Wedding Soundtrack

As we get closer to the date, we need to make some decisions when it comes to the soundtrack of our wedding. We have our band and DJ locked and loaded (because they happen to be relatives) but we still have music decisions that need to be nailed down, 1) Music for the Ceremony, 2) Music during “Cocktail Hour”, 3) Requests for the Band and 4) Requests for the DJ.

Music during the ceremony is totally stumping me. Do we play the traditional bridal march or an alternative classical arrangement? Do we play a CD or live music? All of these questions are yet to be answered. . I would love for his cousin Jane to play the piano and the venue said that they have plenty of pianos around, so it would be no problem to bring one in. Still I have no idea what she should play. Fortunately, I have a solution…make Evan do it! He said he wanted to be in charge of the music, so he can have at it.



We decided months ago that we want to incorporate Motown Music as a tribute to Detroit. We spent hours downloading and listening to Motown tracks. We picked out our favorites and thought about different family members and which songs would spark them to get out of their seats. Everyone loves Motown Music, right? Then I got to thinking, “what if everyone doesn’t love Motown Music?” That could turn into a total bummer for the person who doesn’t particularly care for the sweet sounds of Marvin Gaye, the Jackson 5, the Temptations or Stevie Wonder. (I know it is hard to imagine.) Then I read an update from my planner, who sends weekly tips to all her brides. She recommended playing our themed music for the cocktail hour. That way if there are people who don’t like it, they will get variety when the dance party gets started. I think that this is a great solution. Now we will just have to narrow down our favorites to get them on the playlist. Since our entire reception is really a cocktail style receptions we will probably play Motown Music during the first hour up until the cake cutting.

Requests for the band are tougher than you would think. We want them to play their original songs because that is why we love them, but we also want them to play songs that all guests will be familiar with. I would like them to play the “first dance” song. We haven’t decided 100% what that will be, but we are leaning towards, “Come Away with Me” by Norah Jones. There are some other options floating around, but I really like this one.



My must have wedding song is “Love Shack”. I know it sounds silly, but I love this song and always wanted it played on my wedding day. I don’t know if I should ask the band to play this song or put in a request with the DJ. Either way, I will be happy. The only thing that I want to give to our DJ is a list of DO NOT PLAY songs. No electric slide, no chicken dance, absolutely no no no line dancing songs. I know it is harsh, but I just can’t take it. I know that we will have people on the dance floor, because Evan and I love to dance. The bride and groom having fun dancing should be more than enough of a draw.

Wedding Related Purchases

As a bride I can rationalize a lot of expenses, but I am most excited about a recent purchase that I will use long after the wedding is over. A fancy smancy new printer!! My old printer was for basic work printing only, the print quality wasn’t very good and it often printed crooked pages. I had been thinking about buying a new one for a while, but now that we are getting close to needing printed materials for our wedding, I was ready to make a purchase.

I have a big long list of wedding, must prints: stickers for our favors, address labels for our invitations, rehearsal dinner invites, “day-of” itineraries, inserts for our OOT bags and the list goes on…

Here is the best part about this purchase…it didn’t cost me any money!! I had a bunch of gift cards with half balances from Christmas and some cash leftover that my mom gave me for my birthday to buy a bed skirt (side note: I found a King sized white bed skirt for $9.99 at Bed Bath and Beyond). But back to the printer…I got a Kodak ESP-7 All-In-One Printer. It prints, it copies, scans and prints photos. Impressive, huh?

The second best thing about this printer (other than the fact that it was basically free) is that it is wireless. I set it up to print from all of our laptops. That means I can set my laptop up in the living room and still print perfect wedding inspirations without having to plug in. Technology is letting me do more and more from my couch. My next investment might have to be a new sofa.

Cake Stands Purchased!

This weekend I went ebay crazy. I was searching for and bidding on cobalt blue cake stands in various sizes to use for our wedding cakes. As you may have read here, we are not having a traditional tiered wedding cake, but instead having multiple cakes on beautiful cake stands. To my excitement, I was able to get all the stands that we need through various sellers in one weekend. They will all be arriving in the mail this week! That means a lot of trips to the leasing office since the delivery guy doesn’t like to walk up to the 4th floor.

I was really happy that I was able to find four different cobalt blue glass cake stands. Who knew there would be such great variety? I bought two 11 inch stands in the same style and three 9 inch stands, all different designs in various heights. These are a little small for wedding cakes, but with all five cakes displayed on our cake table, they will look beautiful. We will be using one of the small cakes as our cake “topper” and plan to keep the tradition of freezing the topper to eat on our first anniversary. I’m thinking that the topper will go this stand, it is 7 inches tall which will make it the tallest stand of the set.

I am feeling really happy about getting the cake decisions finalized. Last weekend, while we were in Michigan, we discussed and decided on the cake flavors with our wonderful cake artist (and friend) Kim Munro. I am really excited about the variety we will have. We decided on four flavors, lemon cake with raspberry filing and butter cream frosting, red velvet cake with cream cheese filing and frosting, carrot cake with cream cheese filing and frosting and chocolate cake with caramel pecan filing and butter cream frosting. Yum.

Also arriving this week will be our cake toppers! They are being custom made by an Esty seller, modeled after these toppers.

Final Planning Trip

Last weekend, we made the crucial final Wedding Planning Trip to Detroit. Unless something crazy happens, we will not be back until the Wednesday before the big day. It was essential that we made the most of our time in Michigan and finalized as much as possible. In just four days, we did catering tastings, met with the wedding planner/coordinator, visited the ceremony and reception site, visited the rental showroom and picked out linens and chairs, revised our floral plan with the florist, met with our photographers, visited the hotel where we are staying, looked at our suite, picked a Rehearsal Dinner restaurant, met with the Minister, picked our cake flavors and design and even spent some quality time with friends and family. Can you believe we did all that in four days? Me neither.

None of that would be possible without Jane, my future-mother-in-law, who drove us all over the Detroit Metro area, Jessica, my future-sister-in-law who drove down from Northern Michigan a day after she returned from four months in Thailand and Uncle Brian and Aunt Julie who fed us and let us sleep on the Murphy bed in their basement on every trip we have made in the last 3 years. We were also really excited to be able to stay with friends, Jeff and Kim Munro, who the week before had been in a snowmobile accident that sent them both to the hospital with broken bones. That did not stop them from providing us a delicious dinner, a generous amount of beverages, a cozy bed to sleep in and a ride to the airport.

I didn’t get a ton of pictures on the planning trip, but this is one of me posing in the food court at the Detroit Renaissance Center.

After this trip, I have a lot of things to blog about, so stay tuned this week for updates!

Pom Pom Party

I’m back!!! Sorry for the little break in posts for the past week and a half. I was suffering from a little blog-burn-out due to some disappointing news about my application to blog on a “real” wedding blog. Needless to say, application denied, but no worries, I’m feeling much better and am really excited that I have a lot of planning progress to share.

This week, I invited all of my bridesmaids to come over to help with the pomander craft project. (I lured them with the promise of pizza, but what can you do?) As you may remember, my first attempt to make this tissue paper delight took me 4 hours for one puff! Even after two weekends of being snowed in, I still only had 7 of them completed. I figured, 12 hands are better than 2, so I called on my girls and they came to my rescue.

It was really nice to catch up with everyone since our schedules never allow the recommended weekly serving of girl time (kind of like vegetables). This was a good project because even though we were busy, we could still chit chat and catch up on all things girlie while we worked. All my girls and my Mom came over after work and we measured, cut, folded, twisted, fluffed and stuck until we made a whopping 5 pomanders in about 3 hours!

I was so busy working that I didn’t remember to take any pictures, but thank goodness for Jessica, Evan’s sister and my bridesmaid, who came all the way from Michigan and also took the only two photos at the pom pom party. Great job, Jess!

I think for the most part everyone had a good time working as my tissue paper slaves. I still have 8 more of these babies to make to reach my goal of 20 pomanders, but I think I can handle that rather than subject these girls to another night of orange tissue trauma. I have much bigger plans for my last few months of can-you-help-me-I’m-the-bride-power. They will be wishing for pom poms….mua ha ha ha.

**Just kidding my lovely bridesmaids, I don’t really have more projects for you (yet) I love you all very much. You are the best!

Out of Town Gift Bags

I am very excited to report that the tote bags we ordered for our out-of-town guest gift bags have arrived from Vista Print! I am also excited to report that I am in love with them. They are so adorable, I can hardly take it! (I know I am a little bias and have a problem with cuteness.) The print on the totes is from our save the dates, designed by the amazing Ann. The bluebird is a theme throughout the wedding and I am really excited for it to be included on the bags. We printed the totes one sided so that people can choose “wedding side” out or in, when they use these for non wedding related functions.

I have a general idea of what we will put in the bags, but I may need some additional preparation to get all the items together (and get them to Michigan and get the items in the bags.) Here is what I’m thinking I would like to include:

A Map for the People Mover so that guests can easily find their way around the city.
Crosswords or Word Puzzles to keep people busy during down time.
Assorted snacks to keep the hunger away.
Water (possibly with a wedding label) to keep guests hydrated.
If we want to get a little fancier we might consider including items such as these:

Scented Candle to keep the room smelling fresh.
Sleeping Mask to keep the sunrise over the Detroit River from ruining much needed beauty sleep.
Fuzzy Slippers, just because.
Most likely we will keep it simple. But wouldn’t it be funny to see Uncle Terry walking the halls of the Marriott in a pair of fuzzy slippers like these babies?

Picture Source 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Wedding Shoes

I am totally a shoe girl. When I was in high school, my Dad would take me and my brother to the Annapolis Mall every Wednesday and we would pick out a pair of shoes for me and an action figure for my brother. I never wore the same pair of shoes, two days in a row throughout all four years of high school. (Yes, I realize that I am a spoiled princess.) To give you a reference, the Spice Girls were popular during this period of my life; therefore I had a lot of platforms sneakers and knee high boots. Please, don’t judge me harshly. They were very in at the time.

Now that I am grown up (and it is not the late 90’s) my love has turned to stilettos and designer heels. Knowing all this, it is no surprise that wedding shoes are really important to me. A girl’s wedding day is a day that she can easily rationalize an insane expense for shoes that will definitely not be comfortable and probably never come out of the box again.

I have been on the blogs looking for shoe inspiration since the day after my engagement. I’ve come across many beautiful shoes, but hadn’t narrowed it down to “the one” pair for me. Manolo Blahnik, Vivienne Westwood, Christian Loubitan, Jimmy Choo, the list goes on. Well my search has ended with a surprising result….

My little brother made me wedding shoes!

Have you ever heard of wedding shoes by Payless? Probably not, because these babies are one of a kind! My brother has worked with Payless on his last three runway shows. He designs the shoes for his runway show, Payless produces his designs for Fashion Week and then they interpret his high fashion (and insanely high heels) into designs to be sold in their stores. The collaboration has been a very successful one and the Payless people are really great. They send me and my mom shoes every season and even sent a wedding gift from our registry.

My brother asked them to produce one of the designs from his most recent collection in ivory and a pair in orange (my wedding color). They even kept the surprise from me while I was trying on all the shoes backstage at the show. My Dad however is not as good at keeping secrets. I told him I planned to look at shoes in the big department stores while we were in NYC and he said, “Well, maybe your brother will have that taken care of.” Dad! You are lucky we aren’t still making those mall trips. And even so, I was totally surprised. I had no idea that Payless would make two pair of shoes just for me. These shoes can be found on no other feet than mine!

(Please, excuse my feet, I am in desperate need of a pedicure)