Xapa to the World

Tag: Cincinnati

  • Getting Married: 43 Weeks – Bridalrama

     

    This is a pretty long post this week, but I think you will find some good info. It’s basically a review, so stick around and, hopefully, you’ll find something you may enjoy!

    Sunday afternoon (July 29, 2012) in Cincinnati was a celebrated biannual event called Bridalrama. I’m sure other cities have similar events, but I’ve been hearing about Bridalrama since I was young with a sort of hesitant curiosity. I’m not really a shopper. It wears me out and makes me a bit irritable if I’m not in the right mood of it. But, seeing as I am now engaged (and my sister scored 4 free tix to the event), I decided to go.

    Most of my friends are married, but it’s still fun to go and scope out things wedding-related. My “Friend of the Bride”, Amy, and our friend Dannie, headed down to check out what goodies we could find. Since I already have the ceremony and reception venues, photographer, and caterer, I wasn’t interested in too many stands except cakes, flowers, and potentially, videographer.

    As it was a Sunday afternoon, we met up after church and drove down to the city. I always park in the Race Street garage when I’m downtown. It looks like the kind of place one would find zombies or see in a B-movie horror flick, but the men who run it are extremely nice and keep great tabs on the vehicles in their care. I highly recommend them…but not too much because I want to have room to park when I’m down there.

    We walked around the block to have lunch at It’s Just Crepes on 4th Street. This is one of those purely Cincinnati treats (only three locations with two downtown and one in nearby Crescent Springs, KY. It was my friends’ first time there and I wish I had taken a picture of our crepes. They have an amazing selection of fully customizable crepes, dessert and savory. I got a chicken Florentine with onions that was so hefty, I couldn’t finish the last 4th of it.

    After lunch we headed to the Duke Energy Convention Center where Bridalrama was being held. There were so many vendors! I can’t even begin to tell you about them all, so if you want the complete list, you should go here. Like I said, I’m not a fan of shopping, but I’m also really good at ignoring salespeople who I don’t need to talk to. I was there to see what was available, talk to people I needed to talk with, and taste everything that could be tasted. I was not disappointed. We all had kind of wished we had gone a little lighter on our lunch, but we managed to have room for all the treats. I’m going to break down the vendors that stood out to me by category:

    Videographer

    This is something I had not really considered as being something important. I like photos, but my friends were recommending a video of the wedding to get a different perspective of the day. Of the three videographers present, Spirit Video Productions, Inc. stood out to me the most. I spoke with one rep who went through the offers with me and I was pretty impressed. You can ask for two videographers, one to stay at the front of the church and one to stand on the balcony above the entrance door. They go through the pre-ceremony moments with the different groups of the bridal party, the ceremony and the reception. They then compiled it into a quick video of the highlights and put it on a USB for easy sharing. The cost was a bit more than we would be interested in paying, but they also do wedding/engagement photos and family portraits. They are also Christian-based, which is always wonderful. Go ahead and check them out!

    Photo Booth

    Photobooths has become all the rage lately. Not sure what one is? It’s where people have a cloth put up and silly props and then someone taking pictures of the guests in fun poses and such. Like this:

    Oh, how I wish my Pappy could be here for a pose like that!

    I’m not sold on the idea for ours, but I did chat with one vendor, Inlight Photography. I have a $100 off coupon here for them, and they seem to have a lot of fun stuff to offer, but it is still quite a bit out of our price range, especially after we are not holding back on the cost of our actual wedding photographer, who is amazing…see previous post. Also, there are four different ways they posted their website on their printed material and only one of them will actually take you to their site. They should pay a little more attention to detail.

    Cakes and Desserts – the good stuff

    The Bridalrama website only lists 4 cake vendors ad we apparently hit them all! They all tasted really good! For me, I’m more concerned with taste and texture than appearance. Yes, I want a cake that will look nice, but I don’t want the decorating to compromise the flavor. All of the samples we tried were super moist, no fondant and amazingly yummy!

    Simply Delicious – tried their Champagne flavored cake with, I believe a raspberry filling, and it was to die for. They have a bunch more flavors, but you’ll have to call for an appointment, because they don’t seem to have a website. 859-359-5382

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    Sweets by LaDawn – I remember trying a sample from this stand, and I remember it being very good and talking with the woman about how I’m glad they don’t use fondant and why, but I can’t remember much else besides the cake pictured on the left. Matt’s only comment was, “That certainly isn’t traditional.” I thought he’d a bit more excited about it. 🙂 She has a lot of variety, so go check her out.

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    .Patricia’s – I had to make sure I remembered this woman’s stand. She had several samples out and I tried a couple. On man! Were they good. My favorite, though, was the caramel cake with apple filling. If I were having a fall wedding, I would HAVE to get that in one of the layers! She’s definitely in the running…I may have to do more “research” though. Her website.

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    J Annette’s Cheesecakes – Last, but definitely not least, is this little jewel. It was funny, this is the very first stand we went to. Dannie was telling us about this place in West Chester who has amazing cheesecakes, as we picked up one of the cheesecake samples. I’m always a sucker for cheesecake. I was getting ready to tell Dannie about the raspberry cupcake I had had on that Friday night, when we both looked up and saw that it was, in fact, the very same business both of us were talking about! Matt’s cousin was celebrating her birthday and her mom had picked up cupcakes from her favorite place, J Annette’s, and grabbed a postcard with info for me. There was a red and yellow decorated cake in the window and she thought I would just love it. What I loved was how the cupcake tasted! It’s hard to get a really moist, flavorful cupcake, but this woman nailed it! To hear Dannie confirm that she was top-notch at cheesecake as well really puts J Annette’s at the top of my list. Matt loved the chocolate cupcake he had that night too. Again, I think more research is necessary, though. 🙂 Her website.

    Miscellaneous

    Kreative Dezines Chair Cover Rental – I saw a friend from high school at Bridalrama with her own business. Lindsey rents out chair covers (I’m still not sure how I’m going to really decorate the reception hall) and decorates the tables. What she is able to do with strips of colorful fabric is so lovely! I would definitely recommend you check her out. Website.

    One Little Band – The girls and I got a bit distracted at this booth. Julie has such a great selection of adorable accessories for weddings. I have spent quite a bit of time perusing her Etsy shop.

    Have you used any of these vendors? Do you have any suggestions/recommendations?

    We ended the afternoon at Bridalrama a little early. We still had an hour before the dress fashion show was scheduled, so we decided to walk down to the new Smale Park right on the Ohio River. We had quite a bit of snacking and lunch that we needed to walk off a bit before heading back home. Of course, we had to make a pit stop at Orange Leaf at The Banks. I finally got to taste their Wedding cake flavor. So very yummy!

    Thanks for sticking around for this really long post! Hope you enjoyed!

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    I’m getting married to my, you guessed it, best friend on June 1st, 2013! Matt and I are super-excited and since we have quite a bit of time to plan this thing, I decided it’d be fun to blog about it. Well, maybe not always fun, but at least informative and it might give me a welcome distraction. You can find all the posts by clicking the “Getting Married” tab on the right of this page, or by clicking here. Thanks for stopping by!

    My Pinterest Wedding Board

    Our Wedding Website on WeddingWire.com

    Related articles

     

  • Getting Married: 46 Weeks

    I was looking forward to the week following the last post since I figured we had the two big things booked and locked away, so I could relax a bit, enjoy being engaged. Sadly, southwest Ohio weather had another idea. I started getting a bit of a sore throat by Sunday night which progressed to a full-on sinus infection by Thursday. That made for a miserable week with barely any sleep, lots of coughing and a Z-pack.

    While I haven’t been up to par, that doesn’t mean we didn’t make any headway on the wedding plans. We decided to do our own invitations to save some money. I’m excited and have been brainstorming ways to make them fun and creative without going overboard. Matt met me near my work place on a half day to have lunch and hang out a bit before going in to work the afternoon. We stopped into Michaels to peruse. I’m glad we did. They were having a fantastic sale on paper and stationery. We got an amazing deal on the blank card stock and envelopes we need for invitations including some card stock for embellishments and our separate reception invitations. When I say, “We got an amazing deal…,” I mean, we got everything paper that we needed for under $50, plus some fun red/yellow flowery things that we can use to decorate for the reception. I can’t wait to start experimenting with designs and trying out different things. I will post some of the outcome on here for you all when I get them going.

    After chatting with my sister one night, I decided I should go ahead and schedule my wedding dress shopping date. There has been a great summer sale going on at David’s Bridal this week, but it seems too soon to go get my dress already. We’re planning to go on Labor Day weekend, hoping for a sale, and also hoping that I can get myself in a little better shape by that time. There are going to be 10 of us there if everyone can show up! It’ll be so much fun though, and I want to try on the truly awful dresses too, so I’ll have some pictures for you.

    Well, here’s hoping that this week is much better than the last!

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    I’m getting married to my, you guessed it, best friend on June 1st, 2013! Matt and I are super-excited and since we have quite a bit of time to plan this thing, I decided it’d be fun to blog about it. Well, maybe not always fun, but at least informative and it might give me a welcome distraction. You can find all the posts by clicking the “Getting Married” tab on the right of this page, or by clicking here. Thanks for stopping by!

    My Pinterest Wedding Board

    Our Wedding Website on WeddingWire.com

    Related articles

  • Booked! (47 weeks)

    There were just two things that I have been stressed about to get booked for this wedding, yes, even 11 months before the aimed-for date: a reception venue and wedding photographer.

    This week’s post is to let you know that we have them booked! I am so confident about my vendors so far, that I’m going to do a quick review/plug for them.

    RECEPTION HALL – Barn N Bunk – Trenton, OH

    Borrowed from the Barn N Bunk website

    First, here is the website: http://barnnbunk.com/

    Both Matt and I have been to wedding receptions here, so when we found out how economical the place was, we knew we had to get it. Located in Trenton, OH, a very farming-heavy community in Butler County, OH, this venue is ideal for weddings and receptions. Barn weddings/receptions have become super popular in the last few years and this 1893 barn is definitely up for the challenge.

    The owners, Bev and her husband (Tom, I believe…I did meet him, but it was for a split second), have been doing this for years. their granddaughter works in one of the shops. You can tell that the whole place is a labor of love. During the growing season, the fields surrounding the barn are filled with a variety of vegetables and beans. They have a farmers’ market and a slew of community activities throughout the year.

    What amazed me was how excited Bev was about our future marriage. I’m thinking that she must see about 52 weddings a year and yet she was still so thrilled that we are getting married and having our reception there.

    Here’s the breakdown of the deal:

    For 200 people, we were quoted a price of $3200. This includes catering for those people of a hot buffet (there are two other buffet options available) with three meats (sliced ham with pineapple, turkey breast in gravy, and roast beef au jus) and four sides or salad options. We chose mashed potatoes with gravy, green beans with ham chunks, tossed salad with dressings, and applesauce. Matt hasn’t insisted on too much so far, but he pretty much said it was a deal breaker if we didn’t get those mashed potatoes. Naturally, I accommodated. I love potatoes too. They also provide iced tea, lemonade, water, and coffee.

    Any guests above the 200 is an additional $11/person, which is a very good price based on what I’ve gathered from friends and family who have planned weddings before. We can also bring in pop, if we want, but we would be responsible for clean-up and monitoring of that. They will allow alcohol, but again, you are completely responsible for organizing that. They do have china dishes and silverware available, but they typically use Styrofoam plates and plasticware. This is where I expressed some concern. We have plans for repurposing things for this wedding – reducing our waste and lowering cost. I asked her if we could buy thick paper plates instead of styrofoam, so that the material would at least be biodegradable. Bev is in a recycling mode so she was very glad to help out and said that she would price-check for us and if it wasn’t much more than the styrofoam plates, then she would just consider it in the original cost. Just a testament that you shouldn’t be afraid to ask about something that is important to you – you may not get the answer you want, but you also just might.

    I will probably do another review of the place after the wedding, but for now, I leave you with the above. I’m very hopeful for what our special day will be like.

    WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER – Images by Sadie – Sadie Hodge

    Here’s her website: http://www.imagesbysadie.com/

    Just about every one of my friends have commissioned Sadie to do photos for them. She runs the gammut of Senior pics, engagement shots, weddings, mom-to-be photos, baby and kid photo, and full family shots. She first came into our lives when my matron of honor (who will be doing our engagement photos) married her super-cool rockstar hubs. I believe that he and Sadie knew each other from school, but regardless, she did some promo shots for his band and then she did their engagement and wedding photos…then my other bridesmaid had her do mommy-to-be shots, then it seemed like just about every other of my friends had her do their engagement shots and weddings. Most recently, she has done pics of friends’ new baby boy and she was brought in for a surprise proposal session at a Cincinnati Reds game.

    I have wanted her to do my wedding pics for a long time, years even! So I was so excited to hear that she was available for our wedding date. She has some different wedding packages which are on her pricing page. I have had too many friends who didn’t get a very good photographer and their groomsmen ended up with a mullet from the shadow, or heads chopped off, or missing whole segments of the night because the photographer sat down to eat his meal during the dinner. I do not plan to be a picky bride, but a top-knotch photographer is one thing I am not willing to compromise on. Sadie is the best and has very reasonable pricing for the quality of her work.

    Another really great photography couple that I would have used had Sadie not been available is her friend Tammi Harris and hubs Rudy. You can find their website here. I really like the stuff that they come up with and as a husband/wife team, they work super well together.

    Thanks for stopping by!

    —————————–

    I’m getting married to my, you guessed it, best friend on June 1st, 2013! Matt and I are super-excited and since we have quite a bit of time to plan this thing, I decided it’d be fun to blog about it. Well, maybe not always fun, but at least informative and it might give me a welcome distraction. You can find all the posts by clicking the “Getting Married” tab on the right of this page, or by clicking here. Thanks for stopping by!