US meets UK

With the hair part done (thanks so much, you guys rock!), it’s time to discuss the make- up part of “getting prettified”.  The one thing that always surprises me about bridal make up is how intense it is.  Which makes sense since I’ll be running around for hours in August heat being photographed.  However…on a Sunday morning…grabbing coffee after the trial? Well…perhaps that should have waited past the church crowd had departed…

You’ve already seen my make up inspiration photo, but probably didn’t realize it.

So how did this look on me? Well, we had to take a guess on the eyes, so here is what we ended up with:

After getting home, I started to think the eye make up might be a bit much.  I have a tendency to wear my eyeliner a bit more like this…

I should probably also mention, the second eye photo? That may have been taken  after a two hour nap..so uh…we’re only judging the eyeliner here.

What do you think? Would you change anything about the current look?

Thank you so much to everyone who helped me figure out what on earth to do with my head. I ended up going for a blend of the inspiration photos. At first we tried to give the style a bit of texture on the sides, but neither of us were too wild about it.

Then we sleeked the front back and gave the bun/chigon part more texture.

I’ve been seriously struggling with my particular birdcage veil ever since I moved away from the structured, “clean lines” theme we had going in the beginning of wedding planning. However, after trying it on during the first fitting and now bringing it to the hair trial – I loooove it.  Here it is, in near full glory!

On the day of we’ll pin the feathers a bit closer to my head, tease my hair for more volume and bring down the side swept bangs a little.

Up next?  Make up!

Did you go into your hair trial with an exact idea? Or were you alll over the place?

I’m a quarter of a century. My best friend sent me this hilarious ecard. I’ve watched it three times. I love singing food.

Zah! I’ve been supposed to be looking at hair inspiration for the past few weeks to prepare for the trial (which is Sunday morning!).  Instead, I’ve gone on hair hunts a few times and have seriously overwhelmed myself again.  I’m all over the map! Structural chigons, curly loose updos, loose chigons, buns, high, low – ack!

Here’s the deal, I have an oblong head (it’s true, think alanis morrisette)  and I need an August ready (read: humidity happy), head shaking, boogie down, birdcage wearable updo. uh…right. Here are the few photos I’ve found that have stuck a chord with me.

The fabulous Cherry Pie:

A cute retro veiled updo

adorable bun with bows

All of these are from Project Wedding‘s hair photos:

Please help me hive! What do I suggest for my trial?

Oh My Gah… When I created our wedding website (several months ago) I thought it might be nice to put a photo up on the landing page.  The photo I chose? A nice, sunny fall day at a wine festival.

Do you see anything strange?

No?

Look again, this time, look at Mr.D’s legs…

Am I over reacting about this, should I change this photo? Am I the only one who sees this (though, admittedly I’ve missed it for several months)?

I never really told the hive about our first baker.  She was new and up and coming in Baltimore and her shop was down the street from where I lived in college. She had delicious cream puffs infused with lavender and heavenly chocolate tortes and though she had just opened a few months prior to our visit she said she was offering wedding cakes. We let her know we’d be leaving the country soon and we preferred to sign a contract and place a deposit ASAP.  A month passed without a response, and when I’d contact her she’d ask all the same questions that had been answered and re-ask for the design file.  Then? nothing. I repeated that process 2-3 times before finally giving up in March.  After I returned to the US she contacted me asking for the details, specifics and design files.  I’d had enough. I’d already moved on to the idea of the cake buffet and felt so frustrated at that point with her service.  Here I was trying to give her money and a contract and I kept getting blown off or stalled. The good news? I experienced her inattentive behaviour prior to signing the contract or giving her any money, so it was 100 times easier to walk away from our verbal agreement.

I figured I’d try the one last baker in my area, Sweet in Ellicott City.  We met with Tracey (the Cake Baker) and while I at first felt guilty that I was taking up her time to discuss a cake buffet rather than one giant, cool, wedding cake she quickly put me at ease and there were tons of details I hadn’t considered.

We spent about an hour discussing sizes, servings, colors, designs and placement. Poor Mr.D leaned over at one point and whispered “I just want to eat cake!”. I’m glad we used that time to go over the details and specifics, because we were able to make several decisions and leave it at that. Yay for making decisions!

Then we moved on to Mr.D’s favorite part – eating cake! We tried X different combinations. The cakes have three layers of icing and four layers of cake. All the cakes will be covered with vanilla buttercream and the chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream. What did we taste?

• Chocolate chip cake, cannoli cream filling
• Almond cake with custard, two layers of chocolate mousse
• Lemon cake with raspberrry fruit filling and two layers of raspberry mousse
• White cake with coconut frosting filling
• Chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream and coconut pecan (german chocolate) filling
• Rum cake with cream cheese frosting

Holy Moly – I didn’t even attempt to count these calories.

We ended up with:

One 8 inch cake (bottom of two tier cake), 25 servings of Chocolate chip cake, cannoli cream filling

Two 6 inch cakes, 28 servings of Almond cake with custard, two layers of chocolate mousse

One 6 inch (top of two tier cake) and one 10 inch cake, 53 servings of Lemon cake with raspberry fruit filling and two layers of raspberry mousse

One 8 inch cake, 25 servings, Chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream and chocolate mousse filling

What will all these cakes look like? Like this:

But with real cakes.

When I first decided on a cake buffet I figured that my friends, family and I would be responsible for transporting and setting up the cakes.  By scaling things back a bit and sticking with a bakery, we’re now able to have the bakery drop them off and set them up just as they would a real wedding cake – one less thing for us to worry about!

Was your cake baker search easy? Or did you taste your way through every bakery in town?

Oh yes we seriously did.  We seriously just decided the whole name change debacle with rock, paper, scissors. The stakes? If Mr.D won we’d either both take my last name as a second middle and his as our communal last; I’d also retain middle name rights or my surname as a first name for our future kids.  If I won? We’d both double barrel and so would our future kids. We played best out of five to determine the winner.

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The results? Mr.D won 3 out of five and we had one draw.

As far as the name changing goes we had reached a stalemate.  Mr.D didn’t want to upset his family and I didn’t want anyone else dictating my choices. After yet another day of irritated discussion, going to our separate corners and me pouring over WB name changing posts and Indie Bride Kvetch I somehow came up with the rock, paper, scissors idea.  If we can’t decide, let “fate” decide.  While there is obviously game theory and strategy involved in “ro sham bo” neither Mr.D or I are at a skill level that would dominate the other to create an unfair advantage.  It really seemed like the fairest option.

Mr.D’s main concern was that if I lost (and I tend to be a wee bit of a sore loser) that I’d be unhappy or bitter about the outcome. So he had to take several minutes to consider whether or not he really wanted this important decision to come down to a child’s game. He acquiesced and we layed out the ground rules, which, basically were best out of five, and release on the word shoot. But hey, it’s over now, and we’ve made a decision.  Yay for making decisions!

These past two weeks, I’ve just been all about the decision making. There are so many that need to be made, I just want to get them over with. I’m probably most happy with this decision being finalized, more so than the flowers, centerpieces or cakes (obviously). But also because this particular decision has caused me so much strife. Several times a week I’d get pretty upset about the whole thing and I’m kinda glad it’s over, and was decided fair and square. I’m pretty content with the decision in the end, Mr.D incorporates my last name into his and our non existent children will for sure be given my birth name and the history associated with it in some way or another.

How did you decide the name change issue?

When we last left off talking about centerpieces it was waaaay back in the day. Waaaaaaaaaay, back in the day.  So it isn’t that surprising, after a color scheme change, and multiple flower posts – our centerpieces have changed too!

Before I even started blogging we were shooting for potted succulents or terariums

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Then we found these two photos

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Settled on the top one and started to create the vases out of wine bottles. Then…we went back to terrariums.

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And after all that? While Mr.D was still in England I scaled them back. Waaaaay back. As in, no flowers at all.  Which might be surprising because I love gardening and flowers. It always makes me swoon when Mr.D surprises me with fresh flowers. So why’d I do it?

I realized that while centerpieces make large statements AT the reception, there doesn’t seem to be a huge focus on them when it comes to the wedding photos.  When I look at people’s wedding albums, I hardly ever see the centerpieces. What I do notice? The bouquets, so I made the executive decision to focus the money on the personal flowers (bouquets, bouts, corsage thingys) and less on the centerpieces. The people accompanying the flowers have a much higher chance of being in our album and I’d rather see them honored with the best looking flowers.

What do our centerpieces look like now? I did a trial run, and the floating Michael’s candle was a total FAIL. It only last for about three and a half hours! That said, once I find longer lasting floating (preferably soy) candles we’ll be set.  They’re quite easy to set up and hopefully our caterer can light the candles before dinner (so I don’t have to worry about burn time during the ceremony/cocktail hour). I also wanted to do a trial run with these just in case they got hot or exploded (a la Miss Bear Cub), thankfully they didn’t. Without any further adieu, here they are!

Suuuuuuuper easy and scaled down, 3 wine bottle/vases of varying heights, river rocks from the dollar store, floating candles. Maybe a bit of lavender rice scattered on the table. Sorted.

Anyone else scaling down their DIY centerpieces?

Okay Hive, this is really it. Are you ready? I promise, no more flower posts from me (unless they’re a recap). Because I’ve finally decided on the flowers and there is simply no turning back. Yay for making decisions!

Since changing our color scheme, and flowers, and the flowers again our florists (rightfully so) wanted to re-meet with us.  I headed back over to their house armed with my many pages of print outs. I’m serious, I had over 10 sheets with more than a photo per page.  They must think I’m crazy.

I had gotten hooked on Michelle Rago’s Elegant Bride cover bouquet waaaaay back in the day, and it still remains the most beautiful bouquet I’ve ever laid eyes on. However, as we all know, if you’re not getting married in the Spring you may have to stay away from a lot of your favorite flowers. Peace out sweet peas and grape hyacith!

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Instead my bouquet will be composed of the following:

• Lavender Hydrangea
• Lavender Lisianthus
• Lavender Roses
• Lavender Freesia
• Lavender
• Brunia

For the D’orsay ladies? They’ll be rocking big fluffs of baby’s breath (Big Bee shoutouts to Strawberry, Joey, and especially the newly minted Mrs. PowderPuff for putting the idea into my head in the first place).

Mr.D? He’ll sport brunia with a bit of lavender, while his Gmen wear poofs of baby’s breath with a bit of lavender as well. Brunia are the little gray balls in the photo below.

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As for the centerpieces? You’ll just have to wait and see how they evolved, or rather… devolved.

Is there a part of wedding planning that has consistently had you waffeling?

SO flipping funny. And true, everything they tell you is true.