Wedding Night Getaway

I am super-excited, because I just found out where we are getting to spend our first night as husband and wife- the historic Grove Park  Inn here in Asheville! Yes, the same hotel the president stays in! And I cannot express how grateful I am to my mom, who basically by being herself (wonderful, caring, helpful!) made an important contact at the hotel who is getting us a huge discount as a thank-you to my mom for helping them out. We are a very lucky couple! And I will finally get to try that famous Grove Park breakfast buffet!

The muddled brain of the bride

Wedding planning is fun. Coming up with creative ideas, finding inspiration in every little source of beauty, looking at tons of gorgeous stuff on the internet and in magazines! The only downside of this is that I am literally bogged down with information at this point. I have looked at dozens of magazines, hundreds of websites, hundreds of blogs! Yes, the blogs are the best. So....much.....pretty!

And all that is definitely enjoyable, for a self-proclaimed aesthete like me, but I am to the point where I feel like I can't maneuver through this ocean of imagery and ideas. I am now trying to write down every idea I have in my notebook for fear it will escape and then I won't be able to find it later. I'm sure other brides know what I mean? I mean, we all want the "perfect" wedding. Our own magical, blissful idea of that day when we join together with the one we love. Sharing it with family and friends, making it personal and unique. And really, the possibilities are endless!

I know that Ti and I really want a wedding that reflects our personalities, is intimate but still kinda grand, and really, really fun. The problem is limiting myself to a few ideas that still fit within our theme so our wedding is not all over the place. And this is kinda hard, because every great idea I hear, every beautiful picture I see, I want it! I'll need at least a dozen weddings to use all this material I have collected. I don't see my fiance agreeing to a wedding a year for twelve years though :) But maybe a career as a wedding planner is in the cards for me......I'll let you know how I feel the day of my wedding though....

Tastings!

Boy, if tastings are not the best part of wedding planning, I don't know what is! I talked a little about our meeting with our Baker, the talented Callie Stingel of Callie's Confections in Biltmore Park, in an earlier post. That was out of this world! Imagine arriving at a person's office and they have three different cake flavors prepared for you, along with five different buttercreams and two fillings? My mom, fiance, thought that we would go with my initial thought on the cake, chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream. But after trying everything that day, we unanimously voted for chocolate cake with amaretto frosting and raspberry filling! I cannot wait to eat it!!! :)

As far as food tastings go, the three caterers we've met with have been amazing. It is going to be one of the toughest decisions from the wedding planning process to choose among these very talented people. We have been lucky enough to try some amazing pulled pork, beef tenderloin, pecan-crusted chicken, brats in puff pastry, crab cakes, buttermilk biscuit crostini with candied bacon, I could go on and on. You see now why this is going to be so hard! We have to make a decision quickly though, as we are at 5 months an counting till the big day! Wish us luck!