Weddingbee

I do love our venue, but I must come clean, our first love was… the caterer. This was to be our first, out of two, catering tastings. Remember how I said I was all about clicking with my vendors? (more about the cake, later - I promise!) Well, this is no different. My catering tasting was love at first… bite? conversation? Whatever it was, both of us knew we wanted them.

I’ll start this by saying that the food was simply amazing!!! They’re 100% organic and use local produce, which I’m all about - but good. And they have the same idea about food as we do, food is meant to be eaten and enjoyed, not just looked at and appreciated. Not to say their presentation isn’t good, it is! It’s appetizing, beautiful and clean, but it’s not “art”. Instead, it looks like something you immediately want to smash your face into, foregoing stupid utensils that would slow you down.

However, it wasn’t just the yummy food that won us over. Several courses into the meal, we were both happily eating our entrees, discussing the wedding and foods we love, how I happen to have a lot of vegan friends, and through that - my friend’s vegan dog. I repeat, we were still eating at this point, when she decided to take a chance on us.

- THIS IS NOT FOR THE WEAK OF HEART -

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Three cake tastings down, one to go.

I’d like to say they were all wonderful and everyone was fabulous, but it’d be a horrid lie. Our first tasting had a wonderful vendor, really a sweet woman and she was so accommodating! All of our questions were answered and our fears quelled. It was unfortunate that the cake wasn’t impressive. Mr. Gummi Bear and I are both very easily swayed by how much we like the vendor as a person, so we felt bad that we weren’t sold on her cake.

The next tasting, which we were very excited to go to, turned out to be the opposite experience. We sat, looked at books, ate cake and were impressed… only to wait an extra half hour to be greeted (or not really, she didn’t say hello or introduce herself) by a woman with a calculator and a scowl. She was rude, unaccommodating, condescending, and was flat out making up numbers out of thin air. She claimed that what the first cake vendor said was possible, was impossible, and made sure to tell us that on a good day, without traffic, in a normal car, it would take over 2 hours to go to our venue. It takes 50 minutes with normal driving as it’s on the way to my parents’ home, so I’ve driven the distance numerous times. I let it go, I wasn’t going to argue how ridiculous that time estimate was, she was just flat out mean to us. I politely tried to leave several times, only to be bashed about how I couldn’t have what I want (so, I should give in and go with her). We left thinking we’d rather not have a cake than have one by her.

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I’m not tattooed all over my body and hanging myself from hooks, but I’ve got a little bit of color on my skin and a whole lot of mini holes. I’ve managed to keep the worst of it a secret from my family, mostly thanks to their own denial that they have a freakish daughter, and partially out of my paranoia that my EXTREMELY conservative family would flip out.

I’m now having a few problems with this side of my life in regards to the wedding:

1. I managed to hide my.. er.. body piercings from my mother when I was trying on gowns for the first time. There was a point where she peeked in and I had to scramble to cover them, but I think in combination with her denial, the complete lack of knowledge that you can pierce/tattoo parts like that, and the quickness of the coverage, they didn’t register. So, now at the fittings and at the actual wedding, how will I cover it? I can’t wear a bra because my gown is backless, in fact, I can’t wear much of anything when I’m crawling into the dress… is it better to tell them now in warning, or forego that moment when my mother is helping me get into a dress and grab the dress and run into the bathroom to put it on? Read more…

So we went over to our invitation designer’s home and picked up our STDs. It’s so nice to be able to go over to her house and chat over these things, it makes it feel like we’re really getting to know each other and less like a business transaction. We immediately went to work buying a few supplies at Paper Source and Blick: paper, envelope liner templates, exacto knife, self healing mat, and some double stick glue.. tape… thing. It’s nifty. I found the people at our local Paper Source to be… really pretentious and unpleasant. They had a very bad attitude and made me feel like I was wasting their time for not being nearly as craft-knowledgable as them. I went to art school, so having people talk down to me about glue is really off-putting, so we got only what we needed at Paper Source and went to Blick for the rest.

Anyway, we sat down and got to work:

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I hadn’t wanted a wedding, I know what kind of person I can be - detail oriented, focused, and easily frazzled. I saw the eventual downhill roll into insanity that would ensue if I agreed to plan an event. Mr. Gummi Bear wanted a wedding desperately, and so after agreeing that he would take a major roll in planning, we bought our first wedding magazine and started. This was in April 2006, and we immediately began making appointments to view venues that we’d be booking for Fall of 2007. We knew we wanted outdoors, natural beauty, to have our pick of caterers, and just to feel it was - the one.

We traveled all over wine country, the coast, within San Francisco city limits and just beyond, only to be broken down in not finding the right place. We stopped looking for months, got sidetracked with buying our home and it wasn’t until this February that we looked at each other and thought, “oh yea, we’re getting married…” and jumped back on the horse. We hadn’t considered leaving the bay area, but we took a chance and drove an hour from our home to visit a small organic farm directly between our two home towns.

lavender field facing the cottage:

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Hi Everyone!

I’m really excited to be joining the sweet ranks of my fellow candy-bees! It seems so fitting for me because I have a ridiculous sweet tooth and am notorious for having candy with me at all times!

Mr. Gummi Bear and I met in college, and he said at first look with my crazy pink hair and weird Japanese punk clothing that I was crazy, then spoke to me and decided I was “normal”. He has since learned his first impression was right! I’m a Japanese importer, animator by degree, and he’s a video game programmer - so we’re both complete geeks. We spend a whole lot of time on our computers, going to Japan, decorating our home with vintage furniture and high tech toys… but mostly raising our two puppies, a papillon and a long coat chihuahua.

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