Weddingbee bios

The Cakes, or so we'll call ourselves for this bio :), are two young, responsible, home bodies that spend a lot of time together.  We each have our hobbies, and really have very few things in common.  One of those few things, however, is our workplace and the footprint that we share there...

My husband and I fit into a somewhat unconventional minority at our workplace.  We are young--I am 23 and he is 22.  Our 'generation' (people younger than 30-ish) make up about 5% of the workforce where we are.  The bulk of our coworkers are on their way to retirement in the next decade.

Mr. Cake is a design engineer.  He spends his days working in a 3-dimensional world crafting the instructions that will soon become a puzzle to put together to create a tool for fabricating airplane parts. 

I spend my days doing odds and ends supporting the business aspects of the organization that we work in.

We both are educated--Mr. Cake will be finishing his bachelor's degree in Management next week (he has an associates in what he does currently)!!  I have a bachelor's degree in Entrepreneurship and am working my way through my master's degree in Management and Leadership.

I own my cake business (extremely part time) and am currently in the works of crafting another wedding related business.

We were married on May 16, 2009, and plan to be a 1-parent working, 1-parent staying home family when we finally have kids.

Mr. Cake and I support the same organization at our workplace.

I've worked here for nearly 3 years now, him only 2.  On his third day of work, he was called to join a meeting that I also attended.  This was our first meeting.  I knew at first glance that this beau was someone I was interested in.

One thing that Mr. Cake has that is entirely enticing to me is a very confident swagger.  He isn't cocky, but he is always sure of himself.  I could tell just by his posture and by his walk that he was someone I wanted to know.

My bestie and I crafted a 'secret admirer' e-mail address and began shooting him daily questionaires to his work e-mail (ok, he barely knew my name and I didn't know how to contact him other than work e-mail!  Sorry workplace!  I wasted a few minutes of his day!).  I found out things like his family pets, his political preference, and what he had for lunch.  He totally gave me up to his coworkers (who I see daily, thanks a lot Mr. C), and they knew right away who was generating these secret admirer e-mails.  Eventually he e-mailed me at my work e-mail and from there it's history.

I will say, though, our first date was a total flop.  We both had an insomnia attack one night and while talking on the phone decided to meet and go for a walk--bad idea!  We went to a park (after hours--who knew?!?) and ended up getting $89 (each) tickets for being in the park after hours!  In our defense, that info was not posted anywhere!!

It wasn't enough to scare him off, though!  Less than 5 months later we were engaged :)

Ok, so Mr. Cake is not a romantic.  His idea of romance is saying things like, "Cake, you are so good at boiling water."  Or taking out the trash after I've asked him 5 times--he thinks that's a super romantic gesture.

So imagine my surprise when Mr. Cake suggests we go on a fancy date to a restaurant I've never eaten at because the menu prices were beyond what I deemed appropriate for any sort of feasting...this, my friendbees, is as romantic as he gets, so I was beyond excited.

I bought 2 dresses, pantyhose, new shoes, and did my hair up super special.  I was a knock out.

**It's important to note that my engagement ring was on layaway...I'd picked it out with him (more like was drooling over diamonds in general while he shopped and I dreamed and nodded yes to everything he showed me...), so I knew an engagement was on the way, but didn't know when it would be.  I had even, on this day, gone in to show my best friend the ring (the sales people there loved us so much they let me visit my ring whenever I wanted)...this was at around 3 that afternoon.  Note: at 3 on December 7, 2007, my engagement ring and wedding bands were still at the jewelry store.

So here it is about 7 pm and he walks in the back door of my house.  I was in my roommate's bedroom waiting for him to get there.  In he walks with the prettiest long stem red rose I've ever seen.  After greeting one another, we were headed out the front door to dinner--he even had his fancy sports car washed for the occassion.

The weather was horrible, so we opted to skip a post-dinner walk (and let's be honest, we hadn't had the best luck with going on walks before this) and just go back to my house.  When we got there, my roommate had executed a well-schemed plan in our absence.

Mr. Cake and roommate had been plotting the entire week of how to have a once-in-a-lifetime, out-of-a-movie romantic evening just for me.  My 130-year-old house was completely done up...the winding staircase was lined with candles and rose petals that led to my bedroom...in my bedroom was an even more elaborate display of romance...music, candles, roses, rose petals.  I was totally smitten.

At this point, Mr. Cake had my engagement ring in his pocket, but until about 4 or 5 that evening he had not planned on proposing--this whole elaborate date was just his attempt to show me that he loved me (swoon)...but since the funding had fallen into place, he opted to utilize this romantic display as his backdrop.

I'm not a mushy kind of girl, so I wasn't offended when he didn't get down on his knee or really even ask me to marry him.  I kind of felt like those formalities just didn't match us as a couple.  As we sat on my bed and talked about how amazing the evening was, he pulled the little ring box out and looked at me and said, "Cake, I want to spend the rest of my life with you."

And that was that.  :)

Our engagement pictures were shot on possibly the windiest day in October 2008.

Here's a few of my favorites...

Yes, this is an engagement picture--I'm posting it because Mr. Cake wore an engagement ring, too.  It was a cheapy tungsten ring that I found online for $70!  It's in my jewelry box now.  He was so cute when he asked the jewelers why girls were the only ones that got to wear engagement rings!  I was glad to buy him his own--he's just as committed and everyone knew it!

This could very well be my favorite picture of us. Ever.

This one makes me smile.  This is really how we are everyday.

My photographer was a junkie for the lighting that day.  I wasn't feeling the whole light pole background shots, but they actually turned out to be some of my favorites.

Love Mr. Cake's smile here..

This is a true testament to our relationship--he's doing something goofy and I'm completely oblivious to it!

We are a pretty 'conventional' couple, but I am not generally a fan of the typical, so when the photographer mentioned the usual piggyback photo I said, "Sure, Mr. Cake, jump on!" This is Mr. Cake's favorite photo for a lot of reasons.

I had five of the prettiest, wittiest, most staying-out-of-it bridesmaids ever.

Four of the five lived more than four hours away, so their help was next to impossible to give and therefore they mostly stayed out of all of the wedding extravaganza--which ultimately helped me out a lot because I didn't feel like I needed help from them since I knew they weren't able to give it and also helped me keep my head on straight and be realistic about a lot of other things.

What they were, though, was completely supportive and always interested.  I couldn't have asked for better people to haul my dress around and hold my flowers :)

Here we are walking to the front of the church..

To show off the back of their dresses--I love, love satin covered buttons!

Their dresses were a Bella Formals frock in midnight blue and were a steal at $125!

Hiding bridesmaids!

And, lastly, my super saucy bridesmaids!!

I'm a huge fan of my family.  Mr. Cake learned early on that I tend to be the glue that holds us together..I firmly believe that keeping your family close to your heart is the only way to be.

My step-dad, who I've always known as Dad, walked me down the aisle.  After many years of hating him for one reason or another, turning into the adult that I have has made me realize just how awesome this guy is.  He sends me text messages that say, "Hola hija, what's crackalackin?  Ok, El Chile Verde."  Seriously, any person with that kind of sense of humor goes down in my favorites book!  By the way, Madagascar is one of my favorite movies (that's where what's crackalackin comes from) and El Chile Verde is a restaurant in our hometown, but he likes to use the 10 spanish words he knows as often as possible...even if they make no sense!

My brother walked my mom down the aisle and then got in line with the other groomsmen.  The only time I cried on my wedding day was when I saw my brother all dressed up in his tuxedo.  He wore that just for me....he wouldn't even wear one for his own wedding!  And my mom...she's God's grace all bundled up into one person.  She's the best person I know.

Two other people that I have to share with you at this moment are my neice and nephew.  They're my brother's children and honestly, my life would not be complete without them.  My nephew is almost 6 and still doesn't know my name (can you blame him?!?  So many people have no idea how to pronounce Karianne) and still calls me seesee and calls my husband Cokey.  I don't have any little people of my own, so having my brothers babies is the best I've got right now!  And since the wedding, we've added a third to this collection--my brother's second daughter was born in June and is the first child born that isn't the spitting image of my family!!  I'm so anxious to see what she'll look like when she's older!

So, my wedding dress was my very, very first wedding purchase (unless you count my beautiful bridal gaurd for my engagement ring)....

My MIL was none too happy to see us engaged, so to try to get her in the wedding mood I asked her if we could go dress shopping together.  It's important to note that my MIL lives 4 hours from me and my husband and I had NO intentions of purchasing my dress so far away because I knew altering it and traveling with it was not my idea of a good time.

None the less, shopping we did.  I chose 4 stores in the city she lives for us to check out--everything from the outlet store to the Kleinfelds look-a-like.  We started with the outlet store--and I'll get back to this because it is ultimately (deep breath) where I purchased my gown.  Fast-forwarding to the post-bargain-basement-shopping, we hit 2 of the 3 other stores as we had no idea where the 4th one was (and had heard bad things about it).  The second store was middle-range budget dresses and the third store was couture, couture, couture.  Now, I love me some couture wedding gowns for sure, but for me, I just couldn't find a gown that looked decent enough on me that I was willing to drop thousands on.

So after this day of expedition, one dress never left my mind.  It wasn't perfect, it didn't fit, and it was at the bargain basement of all bargain basements.  One thing we caught ourselves saying the entire day of shopping was the phrase, "well, this dress is pretty, but the one at *bargain basement* was pretty, too, and the price tag was so much better..."

Ok, let's back up to the bargain basement shopping.  Picture this: a Morton building (a steel building with a metal roof), indoor/outdoor carpet, and associates who are still in high school and wear jeans (note: I have nothing against jeans, but this is not what I imagined the associate putting me into a wedding gown would wear).  There weren't many dresses in my size (12) as most of the dresses there were samples from the Kleinfeld look-a-like store and ranged from 6 to 8 to 10.  However, I did find about 3-5 dresses to try on.  Most of them looked like 80's flashbacks (not so much for my formal cathedral wedding) or prom dresses in white....except the dress I ended up buying.

I'll spare you the long winded details of decribing the dress and just post a few pictures from my wedding day...

This is the back--there are 3 'pick-ups'

And this is the front

There are fleur de lis designs in the beading and that set the tone for the rest of the wedding decor...

a close up of the top...

I wanted to add a little extra info--my dress started out 3" too long, had a zipper, was too small for me, and ended up being too big after a year of hanging in a closet.  The AMAZING seamstress that altered my dress put in the corset back, a French bustle, took in the sides, and took up the hem.  It honestly looked better AFTER she altered it--and all of that for a whopping $94.  No joke.

Oh, and I bet you're wondering how much my dress cost since I purchased it at a bargain basement...

Guess? 

Hint: it was originally $1,200.

 

 

I paid $100!!!!  Yes, you read that right ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS! 

I'm still impressed with finding this dress.  I never considered it 'perfect' but it sure did make my wedding day.

My flower girl was my 18-month-old neice.  When I bought her dress she was about 6 months old, so I took a big gamble on that one!  BUT it was $20, an Alfred Angelo, and just too cute to pass up.

As my wedding planning went on, my colors changed from red, pink, royal blue, and purple to shades of blue with pops of yellow.  SO the red rose petals on the dress didn't so much go with my new color palette (and I completely forgot about them until about a month before the wedding!).  I handed the dress over to my mom who has some sewing skills under her belt.  Luckily for all of us, the dress--unknowingly--had little slits in the tulle to swap out the rose petals for your color!  It took about 3 minutes to accomplish the task and my $20 investment proved to be a great one!

See the blue rose petals???  So cute! 

My sister-in-law was about 8 and a half months pregnant at the wedding, so that's her and her baby belly in the background holding up my neice!  The baby was another girl :)

A co-worker asked my husband if he'd be wearing a 'monkey suit' to the wedding--he had no idea what that meant!  The answer, of course, was yes.

All of the men in monkey suits wore 3-button, black tuxedos with vests and ties.  My husband and the ring bearer wore midnight blue, the groomsmen wore cornflower blue, and the dads wore ivory.

You can't really see the midnight blue in this picture, but I promise it's there!

Here he is with my nephew the ring bearer.  So cute!!

I'd say where we rented the tuxedos from, but it wasn't the best experience and I won't be recommending them to any future bride!!

I had one requirement for my hair: it had to be up.

We live in the windy midwest and I was not about to have my hair going anywhere during the day of my wedding--hello, photography is expensive gotta look my best!

So, my stylist to curled, pinned, and hair sprayed the flexibility out of my hair and it ended up like this:

I was really happy with how it turned out.  It lasted all day and all night, it was comfortable, and most importantly, it was very pretty and very me.

Classic, elegant, and put together.

My dearest friend April graciously did our makeup for the wedding.  I was so completely fortunate to have her there!  She even glued my eyelashes on me

This is me pre hair, pre makeup..and very sleepy.  This is called last-night's-hair-thrown-in-a-clip!

Almost pretty...

In the hustle of the day, I never thought to get a full picture of my completed makeup (dumb!), so here's the best I could find.  You can't see how amazing my eyes looked, but at least you can see the rest...

Ok, I'm a sorority girl and in my blood rests an adoration for all things pearl.  My dress had lots of tiny seed beads that had a pearly sheen to them, so when I spotted this necklace at, of all places Kohl's, I couldn't live without it...

until I saw the $300 price tag!  I had a hard time justifying paying 3 times the amount on a necklace than I did on my dress!  So I stepped away from it while I did the rest of my shopping...and there's an important part I'm leaving out here...this shopping day was Black Friday.  So my MIL convinced me to see if they had a discount on it since it was the biggest shopping day of the year. 

Before I can tell you how much I paid for this beauty, you have to see it...

See all those tiny pearls--yes, real pearls!! 

If you look closely at this one, you can see my earrings poking out...they have identical tear drop shaped pearls on them that match the necklace...

Ok, so you're wondering what I spent on this necklace and these earrings, right?

$100!!!  The necklace was the LAST ONE and was marked down to $60 (thank goodness for MIL and her convincing!) and the earrings--originally $150--were marked down to $40. 

I love it when it's just meant to be.

My ring is a Helzberg Diamonds masterpiece...no really, that's the name of the diamond!

It really speaks for itself, so I'll just show it to you..

I'm going to bashfully say that my wedding ring cost more than our wedding for 300 people did.  Seriously.

But look at it!  The diamond is flawless...and by flawless I mean it has 7 microscopic inclusions you have to magnify at least 50 times to even get a glimpse of one.  It's perfection.

His ring is a tungsten carbide beauty with 3 diamonds in it. 

We searched and searched for the right ring for him and couldn't find it...he had to have 3 diamonds (his dad's has 3 diamonds) and he really liked the 'striped' look.  The day I had to be sedated for a procedure, we decided to go to the mall (for something I don't even remember now) and in my barely awake stupor, we came across this ring.  I remember seeing it, loving it, and him ordering it.  That's the only memory I have from that day.

Ok, the title of this one will make sense when you see the picture, I promise.

My shoes were a DSW steal at $40!!  I had the hardest time finding shoes and took a deep breath and ordered these online.  Luckily, they were the ONLY pair I bought and I love them more than I can express!

Shoes are never easy for me to find because when I was 3 I was in an accident involving my left foot (3 toes to be exact) and a slippery car battery.  If you look in the picture my left foot (which is on the right of the photo due to the mirror image thing), the first toe is short..super short.  It's how I could never get away with robbing a bank in flip flops...they'd find me!  Oh, and that tattoo on my right foot would be another give away!  It's 17 stars and I love, love it.  I got it when I was 18 and wouldn't change it. 

See, isn't this photo just fantastic?  Ok, here's another...

Oh, and the brand of these shoes is Chinese Laundry.

I showed my photographer the amazingly spectacular blog that is StyleMePretty and told him his job was to make sure my wedding looked like one of those weddings...This picture has SMP all over it.

I had to add this one because it's just...us.  I was trying to figure out how to clean my muddy shoes from being outside taking pictures and Mr. Cake was happy to hold them for me so they didn't soil my dress. 

I never wanted a veil.

Until my mom heard me say that.  This was the one, single detail she could not live without me having.  So, go big or go home, right?  I purchased this diamond white cathedral length 2-tier veil off eBay for a whopping $15.  In fact, it was more like $7.50 because the first one was torn, so they sent me another without charging me for it.

This photo is one of my favorites (and Mrs. Quiche, if you find yourself here, I think you'll appreciate this one as well!).  I slipped my veil back on to do some photos in the wind and this it just before the wind slipped my veil off and sent it out into the busy intersection infront of the church...my amazing--and nimble--photographer snapped this picture and made a run for it.  I felt bad for him running after my $15 veil into oncoming traffic, but he didn't know better!

I think this one speaks for itself...just beautiful

This is my hair pin that I wore for the majority of the festivities.  The super sized veil only lasted through the ceremony and was dismantled immediately after because I didn't want all of the hugging from the receiving line to tug and pull on it (and subsequently my tightly packed curls).

This beautiful hair pin was another eBay find...for about $15!  The only downside is it shipped from China and it took nearly a month to get here!  It showed up THE DAY OF my hair trial!

..unless you're a hydrangea lover like me!

My bouquet was made of blue hydrangea, yellow roses, and stephanotis with various greens.  I wasn't 100% thrilled with the way it was tied, but then again that is mostly my fault because I wasn't very specific about that part!

This picture is from before I asked the florist (who just happened to hang around long enough  to fulfill one last request) to tuck in the flippy pieces of bear grass...I already had a veil in my face, I didn't need pokey grass, too!! 

 

My bridesmaids carried similar bouquets of blue hydrangea, yellow roses, scabiosa, and were tucked into silver tussie mussies that I adorned with lots of pretty ribbons and a fleur de lis charm for each.

Each table was adorned with a julep cup filled with roses, a bejeweled candle holder or lantern, a blue wine bottle, and 5-7 blue votives.

We bought the flowers from Sam's Club--75 roses for $60!  My aunt, a former florist, graciously put the roses in the julep cups while the rest of us frantically set up the venue for the reception and cocktail hour. 

This one was my favorite candle holder...the double votives with the jewels--so sweet.

These little bells initially held a quote for every table as I chose to forego the seating chart and table numbers...as formal as our wedding already was, I didn't want it to be stuffy and opted to let people choose where to sit....so the quotes were the next best thing, but I didn't get heavy enough cardstock for them and they were flimsy which made them unusable....the guests still made use of them, though!

Here's a good look at the lanterns..

And this was the third candle holder.  They sure were pretty and I was hapy with them!

 

The head table was something I almost completely forgot...but luckily for me, I got an e-mail about a promotion from Gorham and landed these votive holders and the hurricane for about $30 total!

Not too shabby for last minute, huh?

P.S. please ignore my ugly chairs.  The venue didn't allow chair covers or adornments as it would've increased the clean up time (and they barely let us have the time they alotted us!)

Ok, so I probably mulled over 15 different favor ideas--and since we were having 300 guests, I had to go with something that was at the very least, affordable.

I made these chocolates using 2 different fleur de lis molds, Wilton candy melts, 1.5" round white labels, and 3"x4" plastic bags.

The design on the label is the design that was on our invitations.  I had an Etsy seller create it into a JPEG for me so that I could use it on the pieces I wanted for the rest of the stationery!

...I'm not Catholic.  My husband is.

So I had a whopping SEVEN days to crank out this program!  The priest was a last minute fill in for our previous priest as he had some prior obligation come up and our new priest wasn't exactly excited that I'm not Catholic...well, that was until he realized that my grandpa's cousin is the bishop emeritus for this area...anyway, at seven days from my wedding, I finally got a call from the priest to finalize our ceremony.  Some of this was a shock to me (who knew Catholics don't allow the Bridal March?!), but nonetheless, I got it done and it turned out satisfactorily.

The cover is cream linen cardstock, the blue paper is text weight paper and there were 4-5 sheets per program of that, and they were attached in the upper left corner with a square scrapbooking brad.

Notice my little monogram thingy?  That jpeg file got used a lot!!

I have a template for a Catholic ceremony program if anyone needs a little help (I know I did!)...I'd be happy to share it!  Also, I printed these 3 per page and cut off about 1/2" per sheet, so they weren't perfect like if I had taken them to kinkos, but I saved about $50 cutting them myself!

Ok, this was one avenue I traveled solely for the husband's family.  See, my family is ENORMOUS and most of them live within an hour's travel....not the case for Mr. Cake.  His family is at LEAST a 4 hour drive to where we live, so STDs were a must for every single person on his guest list.  Because of this, I channeled my budget saving self and opted for "free" postcards from Vistaprint. 

Before I break down the money for you, here's what the finished product looked like!  It's a Vistaprint design that I edited to make my own...

I got 100 of these postcards for less than $7!!  And at $0.27 each for stamps, I made out like a bandit!  I think I sent around 80 of them.

These were among the best bargains for the wedding!

A lot of the little details of my wedding were DIY...

I made this super cute card box for our gift table

It's made out of 3 hat boxes (from Hobby Lobby), midnight colored satin fabric, lots of ribbon, and 2 pretty pearl adorned embellishments to keep it classy.

Our  guest book doubles as a rolodex..only it's really pretty.

I had an Etsy seller make this for us.  It was a little pricey at $75, but it was very worth it as now I have addresses, e-mail addresses, birthdays, and all but blood types on cards from all of my guests!  Someday I want to be one of those people who sends everyone a birthday card, so this should help!

Here it is at the ceremony..

And here it is at the reception!

See that there mini DVD player?  It's a freebie our photographer threw in that's playing a slideshow of our engagement pictures!  He's a nice guy!

My husband and I are both God lovers.  During our marriage prep our priest requested that we pray together every night.  Mr. Cake and I prayed The Lord's Prayer every night two times.  After more than a year of saying this prayer daily, it really has a lot of meaning for us and our relationship.

In high school, I was part of our school's Madrigal choir and one year for contest we sang Rene Clausen's arrangement of The Lord's Prayer.  I asked a few of my old classmates if they would be up for a reunion--and a song at my wedding.  Luckily for me they obliged and after many debates with the priest as to when they were allowed to sing during our Catholic ceremony, they all but stole the show.  If there hadn't been a wedding going on, they would've been the talk of the day.  It was my favorite part of the wedding ceremony (other than the husband and wife part) and was the one thing during our ceremony that was truly just for me.

Here they are practicing before the ceremony..

And here they are during the ceremony

There's another guy behind that marble column, I promise.

And yes, one of my bridesmaids was part of the choir :)

Our reception was a blast!  There was tons of food, tons of dancing, and my photographer used his amazing skills to create this masterpiece photo...

This photo takes up two whole pages in our leather album :)

 

Besides dining and dancing, we hired an artist to do face painting on the kids!  I knew that having an adult only reception was out of the question for us as most of our family has young children, so we opted for alternative ways to keep them occupied!  Here's a few photos of me and my bridesmaids and the art that was painted on us...

This is my flower...it was so pretty and SO glittery!! 

A pretty butterfly..

Baby sister Cake's horseshoe...

This is two of my bridesmaids...one has butterfly wings, the other is my maid of honor and she has a blue, slightly different version of my flower!

I have to say, for about $300 (what my mom paid the artist...it was double what she charged, but we were so happy with her work we felt she needed more than that) the artist was the best purchase for the reception activities!  The kids LOVED it and I have to say, I really, really did, too.

So the event that spurred the inception of my business, Piece.A.Cake Confections, finally finally got here.

I started decorating cakes about a year ago--professionally, anyway.  I've done about 20 weddings and TONS of birthdays and other events so far.

No event topped my own, though.  My cake is one that goes down in my personal history books.  I baked 17 cakes, made over 30 pounds of marshmallow fondant, and took on the heavy task of pleasing myself--my biggest critic.

My cake is a 5-tier round cake with the following flavors (starting at the top and working down): lemon cake with raspberry creme filling, champagne cake with raspberry creme, red velvet with chocolate mousse, white wedding cake, and milk chocolate with chocolate mousse filling.  The lemon and champagne were the favorites of the crowd and, of course, they were the smallest cakes.

^ this is it in all its glory!

^ this is a close up of the sugar roses I hand crafted...

 

My husband's cake was a penguin that I carved and sculpted myself.  He is covered in black satin ice fondant with the rest of the fondant being marshmallow fondant I made myself (black is just too labor intensive to make).  He is a german chocolate filled-penguin complete with coconut pecan filling.  We never cut into him at the wedding--apparently my cake serving aunts were scared to cut him--so he found his way to his final resting place that night.  Oh, and his head is made of rice krispy treats that my MIL lovingly made for me while I did all the rest of the baking and decorating.

^ Mr. Penguin himself

I would be doing a major disservice if I didn't mention my cake topper.  It is a mini-replica of me and my husband on our wedding day made out of polymer clay.  I found an artist on Etsy who made this for us all from pictures!!  It was hands down my favorite wedding purchase of all...it truly took the cake.

^side view

 

All of the photos were taken by my fantastic photographer, Kevin Brown.  www.kevinbrown.me

 

From the cake decorator in me: making your own wedding cake is a huge undertaking.  I spent nearly 40 hours laboring over these 2 cakes by myself.  It's no small task and shouldn't be taken lightly!  This cake was far less decorated than I ever planned it to be, but once I got going, the simplicity of it just really made me fall in love with it and after I hand painted the "P" on the tallest tier, I called it done.

Unfortunately I don't have pictures of our food, but it was so fantastic that I still have to tell you about it.

We hired an off-the-beaten-path caterer from a small town about 50 miles southwest of where our wedding was. They are not used to catering for weddings, especially ones for 300 people!  The originally quoted us $8 per person which was $2 cheaper than any other caterer we'd found AND the food was a million times better!  Plus, they didn't have extra fees for delivery and set up either.

So here was our menu--and keep in mind we are in the midwest and like us some home cooked goodies!

For the meats we had:
Fried chicken
Smoked pork tenderloin

Starches:
Au gratin potato casserole
Parslied potates

Salads:
Garden salad with choice of dressing
Pea salad (for my mom..I think it's gross!)
Cauliflower salad (for the groom..he has a thing for cauliflower)

Other items:
Green beans
Dinner rolls
Water and tea

It was served buffet style and rather than fancy china place settings--knowing my guests would include lots of toddlers--I happened to come across an Easter special at Sam's Club that included a package of 50 blue, square plastic dinner plates and 50 yellow, square salad plates.  I snagged up 8 packages (at $10 each, it was a steal because just 40 clear dinner plates were $10!) and our plate situation was solved. 

Ok, so wanna know what the final total on the food was??

$1250!!!!!!!  Yes, you read that right!  Because we skimped on plates, dessert, plastic ware, cups, etc. and the caterer didn't have to provide that, they cut the cost down to food only!  The food was very us, very comfortable, and everyone raved about how fantastic it all tasted.  Who says you have to serve lobster and filet mignon?!?  No offense to those of you who have/will have steak and lobster...we just couldn't afford $35 a person!! 

The cathedral we were married in is the largest, oldest church in town.  It's quite beautiful.

This is the front...

This is a photo my photographer snapped during the ceremony...he was up in the balcony where the organ is.

See, there's the organ!  Just beautiful.

We didn't decorate ANYTHING at the cathedral--really, it didn't need it...and there were 3 other weddings there that day!

I wish I had pictures of our reception venue, but my photographer didn't snap any and their website is down!  As soon as I can get my hands on a few, I'll upload them!!

My husband decided that he wanted to gift all of the groomsmen with a tankard or mug of some sort.  So here's what he chose...

Here is Mr. Cake and three of his groomsmen enjoying their beers..

We also bought these mugs for our dads as well as matching wine glass for our moms.  Here's a picture of the bride and groom set..

We also got a special "pimp" cup for the best man...mostly because we got married a week before he turned 21 and he requested that since he wasn't allowed to drink alcoholic beverages that he at least have a special cup...

And my ladies were gifted several items...champagne glasses, jewelry, keepsake boxes, travel bags, etc.

Here's a picture of the jewelry that I hand made for them!

Each bridesmaid had a matching necklace, bracelet, and earrings.  And even if they never wear their dresses again, I do know that a few of them have already worn their jewelry again!!