Videographer

After consulting my good friend google, I decided to meet with the videographer who seemed like the best deal. Because our wedding is on a sunday, he does them half off! so now my $1200 expense is now a $600 expense.

This guy wanted to meet at the Starbucks at Mockingbird station. It's kinda far for us to go coming from west plano, but for a good deal ill go just about anywhere lol.

I think this guy was trying too hard to seem artsy. putting aside he wanted to meet at a starbucks in a artsy part of town, he came dressed all in back with a painters type hat and tie. he seemed a little too eager to please but his work was good enough.

He brought some DVD cases with him that he was super proud of. they were 24$ each because he used a paper/fabric and put them all together himself. lol IF we decide to go with a videographer we will go with this guy. his work is good and he throws in a lot of "extras" for free. Autumn Video for all you using this blog to help you plan. but, with several unexpected things that are coming up, if i need to cut anything he will be the first to go.

HOW MUCH!?!?!?!

OMG! I cannot believe how much DJ's cost for weddings. I swear people hear the word wedding and they automatically jack up the price 300%. its just not fair to those of us who dont have unlimited funds. not to mention this was an expense I never budgeted for!

My good friend and bridesmaid was dating a DJ when I first started planning. He had told me to not worry about the entertainment, he'd be more than happy to DJ my wedding for me. Well, lets just say life has happened since I've started planning and hes not longer even answering my emails/facebook messages. I get that the situation has changed, but he did promise and the fact that his assistant (also a former friend) is pretty much lieing to me about still djing. you dont spend all that money on equipment and then just decide youre not doing it anymore esp for a friend whom you've already promised to help out. nevertheless it has left me searching for a DJ.

I thought they would be around a couple hundred dollars... man i was WAY off. Now I get that a DJ is super important to any real party. I NEED one and I want it to be a good one! There is going to be a lack of booze at the wedding so a good DJ/MC is even more important than normal. the CHEAPEST DJ I am finding is 750. that is WITH a whole bunch of discounts. most of the ones that seem really good online and in reviews are closer to 1200! FOR MUSIC! I have been asking all my friends if they have any DJ friends that will help me out and reduce their price for a friend or a friend. I pose this question to all my readers. help?

Some of you may suggest just hooking up my ipod and letting it DJ. and while this would be a cheap solution to my huge budget problem...there is NO sound system in my venue and we would still be left needing to rent the equipment. which.. runs about the same as a dj that comes with the works. oh jeeze... what to do?!

Have the cake and eat it too!

This has been my favorite part to date! I decided it was time to pick a cake! So i made appts at 3 top bakeries in the metroplex. Delicious Cakes, Frosted Art Bakery, and Romano's Bakery.

At the fist apt, at DC, Alison came with anthony and i to taste yummy treats. I thought it was strange that when i made the appts not a single bakery wanted to know what cakes we wanted to try. but i thought oh well and went with it. Well at this first shop, we got a list of all the flavors and were allowed to choose 8 flavors of cake to try. So we piked the best sounding 8 and the flavors we liked here boiled down to the double fudge chocolate for anthonys cake and the strawberry and white-white cake for my cake. Alison was surprised that I didnt rush to make the order and go ahead and sign the contract. well... i had two more appts lined up and i wanted to make sure i was getting the best cake for the best price. the lady that helped us was nice enough and at that time seemed to know what she was talking about so we left there feeling pretty good. only minor thing that bothered us was how much they were going to charge for anthonys scuplted cake. they didnt even want to sculpt most of it they wanted us to bring in the parts... its like why even bother!?

so the next week Anthony, MY DAD (yes he actually came to a cake tasting! as a matter of fact both of our dads have been to at least one part of the planning. its kinda cool) and I went to frosted art bakery. they are located in the design district so when we first got there we totally thought we were in the wrong place. But with the huge decorated van we found the right spot. it was a really small place, COVERED in cakes. there was one cake that had to be 10 feet tall! When we sat down with the cake planner she was actually really interested in both the cake designs we picked out and got really excited. This place was a lot more professional. They brought out 10 different cakes in bite sized pieces one plate per person instead of us all munching on the same pieces like we did at the first place. she then went on to tell us HOW to taste it to get the optimal flavor. I really like the Italian cake but since anthony doesnt like nuts that was out. so we picked two flaovrs for me and two chocolate flavors for him and they said they would sculpt the whole cake unlike what the other place had told us. now you could tell the difference in the cake places with the price. but id much rather have someone who really knows what they are doing, more professional and better tasting even if it costs a little more.

the last place we went to it was me anthony and my mom. this place was just so unprofessional and bordering on rude. they had lost their cheat sheet so they didnt know which cake was which on the plate... hello its your cake you should know! they also didnt want to sculpt the whole cake. and their unprofessionalism was bordering on just plain rudeness! Even though it was ok cake and the cheapest price, we will NOT be ordering from Romano's Bakery. I;m surprised they made it into Dweddings best cakes. Then to make things worse! the lady had the audacity to ask us to sign the contract right then and there.

So we will be going with Frosted Art Bakery. and Each tier will be a different flavor, even in the grooms cake. another awesome thing about this bakery is that they will completely replicate our top tier a year out so that we dont have to save the cake for our anniversary... this is complimentary.

so i really do get to have my cake and eat it to!

The best part of wedding planning!

Hello all.

With few comments and even less followers I had decided to abandon my attempts at blogging. Turns out a few of you actually missed my rantings and ravings so I've decided to pick back up where I left off. Maybe you can turn your enthusiasm into comments and we can make it a win win.

So we are currently just under 8 months away from our big day and last month we decided to get serious about what we are going to feed all of you lovely people who are going to share in our festivities. I started out, where I always do... googleing all the places that cater to the venue.

Here is where our list gets shortened, there is no kitchen in the old red and because of a lack of a sprinkler system you cant even bring the ovens in. So we were given a list of about 15 caterers that could still work under those conditions. I originally thought that i wanted a sit down dinner where everyone had their own plate and it was brought to them. but the first 3 caterers i talked to all wanted my entire wedding budget to do that. So I kept searching. I narrowed it down to 3 caterers based on their menu options. I have a lot of muslim family members coming in so finding options for them that are tasty can be a little tricky.

Two Sisters Catering was just way too expensive even after all the "discounts" that they were quoting me that I never even went for a tasting.

Ah yes, I said tasting! THAT is the best part of wedding planning. All the free food lol. So we went for tastings at the other two options I narrowed it down to.

Culinary Art Catering has an open house once a month so My mom, Alison and I went to one. but we werent really impressed with the food. there wasnt near enough flavor. the chicken was dry and the only thing that was really good were the mashed potato martinis. (mashed potato bar in a martini glass) But I decided to give them one more chance because with them I would still be able to do the plated meal within my budget, and I hadn't tried any of the fish options. So Anthony and I went back and found that while their fish dishes were WAY better than their chicken dishes, there was still flavor and umph missing. That, and since not everyone would eat fish, we'd be giving a so so meal to more than half our guests.

So we went for another tasting at Pappdeaux! OH YUM! their cajun food was just soo tasty and Anthony even liked the crab cakes, which never happens. This was hands down the better of the two foods. They even have the ok to put up grills in the back and make everything fresh on site! but it'd be buffet style.

So we had a little dilemma of better service over better food. and luckily for all of you fortunate enough to come to our wedding, we went with better food. NO i will not tell you the full menu, just cuz im blogging about experiences doesnt mean you get to know EVERYTHING before the big day! :-P