First Dances

I always figured it would be pretty easy to pick our first dance song. "Our song" is Rascal Flatts' "Bless The Broken Road," and we could just leave it at that, but you know how I like to make things difficult. :) I thought it seemed a little slow for a first dance, and I decided I'd rather use it for the processional.

Back to the drawing board we went. Mr. Hyena wanted something very classic, and I wanted something that really represented "us" as we are. It took us a while to find the point where those two meet, but we've done quite a bit of brainstorming, and here are some options that, if we don't end up revisiting, at least they can give you some ideas!

• "You and I" by Michael Buble

We both really liked this song, but I think it might have been ruined by one line in the third verse. Something along the lines of, "You may not be here forever," which I don't really think is a deal-breaker, but he was over it. *pout* But ... pianos!

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• "Smile" by Uncle Kracker

The first time I heard this, I knew it was perfect. Mr. H didn't like that it was sung by Uncle Kracker. Psh. No one will know!

• "Fly Me To The Moon" by Frank Sinatra

I'm pretty sure Mr. Hyena has Frank Sinatra's entire discography. There were a lot of song options by Frankie!

• "I'd Rather Be With You" by Joshua Radin

I would like to thank Pandora for introducing me to Joshua Radin. He has a byooteeful voice!

• "Til There Was You" from The Music Man

Start at about 1:15 in. This would be fitting, since Mr. H knows "Trouble" word-for-word. :)

• "Grow Old With You" by Adam Sandler, from The Wedding Singer

Technically the song starts :27 in, but it's such a cute scene you should watch the whole thing. :) This one was ALMOST PERFECT, but once we edit out all the talking, the song is only about a minute and a half long, and we both wanted our first dance to be longer than that.

Is it obvious which picks are mine and which are my darling fiancé's? :) What are you using for your first dance?

Let Them Eat Cake AND Ice Cream!

Just kidding. I'm only going to talk about cake. But every time I hear the phrase "Let them eat cake," I picture this cartoon:

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I've always loved Gary Larson's "The Far Side." I have a messed up sense of humor. 

But anyway, onto some cake piccies!

I have a friend who is into cake decorating, and many moons ago (well before engagement was even a topic of conversation), she posted a link to a Dallas cake decorator's Web site, and while flipping through the pages, I found my first cake love:

via Frosted Art / Cake by Bronwen Weber

So beautiful! I still love this, but as we have planned, it started to seem too fancy for our semi-formal wedding. Off I went in search of inspiration!

via The Knot / Photo by Drew Newman Photography / Cake by Frosted Pumpkin Gourmet Inc.

via The Knot / Photo by Photography by Vanessa / Cake by Barton Creek Lakeside Country Club

From a bridal fair I attended.

via The Knot / Photo by Glen Abog Photography / Cake by Rolf's Patisserie

via The Knot / Photo by Dachowski Photography / Cake by Jacques Pastries

via Style Me Pretty / Photo by Red Ribbon Studio / Cake by Cocoa + Fig

via The Knot / Photo by Rachel McGinn Photography / Cake by Ann's Cake Pan

via The Knot / Photo by Angie Silvy Photography / Cake by Shelton's Wedding Cake Designs

This is one Mom Hyena found while out shopping with one of her friends. We call it the "Dr. Seuss cake."

When I had gathered these images, Mr. H and I went to visit with a couple of bakeries, and we've decided what we want for both the wedding and groom's cakes!

Prior to this outing, Mr. Hyena had told me he wanted a Texas Rangers groom's cake, with blue icing (bright blue — the kind that stains your teeth in all your pictures), and I was RELIEVED when he selected a nice-looking, two-tier chocolate cake with drippy ganache and strawberries in little tuxedos! :)

As for the main wedding cake, we do not want to save the top tier (if we want cake on our anniversary, we'll go get a new cake that will actually taste good!), so we'll be having a three-tier French Vanilla cake with buttahcreme (mmmmmmmmmmmmm), with ribbon around the base of each layer, and edible pearls all over! It'll look similar to this, but without swirls or rhinestones. There will be pink ribbon around each tier and pink peonies on top.

From the same bridal fair.

What's your favorite part: the cake or the icing? I think my answer is pretty obvious. :)

Foooooood

We had our tasting with our caterer a month or so ago, and man, my parents are STILL talking about how good the food was! They came into town, and had planned to go to the tasting and then out to dinner. Oh, parents, you have so much to learn about wedding planning! :) We left STUFFED and really, really excited about our wedding food.

I'll try to paint some word-pictures to help describe how epically awesome D'Vine Cuisine is! Here's what will be on our hors d'oeuvres menu:

• Stuffed Mushrooms — Mmmmmm. Two-bite-sized mushrooms absolutely STUFFED with goat cheese and bacon! Mmmm, bacon. Mmmushrooms! I was sold before they were even served.

• Double Tomato Bruschetta — A light, tomato-y yumfest! Very rich-flavored tomatoes and light crusty bread. I think there was some kind of cheese on these too, but in my food coma afterward I may have forgotten some details.

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• Chicken Quesadillas — Since most of the hors d'oeuvres are well-seasoned, we wanted something that would appeal to palates that aren't necessarily big on some of our other items. We're going to have several children at the wedding, and I have a friend who has sensitive taste buds, so we want them to enjoy the food as well. These were pretty simple and self-explanatory.

• Mini Portobello Mushroom & Sun-Dried Tomato Quesadillas — Are you sensing a theme here yet? I'm totally in love with mushrooms and tomatoes. But not to worry! Of the many people who were at our tasting (me, MOH Rachel, and my parents; Matt and his parents) several of them were initially hesitant about some of these items, but ended up loving it all anyway!

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• Brie Rounds on crackers: Pesto & Pine Nuts, Mango Chutney, and Cranberry Pecan — Okay, this was the one I was most hesitant about. See ... I really don't like cheese. (Insert collective gasp here.) Psh, whatever. These melty, melty brie rounds had deeeelish toppings! It didn't have such a cheesy flavor like sandwich cheese, for example, so that's probably why I liked them so much. All of us had a different favorite; I looooved the pesto (pesto is the besto!), my mom loved the mango chutney, and Matt's mom loved the cranberry pecan! Matt was concerned this was maybe too much cheese, but we couldn't decide on one to cut! Oops. :)

I just ate lunch and I'm already hungry again thinking about all this food! We'll also have tea and water service, and we'll be serving beer and wine, so I'm pretty sure everyone will be just as sated after the reception!

What were you most excited about from your menu?

There's Snow Pictures Like Our Pictures!

I'm not a huge fan of traditional guestbooks.  To me, it would feel like we're taking attendance. If we had a traditional guestbook, I would never look at it, which seems like such a shame.

On the other hand, I'm a huge fan of photo albums, so when I saw photo guestbooks in action, I was in love. The idea of getting our guests to write us little notes yearbook-style makes me really happy. I used our snowy engagement pictures and put them all in an album using Blurb, and I left white spaces on almost every page for writin'. I love the way our book turned out; the photo quality was good, the software was easy to work with and there were a lot of options for the book (hardcover or softcover? what colors? how thick do you want the pages?).

Ooooh:

Ahhhhhh:

Ohhhh!

Next came the difficult task of finding pens. I've purchased my fair share of scrapbooking pens over the years, and I was afraid that using that type of pen would bleed all over the glossy finish of the pages. My goal was to hunt down maroon and pink Sharpies, but as I was searching, I kept finding the colors I wanted in the big packs, but not individual Sharpies! I was discouraged.

(source) 
Yeahhhhh ... not going to buy a whole box for two colors.

We shoulda known the first place to go is always Michaels. I found individual Sharpies there. In both colors. That place is magic.

The last step in setting up our guestbook table was to put together some instructions. (Not going to lie, I'm a little afraid that people will just sign the inside covers or something, not realizing that the insides are meant to be written on!) I got this frame at Michaels too, and put some pink ribbon over some maroon construction paper (leftover from our paper airplanes!), and put some directions on top of that:

Voila! Guestbook table DUNZO. Maybe. We might add a framed picture or two later (from bridal portraits?) or maybe some other element.

Have you found any cool ways to use your engagement photos?

Airplanes in the Night Sky

Instead of bubbles or rice, we're going to be having a paper airplane send-off! It's a little less traditional, a little bit awesome, and right up Mr. H's aerospace-loving alley!

Photo by Kristi Odom Photography

Not going to lie, prior to this DIY I could not remember how to fold a paper airplane. A quick Google search remedied this!

First, I took a regular piece of 9x12" construction paper and sliced it into four equal-sized pieces. For the sake of this tutorial though, I used white regular paper, so it would stand out on my kitchen table. With your paper, fold it in half hot-dog style.

Then, fold over the top two corners to meet the middle:

Without opening the folds you've just made, fold the outside edges into the middle again:

Flip it over:

Now, fold the outside edges into the middle on the back side, and then fold the whole thing in half toward the front side:

At that point, the thickest part (on the right in this picture) is the back end of the plane. You can lift those "wings" up and it will look like a plane!

Go on and throw it. You know you want to.

Whazzat?!

I bought some maroon sulfite construction paper off Amazon, which was a good thickness for folding but didn't crack like normal construction paper. Here's how my maroon planes turned out:

Oooooooh.

Oh look, a cute basket from Michael's on 20% off clearance!

A perfect fit!

Elliott-boo, don't you eat those airplanes!

So voila! My third-grade paper airplane tutorial. :) I'm really excited about how they turned out. I can't wait for people to throw them at us! (Is that weird?)

Have you utilized any skillz from your childhood in planning?

Pilfering and Plundering: A Tutorial

I found out a month or so into wedding planning that Mom Hyena had not discussed my budget (which I had been planning things off of) with H-Dad. We're not the best at communicating with each other.

H-Dad just about had a heart attack when Mom Hyena told him what we had discussed. He asks me on a weekly basis why Mr. H and I don't just elope, only semi-joking. In my frenzy to cut down certain budget lines to a reasonable price, I came up with a brilliant idea.

Mom Hyena is an elementary school teacher. There is a LOT of craft stuff around her house. So one afternoon while I was in town, they headed off to H-Dad's favorite store (CostCo), and I went all How The Grinch Stole Christmas on the house, looking for good craft stuff I could steal borrow.

She took the rare Who pudding; she took the Roast Beast!

I surfaced with a couple colors of ribbon, elastic, lace, twine, two colors of gingham fabric (which didn't match once we decided on a color scheme) and a hot glue gun. Unfortunately most art supplies owned by teachers are not of the wedding-friendly variety, but I'll take what I can get. Besides, that blue ribbon you see there makes an appearance on my "something blue" ...

I bought a white garter at Hobby Lobby for $1.99 on a 50% off clearance, but I couldn't just leave well enough alone.  It originally had little plastic hearts and a white bow hot-glued to the front, but I peeled those off. I made a bow out of the blue ribbon from the 'rents and stitched it to the front, and I went to JoAnn's and purchased some bright blue giant rhinestone buttons for about $5. I am not a very neat stitcher, but I doubt any of the boys will be looking that closely if they catch it. Garter complete for under $8! Check!

After I took this picture I realized the bow ends were uneven, so I did trim those. Just didn't want to upload any more pics! (All photos personal.)

Is your parents' house a treasure trove of wedding goodness just waiting to be used?

A Favor

In the big scheme of budgeting, favors were one of the first casualties. I dusted my hands and was done with that one.

It's funny how your future spouse can surprise you by being really passionate about something you don't expect while you're planning. Sure, Mr. Hyena was fine with not buying 130 people little boxes of candy or other tchotchkes, but since we weren't going to go with traditional favors, he wanted to do something to honor our guests and participate in an organization that is important to us.

Once upon a time, Mr. H received a Kiva gift card from one of his family members. Kiva is an organization that is helping eliminate world poverty by allowing small-business owners and entrepreneurs in undeveloped countries become self-sufficient. These entrepreneurs request loans to get their businesses off the ground, and "lenders" donate money to these businesses. As the loans are paid back, you can re-lend money to other entrepreneurs, so your donation goes a lot further than just a one-time payment.

For my birthday sophomore year of college, Mr. H got me a gift card too, and it's been a neat thing that we can do together. I'd never heard of Kiva before, but it's been one of the coolest gifts he's given me, because it gives us the opportunity to help others.

So favors may have been off the table, but we wanted to make a donation to Kiva instead. As the budget doesn't necessarily have wiggle room for "alternative favors" either, we decided that regardless we would want to make this donation, so we will do this out of our own pockets.

I created these little table cards to go with the centerpieces so our guests will know whassa goin' on:

Personal photo.

So cute! Ahhh I fall in love with our color scheme again every project I complete.

Are you doing any non-traditional things in lieu of favors?

Airplanes: Part 1

It's difficult marrying an Aggie. :-P Not because I'm not one, but because you would think in a town full of them, it would be so easy to find anything you want in maroon. And um, you would be mistaken.

In an effort to be "different," I decided we needed to use paper airplanes for our send-off instead of rose petals or rice or bubbles. Bonus: Mr. Hyena is studying aerospace engineering, and totally loves airplanes. Score. I wanted them to be maroon, since pretty much everything else I've planned so far has been pink!

Mr. H could probably tell you what kind of plane this is. I cannot. (source)

We went to every craft store looking for maroon paper. And it is impossible to find. Well, I take that back - they have maroon paper, sure, but it's either too thick or too thin to fold, and I wanted something in between.

Flash forward two days. I spent half a bajillion hours searching for maroon origami paper to no avail. I found plenty of variety packs including the right color, but no plain maroon or burgundy! (I had to expand my color scope for more options. Also to no avail.) I finally decided to buy some sulphite construction paper that can be folded without cracking. (I recently found the same paper on Amazon.com for half the price I paid on another Web site, so lesson learned, always look on Amazon!) Now that it's here, I like the color and texture of the paper. It's not reminiscent of grade school, which is a plus. It folded nicely too! And ... I'll stop here for some suspense! Coming up, I'll show you how they turned out and give a quick tutorial.

What are you using for your send-off?

Where's the party at?!

I moved to south Texas less than a year before I got engaged. I knew literally nothing about wedding reception locations in the area. I'd been to one wedding here, in a hotel ballroom, and a quick e-mail confirmed that there was no freaking way we could afford to do that. Catering minimum? No thank you.

Mr. Hyena and I talked about all the things we wanted in a reception venue, including having it indoors (outdoors in May in Texas = unpredictable), not wanting to pay for a lot of additional rentals, wanting the venue to allow alcohol and wanting to be able to book it as soon as possible (I mayyy have mentioned that I tend toward the anxious, and I didn't want to worry longer than necessary).

I jumped online to visit my dear friend, Google, and came up with the following options. We visited all of them, and unfortunately I took no pictures ... so you'll have to just look at the ones on each place's Web site.

• Downtown 202, Bryan — This was the first place we visited, one weekend while Hyena Sis was in town. Looooooved it! Rustic brick walls, gorgeous chandeliers, but a little pricier than we had planned for. Also, they wouldn't let us book more than a year in advance. I was terrified that someone else would swoop in and book it first, so we kept looking.

(sorry for the low-quality pics, I didn't get any of my own! image source here)

• The Veranda, College Station — Cute little reception area out in the middle of nowhere. There was an outdoor arch on a deck over a little pond, which would have been perfect for someone who was going to have a much smaller wedding than ours. It was really cute, and the hardwood floors were really nice, but there were only two toilets in the whole place. For 150 guests, that didn't seem sufficient, and it would have cost a big chunk of our budget to rent additional ones.

(images from here)

• Brazos Cotton Exchange, Bryan — I saw a lot of potential in this one, and I liked all the things I would have been able to do with the space. It was on the third floor of a building in the downtown district, had huge windows and few decoration restrictions. The downside: extremely small "dance floor" (which was actually more like an aisle for walking), so we would have to rent a dance floor, which, again, would take up a good chunk of budget $$.

(images from here)

• Royalty Pecan Farms, Caldwell — A little out of the way, but an adorable rustic indoor/outdoor venue. We liked this one, since there was room to fit everyone inside in case of inclement weather, but if the weather was nice then we could spread people out all over the lawn. It even had a cute arch to get married under! It came with all rental items and was within our budget, but they wanted to charge an arm and a leg for alcohol and food.*

(images from here)

So which one did we choose? Drum roll, please ...

Downtown 202! Mom Hyena came down to visit for the weekend to help me complete some wedding tasks, and I took her out to our final two contenders (the other was the pecan farm). She loved Downtown 202 and after talking about it for a quick sec, we were ready to put down the deposit right then and there! Only problem ...

Remember when I said they weren't booking more than a year in advance? Yeahhhhhh. We told the lady who owns Downtown 202 that we had just come from the pecan farm, and that they had said they could only hold our date for another week since several other couples had inquired about it. We didn't want to lose both venues because we couldn't commit this far in advance! So she allowed us to book it two months earlier than she originally was going to allow! We were so pumped. And can you imagine if they had let someone else do this while we were waiting for exactly a year in advance??

Did anyone else miss out on a venue they loved because of booking restrictions?

*This is, of course, relative. It was just more expensive than this little cheapskate wanted to spend! Thirty dollars per bottle of wine? Um, I'm a six-dollar-bottle type of girl.

Full of win

Back in February I went to a bridal fair with my sister and my then-newly engaged friend Jackie. It was REALLY far in advance of either of our weddings (Jackie is getting married in February 2011!), so we decided before we went that our goal was to get ideas and ... enter as many contests as possible. We like to win free stuff!

Several of the photographers I'd met with in my photographer rampage were at the fair, and I tried to say hello to all of them as we wandered around. I was pretty impressed when a few of them remembered my name and stopped to have a conversation! I spent a few minutes talking to one that Matt and I had really liked when we met him, and I filled out an entry form for the free bridal portraits he was giving away.

Whaddaya know, I won! With the addition of bridal portraits and a special on prints since I was an attendee at the fair, he was well within our budget and we felt very confident in choosing him to be our photog for the big day! And our photographer is ...

Danny Boyle!

Seriously, check out the pretty ....

(all photos by Danny Boyle Photography)

Did you win anything cool for your wedding? Tell me about it!