Adventures in Shoe Shopping

If you're male, go ahead and skip this post right now.

Now that it's just the ladies...

Shoes. Obviously this hasn't been a huge concern for Kenneth. He'll wear whatever they've got where he rents his ensemble, but it's been a minor major concern for me.

I wanted to have my wedding shoes figured out before my dress came in alterations started. I also knew with my long list of particulars, it would take a long, long time to find The. Perfect. Shoe.

My wedding shoes had to be:

1. Less than $100. Our budget just wouldn't allow for more, and truth be told, I pride myself in my ability to find gorgeous shoes while never paying full price.
2. Seattle-in-spring-appropriate. I don't know if you've heard this before, but it rains in Seattle. This means no suede, no satin, no silk, and no faux versions of those materials either.
3. Something I'd wear again. Yes, they should be festive, but I just can't bring myself to purchase anything I'll wear/use one day except my wedding dress. (Ok, and my veil). I'm a frugalista bride and it doesn't seem practical to wear one-day-only shoes.
4. Peep-toe. Nearly all my pumps are peep-toe because they're just so much more comfortable than other heels. I wouldn't feel like myself wearing something else.
5. 3" or less. I discovered this later in the hunt, but Kenneth wants me to be shorter than or the same height as him on our wedding day. Definitely a fair request since he otherwise never minds my height adding shoes. It was also a welcome requirement because it gives me an excuse to wear shorter, and thus more comfortable, heels.

Preferably, they'd also be some fabulous shade of blue, so we could get fabulous pictures like this (imagine the shoes are blue instead of green):

Adorable, no? (Source)

I knew I was picky, but I didn't expect it to be so hard. (Did you know most bridal shoes are $150+, and those that aren't are usually satin? I certainly didn't.) After hunting through many a clearance rack and after many an email to poor mom and sisters-- "What about these?" "No? Ok, what about these?"-- I gave up on blue shoes. I'll settle for metallic, ivory, or any fabulous color. (Does it have to match the decor? Nah.) Finally, while strolling Nordstrom Rack, I found something like these (shorter heel though).

Source

Silver is in our colors, and I'd wear anything by this designer. They were comfortable and affordable...But after bringing them home, I decided they weren't festive enough.

Then, another day at The Rack, I found these, except in gold:

Source

After bringing them home, it was determined that they were festive all right, but the 4" heel brought out the fiance's veto. On second look, they were pretty gaudy anyway.

J.Crew had some fabulous options, but not in my price range, so I started stalking Ebay. (Oh, Ebay! Why did I not see your virtues before wedding planning?) I'm a bit trigger happy on Ebay since I rarely win, so when I bid on these, I thought they would work, but didn't think much of it. They fit my criteria, and at that point, that's all that mattered. Bidding ended in 2 days... so if I didn't win, there was always more shopping that could be done later.

Source -- not actually where I found this picture, but I haven't been able to track it down since I found it. This is as close as I found.

I placed my bid and later in the afternoon I skampered off to Portland for the weekend to visit my dress that had just arrived. Mom and I made a wedding-weekend of it, so while I was there, I had my first dress fitting, shopped for invitation supplies, picked up our save-the-dates, decided on mom's mother-of-the-bride dress... and of course, went to The Rack for more shoe shopping. That's when Mom found these:

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Beautiful. Not too guady. Heel height at 2.75". Comfortable, re-wearable, festive. We checked the price tag--$79 for a pair of Stuart Weitzman shoes! -- and I was sold. The shoes were purchased and we continued on our merry way, with me basking in the glow of victory in the hunt for shoes.

That is, until I checked my email that night and found that I had won the J.Crews. Of course, the one and only time I've ever won an auction on Ebay. Sigh. Now I must choose betwen the gold Stuart Weitzman's and the ivory J.Crews.

B.

We interrupt this broadcast to announce...

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Because We Love You

Today we took a bullet for you. We scoured the Seattle Area eating more cake than either of us has probably had in the past 12 months. That's right, we did it all for you. We sampled close to 15 different flavors and filling from 4 different bakeries. Never mind the sugar crash I'm experiencing and that Brianna's hands are a wee bit shaky from all that sugar, we did it purely out of care for our friends and family. Undoubtedly, those of you who are checking on our planning progress will want a bit of a report on the bakeries we've visited. Without further ado...

We started our morning at Mike's Amazing Cakes. If you tune into the Food Network occasionally, you may have seen some of Mike's impressive work. The bakery specializes in cakes that that look unlike any other cake you've ever seen. Truly spectacular artwork. Follow the link I embedded in the name for a more spectacular viewing experience. Here are the samples we tried. To the right you'll see spice cake with cream cheese filling and white cake with chocolate filling. The spice cake was incredible, and the cream cheese frosting was perfection.

After looking hard for the wrong 110 Denny Way Seattle- in fact, there are two 110 Denny Ways in Seattle- we ventured into Morfy's. Brianna has classified them as having the most moist cake in Seattle. We forgot to take a picture before we polished off the champagne cake. My apologies if you're only reading to see the pink cake but you can still see white  with raspberry filling, lemon  with lemon chiffon filling, carrot with cream cheese frosting, and chocolate cake with-- you guessed it-- chocolate frosting. Normally, Brianna will have nothing to do with carrot cake, but she actually liked theirs. Apparently, the raisins didn't permeate the cake enough to turn her away from it.

After stopping for lunch, since man can't live on cake alone, we visited a favorite bakery of mine, Madison Park Bakery. Madison Park doesn't joke around with cake tastings. They find out what flavor and filling combination in which you're interested and they make cupcakes for you. The cake here is fantastic. All of the fillings we sampled are delicious. I used the present tense "are" because we were losing steam at that point and had to bring home leftovers. We tried chocolate cake with hazelnut, coconut, chocolate fudge and chocolate mousse. (Clockwise starting at the frosting H.) Brianna had the flu and couldn't go to our original scheduled tasting a few weeks ago. The nice folks at Madison Park sent me home with some cupcakes to get started, and we rescheduled this bakery visit.

After a short stop to browse wedding bands, we ended our cake-stravaganza at our reception location, Salty's on Alki. The "Best Chocolate Cake Ever" has quite a name to which it needed to live up. This cake was rich. Fudge frosting over chocolate cake, with chocolate filling, this cake was as dense as it is delicious. Their signature "White Chocolate Mousse Cake" contrasted the other sample with a very light texture. Both cakes were fantastic, there's no question about that.

So there you have it. Our day long cake-walk through Seattle's Bakeries. Honestly, we aren't ready to make a decision yet. All the cakes were delicious. As much of a challenge as it is to eat cake four times in eight hours, it offered us a chance to compare our contenders in quick succession. No pressure here, but the cake has become a decorating focus for the wedding. If you're new to our blog, and you haven't seen the inspiration cake yet, there's a picture of it to the right.

So that's all for today. Hopefully we'll decide on a bakery soon and be able to cross another item off the wedding to do list. As for us, we're off to go for a run.

KH

BEEP!

For a slight change of pace, Kenneth will be writing this entry. Early on in our wedding planning adventure I decided the most fun activities in wedding planning would be cake tasting and registering for gifts. Little did I know it would spark a debate that spanned several weeks.

Once upon a time, engaged couples walked into department stores, made a list of the things they would need for their new home and voila - months later they would be showered with amazingly matching dishes, towels and sheets. Of course, when Marshall Field's began offering this service in 1924* nobody could have imagined that you'd have access to everything that comes with a global communication tool.

*(I didn't actually know that. I got it on Wikipedia. Also, thanks Britannica for the classic picture)

Call me olde fashioned, but I figured registering for gifts would be just like that. Brianna and I would get in our brand new Model T and drive over to The Bon Marche - she's be wearing a lovely dress and I'd be wearing my best suit and fedora. We'd search for all the things that would complete our home and, using the Dewey Decimal System, they would catalog our wishlist.

Apparently, this "internet" allows people to register for items from any manner of stores. I don't just mean the "beyond" in Bed, Bath & Beyond. You can register for honeymoons, Dodger Tickets and even goats to be given to starving third-world communities. Needless to say, this was going to complicate things for our naive hero.

One thing we all know about Brianna is that she has a heart as generous as anybody any of us will likely know. It's one of the reasons I love her. She very much likes the idea of sharing our good fortune by having a charity or similar registry. For example, see this handsome young boy with the goat I found on Heifer International's website.

I, on the other hand, am a bit concerned about the aging fleet of cooking utensils we currently employ. Upon my insistence we registered at Macy's. Fortunately, Macy's is kind enough to donate a portion of purchases made off our registry to the American Cancer Society. Macy's didn't necessarily have everything for which we were looking, so we also registered at Target.

To be completely honest, we're still discussing either a honeymoon or some other new-fangled and hip registry. So if neither of those registry lists has something that fully encapsulates your affection for us, stay tuned.

"Uh, Kenneth, I dozed off there in the middle of that block of text. What did you say?"

Oh, sorry. Sometimes my typing gets away from me. For the Too Long, Didn't Read version:

• The internet changed the world.
• We've registered at Macy's and Target.
• Everybody loves Brianna.
  
• There may be a third registry option in the works.
• I'm a tad long-winded (Does it count as winded if I'm typing?)

KH

Side Effects from Attending a Cousin's Wedding

Poor Kenneth somehow ended up off to the side.

Chris and Ashley walk down the aisle; first steps as Mr. & Mrs.

Whew! Going to my cousin Ashley's wedding this weekend, which was beautiful, btw, made me a little anxious about our wedding. For one thing, her wedding was exactly 6 months from our wedding day.  That means it's time to get serious about planning! For another, it was intimidating to think that many of the people at her wedding would be coming to ours-- all the love that surrounded Chris and Ashley is a lot to live up to!

I'm sure it's no shock to learn that Kenneth and I talked most of the drive home from Salem to Seattle about what we liked, and what we would do differently at our wedding. We talked through who to have in our wedding party. We're still sorting that out, but we're much closer! We mulled over music options, discussed our registry, talked through rehearsal dinner ideas, and talked more about first dance and parents dance songs. We also realized that some things just can't be helped-- our ceremony is going to be an hour long, and we'll do our best to keep it lively for those with short-ish attention spans. But some things we can control, like making it a meaningful day. Ashley wrapped her bouquet in one of Granny's scarves, used Granny's cake topper, and had Ave Maria play before the ceremony. (Ave Maria was sung by Granny's dad at her wedding and the wedding of all her siblings. It's also been played at all the family weddings since.) Those little touches made the wedding truly special.

Last picture with Granny while at my cousin Jack's wedding, May 2008.

She was really a sweet, jolly old lady, even if the picture doesn't show it.

While we're being sentimental: Losing Granny last November was hard. (I'm absolutely giving an understatement here.) Since then, at each of the 4 weddings I've been to, at some point I have found myself tearing up thinking about how I won't get to see Granny's face or get squeezed in a great big hug from Granny on my wedding day.  Since starting to plan the wedding, it's been hard walking the line between my desire to make Granny as present physically as she will be in spirit at our wedding-- while also remembering that life is for the living. How do we honor our family members in heaven while also holding tight to the joy of the day? To make things more difficult, I'm stumped on how to honor my Granddad. I never met him since he died before I was born, but his marriage to my Granny is one of the best models for lifelong love that I've ever seen. A love that lasted nearly 30 years after one partner died. That's the kind of love I ask God to give Kenneth and I.

One last thing about the weekend: We finalized our guest list and addressed our save-the-dates! I stuck the little polar bear stamps on each one and sent them today. Being a bad blogger, I've got no pictures since my camera is still MIA, but rest assured it was momentous dropping those suckers in the mail box. One more major wedding task DONE! I'll post on the save-the-dates soon.

B.

And what will we dance to?

We've been having some trouble picking out our first dance song. We've got about 6 months to go, but since this is such a dang difficult decision for us, we're starting now. Here are some of the current contenders:

Can't Take my Eyes Off You, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. This one is "our song."

Come Rain or Come Shine, either this version, or maybe even this one.

The Way I Am, Ingrid Michaelson

Oh, Dave Matthews

I'm Yours, Jason Mraz

Till Kingdom Come, ColdPlay

What a Wonderful World/Somewhere over the Rainbow, Israel Kamakawiwo'ole. Oh so ubiquitous , but beautiful, right?

And, neither of these are first dance contenders, but we can't have our reception end without hearing this song, and this one. They're both silly jokes of ours, but no songs remind me of the very early days of our friendship and relationship than these. Especially the first one.

Wedding toasts

um.... right. Not exactly "us."

The wedding toasts are probably one of the more scary portions of the whole wedding reception things. Neither of us are terribly sappy people, except when it's absolutely necessary-- like, oh, our wedding. So, we'll indulge in a little sappiness on our wedding day, but toasts could end up being sappy overload.

Luckily our appointed toast-givers are more likely to be funny than sappy.

HIL-ARIOUS!!

Ok, so that's not Kenneth's kind of humor so much as mine. (You've probably already heard me tell my favorite joke before: What do you call a fish with no eyes? Fssssh. HAHA! Makes me laugh every. single. time. Love me a dumb, corny joke.)  Hopefully our toast-makers can find a way to maneuver both of our senses of humor...I just hope it doesn't end up looking something like this.* You may have heard of cake wrecks. Well, if there was a site to post bad toast videos, this would be on Toast Wrecks.

*Warning: the best man in this YouTube video has a bit of a potty mouth. You probably shouldn't watch it at work or around young folks.