Sarah and Matthew

Abandon Ship!

We recently were having issues with our caterer. To sum up the problem, they wanted us to buy a lot more food than was needed. Having researched the appropriate percentage of extra food needed for a buffet, I wasn't about to cave in to their outrageous demands. They weren't going to budge on the issue either.
Solution? We got a new caterer. Technically, it's the first caterer that we originally wanted to go with. We thought that they had gone out of business or something because they weren't returning our phone calls. Well, in my frustration with the other caterer, I started digging to see if I could get a hold of them again. Desperate times called for desperate measures. Lo-and-behold the caterer that we originally wanted had changed their number shortly after we first met with them and probably didn't get our phone calls. I found this out through their new website, which also wasn't in existence when we first met with them.
All I can say is that I'm relieved. Now we just need to get our deposit back from the other one and we are good to go!

A Place to Stay

I wanted to quick mention that if you have a larger family or are looking for a cheaper means of spending the night, I highly recommend checking out the vacation houses around the area of the wedding. My immediate family found huge one that is being split among several families for a cheaper price than what they would normally spend on a bunch of hotel rooms. Plus, the house is gorgeous and is walking distance from the beach. If not family, check with your friends on the idea. Just a thought.

I also have to mention that I accidently copied in the caterer on my griping about the... caterer's menu. I was pretty red in th face when I realized what I had done. Let's hope that this is the worst embarrassment that I will have in this planning process!

Registry

I've added the wedding registry page. There's now a link to it at the top of the page. Today Sarah and I walked around Macy's with a scanner and picked out some things we liked. Sarah also spent some time putting together a list on Amazon.com. Between the two of them there's a fairly broad range of stuff.

Oh my CAKE

I had to share some of the following wedding cakes from the Cake Wrecks blog. They were too good to keep to myself! You can see more awesome and awful cake pictures at Cake Wrecks.

If you are a Trekkie:

If you prefer some StarGate:

How about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?

When all else fails, you might as well curl up and die:

New Website Stuff

There are some new additions to the site. Up top there is now a link to the directions and hotel. This page now also has links on the side to show posts from specific months, so everything isn't all on one page.

It's for the Ladies!

This last weekend I went out with Nicole, Tina, and Michelle to get bridesmaid dresses for the wedding. We hit three different places, finally finding a very nice dress that worked for everyone at David's Bridal. From that decision, we've slightly tweaked our wedding colors since the bridesmaid dresses will be in a nice medium blue shade instead of the sky blue/silver/blush pink that we tentatively had picked before. They called the color of the dresses Cornflower Blue, which I thought was a ridiculous name for a color until I actually looked it up. Turns out there are cornflowers (not related directly to corn) that come in yellow, blue, and purple. Who'd have known?

I also found a nice shoulder shrug that will go along with my dress, which pleases me to no end because my online searches were failing miserably. And, it won't cost me an arm and a leg, either. This too is a good thing since we find our original budget was a far cry from the reality of what we will be spending. Oh well...

FAQs

I'm already starting to get some questions on the details. I'll answer a couple right now.
Q. Are kids welcome at the reception?
A. Definitely. You are welcome to bring your children. Just make sure that you indicate the correct number of chairs on the reply card or website confirmation. Also, let us know ahead of time via email if you need a high chair so we can figure out if the reception hall has the number needed.
Q. What about the dress code? You are getting married outside, right?
A. We will be outside by the beach for an hour for the ceremony. The ceremony is taking place at the pavilion, so the chairs won't be on sand or anything. Given that it may be warmer during that time of year, I'm anticipating that the dress code for the ceremony may be more casual while the reception dress code is semi-formal. Feel free to bring a change of clothes for the reception - they have several places to change at the reception hall. I will also mention that the area around the pavilion is a little windy at times so keep that in mind.
If you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

Flowers, Hotels, and Cake!

This past Saturday Sarah and I went down to scout out some florists, as well as take some measurements of the Pavilion to make sure that it's big enough and has outside power and such. Now we're working with the woman from the Parks system to see if they have chairs or if we'll need to have a rental place bring them in. We're also getting the inside of the Pavilion in case of inclement weather, and so that we'll have access to the restroom. Our next stop was the hotel where we didn't get the rooms reserved, but we got it straightened out on Monday so we'll get the information onto the website soon.

Sarah's family is looking into renting a house on the beach since there are a lot of people coming down. We're trying to set up a visit to take a look, and we also need to decide which of the florists to go with and get that lined up. Sarah has set up an online registry with Amazon and has a trial run with the makeup and hair people and she's going bridesmaid dress shopping with her girls next weekend.

We did decide on the cake, though, and with only one stop. Strongbow has amazing cake. We're probably going to get the chocolate raspberry mouse. It was really tasty, with really good frosting, and I'm not that big a fan of cake so that's saying something.

Lastly, I made it over to the tuxedo rental place so the guys that are in the wedding will be getting an email from me shortly to let them know where and when to get fitted. It feels like things are coming together, but it's a lot to keep track of. Thank Google for Spreadsheets!

Save the Dates

We've got our Save the Dates back from the printer and so we'll be sending them out soon. Of course, if you're visiting this website you either already know the information printed on them or you've gotten one, so this post may be pointless. Sarah's been making phone calls and we are looking good for the Portage Lakefront Pavilion, and we have the hotel situation figured out, so as soon as we have those buttoned up we'll get to work on the actual invitations.

Once we get to that point we'll start building out this website a bit more to get the information if you don't have the invitation handy, links to reserve a hotel room, a map with directions, and all that good stuff. We'll also have an online RSVP so you can respond either here or by mail (or both, if you're so inclined).

Amari Vogue, oh yeah...

We booked our main honeymoon hotel today. We will be staying at the Amari Vogue Resort located in Krabi, Thailand. This particular place was chosen after much digging through Tripadvisor.com and looking at many, many other places. It actually took quite a while for Matt and I to pick a place because we had so many desires that we wanted fulfilled for our honeymoon. The word picky may not even be strong enough to describe our criteria.
The resort is listed #1 by Tripadvisor and had lots of glowing reviews. It was a little more expensive than we hoped, but will totally be worth it. I'm sure that you will agree with me after seeing these mind-boggling pictures. I really can't wait!