Wedding 'Cake'

Notice that cake is in quotes. That's because we aren't having a traditional wedding cake! Early on in the planning process Ben mentioned that he thought it would be awesome to do cupcakes and pair them with a drink or two like one of our favorite places, Sweet Revenge. So once Tensing Pen agreed that we could have cupcakes we had the task of figuring out how to pair them with a drink from our wedding. Without knowing their house wines, we chose to try to pair cupcakes with Red Stripe. This excitedly (the only thing Ben has been excited about yet) gave us an excuse to go to our favorite cupcake shop, Crumbs, and get a variety pack of cupcakes.

Here's what we were working with starting at top left we have: m&m, raspberry, grasshopper (Chocolate mint), ROW 2: hostess, yellow cake with vanilla frosting, chocolate chip, ROW 3: Red Velvet, yellow cake with chocolate frosting, oreo cookie, ROW 4: Chocolate something, coconut, chocolate blackout, and finally strawberry because that was a basic flavor missing from the mix.

We wanted to focus on the more classic flavors that we thought that Tensing Pen could replicate. So we each cracked open a Red Stripe and go tasting away!

Ben very much enjoyed this wedding task!

Here's the aftermath!

So you can definitely tell our favorites. The raspberry almost completely disappeared as well as the two yellow cakes. So we choose yellow cake with raspberry filling and vanilla frosting & yellow cake with chocolate frosting. We definitely wanted some chocolate in there because so many of our friends (and my mom) are HUGE chocolate lovers. So there it is folks! Try them out with a Red Stripe!

Menu Selections

Tensing Pen has 3 menus for us to choose from. When we first looked at them we knew we wouldn't select one straight down and knew we were going to mix and match from them. We also had to consider our ethics (sustainable seafood is huge for me) as well as dietary restrictions (shellfish allergies, vegetarians, etc) in our selection process. These things basically choose our menu for us. Behold the reception menu:

Appetizer - saffron risotto with slivers of chicken on truffle glaze; Vegetarian = risotto with steamed veggies.

Salad - Charred / pineapple / mint mixed garden greens / cherry tomatoes / toasted nuts citrus vinaigrette

Entrees - Blue cheese crusted beef tenderloin / red wine peppercorn glaze Or Blackened sliver snapper with lintel papaya salsa; Vegetarian = TBD by the vegetarian guests (get your act together guys ;)

All Entrees are served with sour parsley whipped potatoes / Island pak-choy

Hair & Makeup Trial

In mid January, I went back to Saja for my first dress fitting. The wonderful thing about Saja is that the designer is the one fitting the dress. She's taking the measurements and putting the pins in place, crawling around on the floor to make sure the hem is in the correct place. My dress was then walked to the alterations place.

I took this opportunity to do a hair and makeup trial. I tried a different hair style and did my makeup pretty much like I always do when I go out.

Here are the results:

left: no makeup

right: makeup

Not a huge difference especially with the horrible lighting of my apartment. I'm planning on going to Sephora to get some help, closer to the big day.

I really liked the hair style I choose. It was fairly easy to do but definitely needed some hairspray to help hold it together. After I got out of the shower, I let my hair dry a bit and then pulled it into a side pony and loosely braided it. I let it dry like this all morning. I set the waves with mousse before pulling it back in sections to create the back. This may be a winner!

I also wanted to test toenail colors. Thankfully it was winter and no one noticed that I left the house in 2 different color polishes! I decided that the teal was too much (I figured it was), so I'm planning on doing something neutral-ish like this light pink on my left foot.

3 months!

1. Ben tried on some wedding bands to get a feel of what he likes. I have chosen my ring design and Ben is narrowing his down so we can send them to the jeweler to get made.

2. Centerpieces have been mocked-up.

Each table will have something similar to this on it. We got the lanterns from Ikea on a recent trip. Next steps = figuring out how many tables and ordering enough supplies, taking the glass out, making better numbers.

3. Dress fitting. Yesterday, I had my first fitting of my dress. There are very few alterations that need to be made. Tacking on my sash and flower as well as a bit of hemming since my shoes are so flat. I did my hair, hair, makeup and painted my toe nails for the trial as well. It was nice to look in the mirror with everything done. I was able to make a decision about my toenail color and I am sticking with the shoes I have. I had my hair half-up and half-down and wavy and liked it. The exact style may change though as it was pretty destroyed by the time I got home - I'm sure the hood on my coat didn't help that much...

First Hair Trial

We're almost 100 days from the wedding! It's getting down to crunch time. Tonight we're headed to a holiday party so I thought I might as well try a hairstyle I could try. I've been researching a lot of images on Pinterest.com. It's a fun place to kill an hour or two looking at pretty pictures. The nice thing is if you click on an image it sends you to the original url so I actually got a how-to for this one. Here's the original picture:

Photo from The Bride's Guide

It actually was fairly easy. I think it would stand out more if my hair was lighter which I'm hoping to make it for our wedding (highlights - not a full dye job). It's also really hard to take a picture of the back of your head.

It'll do for tonight. Looking back at the photo it looks like they dropped the top strand while I dropped the bottom strand each time. Hopefully it'll hold up all night!

UPDATE: While I did get a compliment on the hair, it didn't last very long once we started dancing. I will definitely keep this style in mind for nights out but not a keeper for the wedding.

Decor Decisions

The beauty of Jamaica will be our main 'decor' for our day. The ceremony will be outside on the rocks and the restaurant is open air with plenty of natural beauty surrounding it as well so any decor we do will be minimal.

I want our ceremony to be 'in the round' as pros like to call it. Basically, I want everyone surrounding us in a circle during the ceremony.

Photo from Jessamyn Harris Photography, via A Practical Wedding)

Thus there will be no aisle to decorate and any decor that we do to mark the ceremony space can't hinder anyone's view. So if I get my way and get to have that ceremony set-up there will be no decor needed. Scattering something like the pictured couple did wouldn't really work with the nice sea breeze we'll hopefully be experiencing.

While I haven't received more detailed pictures of the restaurant space we'll be using for our reception to get any further ideas about decor for that, I do figure I'll want to do centerpieces. However, they won't be what most people imagine when they hear the word centerpiece. There will be NO FLOWERS.

Having no flowers is very important to me for multiple reasons. First of all, the commercial flower industry is full of human rights and environmental abuses. If we wanted organic flowers they would have to be flown in from a fair distance at a huge price. Flying organic flowers from further away than conventional flowers kind of defeats the purpose. My mom is also allergic to a TON of flowers. Like seriously almost every flower. I also think they're wasteful and expensive, so no flowers here.

So now that I've squashed your idea of centerpieces here's some inspiration photos I've gathered for our centerpieces:

(all from google search of non-floral centerpieces)

So the common element is candles. The candles will either be on top of mirrors or driftwood and there may or may not be shells present. The shells bring up another contentious point for me - I don't want to be staring at the shell of an endangered species (conch) while I'm trying to enjoy my reception. Even if they are shells of abundant species, I want to know that they are sustainably harvested. So this once again may be difficult to make happen so they may not make an appearance at our wedding.

I sent these photos to a florist that works with Tensing Pen a few weeks ago with a description of what I was imagining and making sure all of my wants were clear and never heard back. I figure they will charge way to much money for some candles anyway so I'm soon going to start getting things together myself with a plan of how to get it down there.

Quick update

So I've been yelled at for not updating my blog but the truth is there isn't much to update on right now. But here's a quick rundown!

- We've basically received all of our RSVPs (we're still waiting on 1) and we need to send out invites to fill 3 more rooms based on the responses we've gotten.

- I'm waiting to hear back from a florist for a mockup and quote for our non-floral centerpieces. I'll do a full post on this soon I promise!

- Kenya is in the middle of some violence right now. Already talking to our safari company about that if it continues into the next year.

-People are starting to book rooms! YAY!

But that's about it. I'll start making some more definite plans with Tensing Pen in the new year. This will include our menu, cake/dessert, and timeline for the evening as well as events on Friday and Sunday.