Photography

Photography was the first thing we booked after booking the ceremony and reception locations. I used a service to find her since I was having a hard time finding a quality photographer within our budget.

I HIGHLY suggest using http://www.onewed.com/ as a way to find your vendors. I love the site in general - lots of good reviews and more but my favorite part is their match maker vendor service. Basically - you fill out a little form stating what kind of vendor you're looking for, when the wedding is, how much you're willing to pay and a few other details. Then, that information gets shot out to local vendors who are signed up with One Wed and they contact you back if they're willing and able to work with you!

I got about 10 responses back about photography and after looking at all of their websites and getting a feel for each of them, we intereviewed two photographers before deciding on Cheryl Neuharth Photography. Cheryl has a great eye as well as great taste. She wasn't booked for the weekend of our wedding so she gave us a great deal on her services since she understood our budget and was willing to work with us. I'm SO pleased with her work and that we were able to find a great photographer for a great price. It IS possible!! (note - I have tried this service with some other vendor categories and have received no responses - so you just have to try what you can!)

Check out some of her shots...

Let Them Eat Cake

By far, the best part of planning a wedding is cake tastings!

I'm a serious cake lover in the first place and so to get to go to taste cake for free is absolutely my dream. :)

As with most things during my wedding planning, I made a spreadsheet of all of the cake vendors in the area that I came across in my blog reading, wedding magazines and general vendor googling. I then would get a feel for them on their website, inquire about prices if they weren't listed online and narrowed my search down to 3 bakeries. We visited two and have decided which one we're going with based on price, value and customer service.

The first one we visited was Queen of Cakes (Edina, MN) and is the one we're going to book this week. We happened to go on my birthday so it was extra awesome for me! We worked with the owner, Patti, who was super sweet, understanding and generally awesome. She looked at the inspiration pictures that I had, listened to our thoughts and concerns and drew up a sketch for us. Then we got to eat cake! We sampled about 8 different flavors of cake (mmmmmmmmmmm) and about 4 different filling flavors. Our favorite were red velvet, german chocolate, marble and lemon raspberry.

We've decided to go with cupcakes and then a small two-tiered (4' and 6') for the head table. My mom actually came up with a great idea to do a cupcake stand on each table with enough cupcakes for all at the table plus a dome shaped floral arrangement on the top tier of the cupcake/dessert stand! I loved it - so we're going to have to DIY the stands (a three tiered stand like that doesn't exist, apparently) - but that's OK!

The cake at the head table will be very simple, clean and modern with white buttercream, black ribbon along the bases of the tiers and fresh green spider mums as an accent. I love the design - it's so classic and hot.

This picture best showcases the design except they will be round cakes and there won't be the dots on there.

to friendor or not?

The boy and I took a weekend trip to Madison this past weekend to visit his sister and while in route we found ourselves in, what else, wedding discussions. The topic this time? Music.

You see, DB and I are of the musical nature. We met in a music group, we have lots of musical friends, we routinely listen to music in the car that "normal" people would cringe at (and do!). So naturally, music is an important part of a big event as a wedding might be for us.

It all began with talking about the wedding party. You see - he has one sister and one brother and I have two brothers. Naturally, he wants his brother to be a groomsman and his sister to be one of my bridesmaids. No problem. Except what about my two brothers? If all is fair in love and war - my brothers would be both be groomsmen as well. But that doesn't leave very many spots left for DB to have friends in the line-up. So then I thought of the option of my brothers doing the ceremony music (not sure how considering one is an ex-trumpeter gone drummer and the other is a trumpeter). But DB countered with - "Um...have you not thought about the many, many friends we have that are excellent musicians that we could book for close to free?" and I'm all - "oh yeah."

the question at hand is this, my lovelies...do you use friendors or risk offending friends who have the same talent by hiring a "professional"?

We have numerous friends who have groups who could play at the ceremony, cocktail hour (will there even be such a think?), dinner and reception. But - would they rather enjoy the wedding instead of playing? Or would it be a smart move financially to hire a friendor instead of a vendor?

None the less - our wedding/reception will be a rockin' one...you betcha!