Weddingbee Blog

One major topic of discussion when we were picking out options for our tasting with the caterer at Ravenwood was on buffet dinners versus seated dinners. We had previously been sent a menu that alluded only to buffet-style dinners, but then they sent a new one that included both buffet and sit-down meals. The prices don’t seem much different, but I have no idea if they include wait staff, which for a seated dinner can really ramp up the costs.

So, what are the pros of buffet vs. seated?

Seated Dinner

The seated dinner is served one of three ways.

(1) Individual plates are brought to the guests with the appropriate meal already upon it

(2) The wait staff serves the courses to the plates already on the table

(3) Two waiters serve from a platter: one holds the platter and one serves the meal.
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When it comes to tables at the reception, we have three choices on shape. Round, square, or rectangular. I asked Mr. Fondue which he liked the best off the top of his head, and he said round. This is the most common, for sure. But I keep finding pictures of square and rectangular tables that I love.

We’re still waiting to hear from our venue about what our table options are (like, how many of each shape they have, their sizes, etc.) and then we have to price linens based on that, so this may all be a “moo” point (sorry, had to throw the Friends reference in). But I’m going to provide pictures anyway.

Check out this gorgeous square table for eight.

Source: photo by Liz Banfield via The Bride’s Cafe

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I had a few people ask how I made our save the dates, so I thought I would provide some tutorials. First up is how to put the image together in Photoshop. I am using Photoshop 7.0 for Windows. Other versions should be fairly similar, but menu items may not be in the same locations.

First, start a new file and make the dimensions fairly large. I made mine 2000 x 2000.

Then, I found a graphic to use for the background and made a pattern. This option is located under Edit > Define Pattern. A dialogue box will pop up allowing you to name the new pattern.

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Previously: Part 1 | Part 2

Mr. Fondue and I were beginning to think that a venue that met all of our criteria didn’t exist. We started going back through all the places we had visited to figure out which one would be the best to settle on. We still had two more places on the list, however: a ballroom at a local university, and a golf club right down the road from the house.

We decided to check out the university first. We made some plans with a security guard to let us in to check out the room: Baird’s Chapel at Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee.

Source: One Source Weddings

We met him one night, and he unlocked the building so we could get in. It was a gorgeous room: hardwood floors, lots of windows, high ceilings, and beautiful lighting. Our main issue here was where we would be able to hold the ceremony. We decided we could have the ceremony set up in the room, then have a cocktail hour out in the lobby while the room was being switched over into a reception area. It would be kind of a hassle, maybe, but we thought it was worth it for the location. We decided to go ahead and book it.

Except we couldn’t.
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Previously: Part 1

Still not discouraged, we continued on with the venue search. Our next stop was Cheekwood Botanical Gardens. We were fairly certain a reception here would be out of budget, but we were willing to compromise and have the reception elsewhere to be able to wed in one of their beautiful gardens.

The specific location we had in mind was the reflection pool. However, in the month of May, they do not allow wedding ceremonies there unless you hold the reception at Cheekwood as well. We looked at their lowest price reception option for our number of guests, but it would have had to been a standing reception, which is something we really didn’t want. There were other gardens that didn’t have the same restriction, but we didn’t like them as well. The search went on.

The Hermitage, the historic home of President Andrew Jackson, looked promising.
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While our photographer was easy to decide upon, the location was not. We looked at A LOT of venues. Between the two of us, we had a very specific idea of what we wanted. Our criteria? First, we wanted to have the ceremony and reception in the same location to cut down on travel times. Fitting into the budget was, of course, a top priority. We both also wanted something aesthetically pleasing. We were mainly looking at an outdoor ceremony and an indoor reception, but that wasn’t a necessity. Mr. Fondue wanted a full open bar, so they needed to be able to accommodate that. I wanted a sparkler exit, so that couldn’t be against the rules.

We did a ton of research on practically every venue in a 30 mile radius, and narrowed it down to a few to visit.
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When discussing our budget, Mr. Fondue and I agreed on one thing: photography was, by far, the most important item. It was also the easiest item to choose. Unbeknown to him, I had already found our photographer. About two years earlier, I was bored one day and planned what I thought our wedding might be like. It involved pink cymbidium orchids, some Asian design, less than 60 people, and Kate Crafton taking photos.

Alas, the only thing that remained was Kate. Fast forward two years later, and she had taken on a position with a studio in order to spend more time with her family. Soon after we became engaged, we scheduled an appointment with her at the new studio, Studio 5 Photographic Artists. I brought along my list of questions to ask, but they were really more of a formality. We loved her personality, and so we booked her!

Here is some of her work!

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I’ve been planning stuff since I was a kid. I used to plan bake sales and carnivals and clubs. I always had folders with ideas organized perfectly, even if what I was planning never happened.

Naturally, I try to stay organized with the wedding planning. I started with a binder, where I stored brochures from local vendors, ideas of things printed out from online, and list upon list of things to do. I have since moved to a smaller binder now that all our vendors are booked. It is mainly used as storage for receipts and contracts.

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I knew, from the minute we got engaged, two things regarding the music: I wanted a harp and violin duo, and I wanted to walk down the aisle to my favorite video game song. Luckily, Mr. Fondue had no issues with this. After a bit of searching, we found a violinist who works with several harpists, and was willing to learn a couple songs for us.

Source: George Callaghan

For the wedding party processional, we are going with the standard “Canon in D”. We tried to resist it. We tried to find something else that we liked just as well but wasn’t as popular. But we failed. We just love it too much.

For my processional, we chose “Aria di Mezzo Carattere” from Final Fantasy VI. If you are familiar with the game, this is the opera piece that Celes sings when she is disguised as Maria. It’s one of the best pieces of music in a game ever, and Celes is my all-time favorite character from my all-time favorite game, so it made sense to go with this.
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We originally weren’t going to send out save-the-dates. We weren’t getting married on a holiday weekend. Most of our guests live in-state, and the ones that didn’t knew about the wedding already. It would have been better to spend the money on parts of the wedding that were more important to us.

That is, until the idea of emailing the save-the-dates came to me. As our invitations cater to the more formal side of our wedding, why not use the save-the-dates to display the quirkiness of it?

So we broke out our digital camera and took pictures of our Miis from our Nintendo Wii. Then we used Photoshop to create a graphical file, which we posted in an HTML email and sent out to our guests.

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When we first started talking about the wedding, we were torn between two color schemes. We knew we liked black and white, but the accent color was a toss up. Red has always been both my and Mr. Fondue’s favorite color, but we both also liked how pink looked against black. We debated back and forth for several weeks, with me looking up inspiration pictures of both color schemes.

We ultimately decided on red. Being our favorite color, it comes up a lot in our lives, such as my engagement ring and my car (which will be our getaway vehicle):

I like things that match, so it seemed like common sense.
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You may remember from my last post that Mr. Fondue proposed with my mom’s old engagement ring. It was a tad too big, and I wanted to enhance it a bit to make it more my style.

We decided to take it to a local gemologist, Jay Yontef. We had heard wonderful things about him and his creations, and they were all true! Working with him, we designed a beautiful three-stone ring using my mom’s diamond as the center stone and accented it with rubies.

We had only been engaged for a couple weeks, but I was already so used to wearing the ring on my finger that it was very strange to not have it. After two agonizing weeks, we got a call: the ring was in!

We quickly made an appointment to pick it up. Jay made me close my eyes while he showed it to Mr. Fondue. Then, he placed it carefully under the light and told me to open them. It was gorgeous, and just as I had pictured it!
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 Mr. Fondue and I met at his 21st birthday party. I was sort of dating his roommate at the time, so I showed up to the party completely unprepared for meeting the man I was going to marry. However, the minute I laid eyes on Mr. Fondue, I knew.

He didn’t know right away, however. We talked and flirted over the next month before we finally started dating, but Mr. Fondue was so scared of commitment that he wouldn’t call me his girlfriend for the first six months we dated, despite the fact that neither of us was seeing anyone else. This was incredibly frustrating to me, seeing as I was already in love with him.
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Hi, everyone! Miss Fondue here. I’m so excited to be the “newbee” around the hive! I’ve been an avid reader of Weddingbee for months, and all the wonderful bees have inspired me so much. I hope that I will be able to inspire some of you, as well. (Or at least entertain you a little!)

Mr. Fondue and I have been together for over four years. We’re actually getting married the day after our fifth dating anniversary. A few years ago, we decided to check out the local Melting Pot restaurant to celebrate our anniversary. Neither of us had ever had fondue before, but we absolutely fell in love that night. We eventually procured our own fondue pot, so we could make our own yummy fondue concoctions.

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