Our Sweetie Pie
September 4th, 2008 @ 1:18 pm by Miss Pinot Noir
Even though Mr. PN and I are bypassing the traditional wedding cake, we didn’t want to miss out on the cake cutting tradition. While we were in Napa this past spring checking out our wedding vendors, we began thinking about a wedding cake substitute. Our florist recommended a wonderful bakery called Sweetie Pies. Sweetie Pies is a cafe and bakery in downtown Napa. They were founded 10 years ago and are active members of the community. They make lots of beautiful wedding cakes and specialty cakes. In order to stay within budget we will have a simple 6″ lemon cake with citrus butter cream frosting.
The cake will be pretty small, so I purchased a cake plate on eBay. I found this great plate for $10 (including shipping). When it arrived, it was very tarnished and I wondered if it would clean up enough to be presentable.
Before polish
The After Party Dress
September 3rd, 2008 @ 12:25 pm by Miss Pinot Noir
Mr. Pinot Noir and I will be joining our friends and family for an informal after party gathering somewhere in San Francisco. I originally planned to wear my actual wedding dress for the get together. After all, I will only get to wear it once! But after my fitting I realized that this just isn’t a practical choice. I’ll want something a little more comfortable for the evening festivities.
My criteria for the after party dress included, but did not require, the following:
1. Costs under $100
2. There is some white in the pattern/design
3. Something I can wear it again (I’m all about reuse)
4. Will allow me to sport a regular bra (no spaghetti straps and nothing strapless)
Mr. PN and I took a trip to Macy’s to look for my after party dress. I must admit that Mr. PN is really good at shopping for me. He picks out styles and colors that I wouldn’t typically try, and they usually turn out to be great. I get the most compliments on the outfits that he picks out. Too bad I couldn’t take him wedding dress shopping with me! After scouring the sale racks, we came up with four options.
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A Wedding Planning Hiatus
September 2nd, 2008 @ 12:55 pm by Miss Pinot Noir
Some of you may have noticed that I have been a bit absent on the blog lately. Well, I started a new job last week (yippie!) but the stress of a new job coupled with all the wedding planning has really been getting to me. Mr. PN and I have been bickering about the smallest of issues—like who left a light on—and it has been exhausting and draining. To be honest, there have been days that I have just wished for the wedding to be over and for life to return to normal again.
So instead of using the long weekend to accomplish many wedding projects, we took a wedding planning hiatus! We left town and more or less ignored the wedding for the weekend.
Searching for the Perfect Bar
August 27th, 2008 @ 6:09 pm by Miss Pinot Noir
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Mr. PN and I are in search of the perfect bar in San Francisco for our after party. All of our guests are staying in San Francisco and busing out to Napa for the wedding, and we will all be returning to San Francisco for the evening. Mr. PN and I plan to steal a little time after the wedding for fun photos and then we will meet up with our family and friends on Saturday night at a local bar. This will be a very unofficial meet up as a way for us to spend some extra time with our family and friends that will be traveling so far to be with us on our wedding day.
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Southern Wedding Recap
August 27th, 2008 @ 1:14 pm by Miss Pinot Noir
Mr. PN and I recently traveled to Birmingham, Alabama for a wedding! Birmingham was just lovely and we had a great time. We arrived on Friday afternoon and checked into our hotel, Embassy Suites Birmingham, and went off to find some lunch. Mr. PN then went to the church for rehearsal and when he returned, we got ready and took the hotel’s free shuttle (best hotel amenity ever!) to the rehearsal dinner at The Club. We enjoyed spectacular views of the city and heard many wonderful speeches about the bride and groom.
On Saturday morning, Mr. PN and I took advantage of the hotel gym (we are total gym rats) and then we enjoyed the fabulous free breakfast buffet at the hotel. We parted ways and I took this opportunity to do a little exploring, so I took a suggestion from the hive and ventured over to the wonderful Pepper Place Saturday Market. I love farmers’ markets and it was so much fun to explore a new city’s market.
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My Bachelorette Party!
August 22nd, 2008 @ 5:05 pm by Miss Pinot Noir
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My bachelorette party is this weekend and I can’t wait! My bridesmaid and FSIL have been planning the entire thing and I don’t have a clue what the plans are. My only hint:
I will be “wearing a white shirt (and it isn’t too embarrassing)” and there will be champagne!
Magnetic STD’s
August 22nd, 2008 @ 1:01 pm by Miss Pinot Noir
When Mr. Pinot Noir and I decided on a destination wedding, we knew that we would need to send out Save The Dates so our family and friends could begin making their arrangements. While sending an evite might have been the most eco-friendly option - most of our extended family is not comfortable with technology (as in they don’t have email) so that would have made things rather difficult.
Long ago (pre-engagement) I had fallen in love with the idea of doing a photo booth style save-the-date. After our engagement, I researched all of the photo booths in New York City and compiled a list based on location, price and quality. I planned to take the pictures with super cute cards and then reproduce copies of the photostrip. But then I started to worry (this is not unusual). How many tries would we need to get the right combination of photos. How many booths would we need to visit to get a decent quality? I decided to make a postcard using the photostrip images, and then we wouldn’t need to use envelopes and we would save money and paper (no envelopes!). Visions of creative, unique, DIY save-the-dates danced in my head.
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Would You Get One?
August 21st, 2008 @ 9:29 am by Miss Pinot Noir
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While prenuptial agreements used to be limited to celebrities and the wealthy, they are becoming quite a common practice today. In fact, the number of couples seeking prenups has risen 57% in the last five years. According to this article from Smart Money, more and more adults today are getting prenups. As people marry older, they have established their careers and have a good financial history. They might own real estate, have financial investments, or contributed significantly to a retirement fund. Interestingly, more and more of the people requesting the prenups are women rather than men. Also, some couples choose to get prenup not because of wealth but because of debt. Today’s debt ridden society is making it more and more likely for one person in the relationship brings in a significant amount of debt.
Prenuptial agreements are about the most unromantic part of wedding planning.
A Hawaiian Honeymoon
August 19th, 2008 @ 6:04 pm by Miss Pinot Noir
I wish I could personally thank the person who thought up honeymoons. Seriously, what a fabulous idea!?!? Spend all of your time and energy planning the wedding day and then all of a sudden you are on vacation! I personally think it is especially great because I tend to get overly excited about vacations. I fantasize about them for weeks and I envision how wonderful they are going to be. As a result, sometimes I am actually let down because I build up such high expectations. But, with a honeymoon, I won’t even have time to think about it until we actually arrive! This means no expectations, no stress - just pure romantic relaxing bliss!
Mr. PN and I will be spending one fabulous week in Hawaii! Picking the honeymoon location was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be. Neither of us have ever been to Hawaii and since the wedding is in California, we will be half way there anyway! The next step was to pick an island to visit. I thought we could hop around the islands and spend a day or two at each - after some research I quickly realized that “hopping around” wasn’t as practical (or affordable) as I first imagined.
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A $2000 Wedding?!
August 14th, 2008 @ 10:32 am by Miss Pinot Noir
I recently came upon the 2000 Dollar Wedding blog (thanks to a profile from Meg from A Practical Wedding). Sara and Matt are an amazing couple who were married last month in Colorado. They stuck to a strict budget of $2000 in order to keep the wedding planning focused on their goals and to save the money for a down payment on a house (which they moved to, from Colorado to Texas, two days after the wedding!). I have spent the last two days reading the entire archive, over 140 posts, and I feel so inspired. In their words:
Our quest to wrest our wedding from the hands of the Wedding Industrial Complex and make it our own (in a budget-minded, hand-crafted, eco-friendly way)
