So much Cake Porn

As you can probably tell by now, Mr. Manatee is taking what you might call a "hands off" approach to wedding planning. This is pretty much okay with me, since it means he pretty much trusts my opinion but isn't afraid to step in if one or two of my ideas go terribly wrong. I also attribute this to a sweet conversation I happened to walk in on between Daddy Manatee and the Mr. He explained it to Mr. Manatee like this. "Your job is to show up, look nice for pictures, and be absolutely amazed at everything she's put together." When he puts it like this, how could I possibly disagree?

But the cake? He was all over that. To be honest, he's not actually much of a cake person normally, so this surprised me. Picking out table linens? Not so much. For me, it was not as much about taste as it was about design. Duh!

I was swooning over these beauties. Sensing a theme? Yeah, me too. Ombre, yet again, and no fondant!

Img via Wedding Chicks Photo by Austin Gros

Photo by Martha Locklear

Img via Ruffled Blog Cake by A Cake To Remember

My mom teased me that she would make sure a traditional fruitcake would be present, as is tradition in Canada. She was only joking, since she had adamantly protested that there would not be one at her wedding, but Grandma Manatee slipped one in at the last second!
Admirably sneaky, but gross.

Image by Aussie True Blue Recipes

We also knew we wanted to have a Grooms Cake! Despite the fact that the slices are usually inexplicably 50 cents cheaper, its the one of the few chances the couple has to really showcase the groom's personality. And an excuse to have a cake dripping in chocolate, usually.

Because of Mr. Manatee's Ohio roots, he's a die-hard Buck-eye fan, and we're hoping to somehow combine the sports element in these two chocolate-on-chocolate cakes. I'm dying just thinking about it.

Image Via World Wide Wedding and Bride

Img via Pinterest

Stay tuned for our cake tasting adventures!

What I'm Most Excited For

What I'm most excited about, besides the ceremony and the dress and the cake and....
Well, high on The List of Things I'm Excited About (which is about a mile long) is our decision to use Wish Lanterns!

Image via Martha Stewart Weddings

Previous bloggers have explored Wish Lantern options,  like Mrs. Frog!

I have to admit, most of my desire to have this as a main-event for our reception stems from Tangled. I mean, what bride has watched that movie and not had their eyes grow big as saucers with the sheer possibility of this amazeballs tradition.
Now Tangled gets cray with it, since it's a whole village sending these off. Thats simply not in the budget. Although the best pictures I've found have several hundred, we're hoping for a similar effect with 50-75. Since I'm sure everyone has heard some horror stories about setting these off, we're going to take a ton of precautions. Luckily our awesome venue has okay-ed the idea, and there's a huge parking lot nearby we can set them off without any trees or buildings getting involved. If we order 50-60, we'll be able to ask our guests to partner up to coordinate the launch, so no one has to figure it out by themselves. We're also toying with the idea of asking a fire marshall to come out? Like I said, precautions.

Our daydream for this idea looks like this

Image via Forevermore Events

NOT THIS


Wish Lantern has them for around $2.50 a piece (if you buy at least ten), BUT I found a listing for 50 for $34.99 with Best Choice Products on Ebay. Am I suspicious? Maybe. But considering that 50 lanterns on the Wish Lantern website would run me $139.99 + tax + shipping, I think it's worth the risk. Stay tuned for when we test one out!

Even if my gamble is a bust and I have to pay full price, I still think they'll be a really affordable way to make a big statement. So romantic! 

Do you have any experience with Wish Lanterns?

Bee, Bee, Manatee!

I know every says this, but I can't believe I'm writing this! I really, really cant.
And I can prove why!

When I turned in my application about a month ago, I was usually talking Mr. Manatee's ears off about one of two things: the wedding, and getting into nursing school. More specifically,
1. Becoming a bee
2. Getting into nursing school at our current university, not somewhere in a galaxy far far away (like East Texas.)

Now I may have gotten a C in statistics, but when I saw on the website that only 5% of applicants got accepted as bees, I knew enough to know that 5% roughly translates to....

Wormhole Riders

So earlier this month, when I got accepted to nursing school at my University, which is rumored to have a 10% acceptance rate, I calculated (and I had to google the equation! Doh!) that my chances of getting in to nursing school AND getting a good email from Mrs. Pengy were....... .005%!   Good Lord! Case closed. Or so I thought!

Now that you know I'm a complete nerd, you understand my reaction when I got the news!  After stepping out of the shower and checking my mobile email on a whim, I ran to the front door in my towel to yell down the hall after Mr. Manatee, who had just stepped out. I probably scared him half to death! I'm betting my neighbors also think I'm a nutjob, for hanging my head out the door hollering "I'M A BEEEEEE".
 No lady, you are clearly not a bee, you're a soaking wet person.

Given these odds, I really should have bought a lottery ticket! Either that or I'll never win anything in my life ever, because I've used up all my impossible luck.

Anyway! We're the manatees, and we're madly in love.

At our favorite college bar :)

Mr. Manatee is finishing up his last few months as a Civil Engineering student, and I'm a newly minted Nursing student! We were born 2563 miles apart, and its crazy to think that 100 years ago we may never have met! We met in college on a forced blind date by his roommate, who insisted we were perfect for each other! We were living it up after recent breakups on both sides, and neither of us were crazy about the idea. We finally agreed to meet, and the rest was history!
We're the perfect balance! I'm a little silly and spontaneous, he can be very reserved and likes to think things through. I could get lost in a cardboard box and he can navigate his way out of anywhere. We've been through some definite ups and downs, but we always get through it together!

We've been together for over two years, and we've been engaged for a year already! We're ready to get this show on the road! We're planning a ombre/watercolor, fun and laid back celebration with around 100 of our favorite people. Its hard to put a finger on our 'theme', but we're going for fresh and fun with a variety of blues, grey and maybe even a raspberry pink! Although we're getting married at a B&B, you wont find any chalkboards or mason jars at our shindig! 

So why the manatee? Well...we spend a TON of time in and around water? Or cuz its stinkin cute, thats why! 

Cant wait to share our story with you, and get to know the hive better!

Twogether in Texas

We've  always known we would do some sort of premarital counseling. Both of us grew up with the mentality that divorce is not an option. Considering that the divorce rate in the United States is a staggering 50%, we knew we wanted some tools to help ward off those odds. It didn't hurt that our church also required it for us to be married, but they were incredibly flexible about where it was done!

Early early this morning (8am on a Saturday, ouch!) Mr. Manatee and I battled OU/Texas traffic up to Anthem in Dallas for our premarital counseling seminar. Texas has this fantastic (and completely free!) program for engaged couples called Twogether in Texas. Completely non-faith based, this program approaches touchy subjects like communication, anger, money, previous marriages and blended families. Surprisingly, sex was not really discussed! After completion of the full day program, couples receive a certificate of completion that earns us $60 off our marriage license! I actually found this program on the side bar of advertisements on Facebook.

We dragged out of bed at 7am, picked up some liquid courage and joined seven other couples in the most fantastic full backed leather chairs.

The class ran from 8:00-4:00pm, and it was surprisingly a lot of fun! The class was taught by a really wonderful couple who had been together for almost 25 years! They immediately got us up for several "Ice-breakers" that let us really get to know each other, including sharing our love stories. It was a really great mixed group! Because we got the awkwardness out of the way early, it was really amazing to get to hear and share personal stories and struggles we'd had in our relationships throughout the day. We also got a workbook with amusing pictures and interactive activities, a love language quiz and instructions to write an "Only You" love letter to our future spouse! Some of the discussions and activities were hard, but we learned so much! At the end of the day, this really tough-looking martial arts instructor shared his "Only You" letter with the group, and it was an incredibly touching tribute of his love for his future wife and incredible excitement about their child on the way. We all got a little teary-eyed! Mr. Manatee wrote me the sweetest letter that I can't wait to frame. 

Oh yeah, and we got free lunch!

Did you opt for premarital counseling? Was it a chore to get through, or an experience you enjoyed together?

Giving This Thing a Theme

We've played around with a few color schemes. Some with pink as the fifth color, some with coral, one with green. But the blues have always been the 'base' of our color scheme. Blue is my absolute favorite color, and given half a chance I'd paint every wall in our apartment a different shade. Blue is Mr. Manatee's second favorite color, first being green (check out that second color scheme!).  But truth be told, the fifth color is not as important ....yet. If it were up to me, we'd only be doing the blues, gray and glitter (!!!),

So pretty!

In a perfect world! But our slightly pushy florist insists we need CONTRAST. We're still hammering out the details of that elusive 'contrast color', but what we do know for sure is the ombre/watercolor theme we have going. I was initially worried Mr. Man wouldn't be on board with the 'ombre' idea, but he actually really liked it once I'd shown him some pictures! His words were "As long as everything is not bright pink." What a blessing to have such creative license ;). I posted on Weddingbee a few months ago my inspiration board I sent to my lovely Canadian aunt who is doing our invites. As other bloggers, and my favorite fictional character Robin Cherbotski,  have mentioned before, it seems to take a little while for wedding (or any) trends to hit Canada.

"The 80's didn't come to Canada till like '93."

Anyway, ignore the purple in the picture, I'm mostly looking at theme. But aren't these ombre blues to die for?

What do you think for our elusive 'contrast color'? Pink? Green? Maybe even yellow? Who knows!

Risky Business

We (I) started looking for a photographer pretty quickly. Several years ago, my aunt (the mother of our adorable ring bearer!) had an intimate destination wedding on the beautiful island of Kauai. She had a gorgeous ceremony, a handsome groom, unbelievable weather (and yours truly as a junior bridesmaid!) It was perfect! The only thing she didn't have? Pictures.

My aunt and her husband

My aunt is a smart woman, an artist, and not strapped for cash. She is also the last person who would hire someone unprofessional, untalented or suspiciously priced. He showed up to the wedding, did his thing, and that was that. He sent them a few sneak peak pictures a week or two later and then....nothing. Long story short, he skipped town. This was probably eight or nine years ago, and as far as I know, she still hasn't heard from him. Thankfully my grandparents are never without a digital camera, so she still had a few pictures to treasure.

It's interesting the level of trust we place in our vendors; how huge it is that we place our perfect day in their hands! Of course things like contracts protect our financial investments, but that's hardly a consolation. I sometimes suffer from memory problems (I guess my doctor would blame it on ADD) and I'm committed to remembering every detail. Because of this and my aunt's experience, I was prepared to do my research. I'm not sure how long Weddingwire or similar review sites have been around, but I creep those sites like nobody bidness.

Problem: our budget was relatively low. Our original budget for photography (with or without engagement pictures) was originally $1800, or 10%. Luckily, our long-ish engagement gave us (me) plenty of time to search.
SPOILER ALERT: We discovered later that the best way to stay in budget was to find a photographer etc whose style we really loved, tell them our budget dilemma and ask them if they happened to know anyone with a similar style whose business is relatively new, but may have been a 2nd shooter/intern for someone prestigious for years. They have the talent and respect of a professional, but not the 'reputation' that costs you. If you have the time to find that balance, I highly recommend this method!

We considered a few options. I think everyone within 100 miles knows that photographers like Allison Davis and Johnathan Ivy are pretty much the gold standard in Dallas. They absolutely deserve every penny! I love their work, and with that in mind, I set out to find someone with similar talents more in our price range. It was an adventure!

Photo Credit: Jonathan Ivy

Photo Credit: Allison Davis

Despite being amazing in their own right, these particular pictures are of our venues! Left: Reception Right: Church (More on that later!)

Have you had any family experiences that effect the way you deal with vendors? Are you willing to trust a relatively new vendor if they are backed by professionals?

Finding Our Church pt 2

After we'd fully ruled out White Chapel for our ceremony, I was given the go-ahead to contact the wedding coordinator at a church just down the road from our venue, First United Methodist Church of Arlington (what a mouthful!). The first woman we dealt with was unreasonably stingy with information. Because of our long engagement, we told her we wanted to become involved in the church we chose to be married in and become members. She was a little older and very suspicious of our motives for membership. It was true that we had heard members paid a lower fee, but we also were earnest in our desire to join the church!

Regardless. This church could not be more perfect in my eyes. It is literally two blocks away from our reception venue, historic, and Methodist, like us! This church was the perfect size, and gorgeous.

One thing we both thought fascinating about this church was that it was built in 1907, and it has tragically burned down since then not once, but twice! The church never gave up hope, and was always rebuilt on the same foundation. I thought this was an amazing metaphor for marriage!

Photo by Simple Moments

Photos by Johnathan Ivy

The sanctuary held around 800, and the intimate chapel held 100. The first time I saw the gorgeous sanctuary, I was sold, but we knew with our budget we would probably be in the chapel.

I have to admit that when I emailed the wedding director about policies and fees, I was filled with dread. After our experience with White Chapel I worried that we might not be able to afford the church wedding that Mr. Man wanted, or would have to draw drastically from all other areas of the budget to make it happen. Luckily, we were not as shell-shocked by the cost this time. Unfortunately, the woman in charge would not even give us a hint as to what the member cost would be at this point, so that would remain a mystery for quite some time.
Non Member Fees

	Fee	Deposit
Sanctuary	$ 1,600	$ 200
Chapel	$ 800	$ 200

And because awesome people make lists....

The Pros: 

1. Location! It was SO close to our reception location that if our friends/family got lost on the way, well...that was out of my control. We did all we could!
2. Price! Even the non-member prices were cheaper than the member fees at White Chapel. The coordinator even let us elect to have someone we know marry us to avoid the $250 pastor honorarium (fee). 
3. Decor - The sanctuary and chapel were both so nice already that we wouldn't have to spend a ton on flowers or decorating. 

The Cons:

1. We had to have live music, which meant either paying $225 for the organist or find our own live musicians, which would have their own fee plus $100 for a required sound technician.
2. Our flower girls weren't allowed to throw anything! No flowers, real or fake! Also, supposedly no glitter or rice or anything outside. This was a real bummer, but I found a pro-photo of people tossing things, so maybe it's allowed under the radar ;)
3. We might have to be in the smaller chapel and not the sanctuary, if we didn't find out member prices before we had to book.

On the grand scheme of things, the cons are nothing compared to the pros! We booked it right away, and since at this point we were still over a year away from our date, we didn't have to commit to the sanctuary/chapel just yet. I became a member and we attended church at least every other weekend to service for four or five months. The snarky lady was still not impressed enough by our dedication to grant us the member price, but good news is coming!

A Double (Maybe Triple!) Dose of Cuteness

When it came to picking our flower girl and ring bearer, we mostly had to look to my side of the family. Mr. Manatee's family's children are either way too old, or way too young. The youngest girl is 12, and the most eligible boy in the family is only about year old. He did a pretty good job in his parents' wedding a few months ago, but mainly because it required something he already wanted to do...walk towards his parents. I didn't really ask my bridesmaids in any fancy way, but I did order this card from Arleen Design for the asking of our little ones!

So, for our ring bearer we chose my little cousin, Pierce, who lives in Vancouver with the rest of my extended family! We've had the privilege of hanging out several times on family trips, and he is always SO much fun! 

Here's Pierce and my beautiful aunt, who is kindly designing our invitations for us! She's an incredibly talented art director and operates a little Etsy shop called The Letter K Design. Can't you tell how much fun he is?!

Next we had to find some gorgeous little girls! Luckily we knew of at least one, if not two! Their mother, Erica, had been my grand-sister in Colorguard in high school, and we've been close ever since! Her and her husband moved to an Air Force Base in Abilene about a year ago, but we try really hard to see each other every few months! She is a few years older than I am, and is blessed with two beautiful little girls! I say one maybe two because we'd love to have the youngest be involved, but only if she feels ready! I can't wait to dress Molly (and hopefully Kate!) up in the tulle-iest little flower girl dresses I can find.

Hmm....I'm dreaming of something like this!

Photocredit: Girlyglam

Did one side or the other lack in 'eligible' little ones? Did you look outside your family for cuteness?

On Finding a Church Part 1.

Despite the fact that Mr. Manatee had very clear intentions of being married in a church, he didn't really have any specifications of which church. Spoiler alert: This was the first time his mother and I had ever actually butt heads over anything. She wanted us to get hitched in a gorgeous church in his hometown (Southlake) that they attended on occasion, and I had my eye on a church about two blocks down from our reception location. Both of these churches were Methodist, but that's pretty much where the comparison stops. Always eager to keep the peace between Manatee-In-Law and I, I usually would have just agreed to use White Chapel. However.

SL White Chapel

There were several roadblocks between us and wedded bliss at White Chapel.
1. The DFW Connector 

The connector is actually the job site that my darling fiance receives his paychecks from. It is also the biggest pain in my road-rage-prone butt. Ideally, this 3 billion dollar fix cleans up traffic throughout the Metroplex and eases the cluster-truck congestion in Grapevine. In reality, it just fatally confuses any GPS that attempts to navigate it and any normal driver that comes across it.This job has been going on for years, has little chance of being finished by June 1st, and skyrockets my blood pressure every time I'm behind the wheel. It is also right smack in the main roadway between White Chapel and the Sanford House, and it's the last thing I want to involve our out of town guests in. No. Bueno.

2.  It's HUGE. Or tiny. 

 
We had a bit of a goldilocks problem with this venue. The Sanctuary holds...wait for it...2500 people! With a guest list of around 100-120, we were going to hear crickets. The wedding consultant half-heartedly suggested we could turn off the lights in the side wings. She did tell us about a small, historic little chapel that was part of the main building, and it was so adorable! The downside...it only held 65 people, and we were restricted to 3 BM and GM. At that point, we each already had 4, and we couldn't imagine asking anyone to step down. The walk down the aisle was, as you can imagine, about 10 steps, and that didn't much fit into our vision either. It sure was cute though!

White Chapel

3. It was expensive.
When I requested the information be sent over about pricing, my eyeballs just about popped out of my head. 'Mr. Man' and I started out on this search naive to the cost of getting married in a church. We ignorantly assumed that a holy house would be so thrilled for us to tie the knot before the eyes of the Lord they would just let us slip in with a hundred people on a Saturday. Not so! The fees to use the church were as follows:

	Non-Members	Members
Sanctuary	$2,400	$1,850
Chapel	$1,500	$1,000

Holy Crap! Mr. Manatee's family, thankfully, were members, which softened the blow... But not by much! In their defense, this included a pianist and the use of the minister. However. Considering that we had (just in case) allotted a pitiful $600 in our fledgling budget for the use of a church, even the tiny chapel was way out of our budget. The Manatees were already financially helping us and my family out with the wedding more than traditionally called for, so we weren't about to strain our budget any further.

Thankfully Manatee-In-Law saw that I really had given it a chance, but the cons to this option couldn't be ignored. We agreed to put White Chapel behind us.

Did you have a established church at the time of your engagement, or did you consider a few before booking a ceremony space?

If It's Not Moving, Monogram It

I'm relatively new to monogramming. I never cut my teeth on a copy of Southern Living, and as a Canadian, I'm distinctly....un-southern. But just because I wasn't raised in Texas, doesn't mean I dont die over these Southern details. So when this puppy popped up on my Pinterest, I knew I had to have it.

Frill Seekers Gifts

 I kid you not, not five minutes after I saw that Pin I was googling all kinds of monogram embossers. Some were expensive ($60) some were suspiciously cheap ($15? No way.) But I ended up going respectably mid-range at $25. I found this one on Amazon, and the fact that the example was my own initials seemed like a good sign to me. The only difficult part was figuring out if the husband's first initial was to come first or the bride's. After a quick web search, my results were inconclusive. Some said the husband's, some said the wive's, so I took matters into my own hands. I thought LNC had a better ring to it than CNL, which sounded like a late night talk show! Clayton didn't have an opinion about it either way, so I bought it! Less than four days later, the package was in our mailbox!

Just to be clear, I'm just as superstitious as the next bride, and so wont be using this stamp on anything pre-ceremony related! I'm hoping this monogram will class up some cocktail napkins and other details for our reception.

It seemed alarmingly small at first, but that was because they'd tucked the plate inside the machine for ease of storage. Of course I couldn't figure the damn thing out, but engineer fiance' came to the rescue and I was in business. I was disappointed that I didn't have any napkins at hand, but I did have a blank envelope that stood in just fine! 

 At first I stuck with stamping appropriate things, like different thicknesses of paper, but before long....I was monogramming pages of Clay's textbook, the wrapper to the crackers we were eating, anything that would stand still and could be pressed into holding our future initials. I couldn't wait to get my hands on some napkins.

Soon it was time for bed. Clay made a joking comment that he wouldn't be surprised if I'd monogrammed the sheets before he got in there. I was happy to oblige! (Although with little success)

Have you ever gotten extra excited about wedding related mail? Maybe gone a little overboard "testing it out?"

I'll Wear White Part 2

After my first few unsuccessful experiences with dresses, I was starting to get a little discouraged, but a little closer to knowing what I wanted.
I took a trip to Lewisville Bridal with MOH Ashley, and got a little closer to finding what I wanted. I tried on probably 6-7 dresses. They were very helpful, but they didn't allow pictures. We got some sneaky shots while the attendant was off looking for belts. It came down to these two.

This is La Sposa Detalle. It was REALLY close to what I wanted, and the tulle was to die for. I didn't think the sweetheart was deep enough, and it wasn't very flattering in the midsection. I could have had the neckline altered, but that would have been another expense. I've lost about ten pounds since this picture, so it might fit better now, but it still wasnt exactly what I wanted.

I'm really glad now that I look at these pictures that I didnt choose this one. (I can't remember the designer) I was still trying to make the folds work. You can't tell, but the neckline had really cool feather details I was really tempted by. My waist was a little more cinched in this, but the folds were still too toilet paper for me. Dang you, mother, for planting that idea in my head!

A few weeks after this visit, I talked to my grandma about what I should look for. She really encouraged me to get something with lace. When else can you wear full lace than on your wedding day? I had to admit she was right! I added it to my list of 'wants' for my dress.

Image via Google Images

On a last minute whim, my mom and I decided to go dress shopping one Saturday. Lulu's Bridal in Dallas didn't take appointments, but we decided to chance it. When we got there, there was a line out the door. While we were waiting, we decided to take a look at the racks... there really wasn't anything I wanted to try on. We were disappointed, but we were determined not to go home without trying on anything! I decided to try and sweet-talk my way into an appointment at Mockingbird Bridal, and they said if I could get there in the next fifteen minutes, I could slide in. Done and done!
I tried on some really pretty dresses, but I didn't find anything that really stood out. My mom liked the more old fashioned fabrics, but at this point, all I wanted was tulle. When we were about to leave, I spotted a dress hanging up that another bride had discarded, and I had to try it on. It looked a lot like the Detalle, but better somehow. My consultant slid it over my head, and there she was!
Enzoani Erin, and it was perfect. Well, besides that weird bow on the hip that I had removed. My waist looked tiny, the sweetheart was deep, the lace was perfect, and I was drowning in tulle. The only downside was the price tag....On sale, $1800. My mom, who so far hadn't really been impressed by anything, declared that this was the one and I needed to go ahead and do this regardless. I couldn't agree more, and I ran two blocks down the street in the rain to get a cashiers check to pay the 75% deposit. I beamed all the way home, and despite the zillions of dresses I've seen in magazines and online, I've never regretted my decision!
Just like finding the right man, you see hundreds or thousands, you'll try on a few, and you might even really, really like some of them... but when you find the one... you just know! And maybe you even find yourself completely emptying your bank account, running through the rain to make it happen.

     ^ I probably shouldn't make this face at parties.


When you found the perfect dress, did you just know? Was it a long journey to find 'her'?