The Big Reveal

When we first got engaged, I daydreamed about Mr. Cupcake and me seeing each other for the first time during my walk down the aisle. So traditional, so picture perfect....

So not a good idea for two major criers like ourselves.

I have admitted before that I am a big-time crier, so I know that I am going to cry on our wedding day. If you were to bet against me shedding tears on our wedding day, you'd lose. It is a done deal. I will cry. Probably more than once.

I know that Mr. Cupcake is also in touch with his emotions, and although he doesn't cry nearly as much as I do, he still tears up when he talks about Maggie, his golden retriever who died of cancer seven years ago, or when a good sob story is being told on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (he'll kill me for that one, but it's true!). And when he sees me cry, his eyes get a little glossy and he says "please don't cry, please don't cry" because eventually it becomes contagious.

The more I thought about seeing each other for the first time during my long walk down the aisle, the more anxious I started to feel, and the more I questioned my desire to wait to see each other. What if all the excitement and anxiety that has been building up over the last year and a half leads to an uncontrollable sobfest (which our friends will later call "Sobfest 2008")? What if I can't prevent the "ugly cry"? What if my sobs can be heard over the sound of Trumpet Voluntary playing on the organ? I began to reconsider the idea of seeing each other before the ceremony in order to calm our nerves and to steal away a little alone time before the festivities, but the traditional side of me was still conflicted.

And then, I got the greatest email ever from my DOC, Jenn Poletti of Perfect Planners, responding to my inquiry about what she thought would be best:

My below long story is in NO way me trying to sway you, just telling you what happened to me!

I will tell you that I did not see Dan before the ceremony. I had it in my head that I wanted the first time seeing each other to be while I was walking down the aisle, and it would be so much more special, etc. Looking back, I wish we had seen each other beforehand. The first meeting would have been just as special (in my opinion). But, at the time, there was NO talking me out of it. My mom tried, Dan tried, and my stepmom tried. I was such a calm bride the entire planning process, the morning of the wedding, etc. I'm not typically a crier. Well, when those church doors swung open, all of a sudden, I was so overwhelmed with emotions, I started bawling. Not crying, BAWLING. Think Niagra Falls. And, no, I'm not kidding. I don't know what happened! People probably thought my dad was dragging me down the aisle and forcing me to get married! I was crying so hard, that I could NOT see going down the aisle. As soon as I got up to Dan, the first thing out of his mouth was, "why are you crying like that?!" Not the "you look absolutely stunning" that I was expecting! Ha! Now, I'm not saying this will happen to you at ALL. However, looking back, I think if I would have seen him beforehand, I would have not felt so rushed, emotional, etc. and I could have enjoyed and remembered my walk down the aisle and seeing all of my friends and family smiling at me while I was beaming down the aisle...rather then choking back the waterworks. Ugh! And, I still think walking down the aisle would have been just as special.

When I thought about myself and how I react under pressure, I realized that seeing each other before walking down the aisle would definitely be a good thing for us, and Mr. Cupcake was relieved. He had been pushing for this all along, but I, too, had been adamant about waiting, just like Jenn. After hearing her story, it was decided once and for all. (And I'm not saying I won't cry at all now..... but maybe I'll be a little more relaxed and they will be pretty, happy tears!)

When we mentioned seeing each other before the ceremony to our Pastor, he liked the idea; he suggested that maybe we could see each other earlier in the day, for a quiet breakfast together before we are in our fancy duds, perhaps, so that we feel more relaxed. This would allow us to still have that element of surprise when walking down the aisle, but also leave us feeling more at ease about the exciting day ahead. I am still undecided if I want to do this or if we should wait until we're all fancied & prettied up.

What are your feelings on seeing each other before your walk down the aisle? For anyone who has done this, did you see each other earlier in the day, pre-fancy clothes, or did you wait until you were primped and ready to go?

Bachelorette Perfection

After my Nana passed away last Friday, I was, of course, very upset and felt like it would be wrong to go out for my bachelorette party that was scheduled for the next night. I didn't know how much I wanted to be celebrating after such an emotional and heartbreaking event. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that a night out with my girlfriends was probably just what I needed after a stressful and sad time. I had already requested something low key that wouldn't break the bank for anyone, which ended up being dinner and drinks with 10 of my fabulous girlfriends, so we went ahead with everything as planned that Saturday night.

We headed to El Vez, a Stephen Starr restaurant in Philadelphia. Stephen Starr is known for owning some of the coolest restaurants in Philly, and El Vez is no exception. It's a contemporary Mexican restaurant with perhaps the greatest guacamole I have ever tasted. (The pitchers of margaritas and sangria weren't so bad, either!) I was surprised at how reasonably priced everything was, and it was the perfect atmosphere for my fun-but-not-crazy night out.


My Matron of Honor, Kelli, came prepared with a veil and sash for me. The sash was surprisingly chic — white satin with black satin trim, embroidered with "Future Mrs. Cupcake" on it. (She got it on ebay!)

Me with my fabulous Maid and Matron of Honor — Nicole (left) and Kelli (right). Nicole and I have been best friends since 8th grade. She now lives in Austria and is home this summer for all of the exciting wedding festivities. She will be back in September for the wedding! Kelli is a trooper — she is pregnant and due only 2 weeks after our wedding, and she looks fabulous. I have given her belly some tough love and told baby that she is not allowed to arrive until I am home from our honeymoon. I need to be in the waiting room cheering on my BFF!

My friend Ali who I met at an old job (left) and my oldest friend Jill (right) — we grew up across the street from each other! Ali is also pregnant and due NEXT WEEK! She looks amazing.

Bridesmaid Chrissy (left) and bridesmaid/SIL Kim (right), my NYC peeps! Chrissy and I met in high school playing angels in our school's production of Anything Goes. Kimmy married Brother Cupcake last June but has been part of the family for eight years :-)

Did I mention that one of the best parts of El Vez is that there is an old-fashioned photo booth? After all the fun we had, now I really can't wait to have the photo booth set up at our wedding!

(Click to enlarge if you want to see all the funny faces I am capable of.) From l-r: me with MOH's Kelli and Nicole; me and Jen, one of my best friends from college; me and bridesmaid/SIL Kim; me and bridesmaid Chrissy; me and my friend Blake

It was also Nicole's birthday, so I had the waitress surprise her with a little dessert and "happy birthday" action.

The whole she-bang of ladies before leaving El Vez

After a fun dinner at El Vez, we decided to venture to a nearby bar for some drinks and to chit chat more. We decided on JL Sullivan's Speakeasy, downstairs at the Bellevue. As soon as we walked in the bartender spotted me with my veil on and handed me a glass of champagne — how sweet! We found a table and relaxed, and it was the perfect time to catch up with my ladies over a glass (or a bottle.... or two!) of champagne. Plus, not all of my friends knew each other before the evening began, so it was fun to see people getting along and getting to know each other!

Jen and I have about 50 pictures like this from college! I'm a hugger.

Nicole and me showing off my fabulous sash

Mr. Cupcake and my brother had generously offered to be our chauffers for the evening, so around midnight I decided that I had had a fabulous time with my girlfriends and I was ready to call it a night. I called Mr. Cupcake to pick us up, but it took him a little while to get going (or, ahem, wake up) and meet up with my brother. Since we had another half hour until the boys would arrive after we left JL Sullivans, we decided why not grab just one more drink at another bar?

Jill, Nicole, me and Chrissy, heading to our next destination. These ladies are all friends of mine from high school. (I also had to shamelessly show off my super cute Nicole Miller dress.)

We headed down the street to Fado, which, coincidentally, is where Mr. Cupcake and I celebrated with friends the day that we got engaged last February. At Fado, there was music, there was dancing, and in just 30 minutes, there were a LOT of pictures.

All the girls left at this point in the evening — Chrissy, Jill, me, Nicole, Blake and Kim

New friends Blake and Kim!

We don't know these girls, but they kept feeling the need to stick their heads through the bars next to the dance floor. Mysterious.

There had been another bachelorette party going on at El Vez, and they had an extra light-up bling ring that they generously gave to me! You can't see the red light, but it was fabulous, as you can tell by Chrissy's admiration of it.

Ah yes. The alcohol starting to take effect.

I like to pretend that the man behind us is laughing at something else, even though he is staring directly at us.

I have no words.

When the boys finally arrived around 1 a.m., we had squeezed in just enough dance party time — it was the perfect way to cap off the night. We didn't spend a ton of money, we didn't fly to Vegas, and we didn't even stay at the bar until closing time. But it was exactly what I needed after a rough couple of days, and it was a wonderful reminder of the amazing ladies who support my relationship with Mr. Cupcake and who rally around me when I need them.

This photo slays me, and it perfectly expresses the awesomeness of my girlfriends and the night we had :-)

This One's For Birdie

Last Friday was filled with mixed emotions — we excitedly received our wedding invitations, my mom's dress for our big day finally arrived.... and my wonderful Nana, the last of my grandparents, passed away.

My mom's parents died before I was born, so my dad's parents, whom we called Nana and Pop Pop, were the only grandparents I ever knew. Pop Pop passed away 10 years ago, and since then I feel like I really got to know Nana better (and although many pronounce it "Nah-nuh," my brother, cousins and I have always called her "Nah-Nah" — it's just our thing!). As a shy child I didn't always know how to handle her loud Italian demeanor, but over the years I came to adjust to and love her outspoken nature. She was truly one of a kind.

I have so many great/funny memories of Nana. When we were kids, Nana and Pop Pop would have us all over for dinner. Nana made the most amazing chicken that she called "Spitzat" — it had "a little bit of this, and a little bit of that." It was her specialty and it is what I remember always eating when we were there. If any of us kids ever left any food on our plates at one of our family dinners, Nana would say "eat birdie, eat!" As a picky eater, I heard this phrase from her a lot while growing up, and eventually Nana's nickname for us turned into a nickname that we affectionately called her — "Birdie."

Overall, Nana was just a great cook. She never saw the point of having a microwave, no matter how much we tried to convince her, and even if we stopped by on short notice she would still have lots of nibbles for us to munch on or a meal that she could just "whip up." She was also a spectacular baker. Nana was famous for making pizzelles and brownies like no other (and the trick to keeping them fresh was storing them in tins with wax paper). She always told me "if you can read, you can cook" and I plan to prove her right someday when I put her many cookbooks to use.

She also had the most amazing stories about her past — many of which we were skeptical about at first, but eventually realized she had really just lived an amazing life. She went to medical school at Temple University during a time when women simply did not become doctors. She never finished school because she got married and, at that time, a married woman's place was in the home, but she was so intelligent when it came to medicine and health and she would have made an amazing doctor. She told us stories about growing up in a mansion on Broad Street in Philadelphia, and how they had a "country home" in Chester County and a "summer home" in Ocean City, New Jersey. She traveled to more places than I'll probably ever have the opportunity to see, and she always kept up with the times and knew what was hip (you can read more about that fun side of her on my sister-in-law's blog).

Nana was an astounding 90 years old and only slowed down over the last year or so. She made the trek to NYC for Brother & SIL Cupcake's wedding last June, but was gradually becoming a little slower and a little more tired since then. She was able to celebrate her 90th birthday with friends and family just this past April. But Nana needed to be on oxygen now, and she started sleeping more and more. About two months ago, she finally came to realize that she could no longer live on her own in her cozy little treasure-filled apartment, and we helped to move her into a nursing & rehab facility nearby. Although visiting her in her new home wasn't the same as being surrounded by all of her photos, owl figurines and candy dishes (and oh, there were always a LOT of candy dishes!), Mr. Cupcake and I were able to fit in a lot of wonderful, meaningful visits with Nana. She always felt guilty that she couldn't offer us a cocktail or some cheese and crackers in her new home, but we didn't mind as long as we were able to spend more time with her.

Nana's death has been hard to deal with on its own, but losing her just two months before our wedding is extremely difficult. It has been comforting, though, knowing that Mr. Cupcake had the opportunity to get to know her and hear some of her amazing stories (she was still as sharp as a tack up until her last moments), and it is nice to know that Nana adored him. She gave us a shower gift and wedding gift in late May, and although it was upsetting, it also created a great opportunity to tell her more about our wedding plans. I'm so glad that I had the chance to show her a photo of me in my dress, a swatch of the bridesmaid's dresses, and fill her in on all of our little surprise details. Part of me still can't believe that she really won't be there when we get married, but I know that she'll most definitely be there in spirit, wearing her unforgettable dark glasses and toasting us with her trademark vodka and tonic.

Miss you, "Birdie."

Nana and Pop Pop on their wedding day, 1940

Nana at Brother and SIL Cupcake's wedding in NYC, June 2007
Photo by Brian Dorsey

Say "Bonjour"...

... to these adorable vintage Parisian Bridal Gown Cards from Crate and Barrel, on sale for only $2.95 for a set of eight (down from $12.95):

This one is the prettiest!

These would be the perfect thank you cards to send after your bridal shower, or a sweet gift for another bride-to-be you may know. I might have to purchase a few packs after my first bridal shower this weekend! It will make writing thank you notes so much more fun :-)

Cake, Revisited

Let's face it: the cake is pretty much the most fun part of wedding planning. I mean, what about the wedding cake isn't fun? It's pretty, it's yummy, and it has two of my favorite ingredients: sugar and butter. Mmmmm.

A while back I had posted about the fabulousness that is Sweet Jazmine's, and our desire for a cake that looks like a hybrid of these two:

by April Reed

by Papillon

But then, my constant need for something unique got the best of me, and I decided that I wanted to use these cakes as inspiration for creating our own one-of-a-kind cake design.

So with a lot of thought and a quick little rendering in Adobe Illustrator, I came up with this cake design:

The larger middle tier pays homage to the April Reed cake design, which was the one detail that Mr. Cupcake really liked and wanted to keep. The quilting effect on the bottom and top tiers emulate a design detail on our invitations (which you will see soon, I promise! :-)), while the middle tier with a teal ribbon accent and the "seal" with our names is a cute little personalized detail. I know that monograms tend to be all the rage these days, but I wanted to do something a little different (shocker, I know!) and I think our names look cute. The cake will also be topped with a cluster of white flowers, which I didn't think were necessary to illustrate :-)

Kim and Brooke, the lovely ladies at Sweet Jazmine's, liked my little sketch (or, at least, if they thought it was OCD of me, they didn't let on one bit). They will use it as a guide for creating our uber delicious lemon delight cake, which is two layers of lemon pound cake and one layer of lemon curd and lemon buttercream.

Are you having your baker copy a cake design that you love, or are you using your favorite cake designs as inspiration for something unique?

Handing Over The Reigns

Yesterday was a jam-packed day of wedding appointments for Momma Cupcake and me. I took the day off of work so we could have meetings with the florist at 11 a.m., the baker at 1:30 p.m., and the catering manager at our venue at 3:00 p.m. In a matter of 6 hours, I feel like we got so much accomplished!

Although a little chaotic, I am really glad that I arranged things this way. With about two months left until the wedding, having all of these big meetings on the same day forced me to get organized with all of my final ideas a little earlier than I may have otherwise, since, aside from the catering manager at our venue, I likely won't meet with the florist and baker again before the wedding. It was also really helpful to have vendor conversations fresh in my mind while meeting with the catering manager, so no detail goes overlooked.

I am not going to lie — I was definitely up until 1:30 in the morning the night before, making sure I printed all of the right photos and wrote down all of the questions I needed to ask. But, the feeling of having handed over the reigns to at least two of my vendors does feel somewhat blissful, albeit a little scary!

One thing about wedding planning that has been a little difficult for me has been putting trust in others to make my visions a reality. I am a detail-obsessed perfectionist who would usually rather slave over a project for hours by myself than ask someone for help and risk that it won't be done "my" way. But at this point, ladies, let's face it: I am exhausted. It is time to not only start asking for help and delegating, but it's time to trust that our vendors will pull through and pull off a beautiful wedding that is uniquely ours. I have given them every ounce of information that I could possibly give them, so it's time to take a deep breath, take a step back, and leave the rest to the professionals.

Have you had a hard time handing over the reigns to your vendors?

Bridal Diseases

I swear — the closer the wedding gets, the more mysterious ailments I have.

Saturday morning I woke up, showered, and was getting ready as usual, when I noticed that my left ear was all red and splotchy. Huh? How did that happen? It wasn't around my earring hole, it was more at the bottom of my earlobe, and I couldn't figure out what the heck was going on. I hadn't slept with my earrings in, there was no sign of a bite, it wasn't swollen, and it didn't hurt. It was just icky-looking and red. Not very bride-like at all.

Mid-week, it's a little better, but still red and more annoying then anything. I know I've mentioned that I'm klutzy so I am clearly expecting a few papercuts and bruises to accessorize with my wedding dress, but I'm really not in the mood for anymore mysterious bridal ailments to make an appearance in the next 2+ months.

Have you had any strange bridal diseases appear as your wedding gets closer?

Color Palette Validation

Some days while heavily under the influence of my wedding-planning trance, I find myself in a moment of panic when I'm second-guessing my color palette yet again — actually, we might as well call it ninety-second-guessing because I've worried about it so much. Then, on a day like today, I'm reminded of how much I love my color palette of teal and chartreuse (or lime green or bright green or whatever I decide to call it on that particular day.... it seems like everyone has a different vision of what chartreuse is!) when I come across an inspiration board like this one found on Sparkliatti:

Inspiration board found on Sparkliatti (thanks Miss Tiramisu and SIL Cupcake!)

Ahhh, color palette goodness!

A follow-up post about this inspiration board included a recommendation for colorful flowers to use as an accent. I've been pretty committed to using only whites and greens in our wedding flowers, mostly because I can't decide on another color to incorporate, but these orange and fuchsia flowers certainly add an element of surprise that I hadn't considered:

This photo is from Sparkliatti, too :-)

I'm meeting with the florist next week to really nail down all of the specifics, and I can't help but feel a little stuck with not much time to spare. I'm not sure that the orange and fuchsia are quite what I'm looking for, but I'm starting to get nervous that the white and green that I'm picturing as "simple and stunning" will just end up looking redundant and boring. I've toyed with the idea of adding in little punches of purple, or perhaps just different shades of blue, but I just can't decide.

Is anyone else out there set on their color scheme but having a hard time figuring out what accent colors will work the best for their flowers? Any other teal and chartreuse brides out there with any suggestions?

Hometown Homage

Most people like to brag about their hometown and its unique delicacies or traditions that make it stand out from the rest. Here in Philly (no one from here actually calls it "Philadelphia" :-)), we've got Rocky, the Art Museum, the Iggles (that's "Eagles" to you non-Philadelphians), soft pretzels, the Declaration of Independence, the Mummers Parade (a strange but absolutely fabulous New Year's day tradition), the Liberty Bell, Tastykakes, da Phightin' Phils (the baseball wielding Phillies), and, of course, the mouth-watering Philly cheese steak (I like to call it "heart attack on a roll").

While our wedding isn't actually in the city of Philadelphia, I have lived in the area my entire life, and it's just, well, home. The city is also where Mr. Cupcake and I met, it's where we fell in love, and it's where we got engaged.... so it's only natural that we would try to incorporate some aspects of Philly culture into our wedding, particularly with a little tasty late-night treat for our guests.

Friends of ours served yummy soft pretzels as a late-night snack at their wedding, but I'm picky about my soft pretzels and I insist that they be served warm, straight out of the brown paper bag they come in. This would be a little difficult to coordinate at the wedding, as the pretzels would need to be bought fresh that day, and then reheated immediately before serving, and they'd just get cool too quickly.

Mmm, they sure do look yummy, though, don't they?

Mr. Cupcake and I decided that the perfect treat to serve to our guests late in the evening would also be the easiest to coordinate: TASTYKAKES! Let's face it, people: nobody bakes a cake as tasty as a Tastykake (hardy har har, I couldn't resist). For those of you who are not lucky enough to know what a Tastykake is, it's basically the greatest brand ever of scrumptious, snack-sized desserts, and they're made right here in the City of Brotherly Love. There's a huge variety of choices, including the delectable Koffee Kake:

image found here

The scrumptious Butterscotch Krimpet:

image found here

And, my personal fave, the melt-in-your-mouth Peanut Butter Kandy Kake:

image found here

Tastykake products usually have a shelf life of 1-2 weeks, so we will be able to stock up a few days before the wedding without having to worry about making anyone buy them the day of, and we certainly don't have to worry about heating them up. They are pre-packaged in individual servings, so our work will be done. And, our guest's bellies will be happy!

We can't possibly serve the Tastykake's all by their lonesome, so we'll have some milk to accommodate the sweet goodness. At first I thought shot glasses of milk would be perfectly adorable, like this:

image found here

But since we wouldn't be sitting the Tastykakes on top of the shot glasses (because that would just look kind of ridiculous and not nearly as cute as the cookies), we don't have to have the milk served in shot glasses, and my mom had the great idea of putting out a tray of individual milk cartons, just like you'd get in grade school:

image found here

Kitschy, cute, and — depending on how easy it is to find these in a store — super simple to just keep cold and serve to our guests as-is. Perfect to wash down the Tastykake treats!

Are you adding a little hometown flavor to your wedding with a late-night snack? Or are you infusing your city's culture in some other way?

Jumping on the Bandwagon

....the photo booth bandwagon, that is!

Photo found here, via the ever-awesome Oh Happy Day

I stray away from a lot of wedding trends simply because they're trends and I want to be a little bit different, but the photo booth bandwagon is one that I am quite happy to have jumped on. Not only does a photo booth go along with the vintage vibe that we hope to infuse throughout our wedding day, but, quite simply, it's an awesome treat for our guests.

When I brought up the photo booth idea to my mom early in the wedding planning process, I wasn't sure what her reaction would be, but she thought it was a great idea. However, she felt very strongly that if we were going to get a photo booth, we should stick with a traditional, old-school style booth with strips of 4 black & white photos. Although I LOVE the looks of these photos, I was also torn because I wanted the photos to be favors for our guests and I wanted to somehow leave our "mark" on them, like the digital photo booth photos from Mrs. Hibiscus' wedding:


However, for the sake of authenticity, I decided I could do without having our "branding" on the photos like those from a digital photo booth, and knew I could find another way to make these a unique favor.

After doing my research, I found a local photo booth vendor who rents classic photo booths, and after a lot of price comparisons, this was definitely the best deal I could find. I found other more affordable booths, but they were in NYC and would charge larger delivery fees, so I decided that staying local was best. They were also prompt to respond to my inquiry and the many questions I had, which is always a good sign.

We will have our photo booth for 4 hours, from the beginning of the cocktail hour until an hour before the reception ends, and our guests can take unlimited photos during this time. There will also be an attendant nearby to help guests if there are problems. We paid a little extra to be able to have all of the images burned onto a disc for us to take home, since we want our guests to be able to take their photos home with them. And, bonus — they gave me the dimensions of the frame that is on the outside of the booth so I can design and print my own large-scale poster to insert. I haven't gotten there quite yet, but I plan to design something that still looks like the retro photo booth signs we're all used to seeing, while making it personalized for Mr. Cupcake and me (and letting our guests know that the photos are free and available until 10 p.m.!).

Since we can't brand the actual photo strips with our names and wedding date, I came up with the idea of creating little photo mats for our guests to place their photo strips on. This makes them a little bit more of an interesting favor and gives it that personalized touch that I'm always trying to infuse into the wedding details.

I got out my handy Gocco and printed a little design at the bottom of a 2" x 9.5" piece of cardstock. (To make the most out of my Gocco and my time, I printed 2-up, which means I actually printed 2 designs side-by-side on a 4" x 9.5" inch piece of card stock that I later cut in half to be only 2" wide). The silver ink on the teal and green cardstock really came out beautifully (we'll have two different types of mats to choose from, hence the two different colors):


Once the printing was all done and everything had time to dry, I cut the pieces down to 2" wide by 9.5" tall, and mounted them (with double-faced tape) to 2.5" x 10" pieces of cardstock in an alternating color to create a pretty border. I am also going to add little strips of adhesive with tabs that guests can remove to expose the adhesive and place their photo strips to the mats. To illustrate how their photo mats will look in the end, I used an old photo strip that Mr. Cupcake and I had from a trip to HersheyPark a few years ago:

Yes, I am very good at making ugly faces :-)

This project didn't take long at all, and I love the way it will spruce up our favors. I will have these sitting in a basket directly next to the photo booth with a sign instructing guests what to do with their mats, so hopefully they'll take advantage and these memories will last on fridges for years to come!

Are you getting a photo booth, creating your own makeshift booth, or foregoing this trend altogether?

Borrowing Ideas: Gocco Napkins

When I read Miss Cream Puff's post about Gocco-ing cocktail napkins with useless facts about her and Mr. Cream Puff, I knew I had to steal — er, borrow — her idea. I immediately got to work coming up with some fun facts about Mr. Cupcake and me, and bought 600 3-ply cocktail napkins at Party City.


At $2.99 per 50-pack, I spent just over $35 on this project. I already had the Gocco, the screens, and the teal ink that I planned to use, and my labor was free :-)

I printed all of the layouts on one page on a laser printer, and cut them down to size.


I decided to try to get 2 fun fact layouts out of each Gocco screen to get more bang for my buck, and planned out how I would register each napkin before I flashed the first screen.


Once the screen was flashed, I blocked off the first fun fact layout and inked up, and taped the second layout to the screen for use later on.


I set up the layout so that if I placed the napkin flush left and hanging off the top of the sticky mat, the layout would be centered.


This also proved useful, because enough of the napkin was hanging off the right side of the machine that I could hold it while lifting up the top of the Gocco unit so the multi-layered napkin didn't stick to the ink.

This is what happened if I didn't hold down the right side of the napkin after inking, risking a little smearing

Once I finished the first batch of napkins, I blocked off the second design with my ink blocking material at the bottom of my screen, and scraped the ink from my first design onto my second (as to not waste ink) and added a bit more ink for full coverage. I then taped a scrap piece of card stock over the screen-side of the first design so that no ink would come through the screen when I was printing the second design.


It worked like a charm, so I was able to utilize only 3 Gocco screens for 6 layouts.

Even Mr. Cupcake was excited at how great the napkins were turning out!

Alright, not so much, but he had had a long, tiring day....

After a few (okay, several) hours of hard work, all 600 napkins were done, and covering just about every surface of our apartment.


For your entertainment, here are the 6 facts I printed:

Brooke & Nick Fun Fact No. 1:
The new Mr. and Mrs. first met at a Halloween costume party in 2003. They struck up a conversation while waiting in line for the rest room… and the rest is history.

Brooke & Nick Fun Fact No. 2:
The first two years of Brooke and Nick’s relationship were long-distance. Over those two years, approximately 23,296 miles were traveled between Lewisberry and Manayunk/Media to see each other.

Brooke & Nick Fun Fact No. 3:
The first movie Brooke and Nick went to see together was “Elf,” starring Will Ferrell. It was their second official date.

Brooke & Nick Fun Fact No. 4:
Early in their relationship while discussing books that they loved as kids, Brooke and Nick discovered that they shared the same favorite: “Big Dog, Little Dog” by P.D. Eastman.

Brooke & Nick Fun Fact No. 5:
Nick proposed to Brooke on February 10, 2007, while sitting amidst the life-sized game pieces outside of the Municipal Building in Center City, Philadelphia.

Brooke & Nick Fun Fact No. 6:
Nick’s love of history and Brooke’s knowledge of useless pop culture facts have led them to be a successful Quizzo duo. They go by the team name “Incredicouple.”

Are you "borrowing" most of your wedding detail ideas, or have you been able to come up with anything completely unique?

Unloading Baggage

On Friday night, Mr. Cupcake and I had a cleaning party in our apartment — I know, we are absolutely wild!!! In our defense, though, our apartment was in dire need of some TLC, and neither of us could take the clutter anymore, so we decided that playing music and having a few beers while we cleaned would make it a lot less painful.

One thing that I had to realize while we were cleaning: a LOT of the clutter in our apartment is the result of wedding planning. I have been storing a lot of wedding items in my mom's basement (like my now-over-275 pieces of cut glass that will hold candles at our reception), but a lot of items have still seeped into our living space. The biggest culprit: my wedding magazines.

You may recall my creative storage solution for housing my mags.... but the truth is that the wine rack didn't even hold 1/4 of the wedding magazines I have accumulated over the last 16 months. Others were hiding out on shelves, in corners, and under couches. Mr. Cupcake treaded carefully when broaching the topic, but when he mentioned the idea of possibly getting rid of a few, I knew he was right. Even though I was holding on to them for so long because I didn't want to risk throwing away the most perfect idea for something that I had forgotten about, I had to face the fact that even if the perfect ideas are hiding in there, I am way too busy to sit there and look through them all again over the next 2.5 months!

So, I gathered a majority of them (except the REALLY good ones), spent one last somber moment with them, and said my goodbyes.


It may sound silly, but it actually felt pretty good to get rid of these. We're getting much closer to the wedding now, and it's time that I stop looking for ideas and just focus on sticking with the ideas I have already come up with and getting things completed. Having so many bridal magazines in the apartment was just making me feel pressured to leave no stone unturned to ensure every detail of our wedding is absolutely perfect, but I have to realize that perfection is just not a reasonable expectation (nor is it necessary!). Getting the magazines out of our apartment feels like I have unloaded a lot of unnecessary wedding baggage, and now it's time to just move forward and be happy with all of my decisions.

Has wedding planning started to clutter your living space.... and conscience?