Weddingbee

Everyone in the family pitched in to help. Mr. Fondue helped with usher duties. Their other brother was the DJ/MC at the reception. And me? I was photographer/day-of-coordinator.

I will preface this by saying I am, in no way, a photographer. I am an admirer of photography, but that’s it. I’ve had no formal training, and I don’t even own anything other than a little Canon point-and-shoot. So, when they asked me to be their photographer, I was more than a little apprehensive. Especially since it was to be in a church, and churches are notorious for bad lighting. I was freaking out up until the wedding, though Mr. Fondue did his best to calm me down by reminding me that no one else in the family even owned a camera, so without me, they wouldn’t have any pictures. (No pressure.)
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I’m referring to the new addition to our venue at the entrance to our ceremony area that appeared after we booked. This thing:

Source: Kate Crafton

One would think that it would be the perfect thing to decorate with bunches and bunches of flowers. Except I’m not a flower person. At all.
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As I mentioned, we know we want our cake design to be based on our invitations and to include our monogram. However, I’m not really sure of the best way to go about doing that.

I’ve come up with several different designs that reflect our invitations and other elements in the wedding. Sorry for the terribly quality; I was just throwing stuff together in Photoshop. The thick black line would be a black ribbon.

Design #1

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When we came up with our budget (I use that term loosely, as there was never a definite amount we agreed to stick to), we agreed that photography was the top priority and videography was unnecessary. So we splurged on our photographer, and opted for a DIY wedding video by asking all our friends with camcorders if they would mind recording at least some part of our wedding, so I could edit and splice the videos together later.

And then I saw good, nay, fantastic, goosebump-inducing videos, like those from StillMotion. And suddenly, videography was very important to me.
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The printer I am using for our fauxtobooth is a Canon Selphy ES2. My parents bought it last spring to use at my grandmother’s 90th birthday party for a photo guestbook. Soon after the party, I claimed it so I could figure out the best way to make it work for our fauxtobooth.

Source: Canon USA

The printer is fairly intuitive to use. There’s a menu where you make all your selections on formatting and number of prints. For my initial tests, I chose a four-pictures-per-page layout. If this were at the wedding, I would have also selected to print two copies (one for the guests and one for us), but for my tests, I just did one copy.

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One of the things I would really like to fit into the budget is a photobooth. Yes, it’s trendy. But I don’t care. It’s an awesome idea. And also a budget-buster.

Source: Party Booths

So for more than $1000 less, we are having a fauxtobooth. This is, essentially, a fake photobooth. People come up, dress up in whatever silly props they want, pose in front of the backdrop, and four pictures are taken. These four pictures are printed on one 4×6 piece of photo paper - one copy for the guestbook and one copy goes to the people in the picture as a favor. Our venue has a great little area right off the main ballroom that would be perfect to set this up.

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Cake is my favorite food, so you can imagine how giddy I was at the idea of a cake tasting. Last May, we started our hunt for the perfect cake designer. We went to a few tastings over a couple weeks (and I swear I meant to get pictures but got so excited about eating cake that I forgot my camera). Scheduling cake tastings was a little tough, because most places have set days they do it on (usually either Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, or some combination of the three). So I would have to wait for Mr. Fondue’s work schedule to get posted every week (usually on Thursdays), see which of those days he had off, then try to schedule the appointment for sometime after I got off work.

The second place we went to was Maples Wedding Cakes. We had talked to them at a local bridal show in January and have always enjoyed their samples.

Here are some examples of their work, so you can see some of their gorgeous designs:

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I’ve been married before. I was 20 years old. We did the whole wedding thing, and we were separated a little over a year later. So, when Mr. Fondue and I started talking marriage, I originally wanted to elope. I wanted to be married under a waterfall in Hawaii. Just us. No one else.

The problem was that Mr. Fondue hadn’t been married before and wanted all his friends and family to be there. So, the wedding planning began. (I wonder now if he regrets this decision.)

At my first wedding, my dad walked me down the aisle and presented me (even at 20, I didn’t want to be “given” away). Being older now, I thought it might be nice to walk down the aisle by myself, to show my independence. This is nothing against my dad, of course. I love him to death. But this being my second wedding, I thought it was a little silly.

I casually mentioned this to Mr. Fondue, and he suddenly turned all traditionalist on me.
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Although we had originally decided to have a full open bar we are now leaning toward beer, wine, and one signature drink, for budget reasons.

Mr. Fondue was a bartender for several years, so I naturally turned to him for recommendations on what our drink should be. We decided it should be a red drink, since that’s our accent color. Mr. Fondue said he thought a vodka and cranberry would be the simplest and tastiest choice.

I did a taste test on Halloween (so never mind my zombie appearance) and approved his decision.

But of course we want to give it some sort of snappy name to put on our bar menu.

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Note to Mr. Fondue: Dress pictures ahead! Stay away!

After purchasing my dress, I began thinking of what to wear underneath it. I loved the fullness of Mrs. Shortcake’s gown. I already owned a hoop skirt, but I also purchased a petticoat so I could experiment.

Happily, my dress came in last week. I went and picked it up like a giddy little girl, but didn’t bother to try it on at the store, since I wanted pictures and they don’t allow them. At home, I tried getting into the dress by myself and got stuck. I nearly had to ask for Mr. Fondue’s help to remove it from me. Luckily, I freed myself in time, so I was able to keep the dress a secret. After that fiasco, I hightailed it to my parents’ house to enlist Mama Fondue’s assistance.

I tried the dress three different ways: without anything underneath, with just the petticoat, and with both the hoop and the petticoat. This gave me three different fullness levels that I could present to you, so you all could help me decide what looks best! Mama Fondue was very thorough and took both full-length and close-up shots, so there are a lot of photos to assist you. So, without further ado… (Ignore my lack of make-up and makeshift hairstyle.)
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