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The most valuable thing I’ve learned for shopping (in bulk) for my wedding is the power of the COUPON CODE. Most of you “shopping savvy” girls are probably already clued into these magical sites, but believe it or not, I knew nothing about them before I started shopping for my wedding. Don’t rely on a company’s website to clue you in to their latest sale. Often times the discounts are E-mailed to customers who’ve registered with them, but unless you like to have your Inbox clogged with bulk mail, heres a simple trick I’ve picked up from some resourceful brides. Simply Google “Coupon Code” along with the online retailer you’re purchasing from.
There are lots of websites dedicated to sharing with consumers the latest deals and steals available on the net. Here are a few of my favorites:
http://www.currentcodes.com/
http://www.couponchief.com/
http://www.retailmenot.com/
Do you ever think back to before you were engaged and just think all this “wedding nonsense” was… well… nonsense?
Well, that was me, six months ago. All over the board. Garter toss? Lame. Bouquet toss? Lame. Color coordination? Lame. Cake cutting? Lame-O-Rama.
As the months have passed by, and the wedding creeps up, I’m slowly beginning to realize that I’m indeed excited for all these little “wedding traditions.” It all came to a head this weekend, when Ingrid Frazer, our cake baker, sent us over a sample of our wedding cake to try while visiting our reception site. She practically sent us the entire top tier of our cake! And you know what that meant… time to practice the cake cutting!
Some pictures are worth a thousand words, but these are worth only two: SHEER EXCITEMENT.
Venue Shopping 1 - Hotel Vitale, San Francisco
Venue Shopping 2 - David Girard Vineyards
After an intense month of spreadsheets, trips to venues, and exhausting our online resources, we finally settled on a venue that we both loved. What is really special about getting married at a winery we frequent is that we can come back often and reminisce.
image from villatoscano.com
Money. The most dreaded topic.
What to do with our finances after we officially become Mr. and Mrs.? I’m an independent contractor, meaning that I don’t get a regular paycheck, but work job to job. So for tax purposes, I keep close tabs on my business expenses, and have 2 separate bank accounts, one business and one personal. I only transfer money into my personal account to cover my minimum personal expenses, and leave the majority “pool” of money I have in my business account. Long story short, a joint checking account would be really unfair to Mr. Penguin, because he would deposit ALL the money he makes into the account, while I would deposit a minimum amount to cover my personal credit card.
Lately, not having combined accounts has really gotten on my nerves. Now that we cohabitate, I’m sick of deciding who pays for groceries, who pays for dinner, who pays for plants, furniture, ANYTHING. It’s not even a “50/50″ thing, because neither of us care about who’s paying more or less, its more of deciding who has more money on hand at that particular moment. And after 2 years, it’s getting exhausting.
Featured on Weddingbee
Unique Wedding Favors
“Add a memorable touch to your wedding with unique favors that match your theme.”
I’ve been wondering what to give to the “little ones” at our wedding to keep them busy and happy.
For the past six years or so, I’ve been exclusively purchasing all my baby gifts at The Elegant Child.
Its a posh baby gift site frequented by many Hollywood types, and the owner, Teri Weiss, runs her shop out of her home. I’ve visited many times when I lived in L.A. and everything she has is capital “F” Fabulous. She treats all her customers like they’re the most important people in the world, and her unique gifts never cease to amaze me.
I’m really trying to restrain myself from shoving the Penguin’s Alma Mater down our guests’ throats.
Okay, okay, no I’m not. The above was me attempting to portray myself as a normal human being and not a crazy obsessed die-hard Bruin fan and UCLA alum. Truth is, Mr. Penguin and I plan our lives around UCLA sports. His parents are scheduled to come into town from Minnesota this week, simply because its a bye weekend for Bruin Football. We didn’t choose June for our wedding simply for the mild weather and sunny skies, but rather because it’s a dead month for the big NCAA sports.
So, obviously, the design for our groom’s cake will no doubt reflect our love for UCLA.
Mr. Penguin, please refrain from reading any further.
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
I have a confession: I never watch couples cut their cakes. Dinner is over, I’m enjoying a cocktail and conversing with long lost friends, and the 20 kids bouncing around the cake table is kind of a turnoff. And even if I wanted to watch the cake cutting, often times there are 30 guests crowded around it, and I’m not about to elbow the bride’s grandma in the pancreas just to catch a glimpse.
When we met with our wedding coordinator, I asked her if it was okay if we placed the cake smack dab in the middle of the dance floor. She said that she hadn’t done it before (it’s usually shoved in a corner of the tent), but that there was no reason why we couldn’t. I suppose there is a possibility that someone would come over and knock it over, but isn’t that the case even if the cake is in the corner? We could rope it off if we were REALLY that concerned about it. We’re not.
There is something incredibly clean and simple about bouquets containing only one type of flower. Ever since Mr. Penguin’s step-sister carried a bride’s bouquet made up entirely of stephanotis, I was hooked. I really want my bridesmaids and I to carry bouquets containing only one flower.
I recently received the most wonderful gift from one of my best college girlfriends: A deck of CozmoCards. CozmoCards are basically a deck of cards that give you $15 off at over 40 restaurants around a particular city. You recieve one $15 “gift card” PER RESTAURANT, and are able to send in for 6 “jokers”…meaning you can repeat 6 of the restaurants if you’d like. They’re good for one calendar year (January-December). It’s a great gift for your wedding attendants who dine about town often! A CozmoDeck retails for $30 and you can find them at www.cozmocard.com.
CozmoDecks are currently available for Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Venue Shopping 1 - Hotel Vitale, San Francisco
At first, we were reluctant to look outside of the Bay Area for venues. Mama Penguin begged me to consider how much easier it would be to plan a wedding closer to my hometown, and how there were already several venues that we were already intimately familiar with right around the Sacramento/El Dorado County Area.
Mr. Penguin and I took a Sunday morning to take advantage of some Crate and Barrel freebies at a spring registry event. We hop between the Bay Area and Sacramento often, so after our bummer of an experience at Williams Sonoma San Francisco, we decided to try our luck at the Crate and Barrel in the Galleria at Roseville.
With low expectations but high hopes, we entered the store and were greeted warmly and directed to all the right places at all the right times. They appeared to have a sales associate working every section of the store, so that any time you had a question, a knowledgeable staffer was on hand.
It’s difficult to include everyone important in the wedding process, especially when most of our families reside half way across the country. We’re trying as hard as we can to make the wedding a reflection of not only ourselves, but everyone involved.
Our winery reception site lists five wines (3 reds, 2 whites) that we must choose from for our reception. So we hauled all five to our most recent trip to Minnesota to have Mr. Penguin’s family help us choose our wedding wines. We had to choose from a Sav Blanc or Semillion for our whites, or 2 Zins and a Bella Rosso for the reds.
Cake was something I REFUSED to go over budget on. If I couldn’t get it for under $500, we were going to get a big old Costco sheet cake. Okay not really, but our local supermarket Raley’s actually had a nice little selection of simple cakes that would really just “do the job.” And I was fine with that, after all, I’d already blown the budget on venue and photography, so I really had to stick to budget on elements that were less important to me.
Raley’s has got some great simple cakes for around $350 that serve 100-140, but they don’t deliver, and I just didn’t feel like dealing with (or putting someone in charge of) one more detail like that. I had set my budget at $500, so I thought I might as well give my venue’s recommended baker, Ingrid Fraser of Elegant Cakes (Amador City, CA) a try.
I knew for budget’s sake we had to go SIMPLE. But I’m never one for plain, so I scoured the web and found some cakes on theknot.com that would suffice:
Only now that Mr. Penguin and I are engaged do I realize what a bummer it was that a few people in our lives, especially my parents, didn’t take our relationship REALLY seriously before we officially got engaged. Despite the fact that we had been dating for 6 years, had lived together for 2, and had co-signed on a home, they still treated me like a “me” and not a “we.” Although we weren’t officially engaged, Mr. Penguin and I had settled into a married-ish relationship a couple years before we made it official.
My parents really love Mr. Penguin, after all he is a great guy. Before we got engaged, Mama and Papa Penguin and I would often discuss my future. They never really mentioned his presence in it, and I was too hesitant to outright discuss the fact that he would be in my life 10 years from now. We often would discuss the future of my business. In my heart, I knew that if Mr. Penguin wanted to start his own private practice in another part of the country, I would be more than happy to follow. And to make sure that we had an income, I would drop my own business to get a steady job with a steady cash flow, just so we could be sure that we could pay our bills while he got off of the ground. BUT, there was NO WAY I would have ever been able to say this to my parents, pre-engagement. Even though he was my long-term boyfriend, even the MENTION of me making a career sacrifice for someone other than myself was a little upsetting for Papa Penguin.
A fellow bride who I’ve been in close contact with since getting engaged sent me this E-mail a few months ago:
“I found some invites that I really like from Jean M. They are way over what I wanted to spend but I feel like I should do what I like instead of settling for cheap. My mom offered to pay for the invites but I just feel like I have more freedom to pick them out if I foot the bill. I don’t think my mom would go for $321 invites. Now that I type that number, I don’t know if I want to spend that much either.”
Here’s what she wanted:
“Kim” By Jean M - 100 Invitations $321, 100 Response Cards and Envelopes $66. Total: $387
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Mrs. Penguin, Northern California Age and Occupation: 27, Weddingbee Editor in Chief Fiance's Age and Occupation: 30, Doctor of Physical Therapy Engagement Date: January 29, 2007 Wedding Date: June 7, 2008 Blogging Since: September 14, 2007 Venue: Winery in the Gold Country About Me: I love the Spice Girls, dogs with underbites, bean burritos, making messes, high fives, avoiding showers, crossword puzzles, blogs, weddings, and blogs about weddings!
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