Signs

Photobooth!

My favorite thing at our wedding party was the photobooth! Okay, I'll be honest I absolutely LOVED every part of May 23 and my favorite part changes daily. Here's our booth!


I love wedding stuff, but for a few weeks in March I was really stressed out. It was the busy season for my mom at H&R Block and T was extremely busy with school projects in California and I felt like wedding things weren't coming together and I was on my own.

My mom set aside a Saturday to go to a bridal show with me and we went even though I didn't feel like it. And there we found the magic photobooth of goodness by A Day to Remember Receptions.

I had looked at other photobooths before and they were all about $1000. My mom and I took a fun set of pictures together in the A Day to Remember Receptions photobooth. And then we found out that A Day to Remember Receptions was offering a screaming deal ($416.95 total!!!)and I decided right then that I wanted to book them. I called T and asked him if it was okay and booked our date right then.

And I realized right then that even if nothing else worked out we would have this rocking photobooth on top of our awesome music and delicious cake and amazing photographer and thus our party would be fantastic. And all of a sudden, I got my wedding groove back.


Each photobooth session had four pictures with a choice of black and white or color. Then the photobooth printed two copies: one for the guest book and one for the guest to keep. And we had an unlimited amount of pictures to take in the booth!

Putting together the guest book

The pink and our names and our date were printed on every photobooth picture just like this.

1. We are so happy to be married!

2. AAAHHHHH!!! We're married!!!

3. Some kissin' (c'mon you knew it was coming)

4. We have proof (the rings) that we are married

I wish our photographer had taken a picture of T's feet and my dress in the photobooth and a picture of us pulling back the curtain in the photobooth. C'est la vie.

Here are a bunch of fun individual shots that we pulled from the comprehensive CD A Day to Remember Receptions gave us. There were SO many great pictures and it was hard to decide so there are LOTS.

These first three are a series of my cousin M and her dad J...

That's 9 crazy people in a photobooth. Gotta be a record. At least for crazy people.

Our photographer, Elizabeth Taylor Frandsen

It's a ghost! Or maybe a white ribbon stick...

Everyone, thanks for taking great pictures and making our party AWESOME!

Cake part 2

My fabulous cousin M put the finishing touches on the cake.

I wanted our cake to be tall-ish but we didn't need the extra cake layer, so the solution was a tall cake stand. Our cake stand was actually a plant stand from the Home Depot.

When T and I tried to cut the cake...

the cake would not cut. No matter how hard we pressed.

Then I said, "Oh, NO! The cake is frozen!"

I had a valid reason for thinking the cake was frozen. Rachel (our baker from Bayshore Cakes) told us that the buttercream frosting on our cake had a very good chance of melting if it was above 90 degrees. I was worried about this because May is an unpredictable month weather wise. Rachel said she would freeze the cake overnight and thaw it in the morning. Then the cake would be chilled and thawed and would last longer if it was hot outside.

I really did think that the reason we couldn't cut the cake was because it was still frozen. Actually, we just had the luck of trying to cut into a dowel that was supporting the cake.

When we finally got a piece of cake cut (brownie with carmel, heath bar and whipped cream filling)...

we played nice.

My amazing Aunt J cut the rest of the cake. Wedding cake is not easy to cut!

Cake

Typically speaking, I am not a cake person. Cake is fine and I like it enough to eat it, but if some one were to ask me what sounds good the answer would not be cake. The answer would be more like pie. Or cheese.











Anyway, since I don't really care about cake, I told T he could have whatever flavor of cake he wanted as long as it was the design I wanted. T said he wanted yellow or chocolate cake with buttercream frosting. Which was great, because I wanted a whipped look that can only be done with buttercream.

Since T was in California, I did the cake tastings. All of the cakes I tried were run of the mill. Untill I tried Bayshore Cakes made by Rachel Donnell.

I went to the tasting with my mom and we were surprised about cake. We tried 15 mini cupcakes. There was the regular butter pecan, chocolate, white, red velvet, and carrot cake. And then there were crazy awesome flavors like cinnamon crumble, lime, orange, pink lemonade, rootbeer, peach, lemon poppy seed, brownie and others. And there was more than just the regular chocolate, buttercream or fondant frosting. Rachel had cream cheese, grape, pink lemonade, whipped cream, pina colada, ganache, and almond frosting, too! I don't like cake that much and I ate Every. Last. Cupcake.

All of a sudden I had VERY strong opinions on what flavor of cake we should have.

We got take away samples in a little box to freeze to have T taste when he came to visit two weeks later. Luckily T liked the same cake flavors as I did.

The bottom two layers of our cake were brownie with whipped cream, carmel and heath bar filling. The top layer was lime with whipped cream filling. We had two sheet cakes with pink lemonade cake with pink lemonade frosting.

And Rachel made the whipped look just like the picture I gave her.

T and I LOVED our cake! It looked beautiful and tasted delicious. We made sure to snag some big pieces of all three kinds to eat after the party. It seemed like others enjoyed the cake as well.

And so we had our perfect cake at our perfect party.

Our cake's picture is even on her website. It is the 13th cake down (#279).

A side note: Today I tried to make pink lemonade cake. Well, pink lemonade cupcakes. I used a Betty Crocker white cake mix but instead of using 1 1/4 cups water I used 1/2 cup water and 3/4 pink lemonade concentrate. Other than that I followed all the directions. They turned out...interesting... The toothpick came out clean at 16 minutes, and the cupcakes seemed baked all the way through, but when you take a bite the texture is like it is not cooked all the way through. But after the bite the inside of the cupcake looks as if it is baked all the way through.

The cupcake was a bit tart so I frosted it with homemade buttercream frosting (mom, I STILL can't make frosting right! It tastes pretty good, but not great like yours.) instead of attempting to make pink lemonade frosting. They taste decent, but I'm not sure if I will repeat pink lemonade cupcakes...