Booze and 15

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Even though our caterer really has nothing to do with the booze, she was still nice enough to do some research and help us figure out how much alcohol we need.

Side note: Everything we're doing is separate. The hall provides nothing, so we're bringing everything in ourselves, which is great because we know that we're getting the best possible price, but it increases the complication factor. So we can't just tell the hall how many people we need to serve alcohol to, we have to figure it out ourselves and bring it all in. Which is completely fine, its what we signed on for, but...lots to figure out.

So it looks like we're going to have about 225 people there, and Ryan has 15ish co-workers arriving after dinner for party time. So that puts our number of drinkers at about 240. We're serving 2 kinds of wine (chardonnay and cabernet), 2 kinds of beer (Budweiser and Budselect...we had 3 whopping options, but no big), and a signature drink that will consist of cranberry juice, pineapple juice and rum. Oh yes.

We'll be ordering:

80 bottles of wine, 30 red and 50 white

2 half barrels (known as kegs) of beer, 1 of Budweiser and 1 of Budselect

6 1.5 liter bottles of rum, 7 gallons of pineapple juice and 7 gallons of cranberry juice

I feel like such an alcoholic ordering all of this! I feel this urge to be like, "So I need to order 80 bottles of wine but I'M GETTING MARRIED AND ITS FOR MY WEDDING I SWEAR I'M NOT GOING TO DRINK IT ALL MYSELF."

We're ordering the kegs from the reception hall even though they're just a bit more expensive, simply because my brain hurts from all of these logistics and I don't want to try to figure out how to get them to the hall and then back to the beer place they came from. The rum we'll be getting from Costco ($17.99/1.5 liter!) and the wine is from Trader Joe's, at $2.99/bottle. I've done a taste test, and it is delicious.

So while I'm really glad we're handling everything separately, because I know we're saving a ton of $$$, but I do see why people pay 1 price to have all of this in one place for them. And we are very lucky in that Ryan's family and friends in St. Louis are being beyond helpful. Get this-his mom's neighbor, who I've met ONCE, is driving a car down to the reception sight mere hours before the wedding to help set up our entire reception for us, including the centerpieces.

Also speaking of lucky....my friend and bridesmaid Melissa is coming to Cape tonight and staying until Sunday morning, just to help me with last minute wedding stuff. Wine will be involved. I can't even tell you how excited I am to see her!

15 Days out my friends! I haven't lost my mind yet, but we've still got plenty of time for that to happen.

What's on the menu

Friday Ryan and I met with our caterer, Beth.

She's super easy going, and she's taking care of so much more than I thought she would! We're doing the linens through her at $2.25/table cloth, she's going to set out snacks we're providing for the cocktail hour, she's getting us liquor info/pricing (which we're doing on our own, so it really isn't her job/problem), she's setting out the cakes for us and she gave us some great ideas on how much alcohol to purchase.

Here's the menu (buffet style, $12.50/head):

Chicken parmesan
Mostaccoli
Oven browned potatoes
Green beans
Baby carrots with dill
Rolls and butter
Salad with house dressing
Iced tea, lemonade, water

All of this on real dishes and with real silverware. That was quite the revelation with wedding planning-a caterer's price often does NOT include silverware and plates. Ouch. She has this thing where she thinks people should always eat off of real plates. I'm with her.

This was Friday that we figured all this out on. Sunday morning Ryan has a voicemail from her with a message saying that her distributor messed up and she has a chicken surplus. If we pay a deposit today, she can cut 10% off our total bill. So Ryan ran a check down to her today and now we're saving 10%!

I feel very lucky that we found Beth. Not many caterers would pass savings on like that, or work with us the way she is. For kids, she's leaving it up to use to determine how much they'll eat, so most of the little kids are eating 2 for the price of 1. She's definitely going above and beyond and her food is SO GOOD. I ate at her restaurant with Ryan's family a few months ago and she makes Italian soul food. Our guests will not have to suffer through the dreaded "wedding food."

What are you doing food-wise at your wedding?

We can dance if we want to

Yesterday Ryan took one for the team and we had a dance lesson.

For all of you St. Louis brides, his name is George Denninger and you can find him here. He does private lessons for $50/hour and larger groups for a little bit more.

Anyway, we brought our music in and he listened to the first bit and showed us 4-5 different dances that would work with our music. We ended up choosing the foxtrot and he slowly broke the dance down for us. Within 30 minutes we were dancing around the room! It rocked. He taught us some pretty fancy getting-on-the-dance-floor moves which we ended up simplifying when we practiced at home later on that day. He was a really good teacher.

So yeah...Ryan's a better dancer than me. I apparently keep trying to lead. Having someone else 100% dictate the dance is weird though, and it's taking some getting used to.

We're going to try to go back before the wedding, but if not, it'll be fine. We have a little video of the dance to refresh our memories if need be, and I can't believe how much we learned in 1 hour!

I am so, so glad we did this...and that Ryan did this. It definitely wasn't his thing but he knew how much I wanted to do it. He is awesome.

Did you take dance lessons for your wedding? Are you glad you did?

Toss

My sister and maid of honor Alli was nice enough to put together a toss bouquet for me last weekend, since there is no way in hell I am tossing the satin flower bouquet I have slaved (I mean labored over with love) (they're almost done by the way, I'm just waiting for some feathers I ordered off Etsy to arrive!). I had a bunch of flowers laying around from before I really figured out exactly what I wanted for my bouquets, and I figured these would make a nice toss bouquet. (Want to make these super easy organza flowers for yourself? Here's a tutorial!)

The flowers were conveniently already sewn onto stems, so Alli just arranged them into a bouquet-ish shape, wrapped the stems in floral tape, and then did a ribbon wrap with some Martha Stewart ribbon we got at Big Lots for $1. Alli is a perfectionist and she is bothered that so much of the stem is showing...but I think it looks fab.


My room is such a mess, I'm sorry you have to look at it....and I've set up a sewing area on my desk, and when you sew you have to press things all the time, so I drug the ironing board and iron up from the basement and I just keep it in my room now. Classy. Also I've been in St. Louis for the past 3 weekends and cleaning is high on my priority list for the weekend.




Simple, easy, pretty, and thanks to Alli, DONE. These organza flowers took so little time and they were just sitting around going to waster, so I'm glad we could use them.

I have more organza flowers that are not sewn on to stems and I'm going to use them for pins/corsages for the moms and grandma. I'm going to glue a pin onto the back and sew ribbons onto the back, so the ladies can wear them as a pin or as a corsage...and if they pick the pin option then they can just cut the ribbons off. I do want to put pearls in the middle of the ones the moms/grandma will be wearing instead of the aqua or red beads, I think there's a higher chance of it matching better.

Can you bear to toss your bouquet or are you doing a separate toss bouquet? What are you doing corsage-wise for the women in your life?

Cake Stands

Ryan is taking care of the wedding cake. He and my little sister did the tasting and everything. My only request was that something be strawberry flavored...the cake, the icing, filling, fresh strawberries on the cake, I don't care, just something strawberry. Other than that, Ryan and my little sister Mary have been handling it.

I do know that we're doing wedding cake from a local bakery for the "fancy" cake, and then sheet cake from Costco for the rest of the guests. It's a big money saver, and from what I hear the Costco cake is delicious.

I also know that I need to be on the look out for 3 cake stands, at least 9 inches in diameter to exhibit said cakes. Milk glass matches the rest of our reception decor, so I've been keeping my eyes peeled for milk glass cake stands.

The milk glass vases we got for pretty much nothing, usually around a quarter a piece. I knew cake stands would be different, because they're pretty in right now and harder to find.

I found this cake stand at a really skeezy thrift store for $13.50!


Ryan and I had an extra 30 minutes Sunday afternoon and found this beauty at a local antique store. It's cracked, so the price of $22.50 was knocked down to $12. Hell yes we'll take it-the cake will cover up the crack anyway!




I store all of our wedding stuff in my basement....and I was tired last night and just photographed the cake stands in the poorly lit basement. I never said this was a photography blog!


I love the base of that one.

So 2 cake stands down, 1 more to go, and we've successfully stayed under our $15/cake stand budget so far!

Ebay has some killer cake stands, but the shipping blows them way out of our price range. Oh well, the fun is in the chase.

Have you thrifted for anything to use at your wedding?

Outside the Box

Saturday Ryan and I were at Hobby Lobby and we did so well!

We weren't looking for this, but we saw it and I instantly loved it. We're going to use it for our card box. I'm on the lookout for thick aqua ribbon to embellish this a bit, and I know I'll re-use it for storage after the wedding.




Here's a close up of the pattern:


The hatbox was with the Christmas packaging stuff, and was 50% off, so we got it for $5.50!

Cardbox dilemma solved! That was easy.

We also got all of the aqua fabric for table overlays for the reception. We bought 15 yards of fabric at $1.99/yard and it was half off. It came to like $17.59 or something. I am still on a high at what great deals we got! I've told pretty much everyone I've come into contact with how well we did I'm so excited.

What are you doing for your cardbox? What's your biggest bargain triumph?

Girl Power

I grew up in the age of the Spice Girls. I still love them, and I'm not embaressed! Their songs are perfect running music.

Ryan, for whatever bizarre and unfounded reasons, doesn't share my love for the Spice Girls. Weird, I know. Needless to say, I have been limited to ONE Spice Girls song at the reception. One.

I am torn, ladies, TORN.

Spice Girls Say You'll Be There
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Toughest wedding decision yet!

I can't be the only person who wanted to be a certain Spice Girl, so fess up...which Spice Girl did you secretly want to be?

Centerpieces, Take 52

Last weekend when I was up in St. Louis, Ryan really wanted to do a centerpiece mock-up. Here are the past posts on our centerpiece saga.

Here's the closest picture I could find for what Ryan was going for:

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He had the idea to use carnations, because they're cheap and they actually look pretty cool tightly packed. So, we headed off to Dierburg's and picked up 6 carnations. They didn't have red, so we went with pink!


While I stripped the flowers of their leaves, Ryan headed out to the back yard to spray paint a branch white.



Mad spray painting skills!

After the branches were dry, Ryan and I started to arrange them into one of our milk glass vases. Earlier in the day, way make a stop by Joanne's a picked up half yard of this aqua material to make table overlays with. We cut it to the size we wanted it and stuck it under the vase.

The beads on the overlay are from Ryan's sister's wedding a few years ago.

And here's the finished product!

It won't block any guests from each other, which is a good thing! That's Ryan's parent's cat Casey, by the way. He's really nice but I'm allergic :(.


And here is it with some candles we got at Michael's...with the 40% off coupon, they cost $5.14/dozen.

I am thrilled with the results. I think they are really modern and cool, and very different. But Ryan and I can't agree on if we need the beads sprinkled on the overlay or not! What do you all think? I am also thrilled that I have an involved groom...because I was 100% tapped out on ideas for this! He definitely saved the day.

Ryan wrote a guest post about the centerpieces, so here he is. Keep in mind that he is incredibly sarcastic!

"So Stacy asked me to write a section in this post as a “guest blogger.” I guess since the centerpiece was my design, I can oblige and write a little bit. I have heard many people talk about how I just need to sit back and let Stacy do all the planning and decision make all on her own. However, I am not the type of person who is able to sit back and keep my opinions to myself. This includes EVERYTHING in the wedding planning process. I am glad she lets me have an opinion, I think it will make it much more enjoyable for both of us and I actually want to be involved. I know this sometimes drives Stacy crazy, but I like to think that most of the time I actually help matters and make her life easier. God knows I am better with rational thinking, numbers, money, and keeping calm…….while she is busy freaking out, I am busy being a baller." (quick note...see what I told you about the sarcasm? He lays it on thick ladies! Back to Ryan) "It works nicely for us. So when she started trying to design the centerpiece, I let her run with her ideas and gave her my opinions and ideas on how to better the original pieces. To me much of the design is an elaborate process, not a single trial (Stacy would rather have immediate satisfaction. Except the whole while I was devising what I thought to be a symmetrical, architecturally sound centerpiece." (Another quick note...who does that. Seriously, an architecturally sound centerpiece? What can I say, he considered architecture school....) "Some might say I am too practical and calculated, however, in this instance I knew I had a good idea. Stacy was actually a bit hesitant and was fairly sure she was not going to like my idea for a while. Reluctantly she said we could try it, and low and behold it was, as far as we are concerned, a masterpiece. I’m a regular Martha F-ing Stewart over here! I am thinking about quitting my career and becoming hellaz full time wedding-centerpiece designer extraordinaire. All in all it was a great experience developing this with Stacy and I am glad it worked out because it is one more thing off our plate and we are both (I think) very happy with the way it turned out.

P.S. - I welcome all comments that tell me how awesome I am. "

So, ladies and gentlemen, that is how we ended up with our centerpieces! Ryan has reminded me numerous times now that he is "Martha F-ing Stewart"....and it's only Tuesday.

Anyway, in terms of cost, these will be cheap. The vases we're getting for $1.50 or less, and we already have about 28. We're planning for 36 tables, so we're almost there! The branches will be free, spray paint to cover them is cheap and the carnations are $0.50/stem from Costco if you order online. We're buying the fabric for the overlay with coupons, so it will be cheap as well.

So what you do you all think? Beads or not beads? Any other thoughts? Comments on how awesome Ryan is (hehehehe, there's his sarcasm again!)?

On My List

My sister Alli and I are itching to do a centerpiece mock-up. We'll probably do it next weekend, since I won't be visiting Ryan (he lives in St Louis, I live in my hometown 2 hours away, and he has to work at a half marathon all weekend so he'll be busy).

This is what we're shooting for:

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I've been collecting milk glass vases to hold the branches, and I'm up to about 28, I think. We're shooting for 40, so I'll have no problem getting more by next summer.

I want to give these a shot because if they don't work, then I need to figure out a back-up plan that utilizes the rows of milk-glass vases I have lined up in my basement! I am having a hard time finding branches with a bit of shape to them. A few weeks ago, I found a decent one and stuck it in a vase and it was very blah, so I'm thinking we could spray paint the branches silver to dress them up. I want to punch paper flowers out of pretty patterned paper and hang those in the branches too. Alli mentioned last night that we could sprinkle the paper flowers around the table like oversized confetti, which would be inexpensive and look nice.

I'm thinking about making an oversized napkin to set the vase on. My sister has a love for no-sew glue which would work nicely with such an easy project. I am also considering votive candles, but our decorations budget is pretty much non-existent, so these would have to be very cheap to be a contender.

What are you doing for centerpieces?

The Polish Heritage Center

Let me just start this off by saying that Ryan and I are not Polish. We're Italian, Belgian, Dutch, Irish and Native American, but we are not Polish.

Thankfully, the Polish Heritage Center in St. Louis could care less how Polish you are. They'll let you rent their hall regardless of where you originated. Here is a view of the hall from the back wall:

These are the windows on the side of the hall:

And this is the stage:

This is a veiw of the back of the room:

For $1100, you get the use of the hall for 9 hours, and you have to be out by 1 a.m. This is fine, because I don't think Ryan and I can stay up that late anyway. The fabulous thing about this hall is that we can bring in whatever caterer we'd like, as well as provide the alcohol ourselves! This will save us boatloads, I think, considering that the cheapest price we've seen for a bar is $12/head. Also, the couple who is in charge of renting the facility is lovely. They were wonderful, and were very accommodating of us being late (oops!).

When we started looking at halls, I really gravitated towards rooms that had natural light (the other ones felt like caves) and hardwood floors (I just love them). Who knew I'd get all picky about that, right? It got to the point where if the hall didn't have those 2 qualifications, I thought it was ugly. It's stupid, I know, because who actually pays attention to the floor? Probably only me. And it's going to be DARK out for most of the reception....so who cares if there are windows or not? Needless to say, the pragmatic part of my mind took a vacay whenever we talked about halls. I wanted window and hardwood floors, end of story.

Anyway, I'm 99% sure we will be booking this hall. Ryan is graciously going to check out one more location this week, since I am stuck in my hometown, so if that doesn't work out...then the Polish Heritage Center is where we will be putting on our boogie shoes next July!

I had to do quite a bit of digging to find this hidden gem. Was your reception venue easy to find?