Shout-out to all the wedding vendors

I managed to write this entire blog once already, then stupid FireFox crashed and lost half of it. Frustrating! I hate writing blogs twice. To all of you who just read my blog for the food, I apologize. I promise this is the very last post about the wedding!

All the wedding posts:
Engagement
Dress is found!
Bridesmaid Dresses
The first pictures
The wedding disasters
Professional pictures

I just thought I needed to do shout outs to all my vendors, since so many of them were so awesome.

The DJ
Kate and Rachel with Toast and Jam were our DJs. They were amazing. They played everything we wanted--even the strange stuff like Flight of the Conchords--at the exact right time and did an amazing job at knowing what the crowd wanted. There was TONS of dancing. And no cheesiness AT ALL. No chicken dance, no macarana, none of that. I've had several people tell me that our wedding had the best music they've ever seen at a DJ'ed wedding and Rachel and Kate are 100% responsible for that.

The photographer:
James Daley did our photography. He was terrific (as you can see). He didn't get flustered by any of my strange ideas (a carnival? Really?) and was totally willing to go for every shot. He must have taken 5000 pictures. He worked with us for 13 (THIRTEEN!) hours and never seemed tired. Plus, the man was everywhere at once while never being invasive. I don't know how he managed to get a billion pictures of the ceremony and never get in the way, but he did. I can't recommend him enough. He was easy to work with and the pictures are beautiful--what more could you want?

(Information about the limo will be inserted when Josh gets it to me Monday)
The reception site:
The reception was at White Eagle Golf Club. Lillian, the wedding coordinator there, was terrific to work with. The food was absolutely amazing--we selected pork and salmon as our choices and they were delicious. In fact, people keep mentioning the food to me--usually wedding food is fairly forgettable but WEGC's was terrific. The room was absolutely stunning and the ground were beautiful.

The flowers:
I randomly stumbled upon The Flower Basket. I saw an ad for them at the wedding dress shop and liked the name, so we went there. Our flower arrangements were terrific. Plus they let you see them the day before, which is great. I couldn't have been happier with our flowers and they were very reasonably priced. I knew they were the florist for me when I told Carol that I wanted roses for my bridesmaid bouquets and she said "oh, no, that would be way too expensive" and recommended a (superior) option. An honest vendor who will tell you that? Worth her weight in gold.



The wedding gown:
Wolsfelt's Victorian Bridal is one of the strangest names I've ever heard for a bridal shop. But if you live (or are going to be) in the Chicago-land area, I couldn't recommend them enough. They have an enormous range of wedding dresses including local talent (of which my gown was) in a large price range. On top of that, they have every bridesmaids dress known to man (only a slight exaggeration) at a cheaper price than any of the other shops I went to (the bridesmaid dress fiasco was totally Dessy's fault and not Wolsfelt's fault).

The tuxes:
Like everyone else, we went to Men's Warehouse for the tuxes. They are easy to work with, the tuxes are attractive, and they include EVERYTHING (shoes, cufflinks, socks, etc.). It is by far the easiest choice when you have a far-flung wedding party. And they carry a morning coat tux if you are obsessed with that like Josh was.

The rehearsal dinner:
Our rehearsal dinner was at Luigi's House, which is owned by Portillos. We rented a private room, which was private and spacious. The meal was family style and came with two appetizers, two salads, two entrees, two pastas, two sides, and two desserts for only $30 a person--that's an amazing amount of food, especially for the price. It was great food too and universally enjoyed by everybody.

Etsy vendors:

A TON of the wedding stuff was handmade from Etsy crafters. I feel they should be given their due also :)

Save-the-dates:
The save the dates were the very first thing I got off Etsy. The design was from an Etsy vendor (who has gone MIA since) and the printing was done by Viridian1. Viridian was extremely easy to work with and did a terrific job both typesetting the postcard side and on the graphics side. They were really professional looking and heavy duty.




Invitation printing:
I don't have a picture of our invitations but they were made by Ajalon. I kept putting off selecting the printer so they were rush ordered. Ajalon printed the invitations to the ceremony, reception, and rehearsal dinner, RSVP postcards, info card, envelopes, placecards, and table numbers. I only have a picture of a table number but they were all done in the cherry blossom style shown. The printing was excellent and on heavy paper and the shipping was fast.



Ring bearer pillow:
RomancingJuliet did a terrific job on the ring bearer pillow and was amazingly easy to work with. I actually forgot about this until the very last minute, so it was a wonderful thing to find someone so talented who was willing to do a rush order. The pillow was beautiful.



Champagne flutes:
The champagne flutes came from LaserBird. She also made some gorgeous moleskin notebooks which were part of the gift package that I gave my bridesmaids. The flutes are personalized with Chinese birds and our names but she will essentially engrave anything you want on them.



Stickers:
The stickers on the take-out boxes came from MAUPromos. They were really easy to work with and the stickers looked exactly like they looked on the website. Plus they were FAST. It's a really great way to customize something the cheaper way.




Crane cake topper:
The cake topper came from Localcolorist. Localcolorist has a wide selection of origami cranes in prints and various colors. Josh and I picked one each and they were great. I wish I still had them! They disappeared, I wish I still had them :(



Garter:
The garters came from LemonadeStandShop. It's not her normal thing but she did a great job. They were easily recognizable as steaks--and fancy steaks at that :) I loved them!



Thank you parasol:
The thank-you parasol was made by Megalinn03 and was terrific. I have packed it away for future events or if friends want to borrow it.




Other vendors:

Cranes:
I thought that origami cranes would be cute scattered around but I knew I didn't want to make them. That's where AvantGarde789 came in. She was willing to put together a custom color combination (pink, light pink, and brown) and even threw in two giant cranes! I saw a bunch of people take them as favors. They were perfect. I let the wedding party decide where to put them and they had one at every placesetting, on the candy buffet, everywhere. Honestly, there were even a couple in the bathrooms



Card house:
My aunt Charlotte made a terrific box for my grandmother's 50th wedding anniversary. I hoped she would make me a box for my cards. Instead, she made this high end upholstered, shingled little house! It was beautiful, luxurious, and perfect. She owns Devon Shops in New York City, which specializes in hand-crafted French and English furniture.

Professional wedding pictures PICTURE HEAVY

I promise this to be the final blog about the wedding (other than the vendor thank you, which is going up today too). I wasn't going to post any more pictures, but believe or not, I've been asked to do add the final ones :) This is a random conglomeration of my favorites. I tried to limit the amount of pictures of people other than Josh and myself because I don't know what other people's views on having their pictures splashed on the internet are (and not because they didn't take gorgeous pictures).

(If you can't see the whole picture, click on it, I've had some trouble with pictures today)

My mom helping me get ready--she looked beautiful and her dress was a gorgeous Calvin Klein. Pinning that veil is much more difficult than it seems.



This picture was taken the minute I realized I wasn't going to be late to my own wedding:



Pure relief.

If you are wondering why I would have been possibly late, read the last blog post.

Dad was happy to see me too! We should have been able to spend 45 minutes in a tiny room reflecting about the wedding but instead it was thirty seconds and down the aisle we went!




My favorite ceremony picture:



I look so devout! If you know me in real life, you realize how hilarious this picture is :)

Another good ceremony shot--the church was amazing.



Our families:



Now that's a good looking family, right?

Same with the wedding party:



After the wedding, like most weddings, we went to the carnival.

(What? You didn't go to a carnival?)

We even got our picture taken with the mayor of Naperville!





I played the traditional wedding game of balloon darts (and won!):



Jordan fulfilled the typical best man requirement to find the bride some cotton candy:



Josh and I shared some cotton candy similar to Lady and the Tramp:




All of us:



We were quite a spectacle at the carnival. Considering my dress is pretty similar to a Disney princess dress, I was very popular with children, some of whom followed us like the pied piper. We were congratulated by hundreds of people, which I loved. I wish I could have ridden some of the rides but there was no way I was fitting on anything in that dress. Believe it or not, I kept the dress clean enough that the dry cleaner thought I had changed out of it into a second dress after the ceremony (even though it got dragged through a carnival, gardens, survived eating lunch sitting on the ground, and was worn from 10 am to 2 am the next day).

We also took some more traditional pictures :)

This is one of my very favorite wedding pictures. All the groomspeople are looking up because a squirrel is throwing nuts at them.



The wedding party again (Erica looks like she has two escorts!):



The wedding party was greatly amused watching me trip my way down to this pond and back:



Hoops are NOT easy to walk up inclines with. Or, really, to do anything else with. No wonder ladies had to have a squadron of servants back in the day, they literally couldn't even go to the bathroom on their own.

On Thursday before the wedding, my cousin David told me that he had caught 4 garters out of the last 4 weddings he had been to and that he WOULD catch mine. This lead to the only garter-toss I've ever seen where people actually tried to catch it (trying to ruin David's record). He caught it anyway! He then told a story about one of the weddings, where he put the garter in his mouth for the picture and the bride got mad. We told him to go for it! Makes a better picture that way :) So Rachel did it too (and she IS the next to get married!).



I adored my shoes. They were high, they hurt by the end of the night, and they were TOTALLY WORTH IT!



We had a candy buffet at the wedding. I really wanted to stick with the pink/brown theme, which was easy enough, a lot of candy is pink or brown.



We had a wide selection but the peanut butter malted milk balls were very very popular. I was a fan of the Peep aerie that was built. It was amazingly popular and is one of the things that people bring up about our wedding most often but was actually kind of expensive, so don't do it if you are looking for a cheap way to do wedding favors :)

We went to Cancun for the wedding and it was amazing--the all-inclusive route is definitely the way to go. This is my favorite picture:



My mom keeps buying me plants, hoping that we will stumble upon one that I don't manage to immediately kill. Mother-in-law Tongues are the only plant that I've manged to keep (mostly) alive (I lack a green thumb). Whenever I see them, I immediately think of mom.

There they are! Tell me what you think. Comments are always great, esp. when they are about my beauty :)

***Vendor info*** Perfect if you want to know who my photographer was :)

The two wedding disasters including the CAKE

I've promised this post for a while. It's the second to last post in our wedding photos series :)

We only had two major disasters on the wedding day. The first one involved the bridesmaids dresses. There was no room at the church for me to get ready, so all the ladies (me, the moms, and the bridesmaids) were getting ready at the hotel. It was made very, very clear that the wedding was NOT going to happen late--if we were there more than ten minutes late, the wedding was off (oh, Catholic churches!). The goal was to get to the church by 11:15 for the noon wedding. So, obviously, they got me ready first. We were already late getting back from the hairdressers (who greatly mismanaged their time), so by the time I was dressed it was 11.

Rachel starts putting on her dress and *bam* the zipper breaks. My aunt, a talented seamstress, starts sewing her into the dress with a sewing kit that Emily (miraculously) carries everywhere. Emily puts on her dress, no problem (although it was at least two sizes too big). Erica starts putting on her dress--and the zipper breaks. These dresses were NOT too tight--they obviously had faulty zippers. There wasn't enough thread for two dresses to be sewn shut so Rachel's fiance drove (he says it's the fastest he's ever driven) to Joannes for more thread. At 1145 we were just getting in to the car. We were about four miles from the church and there was a carnival in town.

We made it and the procession started ONE MINUTE later. Nobody even knew there was anything wrong :) I was hoping that was the only issue, everybody always says that something goes wrong on your wedding day.

Turns out, two things were going to go wrong on my wedding day.

We decided to go with a new vendor for our wedding cake. I really loved her ideas and she seemed to be really professional and focused. Her samples (full 8 inch cakes that she brought to my aunt and uncle's house) were delicious and unique (chocolate orange cake with marmalade filling, for example). Josh was dead set on a groom's cake and wanted it shaped like a piston, Cake Lady (CL) seemed excited about the idea and knew exactly what a piston was! Score!

He wanted a cake that looked like this:



and CL said it would be absolutely no problem, she even described how she was going to engineer the cake and seemed really excited. She was going to work the Mopar logo in and everything.

The main cake was to look like cherry blossoms were climbing the sides, like this cake, but three layers:





We get to the reception. The cake was supposed to be there at 5 pm. We get there at 530 to help set up. No cake. CL apparently calls the venue to say there has been an "issue" with the groom's cake and they are late but will be there very soon. Cocktail hour starts at 630. No cake. Another hour comes and goes. No cake.

Josh and I are starting to get agitated. Half the point of a wedding cake is for people to see it--if we wanted a cake that nobody would see, we would have just got a sheet cake from the grocery store. I decided that if we kept worrying, we would start looking bad in the pictures, so we delegated the worrying to my father, who started circling the cake stand.

I never knew a woman could move so fast. She got in around 745, dropped the cake off, and TOOK OFF. My dad didn't even manage to catch her, she was gone like a flash. Never a good sign.

It's also not a good sign when people keep coming up to you and telling you, the bride, not to look at the cake.

Not that many people saw it, it came about ten minutes before we all sat for dinner and they took it away. Those who did asked about the groom's cake. "What is it?" was the common question, with some sort of guess.

The main cake was okay. Actually, if it had came on it's own and on time, I probably would have been happy with it:



The flowers are pretty, they look pretty much like we wanted, and the cake is as smooth as most people can make buttercream. (I have no idea what happened to the cake topper, it disappeared into the ether).

It was the groom's cake that was the disaster.



Honestly, if given three guesses--or even ten guesses--would "piston" ever be one of them? And don't you love the scrawled "Jessica and Josh"? Never mind that it was literally 100% different than the cake she described. And it didn't even taste good! It actually made the wedding cake uglier by proxy.

See?



Josh was barely restraining his rage during the cake cutting, which was the first time we saw the cake. No exaggeration, we spent no more than 30 seconds with these cakes.





The only thing that got us through it was Rachel whispering "at least you can submit it to Cake Wrecks".

As wedding disasters go, it was a pretty mild one, sure. And it was one of the items I cared the least about. And I of course got a refund, although she didn't offer it first. She's lucky she decided to not fight us, Josh was totally ready to take her on Judge Judy.


**Vendor info (only for the good vendors!)***

Fish baked in foil (p. 399) with Bercy butter (p. 559)

I usually cruise the clearance fish section at the grocery store and I stumbled upon some nice looking tilapia. I know I'm amazingly behind on the fish chapter, so it seemed like a perfect time to buy!

I decided to make Fish baked in foil (p. 399), which seemed fast and easy (making it perfect for a weekend lunch).

The first step was to make the flavored butter--I made Bercy butter (p. 559). It was simple. I simmered some chopped shallot and white wine. I was hungry, so instead of cooling it down, I just mixed it right into the softened butter. Of course, that essentially melted the butter. I figured that didn't matter because the butter was going to melt in the oven anyway...



I smeared the butter all over the fish:



Wrapped it into a cute little envelope and I popped it into the oven:



And voila!! Done!



It was delicious! Perfectly cooked and really, really moist, likely due to the thousand pounds of butter. This is not a fish for the weight watchers out there! But I'm trying to eat more fish, so it was perfect (of course, that only means that I am hoping to eat fish once every three to four months instead of only on Christmas eve or when we decide to eat salmon).

Technorati Favorites"img>

Glazed parsnips (p. 289) and Baked beans with bacon (p. 255)

The grocery store had cheap parsnips. Actually, it's possible that the grocery store always has cheap parsnips, I can't say I've ever looked for them before. In fact, I think I've only had parsnips once (at my aunt's fancy tennis club in Laurel Canyon, CA). Since I liked glazed carrots so much, I was hoping that Glazed parsnips (p. 289) would be as delicious.

Parsnips look almost exactly like carrots and you peel them the same way:



I cut the carrots "in half crossways" which I took to mean quartering them (it's very possible that isn't the correct interpretation). I then poured in some water, butter, sugar, salt, and pepper.



Reading the recipe again while blogging, I realize that I didn't finish this recipe correctly. I was supposed to bring to a simmer, reduce the heat, cover, and simmer for 10-15 minutes, which I did. I was then supposed to uncover, increase the heat to high, and boil until it's a syrupy glaze. I did not do that.




I don't think it really mattered because my parsnips were cooked and had a syrupy glaze anyway. They were good--parsnips taste sweet like carrots but definitely have their own flavor (ie if I was doing the blind taste test on Top Chef, I could tell the difference). I think they are much fancier than carrots and would make them for a dinner party.

I'm not sure what motivated me to make Baked beans with bacon (p. 255) when I didn't like the last TJOC baked beans recipe. I knew I didn't want to cook during the week (that may change, I often say that and then end up cooking a lot) and baked beans tend to heat up well. Plus I kind of like them, just not enough to really buy or make myself.

This was one of those vague recipes. It asks for a 28-ounce can of "beans". What kind of beans? Should I drain them? No answers. I used white beans and I didn't drain them because there is almost no other liquid in the recipe but I'm not sure if that was right.

I mixed the beans, catsup, onion, molasses, brown sugar, and cider vinegar in a bowl, then layered bacon on the top.



The baked beans were cooked with a lid on for a half hour and then with the lid removed for a half hour:




Not the best picture in the world but much much better than the previous baked beans. I liked the brown sugar and molasses flavor and the bacon fat --I would consider that the trinity for baked beans. Disgustingly, I think baked beans are best when mixed with coleslaw--and I'm usually one of those people who don't like my foods to touch.

Hot cranberry juice (p. 38) and Cheese enchiladas (p. 104)

I'll admit that I don't drink enough water (or liquids as a whole) but I've been trying to do better. I had a giant vat of cranberry juice and didn't feel like just drinking it straight--Hot cranberry juice (p. 38) seemed perfect. One quart of juice, a sliced lemon, and a few cloves, heated up:



And done! I don't think there are many recipes that are so simple.

It was really good--the flavor seemed much more complex than three ingredients. I really love hot drinks and it was delicious (reminiscent of mulled cider)--I will make this again. It's a great use of zested lemons--I usually have a poor denuded lemon in the fridge and it seems like a real waste to throw it out.

I wanted to make something fast for dinner and I seemed to be running out of really speedy TJOC recipes. I noticed that although I had made beef enchiladas, chicken enchiladas, and enchiladas verdes, I had never made Cheese enchiladas (p. 104).

The recipe was particularly simple because I bought the enchilada sauce--I wasn't impressed with TJOC's version and have been working my way through store-bought sauces. This time I had a rather expensive version from the local co-op on hand.

I heated up some corn tortillas, then filled them with grated Monterey Jack and Cheddar cheese:



Wrapped them up and poured enchilada sauce over them, finally sprinkling a little cheese on top:





And baked them:



They were good, although fairly boring. The enchilada sauce was horrible. I hated it. It had an extremely strong ancho pepper flavor and was amazingly smoky. In fact, I would imagine the taste of this sauce to be what heavy smokers (the type that smoke while eating) taste when they eat enchiladas. It ruined the enchiladas for me and had nothing to do with TJOC. Does anyone have a good enchilada sauce that they can recommend? I'm not having great luck.

Guy Fawkes Day cake (p. 724)

Guy Fawkes Day! My ex-boyfriend introduced me to the holiday--I (sadly) think he was an admirer of the man. If you don't know who Guy Fawkes was (and I think he's a mystery to everyone outside the UK), I really recommend the Wikipedia page--Guy Fawkes tried to blow up parliament. Apparently, in the UK, they burn an effigy of him in honor of the holiday. In the US, nobody has any idea who he was, so effigies are safe. Most importantly, in my opinion, the origin of the word "guy" referring to person is due to Guy Fawkes, which is one of those pieces of useless trivia that I absolutely love.

I actually wrote this entire blog--on time--and it deleted itself (damn you interwebs!). I really hate rewriting blogs ::whine:: ::whine::

In honor of the holiday, I decided to make a Guy Fawkes Day cake (p. 724). The cake was pretty simple. First step, combine butter and molasses in a pot. I actually ran out of molasses and was trying to figure out if I was going to go the grocery store or give up on the cake, when I decided to search my cupboards (they are overly full and I regularly buy strange things)--I found more molasses. Why in the world do I have so much molasses? Especially when I'm trying to use up cupboard stuff in case of a future move...



Flour, oats, sugar, ginger, cloves, salt, baking soda, and a little grated lemon zest were combined in a bowl:



Half the molasses mixture was mixed in, then some milk, the rest of the molasses mixture, and some more milk. It was mixed until moist. When I first read it, I thought it said "just moist" and got a little worried:



That's a heckava lot more moist than "just". I poured it into a square pan and popped it in the oven:



It was really good! This is definitely a cake that you have to like molasses to enjoy. I love molasses and I thought it was delicious, like a giant molasses cookie. But molasses IS the overwhelming flavor, so I could understand if there were people didn't like it. I whipped up (literally!**) some whipped cream to go with the cake and it was perfect. I don't have much of a sweet tooth, so this cake had the perfect amount of sweetness. And I really don't like frosting, so a frosting-free cake was right up my alley.

This cake stayed good forever. Honestly, a week later, the cake was still moist. Bizarre!


**Totally off-topic but the misuse of the word "literally" drives me nuts. I hate when people say that something "literally makes their head explode" or that "their heart literally exploded". NO IT DIDN'T! You would be dead! You mean figuratively. FIGURATIVELY! That is my number one pet peeve.