Wedding Post 2

Wedding post 2…I need to get these wedding posts written before the wedding isn’t fresh anymore…I mean, it has already been two and a half weeks…sad!

In planning our wedding, we tried to make decisions based on things we liked/wanted (rather than what we are ‘supposed’ to do)…which is tough because it isn’t like planning a huge important party is something we do on any sort of regular basis. We really loved each of the vendors we chose and wanted to give them a little blog love and recommendations.

We used Duos for our catering. Sliders were Brian’s idea and I was pretty pumped for a mac and cheese bar. Yum.  Duos was awesome to work with- we felt confident that things were totally under control all along the way. We got to do a fun tasting prior to choosing them with a few other couples that included various highlights on their menu. We had been to one tasting previously, which was not particularly impressive, and so were pretty decisive after doing the Duos tasting. We met with our contact a few different times along the way, as well as awesome email communication (I had a bit of a panic attack about two weeks out when I realized we didn’t have an alcohol permit, emailed her at 10pm, and she responded THAT NIGHT…so I was able to get some sleep!)They handled all of our rentals, day of set up and break down, problem solving along the way…they really made everything super easy. And the food was super tasty. Plus, they have a restaurant location (newly opened) right in West Seattle…so we can relive our wedding food anytime we want!  http://www.duoscatering.com/

 

We decided to do a sort of ‘meaning of flowers’ theme early on…I got the idea from a book, but I just really liked the idea, just like every other decision in the wedding planning process, of being intentional about the flowers. Not just picking any ol bunch of flowers, but flowers that meant something for us. That being said- I know absolutely NOTHING about flowers. Or plants. So in picking the theme, I hadn’t really thought about the importance of finding a fantastic florist. Luckily, we did find her…when we weren’t even looking. We went to an art show one Friday night and there was a display of flower art that we really liked. We assumed that choosing a florist from an art show would be ridiculously expensive, but figured we would talk with her anyway. She was awesome. We met up with her a few days later for a beer and to talk about some ideas. We gave her an ideal budget, and she put together a ‘menu’ and a pinterest board, so we could pick and choose and decide where we wanted to spend our money. We gave her a copy of our invitation and she recreated the arch from the invitation for the ceremony. Sigh, I was so, so happy as I watched her putting it together at the venue that morning. LOVED it. But here is the super cool thing- not only did I love the work she did making our wedding beautiful…but much of the arch was planted in pots that she is bringing over to our house to plant in our yard! We get to keep them! And she is giving me a mentoring session in taking care of them (which will hopefully help me, because I pretty much kill every plant). And besides loving the actual product, I want to be her buddy- she was such a cool gal! Really fun to work with.  http://www.flyingbearfarm.com/

 

Next up on the list for vendors, and also all around great people, was the couple that owns/runs Mallows…our artisanal marshmallow favors. We actually saw them featured on Evening Magazine (or something similar, I forget)…Brian LOVES marshmallows. Just the regular ol gross, from the store kind. At my old house he had a bag of them by the front door that he would grab a plain ol marshmallow from and eat. Gross. But gourmet mallows, with interesting flavors- I’m all for! We stopped in at the Fremont Sunday Market to do a Mallow tasting. Oh man. I was hoping we could somehow work in the flower theme, maybe cut the Mallows into flower shapes? I emailed the owners, and what do you know…they had just been testing some Rose and Lavender flavors that they said we could do. Again, these two were so great to work with (including dropping samples off to Brian at his work!), really wanted to make sure the final product was what we wanted (they hadn’t done a wedding before, so had to change the packaging a bit)…I just can’t say enough good things. Highly recommend checking them out at the Fremont market…they have tons of delicious flavors. http://www.shopmallow.com/

Okay, that was a long post. Particularly without pictures. Sorry.