Vow renewal

I was talking to my friend today who is renewing her vows on Sunday. She's been married 10 years. They had originally gotten married after high school in her home country by a justice of the peace. So I think this is their full Catholic wedding.

Anyways, she called to tell me when the rehearsal was on Saturday. I didn't realize that I was supposed to be there. She said that since I'm a witness I have to be there.

I did go down a few months ago and I filled out some paperwork for her stating that she had never been married before, when she was baptized and bunch of other questions. I know that was called a Witness form. I didn't realize that I would be a part of the ceremony. She never mentioned dresses or anything special I had to wear or do. Its just going to be a ceremony with a small reception with food and cake at their house after..

What does a witness do?

Bella Baker - Beware

On Sunday, Aaron and I went to a local bakery - Bella Baker- to do a cake tasting.

It was confirmed not once, but twice. They sent me an email with the time and date. Plus, they called on Saturday to confirm our appointment.

So we show up...

and no one is there.

We knocked on the locked doors thinking well maybe someone is in the back.. and nope. We call and leave a message... and no one returned our calls.

This was Sunday at 10 am.

So we figured well, we'll just count them out.. I'd write them an email telling them how disappointed I was in their lack of customer service.. and let that be the end of it.. especially after waiting for at least a phone call saying sorry. I wrote them an email around 8pm that night and I tried to keep it really civil, considering no one had even returned our call after 10 hours.

---

Fast forward to today around 5 minutes ago - they call and I recognize the number and I let it go to voicemail. I was in our computer lab and didn't feel like logging off, going outside just to answer it. So when they leave a voice message, I listen to it..

It is just bizarre.

The manager first off apologizes for the mix up. That the coordinator didn't let them know that she had set up an appointment. She didn't show up for work today and when they started looking through the stuff, they realized she had taken $1000 from their petty cash. That they were surprised since they do such extensive background checks for their employees. So they have been in contact with the police. Its so hard to find help. That they would completely understand if we don't want to do business with them, but they are going to send us a coupon for a free special occasion cake...

--

So we'll see if the special occasion cake coupon shows up. Thats just the weirdest excuse I've heard for a missed appointment.

DIY Favors?

We still have awhile to go before we have to start making concrete decisions.. Our wedding is next september.. So 11 months to go... but..

I went to dinner at Aaron's grandma's house earlier in the week. She was talking about potentially making the food for the wedding, but she said that we'd probably have to cut the guest list... which we really can't do. Our venue requires at least 75 people or we pay for their drinks anyway.

I was thinking that maybe we could make the favors. I always see those wedding cake shaped cookie favors that places sell for 3 to 4 dollars each. We could do them for so much cheaper than that.. and they'd probably look and taste just as good...

Something like this:


I found some cookie cutters online for around $4-15 each.. depends on what you want it to look like.

I was thinking that with the holidays coming up, we could make up a sample batch and see how they turn out....

I dont know, I'll have to talk it over with Aaron and see what he thinks, and then ask his grandma what she thinks... we could just end up doing something else, or buying something. Who knows.

Papapavlos Tasting

We went to a tasting at a restaurant on Friday night. I was pleasantly surprised it was more like dinner than a tasting. We each got an appetizer plate. We also each got a separate dinner. I got roasted chicken with fresh herbs, rice pilaf and veggies. Aaron got roasted sirloin, mashed red potatoes and veggies. Both were really good. The appetizers were really good too.

I was kind of surprised because all we had to pay for was our drinks. Everything else was free.

Its a greek restaurant here in town, Papapavlos, so one of the appetizers was spankopita. I loved it. So we talked to the owner for a bit. He didn't really say much about totals or anything. We discussed some stuff. They are going to send us a proposal. I hope that they send it soon, because I really really hope it doesn't end up being triple what we think its going to be... a lot of places have ended up being waaay more than we thought it would be. I'm getting a little sick of it.

Cake Tasting

So I stopped by the Burgess bakery to get my taster samples.

However, today my journalism class was cancelled and I was able to stop by at 11. Since I hadn't really made an appointment, I didn't realize that they had actually booked me an appointment to pick them up at 1... This would have been good to know. So they werent ready when I got there.

I ended up having to just go home and then come back later after 1 to get the cakes. Aaron went with me. Then we just tried at home. Which is why I have a picture on one of our plates. I kind of liked the sampling at home thing because we were really able to just be honest with what we liked and everything without being afraid of hurting their feelings.
anyways. So we ended up getting 5 cake samples.

Going in a circle from left to right: white cake with rum custard, white cake with strawberry filling, marble (?) cake with raspberry filling, chocolate cake with custard filling and chocolate cake with mousse filling.

I put a ? after marble because do you see the marbling? If you notice on the bottom layer of the cake you can see a small tiny little line of marbling. Not what I was expecting.

Aaron's aunt had recommended them to us saying that she had some at her friends house and it was the best cake she had ever had. Well it wasn't. Some of the other cakes we'd tasted were waaay better than these.
Needless to say I won't be making an appointment to come back.

I called the place we went to last Sunday, Jan's Sweet Treasures, and ordered a small tasting cake. White cake with strawberry filling and the meringue icing. So we're going to pick that up next weekend so that we can just taste and see what a finished product would look like. We aren't getting any decorations on it, although I wonder if we were if it would go up much. I'd kind of like to see the decorations in person.

Maybe I'll call the other place we went to and order the same cake - Kat's Cakes - white cake with strawberry filling and meringue icing and see how they compare against each other.

The difficult baker

When I'm not working on school stuff, I've been trying to call caterers and bakeries and get price quotes. We have a tasting set up for tomorrow night. Burgess Bakery said they only do tastings on Mondays, Tuesday and Wednesday. So I asked how I could get samples for Aaron if I took an appointment during one of those days. I tried to tell them that he works out of town and is unavailable those days.
So basically they said that if I found anyone to do a tasting on the weekend, they weren't very good bakers and I should really wonder about them. That they have a life too and can't meet on Sundays. Friday and Saturday are their busiest days and they can't take anytime out to meet with anyone those days as it would be unfair to anyone whose cake they are working on. Well you know, a simple "no, I'm sorry but we can't accomodate you because those are our busiest days" really would have sufficed.
Plus they went on to chastise me for not being able to pick out a cake without my fiance. Well Aaron and I have two very different tastes in cake. He has to be able to try the chocolate because if its too chocolate-y he won't eat it. Plus some of the white/yellow cakes he doesn't like either. So yeah, he needs to try it because its really important that he like the cake too.. it is his wedding too after all.
Yeah so I'm picking up samples from them tomorrow after school and they are letting me take them home. Then if I like them, I can make an appointment. I know its an exception but this was only after asking to speak with the manager - the person who picked up the phone kept confusing me, didn't seem to know what she was talking about and couldn't seem to answer simple questions if it wasn't included in her little rhetoric already.
The original person who answered the phone, actually suggested that Aaron take a day off so that he could come in. What?!? Yes Aaron will call in sick to his job just so he can come taste some cake. What planet are these people living on?
I doubt will go with them. Its just they were recommended to us by someone who has eaten their cakes. They are letting me pick up three samples for us both. I'm just hoping they had a bad day the day that I called. I can't possibly be the first person who can't come in on those days. I find it really hard to believe that they get much business that way.

My difficult maid of honor.. :(

So, I'm talking with Maya about the blue and green color scheme I saw that I liked..




and she makes a face.. then said, why can't we just wear black?

Augh. I swear. Why can't she just wear what i want. Its not like I'm choosing a combo of neon green and neon orange.. but even if I was.. just wear it. Its one day. If you don't like it, then you can burn it later. really I think that blue isn't bad.

I'm just so sick of everyone making faces, complaining about stuff.. this is our wedding and the only person that needs to like it - is Aaron.

I'm just going to stop telling her stuff. I think I'll just show up with a dress I chose and have her buy it. She's really hard to take dress shopping because she won't try on anything thats not in her size.If its too big or too small, she won't even put it on. Do you know how hard it is to find dresses in her exact size?

Well I'm going to go to bed. I just wanted to get that out. Its been bugging me since I spoke with her before lunch.

Tasting galore

We made it just in time for the cake tasting at 3:30 at Kat's Cakes. The shop was closing at 4. We had to wait a bit since the people before us were still there. We just wandered around the shop. When it was finally our turn, we discovered that the group before us had pretty much eaten the last of the cake. We got one seriously small sliver of white cake, two huge slices of chocolate cake and a micro bite of pumpkin cake and two big slices of spice cake.

So we basically didn't really get anything we were interested in. We wanted to taste the white cake with some of the fillings, but really we only each got a small bite. Spice cake was out. We tried it but weren't interested in it for a wedding cake, same for pumpkin. We were interested in white and chocolate.. the fillings were another story. We got the most funky filling options for us to taste.. Guava, Mango..etc. We had to ask to try strawberry and cherry. The only plus was the Swiss Meringue Buttercream.. It was heaven. We had to ask for a second tasting cup - basically because that was the only thing we liked. So I asked about being able to taste specific flavors and she said that we would have to buy 6" taster cakes in order to taste further flavors.. even though we didn't really get any flavors at all.. other than chocolate.

Then the pricing... it was $220 over what we were quoted at the bridal show we went to. I remember because Aaron liked some strange looking cake, so I asked how much it was. The owner said it was $500 because it was in fondant and it has intricate work. However if I wanted something simple in buttercream it would be around $300. Well our quote for our simple butter cream cake was $520.

I asked if the pricing had gone up and she said no. I got the feeling that she was just a clerk there, so I decided to send an email to the manager later.

Tomorrow, we are going to another shop, the Dutch Bakery, who says they are $3.00 a slice. So we'll see. I went in on Tuesday to pick out flavors and it just seemed weird. They had all these flavors but they seemed they were already paired with fillings and frostings. So I'm wondering if we just get one flavor or if we can get more than 1 flavor. They were really busy and the clerk was helping me didn't know much about the flavors and stuff and kept having to ask her mom about the flavors. I mean with names like the "Princess cake", its not too self explanatory. It didn't say white cake with strawberry filling or anything. So I figured I'd just ask questions tomorrow at the tasting.

We also have one on Sunday too. We are going to be all caked out. Then next friday night we have a tasting at a restaurant for catering, then the weekend after that we have another catering tasting and a cake tasting. We are going to be fat by the end of this month.

I did talk to a caterer in Sacramento about catering - Asante Catering. Their website says $21 pp for 1 entree and add $4 for another entree. Well. Thats not bad. Well that doesn't include staffing - another $600 and linens - another $300 and wine glasses - another $200 and cake plates - another $200... and a bunch of other miscellaneous charges. So really thats not $25 its $38 a person and that without tax and gratuity. I think our whole quote came out to be about $4600!!

The more I talk to caterers the more I regret that we didn't book the one I liked when we had the chance.

Aaron's perfect caterer

I found the perfect caterer:



http://www.in-n-out.com/cookout_trailer.asp

In-N-Out®Cookout Trailers are perfect for corporate picnics, parties, and otherspecial events. You can enjoy the same delicious hamburgers,cheeseburgers, and Double-Double burgers that we serve in our stores,almost anywhere you want.

Hamburger
Cheeseburger
Double-Double
Grilled Cheese
20 oz. Fountain Drinks
Chips

Minimum $1,250
Total 1.5 hours service

New caterers?

Unprepared conversation
So I've been trying to hunt down a caterer since our last one kind of fell through. So I called all the caterers on our sites preferred vendor list and a bunch of others in the area. We basically need someplace that won't require a huge deposit upfront.

So one place called back pretty much right away after I had left a message on the owners cell phone. What they had told me to do - when I called. I am happy they called back right away. However he was on vacation up in the mountains... so he didn't have much to tell me. Other than to email him a list of preferences so we can come in for a tasting maybe on Friday or Saturday night.. but he didn't know which weekend he would be available. If you don't have your schedule available, why call potential clients and suggest that they just come in sometime.. but you'll call back and figure out when.

He wasn't prepared to really answer any questions, like about pricing.. but I guess we can go in - get free food and if its too much, then oh well.

Colors?

So I saw this on Martha Stewart's website the other day:

Perfect Palettes: Emerald and Aqua

See article here



These are photos I saved previously

i think maybe we could do emerald green, aqua blue and maybe add another color like teal or a darker blue.. and maybe have pink flowers? or maybe just nix the pink roses all together and have blue, white and green flowers instead?
Like instead of this: which I have previously taken to the florist as kind of what I wanted:

Bridesmaids:

Mine:


Maybe we could do something like this:
Bridesmaids:

Mine:

or I could mix the two? I don't know..

Caterer was already booked :(

So Aaron finally decided that we should go with the caterer I originally spoke with a month ago. So I called them to confirm and basically they are already booked and we are SOL. So now I'm back to square 1.

augh..

Its so frustrating..

He keeps hemming and hawing about the prices and won't ever make a decision and when he finally does, its already too late. I wish he'd just make a decision. Now we probably won't be able to book a place for awhile until we can get a deposit ready.