Another Jam-Packed Weekend

After a brief hiatus from wedding planning, we jumped right back into the thick of it this weekend! Thanks to Labor Day, we were able to make a long weekend trip up to Maryland, which of course was packed with wedding planning activities.

We flew up Friday evening and got to my parents' house around 9:30 pm, which was really nice, because we usually take a much later flight and don't get there until more like midnight! We settled in and watched a movie with my parents, then went to bed at a decent hour.

Saturday was our busiest day. We got up around 9 am, and headed out to our first cake-tasting appointment at 10. I don't like cake, so I was pretty much expecting Marcus to take the lead on this one, but I actually ended up tasting most of the flavors too. We walked around the room for a while, looking at some cake displays, while the lady prepared our tasting samples. This place's specialty is their raspberry cake (which was really good, by the way!), but we also tasted a variety of other flavors, including pina colada, key lime, almond, and chocolate chocolate chip. We quickly discovered that we liked the fruity flavors best. We also tried several fillings (pineapple, strawberry, and raspberry), but decided that since we liked the fruity cakes, a filling would make it TOO fruity and too sweet.

We got finished there earlier than we expected, so we called the next place we were going to ask if we could come earlier. We were originally supposed to go there at 12, but ended up getting there around 11:15 instead. The second place was very different from the first. At the first place, the lady kind of left us to our own devices and didn't really offer much guidance (although she was quick and knowledgable to answer any questions we asked). At the second place, however, Ann greeted us right away, sat us down at a table, and went through a book of pictures of cake designs with us in addition to giving us a guided tour of the cake displays in the room. She then brought out a plate that had a full slice of each of about 10 different flavors of their cakes! We both LOVED their specialty, which is a mandarin orange cake. Since we are pretty sure we've decided to go with this place, I feel comfortable writing what we've decided about our cake so far. It will be a four-tier cake (because of the number of guests we are anticipating). The top tier, which won't be served at the wedding (it's for us to save and eat on our first anniversary), will be the mandarin orange cake. The second tier will also be mandarin orange, the third tier will be chocolate, and the bottom tier will be mandarin orange again. So basically, our guests will get a choice between mandarin orange and chocolate cake. The entire cake will have a standard buttercream frosting, mostly white with some blue in the designs. We decided to do an alternating design. The top tier will be single dots, second tier will be a design called "trailing hearts", third tier will be single dots again, and the bottom tier will be a scroll design called the "harmony scroll". We haven't figure out the exact details yet (like which aspects of the designs will be in blue), but we have time to figure that out. Ann then gave us all the cake samples we hadn't finished to take home!

After that, we decided to go into downtown Silver Spring for lunch. It was a beautiful day outside (a nice break from the crazy heat we've had all summer!), so we parked and walked around a little bit before deciding to go to the Copper Canyon Grill for lunch. The food was delicious, but the portions were HUGE! I got a salad, and by the time I was done, I was so full I almost couldn't breathe! We walked around a little bit more, then headed back to the car to go to our next appointment.

Our next appointment was with our florist. My parents had met with them several times already, but this was the first time Marcus and I met them. They had arranged several sample centerpieces for us to look at, but we ended up completely changing all of it. The samples were mostly purple with a little bit of blue (which was not at all what I wanted), and they also had another sample that was all white flowers. On our way in, we happened to see them loading a van for delivery, and we noticed these beautiful orchids that were a deep purply-blue. I had the idea of trying some of those in the white sample to see what it would look like, and it was so beautiful that we ended up going with that! We also changed up the bouquets - mine will have white roses, white calla lilies, and a few scattered blue delphiniums. The bridesmaids' will have white roses and the purply-blue orchids! I have to mention the guy who runs the florist shop. He was the highlight of the weekend! Neither Marcus, nor my mom, nor I have any clue about flowers, but this guy was super helpful and hysterical! His name is Sharon (he's Israeli), and he was cracking jokes the entire time we were there! I will definitely be giving him a great review on The Knot after the wedding (although he won't actually be there, but we are primarily dealing with him in the planning). We left feeling very satisfied with all we had accomplished!

On the way back, we stopped to visit my grandparents. We visited my dad's parents first, and then my mom's. My grandma (mom's mom) had asked me to bring a piece of cake for her, so we ended up giving her the entire box of leftover cake from our second tasting! Bernie showed us his pictures and video from my cousin's wedding a couple of weeks ago (I wasn't invited, but my parents went), which was really nice.

When we got back to my parents' house, we collapsed on the couch for about 10 minutes before my mom declared she was hungry and wanted to go to dinner. I was still stuffed from lunch and all the cake, but since I was the only one, we went to dinner anyway. We went to Tara Asia (owned by the same people as Tara Thai), and I got pad thai, but only ate about half of it. We finally went back to my parents' house for the night after that, spent a little while sitting out on the deck working on our invitation wording, and then showered and went to bed.

Sunday was our quiet day, which was SO nice! We slept in (I got up around 11:30, Marcus didn't get up until closer to 12:30), then went to get crepes with my friend Laura C. We got back around 3, then hung out around the house and helped my mom get ready until the Schwartzes (family friends) came over for a BBQ around 5:30. We had a great time with them, as always, and they left around 10:30. We got ready for bed and then played a couple of games before going to sleep.

Monday (yesterday), Marcus and I got up at the buttcrack of dawn (I was up at 6:15, Marcus at 7) to go to our engagement photo shoot. We met up with the photographer at 8 at Washingtonian. I wasn't sure what to expect, since I usually hate posing for pictures, but Steve (the photographer) was awesome and made it a lot of fun! We walked around the lake, posing for pictures in various places, and finished up with a few shots on the bridge. We should get the link to the online proofs in a couple of weeks, so stay tuned! I can't wait to see how the pictures turned out!

After that, we went back to my parents' house and spent a couple of hours trying to figure out ceremony music. We listened to some clips on youtube, and Frieda (one of the Schwartzes, lol) offered to burn us a copy of a cd she had of Jewish wedding music. We didn't really make any decisions yet, we're supposed to work on that this week (although when, I don't know, this week is pure insanity!), but we did take Frieda up on her offer. We stopped at their house to pick up the cd on our way to the airport.

We got back to our apartment around 5:30 pm, unpacked, decided we didn't want to go out again, so ordered takeout for dinner, and tried to get settled. I dug out the program from Joel and Shosh's wedding to see what ceremony music they used, and we found some more youtube clips. Then we showered and went to bed early - we were exhausted!

Next weekend we're going to Florida for Marcus's grandfather's birthday, and we're also meeting with the rabbi while we're there. Hopefully we'll get the invitation wording finalized, too! And we'll be back in Maryland in a few weeks to do our menu tasting, which I'm really looking forward to! It's a crazy time, but I'm actually having a lot of fun with it so far.

Photographers Galore

This weekend, we traveled up to Maryland again. It was originally supposed to be just a fun, relaxing trip for the holiday weekend, but of course we ended up having to meet with a million (ok, only four, but it felt like a million!) photographers along the way.

We drove up halfway Thursday night, got into the hotel around 11:30 (we made really good time!), slept for a few hours and got on the road Friday morning around 7:45. We left earlier than usual because we were meeting my parents at the first photographer's house in Reston (on the way up, but about the same length trip time-wise as just going straight to my parents' house, since it's farther west). We had NO traffic the whole way until we got onto the Beltway (of course), so we still managed to get there on time, at 1:00 pm. The first photographer was ok...she was nice, and my mom really liked her, but I thought she was kind of disorganized and all over the place.

After meeting with her for about an hour, we drove the rest of the way to my parents' house, had about 45 minutes to unload the car...

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, we also brought a whole bunch of our engagement presents up with us to store at my parents' house for now. YAY for no more giant pile of boxes in our living room!

So anyway, we had about 45 minutes to unload the car before we headed out to meet with the second photographer of the trip. We got to her house right on time at 4:00 pm. I liked her better than the first one, but my mom had the opposite opinion (of course).

After that, we went to a nice dinner at Bonefish (yum!), then headed back to my parents' house, where the third photographer (which was actually two people, a husband and wife team) arrived just as we did! We were running a little late and they were a little early for the 7:00 meeting we had planned, but it worked out just fine. They were much younger than the other two photographers we had met with, and my mom was concerned about their relative lack of experience (they had only been doing wedding photography for 6 years as opposed to the 15-20 years of experience the other two had). They were nice, and I liked them, but we decided we weren't really thrilled with any of the ones we met with that day.

Saturday was our "down" day. We got up and went to the crepes place to have lunch with my friend Laura, and then didn't really do much the rest of the afternoon. That evening, we went over to the Bolger Center (our venue) to see it set up for an event. It was cool to see, and we definitely got a better idea of the size and space the room will have for our wedding.

On Sunday, we got up at 10 to go have brunch with my grandma and Bernie (mom's mom and her "husband" - they never actually got married, but they've been together for about 15 years), and then to visit my other grandparents (dad's parents). We came home at 3:30 to meet with the fourth photographer. Thankfully, we LOVED him, and my mom has already looked over his contract and approved, so we have our photographer! His name is Steve Canning, his albums are beautiful, and he's a lot of fun and easy to connect with.

After he left, the Schwartzes (family friends) came over for our annual 4th of July dinner, games, and going to my mom's office to see the fireworks. It was a great time, as always, and we were very sad to leave yesterday (Monday) morning.

Next on the list: CAKES! My mom has sent us links to the websites of several cake designers, so we need to look through them and figure out what we want. We'll be going up to Maryland again in late August or early September, and we will hopefully be doing cake tastings and maybe even our engagement photo shoot! Should be another crazy busy, but fun weekend.