guestbook prompts

As I mentioned, here is a possible contender for the prompt books that my mom and I found at Hobby Lobby:


It is obviously meant to be used as a photo album, but the pages are blank card stock inside (rather than plastic sleeves). And I LOVE that the future mister and I can incorporate some of our engagement photos if we end up using these.

Now, what are some good prompts?

Here are the questions that MSW provided with their template:

Some good...

1. What's the best marriage advice you've ever gotten?
2. What's your favorite memory of us? What's your funniest memory of us? (one or the other, not both)
3. What should we name our kids? (this one could get some funny responses)
4. What should we do on date nights?
5. What's the most romantic place we should visit? Where should we go for our 10-year anniversary? (these two questions are too similar, don't you think?)
6. What should we do during our first year of marriage?
7. Where do you see us in 25 years?
8. When did you know we were meant for each other?

Some not so good...

1. What's the most romantic movie you've ever seen?
2. What were you really thinking during our vows?

And here are a few others that I found online:

1. Share your favorite moment of the wedding so far....then update later if you have a new favorite moment.
2. What are your predictions for our future? (very similar to "Where do you see us in 25 years?" - I think I like this wording better)
3. Why is Heather perfect for Sam? Why is Sam perfect for Heather?
4. What's the best thing about being married?
5. What are your tips on how to be a great husband/wife?

What are your favorite questions of the ones listed above? Do you have any others to share?

Also, we will have about 20 tables (6 - 30" hi boys, 8 - 36" rounds and 6 - 48" rounds) in total at the reception. Should we have a book for each table or just 10 to 12 scattered throughout?

mmmm menu

One of the items we finalized (basically; of course we can still change it if we want to) at our meeting last week was the menu! Just a fair warning - if you're not hungry now, you might be at the end of this post!

After the ceremony our guests will be greeted with an open bar and a scrumptious hors d'oeuvre station consisting of:

• Baked brie filled with raspberry preserves, wrapped in a puff pastry and baked until golden brown
• Hot baked crab dip with sherry - served warm with french bread rounds
• Warm blue cheese and bacon spread - accompanied by grain and butter crackers
• Hummus trio - served with pita chips
• Seasonal vegetable display - accompanied by herb dip
  

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Are you ready for some more??? We will also have a main buffet consisting of:

• Signature Moser salad - field greens, strawberries, blue cheese, walnuts and Moser Vinaigrette
  
• Marinated and grilled chicken breast slices seasoned with jerk seasonings - served with peach salsa
• Smoked brisket, rubbed with spices and smoked slowly
• Pulled pork - served with apple butter BBQ sauce
• Old fashioned tomato bread pudding - a mixture of tomato, cheese, scallions, bread crumbs and herbs
• Baked garlic cheese grits
• Roasted vegetables
• Cheese biscuits
• Soft yeast rolls
  
• Assortment of fresh fruit - served with sweet cream fruit dip

AND to top it all off, a delectable display of:

• Seven assorted cakes - three white velvet raspberry, two Spanish lemon and two chocolate

You have already heard about the cake many times before. Oh, and my parents even got to enjoy their very own cake tasting this weekend since the future mister picked up a strawberry cake for my birthday. They loved it!

Mmmmm....now I'm in the mood for pulled pork. I hope our guests enjoy what we selected. The future mister and I tried to get a pretty good mix of foods we both enjoy (i.e. baked brie, grilled veggies for me, blue cheese dip and grits for him). Hopefully we get to eat some of the deliciousness on the wedding day!

What are/were some of your favorite items on your menu? Those of you who are already married - were you able to eat any of it on your wedding day?

thumbprints, signatures, thoughts and well wishes

A long time ago, probably pre-engagement, I saw this lovely guestbook and thought it was the greatest idea ever.

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But alas, we won't be having a photo booth - so throw that idea right out the window.

Luckily the Internet is chock full of unique ideas:

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(source - probably more appropriate for a smaller wedding or bridal shower, but still so cute)

My personal favorite, though, is the thumbprint wedding tree - such a great piece to hang up and display after the wedding! And, of course, there are many different kinds to choose from.

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Last week, I saw a twist on this idea that I thought was pretty cool. The bonus is that guests don't have to walk around the reception with green thumbs.

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But....with something like this all we'll have at the end of the wedding are signatures. What if Grandma Patsy or Great Aunt Irene want to write a nice congratulations or share a piece of marriage wisdom? I'll fully admit that I'm a sentimental sap and love to read through old cards and notes. And the first thing out of the future mister's mouth when I showed him the thumbprint trees was something along the lines of - I don't like it because our guests can't write us any messages. Good thing I already had a plan!

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I saw these books months ago in the pages of Martha Stewart Weddings and thought that by putting a different one on each of our tables it would be a great way to get our guests to mingle! The reception is a cocktail buffet, so there will be a mixture of 36 and 48 inch rounds and 30 inch hi boys. Personally, I would find it fun to hop around from table to table to write an answer in each book.

Initially, I was thinking of just purchasing some kraft paper moleskines to use as the different books, but mom and I found something better while browsing through the craft stores this weekend. I'll be sure to share once I get around to taking a photo!

What did you use as your guest book? Do you think having a thumbprint tree and books on the tables would be asking too much of our guests?

table mock-up

So here are the photos from the lunch my parents had with Nancy, the hankie lady, and her husband last week.




I wish I had more to show you, but unfortunately my dad is not a blogger and only took two photos. Just imagine the table without all of the china, glassware and utensils. Our tables won't be preset since we're having a cocktail buffet. So they will just have the burlap with crocheted doilies in the center, blue mason jars filled with flowers, and possibly some votives.

I'm really glad that Nancy suggested the doilies - they add more dimension and texture to the table. Slowly but surely my inspiration is coming together in tangible form.

Did you do any mock-ups to see what your reception decorations would look like before the wedding?

saving seats

I think I've mentioned it before that we are having a "cocktail buffet" at our reception. This means that we won't have seating for all of our guests and instead there will be a mixture of 30 inch hi-boys and 36 and 40 inch rounds. If guests get tired throughout the evening, there are additional chairs on the front porch of the house, plenty of seating inside the house (in the air conditioning) and we could also potentially carry some chairs from the ceremony site to the green space surrounding our reception tent. For our younger guests, we don't foresee this being a problem. For our elderly guests, however, we are planning on reserving a few of the larger rounds. This will give me the opportunity to craft some more paper products since I'll be missing out on creating table numbers and escort cards.

The other thing I plan on doing is reserving seats for me and the future mister! Granted, we probably won't be sitting much throughout the evening, but it'll make for an awesome photo! Here are some of my favorites:

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(source) - my absolute favorite!

Are you planning on saving seats at your wedding? Which one is your favorite?

day of coordinator

A few weeks ago I mentioned that we had recently signed the contract and paid the deposit for a Day of Coordinator. I am extremely excited to have this checked off the list! I knew from early on that I wanted a coordinator of some kind, but was concerned that one wouldn't fit into the budget or that it would be considered unnecessary. Luckily, both my parents were on board with this idea and the future mister and I met with someone back in June.

After our meeting, we decided to go with their lowest package, which they describe as "for the couple with their event professionals and facilities confirmed, but who require a coordinator to facilitate their rehearsal, pre-ceremony pictures and ceremony." More specifically, this package includes:

planning sessions at 3 months, 1-2 months and 1 week prior to the event
unlimited email and phone conversations the month of the event
personalized, detailed timeline of pre-ceremony and post-ceremony photos
personalized, detailed timeline of ceremony
copies of personalized timelines distributed to all appropriate wedding professionals the day of the event
etiquette advice and guidance
complete wedding rehearsal coordination (1.5 hours)
pre-ceremony and ceremony coordination (4 hours)
emergency coordinator kit available at event

Our coordinator will also be able to handle some set-up as long as it is minor. For anything that is more involved or time consuming, our coordinator suggested we hire a second person at an hourly rate. We can also upgrade to full day-of coordination (to include the reception) at any time. This is where I'm torn and would love some advice. Initially, I was very happy with just rehearsal, pre-ceremony and ceremony coordination in order to save some money. After the post-ceremony photos, I figured that the DJ and catering manager could take things from there. But now I'm thinking that an extra $200 might be worth the peace of mind that comes from having a coordinator there for the entire day, pre-ceremony through reception. Which do you think is more important - saving some money or peace of mind?

cake toppers

Since I seem to be on a roll with wedding accessories/decor inspiration, let's move on to cake toppers.

Le Petit Oiseau
Charming and cute, but pricey

Lollipop Workshop

Super sweet, but also pricey

Bent Branch
Adorable!

Lilly BonBon

Another cute option

Kiki La Ru
I just think these look fun and very rustic/vintage

The toppers above are all very lovely, but my favorite is most definitely this one:

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When I was an itty, bitty girl (about 4) I saw a picture of the most beautiful Barbie in a magazine (probably the Sears Christmas catalog).

Happy Holidays Barbie 1989

I was in love and it went straight to the top of my Christmas list. I was already a huge Barbie fan, but that Christmas started almost 20 years of collecting. I have every single holiday Barbie from 1989 until 2008, in addition to a few others. So, of course, the 1960s (reproduced in 1997) Barbie and Ken wedding ornament is my top pick. I'm not exactly sure how the future mister feels about my preferred pick, which is probably why I haven't made any decisions yet.

What do you think? Should I go with Barbie and Ken or keep looking to find something we both like?

shabby chic chalkboards

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I love the idea of using a shabby chic/vintage chalkboard as signage at the wedding. It could be used on the guest book table, the gift table, or at the bar to list drink options. Perhaps if there's enough time, I can tack a few of these onto my DIY list.

dancing with my dad

I thought today would be the perfect time to talk about the song I've chosen for my father/daughter dance.

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We'll be dancing to "Coming Around Again" by Carly Simon. Not typical, I know. But there's a story to it. When I was little my dad would make me mixed tapes. One (or probably many) of those tapes had this song on it. Not the three minute version, but rather the seven minute live version which combined that song with The Itsy Bitsy Spider. Oh how I loved that song!

Early on in the wedding planning process I knew that this would be the song we danced to. I had it in my head that I would keep it a secret from my dad and surprise him with it on the wedding day. Yeah right! I remember being on the phone with him, talking about wedding stuff, and he mentioned that he already knew what song we'd be dancing to. So obviously this song holds strong memories for him too. I'm almost getting misty eyed just thinking about it!

So here's to my dad, and all the other dad's out there - Happy Father's Day!


What song did you choose for your father/daughter dance and why?

satisfying my sweet tooth

Way back in February, I talked a bit about cake (here and here). Our initial proposal included a 3-tier wedding cake and a 2-tier groom's cake. The price for these two things was astounding! From the beginning I had really preferred the look of a cake buffet anyway, so I brought it up at Tuesday's meeting. Turns out a cake buffet will save us almost $300! So we will have 7 cakes and three different flavors.

Try not to lick your computer screen:

3 White Velvet Raspberry (my FAVORITE - see my surprise birthday post)

2 Spanish Lemon


2 Chocoholic

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You know, in hindsight, I'm really kicking myself for not agreeing to a second tasting when Epting offered on Tuesday. What was I thinking??! So what if we already knew what we wanted our flavors to be - that doesn't mean we can't try them all again. Silly me. Regardless, I'm super excited to have another decision made! Now I can start looking for a cake topper.

What are your favorite cake flavors?

the dreaded phone call

About two weeks ago I received a phone call from our event coordinator at Epting Events - her husband had accepted a job out of the area and she was leaving the company. Definitely not the kind of phone call you ever want to get when planning a wedding!

Since we were still at about a year out, though, nothing much had been done except for the initial meeting, proposal and deposit. Plus, Epting is known for taking care of its clients. Well today we met with our new coordinator, Wendy, her assistant Abby and even Lee Epting himself. It was a great meeting. We were able to hash out our ideas and pare down the initial proposal. No worries here!

So now that that's settled, I'm going to leave you with some eye candy - my attempt at an "inspiration board." I brought this with me today to show our coordinators, but I had to doctor it a bit for the blog so that my gorgeous, top secret wedding gown isn't seen by the wrong eyes (i.e. the future mister's).

hotel room blocks

One of the next things on my to do list is booking the hotel room blocks. I've been dragging my feet with this one because there is a bit of a debate on which hotels to book. One argument is location, the other is price. Of course I do not want my guests to pay an astronomical amount on hotel rooms for our wedding, but location is also a big deal. One thing is constant - it is about a 10 minute drive from almost all of the local hotels to our wedding venue. For our rehearsal dinner*, however, the downtown hotels are within walking distance. I prefer this, especially for our wedding party/younger friends, because people can drink to their hearts' content and not worry about having to find a ride back to their hotel. The downtown hotels also allow guests to explore the university, shops, restaurants, etcetera - all without having to worry about finding/paying for a parking spot. BUT, the downtown hotels are significantly more expensive.

So, I've come up with a solution. The least expensive hotels are on the west side of town. We'll choose one hotel in that area to block off rooms, one hotel midway between the west side and downtown, and one hotel downtown. On our wedding website I will include the following map I created, which includes our venues, blocked hotels, and all the other local hotels listed in case any guests wish to book a room somewhere else. Guests can decide for themselves whether they'd like to spend or save, drive or walk. Group transportation to the wedding venue is something I'll deal with later (ugh).

View Hotels in a larger map**

Now before I start blocking off rooms, I thought it would be a good idea to come up with a list of questions. Here they are, with help from a post I read on weddingbee:

• Is there a room block set up fee?
• How many rooms can be booked?
• Can we add more rooms to the block if we start running out?
• Do you charge a fee for unbooked rooms?
• Is there a group discount rate? If there is no group discount rate, do you offer any other discounts such as AAA or military?
• What are the rates for different types of rooms?
• Can you block our guests near each other?
• Is there a deadline for when rooms need to be booked by our guests?
• Is there a minimum night stay requirement?
• Is breakfast included?
• Do you charge an OOT guest bag fee? Are OOT bags delivered to guests' rooms or handed out at the front desk?
• Do you have a shuttle? Can we use it the night of the wedding to shuttle people to/from our venue? Is there an extra fee for this service?

What was your experience like booking hotel room blocks? Are there any questions I'm forgetting to ask?

*We haven't actually booked this yet, so I'm going off of our ideal location. Even if we don't end up going with this place, our rehearsal dinner will most likely be someplace downtown.
**I LOVE Google maps. If you click on any of the hotel markers, you'll see that I included driving distances/times to each of our venues.

wedding crashers

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Not quite, but almost.

I'll start from the beginning. Sunday afternoon we got all spiffied up and left the house around 5:30 to make it to the reception by 6. We found a parking spot at the local country club and headed in the direction of other fancy looking people. Closer to the clubhouse we spotted a sign for the Jones/Brown* reception and headed up the stairs to the pavilion. There were plenty of people already gathered and servers were butlering hors d'oeuvres and champagne cocktails. Side note: we were not expecting alcohol of any kind at this shin dig. I spotted the gift table and just as I was finding a spot to place our gift, the future mister stopped me. The sign on the table said Miller - NOT Jones or Brown! And he didn't recognize the photos on the table either, or anyone else milling about for that matter. Crap! Whose wedding were we at and how do we find where we need to be? We asked a server - no help there. So we headed back toward the parking lot and found something that looked like a front desk of sorts.

We asked the woman at the front desk and she kindly told us that the reception we almost crashed was the Miller reception. And the event sheets she had didn't even mention the Jones/Brown reception. Could it be in another location? She didn't think so. Well, she finally got someone knowledgeable on the phone and as soon as she started chuckling I knew what we had done. The reception we were supposed to attend was SATURDAY, MAY 29th - not Sunday, May 30th. OMG! How does that happen! I am the queen of organization and somehow I had it scheduled as May 30th - not only on my iPhone, but also on my calendar at work (and, of course, in my rush to get out of town last Friday, I forgot the actual invitation on our fridge). HOW EMBARRASSING!

Oh well. We laughed it off and went out to dinner in our fancy duds. We still feel bad since we RSVP'd, but it was a high school friend of the future mister's and they probably haven't spoken in at least three and a half years, if not more. We tried calling the groom's parents and left our gift with the future mister's parents since they are friends of the family and were willing to deliver it for us. Any other suggestions on how to remedy our blunder?

*names changed to protect the innocent

the great kid debate

To have kids (at the wedding) or not to have kids? I'm not sure about other couples, but this has been one of our biggest debates during wedding planning so far.

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I LOVE children. I have been babysitting since I was 13, worked in various day cares, volunteered at the boys and girls club, and minored in Human Services in college. Despite this fact, I don't want children at my wedding (except for the ring bearer and flower girl). My reasoning is that we have a fairly limited guest list - 150 max. When you take into account that our extended families are on the large side, the numbers add up pretty quickly. In my opinion, having children at our wedding would take invites away from many adult friends and family members that I really want there to share in our love and marriage. Now I do remember attending a wedding when I was maybe 8 and I had so much fun! But there were less than 10 children there. Our number is closer to 50 or 60. Of course I know that not all parents would choose to bring their kids, but I don't want to take my chances.

Well, at the moment we are in the midst of working on the guest list. Although we had cleared the no kids issue with both of our parents months ago, concerns are being raised. What do you do if a person you really want to come to the wedding more than likely won't come if their child(ren) can't come as well? Do you make exceptions? My thoughts are no because if you make exceptions for one person you have to make them for everyone or risk upsetting/offending people.

While trying to come up with a solution, I came across a website for an event babysitting agency. They will send 3 or more CPR certified sitters to your event or even off site at a hotel. Now it is not in the budget for us to fork over the money for group sitters. However, this agency will also set parents up with individual sitters that will stay with their child in their hotel room.

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Do you think that this would be considered more of a meet in the middle? Or should I try to rearrange our budget to hire group sitters? Where do you stand on the great kid debate? Any thoughts, suggestions?