Cheese & Flowers & Birthday Cake

More quality time in the car today...

Today is my mom's bday (Happy Birthday Mom!) so we decided to multitask and get a little wedding planning accomplished while we were in CT.

We planned to meet w/ Leah, our florist, today for a fun little mockup in Marlborough, CT. Since the stars always seem to be in alignment for JC & I, we had the opportunity to visit nearby Cato Corner Farm for a cheese tasting. Anna, our caterer, recommended Cato Corner for great local cheeses to serve at our cocktail hour. They are a small farm in Colchester, CT with only 40 cows yet they service some of the top restaurants in the country including Daniel, Tocqueville, and Per Se in NYC. (Per Se is owned by Thomas Keller...owner of the ever-impressive The French Laundry in Napa, CA at which we had the luxury of dining this past fall.)

Needless to say, the cheese was amazing. We tasted some young and aged varieties and the complexities and depth of flavor are distinct in the aged cheeses. Delicious. I can pretty much guarantee you'll enjoy!

Next it was on to a couple hours of flowers, and vases, and curly willow...oh my! Leah is so helpful and SO PATIENT when it comes to JC & I. First of all, I have absolutely zero creative vision so, unless you're showing me a full arrangement of florals, I have no idea what you're talking about. Second of all, JC has lots of opinions and ideas so he doesn't do the typical "glazed-over" man thing that florists usually see. End of story, we're a handful. Add in my sister Heidi, MOH, who came along for the ride (and cheese)...Leah had her work cut out for her today. We reviewed the various vessel options, corsages, bouquets, colors, etc. So much detail, but visualizing some of the arrangements and discussing our options gives us more and more confidence that Leah will do a fantastic job for our wedding.


We finished the day at Mohegan Sun, for mom's birthday dinner at Todd English's Tuscany. A little wine, some tasty flatbreads, and fallen chocolate cake w/ my fam made for a relaxing end to a busy day. Then it was back in the car for more quality time...

Save the Dates...Out!

Envelopes printed,

stuffed,

stamped and mailed.

I am so relieved to finally have our save the dates out (which you've hopefully received, if you're reading this!) Probably our biggest headache of wedding planning to date. Such tiny pieces of paper with such little (but important) information...


I hope choosing our invitations will be easier!

Breathing a confident sigh of relief

It's very rare that JC, King of Data (clinical trial manager for life-altering medical studies), finds something he likes and says, "I want it." I like to think I'm one of those exceptional phenomenons but I doubt it. This has happened 2x during our wedding planning process. The first was during our venue search, which was so daunting we haven't even attempted to blog about it yet. The second was after one of our photographer interviews. You would think I'd be the supporting fian-cée and say, "Great! Let's do it!" Fortunately, I am Queen of Data (MBA in statistics), so I'm not.

We researched as many, if not more, photographers as we did venues. I don't know how many people have told us that the photographer is one of the most important vendors we'll hire because their images will be the only tangible memories we'll have after the wedding is over. For our lifetime. That's for-e-ver. We ruled out quite a few referrals after looking at the photographers' websites because we were looking for something special.

The first photographer we met with was great. She was referred to us by one of my clients and JC liked her website and images so much we set up an appointment right away. After meeting with her, JC said, "She's perfect. Let's just book her." Wouldn't you assume I'd want to make the process as easy as possible? Nope. I told him we should wait to meet w/ the other photogs.

The last photographers we met with were AWESOME. We'd been referred to the husband and wife team by a florist (actually, the florist we did not hire). When JC & I checked out out their website and blog we were blown away. Their work was clearly of a higher caliber than any other photographer we reviewed. Would they be too expensive for us?? Yep.

Ok, so out-of-our-budget, cream of the crop photographer or reasonably-priced, really great photographer? Hmmm...

I can't believe how difficult this decision is. I actually lost a little sleep over this one. While JC snored away, I debated on whether it was worth it to pay more than we wanted for photography, and potentially blow our budget, or hire a really great photographer that we almost hired anyway.

More expensive, creatively stylish or affordable, classic style? Oh man...

I called both photographers to get their bottom lines in terms of inclusions (engagement sessions, cd's/dvd's with our images, albums) and total package prices. To work with the more expensive duo we'd need to cut out some of the extras we were hoping for.

Tastes great, less filling? AARRGHH!!!

Finally JC & I decided that our priority was the quality of the work and it was worth exceeding this portion of our budget because we'd always wonder what our album could have looked like. Then, the other night, I get an email from the husband/wife team that completely put me at ease in our decision. They were recently married themselves and they said they totally appreciate our situation and are willing to give us the images from our engagement shoot, which will save us a pretty penny. YAY! I think more than the savings, I'm happy because I feel comfortable that they understand what we're going through and are sensitive to the stresses of planning a wedding.

So meet Justin and Mary! They are fantastic and fun and you'll be seeing them soon at a wedding near you...

We have our Florist

I have to say that wedding flowers is the one area JC & I had absolutely no idea how to budget for. How much do flowers cost? Who knows?? Apparently they can cost A LOT.

JC & I have some grand ideas about what we'd like to display at the wedding to keep with the "natural" theme we have going. We'd like to do some cool arrangements using grasses, herbs, and foliage but we also plan to have some beautiful bright flowers as well. JC has transplanted about 30 pg hydrangeas from his little garden plot in the city to his parents' house, so we're going to use lots of these big gorgeous blooms.

We really only interviewed 2 florists in CT: one is pretty well known in Mystic and does lots of events all over the state; the other was referred to us by my cousin Marsha (making her 2nd appearance in this blog!). When we got their proposals, I honestly wouldn't have been surprised if they were $1000 or $10000. Fortunately they weren't $10k, but they were more than we wanted to spend on flowers when there are other priorities (like food!) to focus on.

We decided to work with Leah, Marsha's referral, from It's So Ranunculus in Marlborough, CT. She was so cute and fun and excited about our ideas when we met w/ her. She's also very willing to work w/ any budget and is planning a "mock design" consultation for us because I have absolutely NO creative vision! I'm excited to watch her play w/ flowers and foliage to see what our arrangements are going to look like. Watch for more posts with pictures soon!

save the dates have arrived

We have finally received our save the dates after a few delays from einvite.com...needless to say, we'll be going with another vendor for the rest of our wedding stationary. We have retrieved all of the invitees addresses, so now we just need to address the envelopes and have the envelopes' postage hand cancelled.

Anyway, here's a sneak peak of the cards, click on the image for a bigger pic.