August 4, 2012 by xapatotheworld

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

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.

.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.

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

Getting Married: 44 Weeks – The Church (xapatotheworld.wordpress.com)
Getting Married: 45 Weeks – Guestlisting (xapatotheworld.wordpress.com)
Getting Married: 46 Weeks (xapatotheworld.wordpress.com)

July 29, 2012 by xapatotheworld

Getting Married: 44 Weeks – The Church

Some of you stopping in might think this refers to finding the right church for the ceremony. For us, that was the easiest church question. My church has a fairly large sanctuary and Matt’s doesn’t. End of story.

But not the end of this post, thankfully. For us, the biggest, toughest question about church is: Where will we attend once we’re married? For some people, that’s not a big issue. But for both of us, it is.

Matt has been with some of the members of his church since he was born. Their church has moved around a little and had a name change, but essentially, it’s much the same group. His church is small, but intimate. Everyone knows everyone and there’s as much a sense of “family” there as I’ve seen at family reunions, but sweeter. Some of the big points is that it is Church of Christ, they don’t have any musical instruments and it is about 10-15 minutes drive from The House (“The House” refers to Matt’s house which we will be living in once we’re married). I have been to two Sunday morning services there so far and a Wednesday night study. I like the acappella worship style and I LOVE that they serve communion each Sunday. Communion is such a dear ceremony to me. Oh, his immediate family attends there as well.

My church is Southern Baptist, about 250 members, and only 5 minutes walking down the street. I love to walk to my church. I’ve been here since I was a freshman in high school, so a little over 13 years. I have been to a variety of churches in my day, both before and during my time here. I love my church so much, they are as much my family as my flesh and blood. We have two services on Sunday mornings, so I don’t always get to see everyone. I have taught the 4th and 5th grade Sunday School class for about 6 years now (I think) and, though it’s been a challenge some years, I have loved it! I’ve seen some of the kids I’ve worked with go into high school and turned into some wonderful, strong Christian brothers and sisters. I can’t wait to see what God does with them in life. I’ve had some amazing mentors throughout my time here, both men and women: Connie Proctor, Mary White, Lester Jones, Leslie Botts, Cyndi Blankenship, Gary Loney, Randy Baird, and so many more in big and small ways. I have seen the value of proper church discipline, sweet Christian fellowship, good fun, and God’s comforting hand in the congregation here. The worship in the second service might be a bit raucous and disjointed at times, but I have a feeling I’ll miss even that when I have to leave.

My church is also very community-minded – the youth group does a Sports Camp each summer, we built a Community Outreach Center with a gym and cafe in order to have more opportunity to minister to those in our community. The last few years have been spent in brainstorming more ways that we can be more involved in the lives of people in our neighborhood, more relevant to their needs and then trying things out to see what works and what doesn’t work. That’s one thing I’ve learned from this church – failure of a ministry or event is not a bad thing, it just means God has something different in mind.

So, after Matt and I got engaged, one of the big questions asked was, “Where will you go to church?” In fact, I think both of us can remember being asked this question a couple months before getting engaged. For our part, we avoided it until things settled down, until we had the big things for the wedding taken care of and could relax a bit. I know that I was thinking about it, and I’m sure HE was thinking about it, but we just didn’t really talk about it. Or when we did, it went something like, “We should probably talk about where we want to go to church…how about later?”

Matt has been to several events at my church. Our young adults group meets every Tuesday night and just about every other Sunday afternoon for a Bible Study and service (respectively). He’s also spent a good amount of time with my dear friends from there. He likes them and he’s seen the bond I have with people there. I enjoy his church, but it’s not MY church yet and I don’t know if it will be. God hasn’t made that clear yet, and I just haven’t fellowshipped with them enough. Matt’s work schedule also keeps him from attending church just about one Sunday a month. Oh, and my church is a whopping 45 minutes away from The House – not impossible, but definitely not in the local community.

When we talked it out, we decided that once we’re married, we would go to his church, mostly. On the week that he couldn’t go to church, I would drive down to my church. I am going to be pulled away from my church, my community, everything I know well, so I think this will be very necessary for me. We both think so. He also said that once a month, we can check out other churches near our home together and see if we can find one that is very involved in community outreach. This is so important to me, that we be reaching out to those around us. I’m so glad that my future husband is concerned about it too, and taking the desires of my heart into consideration. I don’t know where God will put us and I don’t know what it will all mean, but I’m glad that we can talk about it together and that we both are willing to make concessions for the sake of the other.

Have you had the whole “Church” talk before? Was it difficult for you? What compromises did you make and what things were on your non-negotiable list?

I forgot to mention that both of our churches are wonderful for teaching and preaching straight from the Bible. Not only do the pastors value the Word of God but the teachers, leaders and lay people do too. This is absolutely imperative for both of us for wherever we end up fellowshipping. Sometimes we put too much emphasis on the physical or creature comforts and not on the Truth or lies that are propagated throughout a church body. A truthful church is necessity for true worship and fellowship.

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My Pinterest Wedding Board

Our Wedding Website on WeddingWire.com