I'm basically getting nothing in return. My guests will sit in chairs that are visually pleasing, it just doesn't seem worth it. I'd rather spend $600 shopping while we're on our honeymoon.)

Third, the style of our venues has a lot of coral (or terra-cotta, if you will) coloring. It makes sense to work with the spaces rather than work against them.

Outside of our reception venue (actually, it's the inner courtyard)

Outside of our ceremony venue

Inside our ceremony venue

The altar of our ceremony venue

Cocktail area of our reception venue - all I see is mint, coral and ivory. Perfect!!

Lastly, he wants green (I wanted green in the very beginning too). I want champagne, but ivory is a better choice here (I could probably get away with calling it champagne, hehe). Coral is the fun that ties it all together and makes it feel fresh.

Here is the inspiration board that has been slowly pulling me towards it for a few weeks now:

I think black suits and mint ties and bouts will look fine for the mens.

This color combo just feels fresh and summery. I think it will be perfect for a late May, memorial day weekend wedding by the sea. Plus, I love all of the fun pops of coral color and the subduedness (I know it's not a word, but humor me here folks) of all three separately but together I think they're chic and seasonally appropriate.

Was there a major part of your wedding that took you several months (and several changes) to come to a final decision?

RCIA - I'm in

So far I've been pretty unhappy with our RCIA process.

I went into this process thinking that these were classes, as in any other kind of class that I've ever been to that requires learning. I even thought that since I took a world religion course in college (it was my humanities requirement for the general education portion) that I had a pretty good idea about what I could expect. Alas, this is not the case; let me bring you up to speed:

Anyone who wants to go through the process of becoming Catholic needs a Catholic person to sponsor them, I chose Mike to be my sponsor (this has really been a pledge of his love to me seeing as we're in football season right now and we're required to go to the 10:30 mass every Sunday.) So each Sunday since late October, we've been going to mass at 10:30 and sometimes we are required to attend a RCIA "class" regarding the religion. We've both really been enjoying the mass, but the classes on the other hand...not so much.

The woman who is running and organizing these classes is super unorganized and can't give a straight answer to save her life. Her is an example from this past weekend:

Me: "When and why do people sometimes touch their head, chest and shoulders before or after prayers?"

Mean church lady: "They're just customs that people have been doing for a long time."

Me: "Mmmmmmm kay." [That doesn't really help me, but okay. Moving on.]

Me: "What are the prayers that are routinely said during mass and where can I find them so I can understand what we're supposed to say. And what is the profession of faith and where can I find that at, is it in the Bible?"

Mean church lady: "The prayers aren't always the same so I don't know which ones you're talking about. Cradle Catholics know what's being said because they were raised in the church. The profession of faith isn't in the bible, you can probably find it somewhere else."

Me: "I was just wondering where I could find them so I could participate during mass. Do you know where I could find it at?"

Someone else's sponsor: "You can find the general outline for the prayers and the order of the Sunday mass online. I'll print it out and bring it in for you next time we meet. Would anyone else like a copy?"

Everyone else: raises hand

To be completely fair, this last class was done by a man who is actually a teacher at a local Catholic school for girls and has a Ph. D in religious studies. His lecture was structured and a breath of fresh air compared to everything we've done prior. Mike and I both left the class feeling as though we'd learned more. Again, to be fair, no one else will ask questions (except for another guy in the class who is trying to become Catholic, but he's a teacher at another local Catholic school for boys) so I asked a lot of questions on Sunday and instead of the nice guy answering the mean church lady was cutting him off and giving me these crappy answers that came off as "stop asking stupid questions, if I wanted you to know I would have told you." And a lot of her responses start with "Cradle Catholics this or that," where I'd just prefer her to keep her mouth shut if she doesn't know the answer instead of making something up or telling me that "that's just the way we do it, it's always been done that way." To which I ask, "why?"

Is anyone else becoming Catholic before their wedding? How have you liked the process so far? (Aside from the mean church lady it's been super interesting and lead to some GREAT conversations between Mike and I!)

Another grain of sand

...has passed through my wedding planning hour glass. And just like that our 6 month mark has come and passed.

I was looking for a picture of a calendar to illustrate, but came across this instead. Who could pass up the opportunity?

Most notably on my wedding to do timeline, the 6 month marker is when invitations should be ordered. Since I won mine (woohoo!!) I am limited on my selection (boo!!). I won a Weddingbee giveaway a few months ago and I will receive 100 invites and response cards for free (holla!) from the Cat Seto line with Wedding Paper Divas. I'm not sure which design to go with, I've narrowed it down to two and I know that they'll be pink, white with brown font. Here's what I have so far:

Rose Bloom

or Artsy Bloom

Why did I choose these two, because they are basically my only pink options (well technically not true because I can technically order any of them in any color I like. But I'm the kind of girl that has to at least SEE something before I buy it (or in this case order it and not pay for it, because I won it (woot!))).

I don't know what it is, but the further along I get into planning this wedding the more muddled my vision of our day is becoming. Deciding on colors that I like is becoming increasingly difficult, but I can for sure tell you what I don't want and don't like; which for someone who is passed the 6 month marker and still hasn't booked a florist, I better figure out what my vision looks like really quick and start making some decisions!

On a side note, this Thanksgiving was the best Thanksgiving I've ever had in my entire life. Generally the holidays are a major cause of stressing and fighting for me (mostly with my mom, sigh). But last year we had just our parents over for dinner the Wednesday before Thanksgiving (we cook food that is so un-Thanksgiving so we don't piss anyone who is cooking the next day off) and it was a blast. We did it again this year and it was so much fun! Then we did his family's the day of Thanksgiving and another Thanksgiving with my mom on Friday. Needless to say, we had turkey and gravy coming out of our eyes, but the food was excellent all three days and the company was even better. The best part, no fighting. Sadly, I can not remember the last holiday where my mom and I didn't have a blow out fight but it was so wonderful to not fight this Thanksgiving! Crossing my fingers (and hoping I haven't already jinxed myself) for Christmas to be equally awesome!

How was everyone else's holiday and which invite would you choose? Rose bloom or Artsy bloom?