Bijan Bakery

After our E-Session with Augie, we went to our first cake testing session at Bijan Bakery. They have beautiful cakes. They also had great cakes. Our top 3: Mocha, Hazelnut & Mango. We were pleasantly surprised that they make their fondant quite different than anywhere else we've tasted. Their fondant is actually edible! It's also pretty thin, so the downside (or upside...) is that they put a layer of buttercream first, and then the fondant. So you basically end up with 2 coatings. We really liked this tilted cake that they had on display. I should have taken a picture, but I found some pictures online that look somewhat similar. It was an offwhite/peachy color, 3 tiered cake. Since our guest list is about 800, we could've gone with either a 4 tiered cake or a 3 tiered cake with a sheet cake on the side. Unfortunately, their pricing is a little out of our range. It was almost $1,000 for a 3 tiered cake and a sheet cake on the side. To be honest, we didn't want to spend that much on a cake. That's okay. We did learn a lot. We learned that we may have to go with a fondant cake even though we don't want to because it will hold up better in the heat. Either way, this just means that there's more taste testing ahead.

Cute tilting cake that we really like.

Engagement Session

Our Engagement Session is complete. We met our photographer, Augie Chang from Augie Chang Photography at San Jose State University today. What better place to go than the first place we met and spent most of our days at. Whenever people would ask where we're going to take our engagement pictures, we always got that "Ohhh..." look and response. Haha. But the place has meaning and we knew Augie would make it look pretty. It was awkward at first, but he quickly made us feel at ease. 600 pics in an hour! Well, mainly due to the fact that I'm a blinker. =) Anyways, here's the teaser we got from him this afternoon. I can't wait to see the rest. I hope I don't look too awkward...

Invitations Part 2

I must say though, mail merges drive me nuts. I like to make things perfect, so it's hard when things don't match up. The new Word version doesn't help either. For the longest time I couldn't figure out why my "Next Record" formula wasn't working.

Now I'm working on the address labels and I'm hoping this works. One good thing to think about is have a family member or friend that's real good at Word help you out. It also does help to have a great Excel spreadsheet. It's so much easier to have just one Excel sheet with everything on it so that you're not all over the place. Have a spreadsheet with columns for each guest, their address etc. But always use headers that can be used for the mail merge.

We had columns for the kids names as well because our invitations are going to be more personal. We have each guests name on the response cards so everyone can write down their meal choice. This also helps to deter anyone who would like to bring extra guests. Having specific names on the response cards sends a small message that, "oh, only me and my husband are invited" I'm not saying it's fool proof, but it does help a bit. Those that are more courteous may just call and ask if someone else can take the place of someone written on the response cards. Of course, in my family, not everyone is that courteous. hehe. But we're trying to find a good solution to this "extra guests" issue.

Invitations

We finally printed one invitation. Only one because it's for Ira's aunt in the Philippines. I must say, we were both very happy with it. The invitation looks beautiful. We didn't print the map though for her invitation because we forgot. We also forgot to add the registration paper on it. I guess that's okay because she'll be driven to the location by family if she is able to come over from the Philippines.

All in all, we are quite happy. It's beautiful!

Got Light?

We picked our lighting company! We chose: Got Light! hehe. I love their name. We were lagging on looking for a lighting company, but the more we thought about it, the more we figured we should book one. It will get dark in the courtyard, so we'd like some basic lighting at least. All we know right now is that we want lights hanging over the courtyard. We're still waiting on a set date for everyone (us, our venue coordinator and Got Light!) to get together to do a run through of the venue and finalize what sort of lights we're going to have. I'm quite excited.

Ceremony Decor

I'm having a hard time figuring out what to do with the ceremony decor. I like the idea of shepherd hooks, but they're kind of pricey, and we have no idea what we'd use it for later. I am thinking of hanging flowers and just figuring out what to hang them in. Spaghetti jars work well too, especially since we always tend to cook spaghetti. That might work in our favor. =) Here's some of the main ideas that I keep going back to. The concepts are pretty similar, but I love them all.

Pretty Shoes

I've already purchased my wedding shoes. They're gold and pretty. =) Being addicted to the site OffBeatBride, I came across their recent post about these pretty green wedding shoes. Now, if you don't know me, my favorite color is green. Which is also one of our colors for our wedding. Green & Brown. Seriously, these have got to be the cutest shoes. They even have a heart on the soles. It's a good thing they don't have my size because I think I would've purchased 2 pairs of wedding shoes. =) Ira thinks they're tacky while I think they're too cute. I do like the pink better than the green though.

Wedding Dress

So about 5 days ago, I had my very first fitting and I also had my very first big drama for this wedding. Now, my dress has beadings on the bottom, and before I had purchased it, the sales lady had assured me that I would not lose anything during alterations. I still had a very weird feeling about it as I went to my first fitting. When I got there, the lady proceeded to fit the bust. As she got to the bottom, she tells me that I'm going to lose beading. Calmly, I said, "Well, when I bought the dress I was told that I wouldn't lose anything." Of course, they start thinking of ways to fix it before I go ballistic. Because of some language barriers, I misunderstand her and think that she wants me to find another dress. Turns out she was saying I should order the same dress in Petite. Petite is already 3 inches shorter, so if I still need alterations after that, it won't get rid of any beading. Now the manager gets involved and asks why a petite wasn't ordered in the first place. Duh! If I knew anything about that, I would've asked. You EXPECT the sales woman to know everything and bring that to your attention. She's lucky I didn't blow up right there and I was actually pretty calm.

Basically, I now have to wait for my dress, which has an arrival date of August 27. My wedding is on September 13. She let me know that it'll be done on time. It better be. I'm going to be calling them almost every week once it hits July. You better believe that a bridezilla may come out at them. I bought this dress over a year before the wedding. I shouldn't have to deal with this. That's just B.S. They're rush order is 3 months?!? They better eat up all the costs for any other alterations.

Note to short brides: Make sure you have them order you a petite!

P.S. Can you tell I'm slowly starting to have a small boil building up about this?

Wedding Music

I found the song I want to walk down the aisle to. I stumbled upon this pianist that writes wedding pieces. This song just made me stop what I was doing and just listen to it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVawus04gmw

What's even better is that my Ruka-san is going to play it for us. We just have to buy her the sheet music. Too bad we can't lug a nice piano outside for her. I guess a fancy keyboard will have to do. Now, to find someone that has a fancy keyboard. She can't lug hers from New York. =) It doesn't matter. She's playing it.

Anyone know where I can borrow a fancy keyboard?