Your Cake, Your Style

Everything at your wedding should scream you!

Most of all your cake. It is the most memorable, most displayed piece at your event.

Pick something you just adore. Set the tone for everything else.

The Real Wedding Crashers

Top 6 Ways to Avoid Fainting

1. Don't lock your knees, keep them slightly bent
2. Don't spend the night before the wedding getting to know Johnny Walker and Jim Beam
3. Don't hold the wedding in a sauna
4. Don't tie it too tight. No one will notice that you look 1/2 inch slimmer as you crash to the floor
5. Don't be afraid to take a seat for 30 seconds
6. Breathe

Another Brilliant Idea from NBC

The Real Wedding Crashers premieres tonight on the network that brought you such classics as Manimal and Joey and then gave Donald Trump a primetime slot for his ego. Thanks NBC, YOU’RE FIRED!*

The Real Wedding Crashers is a new reality show in which the bride and groom invite a team of actors to come and prank their wedding. Their catchphrase is “Nothing’s safe: not the cake, not the dress, not even the ceremony!” Guests will be shocked at the waiter who’s eating the appetizers, the minister who answers his cell phone during the vows, and the caterer who drops the cake. At the end of the show the guests and relatives will be let in on the ruse and will realize that they’ve just made a fool of themselves on national television. To save face for the TV audience they will laugh and smile, “Good one! You got me!” but deep down they will be wishing that they had bought the cheap salad spinner instead of splurging on the 300 thread count, goose down comforter.

Great Grandma Bertha will never quite understand that it was all a setup or why something like that would be funny, and your friends who were goaded into heated arguments with the actors you hired will feel like you betrayed them. Trust me on this, by the time it’s all over Al Capone and Eliot Ness will have had a better relationship than you will with your friends.

I’m not sure why anyone not named Ashton Kutcher would want to do this to their guests.

*Disclaimer: This phrase is NOT used with the express written permission of Donald Trump who will most likely own this blog before you are done reading it.

Show Him You Love Him This Morning

OK, so you’ve gotten a little distracted by the wedding and it’s all you ever talk about. Your fiancé is trying to be good and pretend he cares. This morning make it up to him. Go to his apartment and make him the best breakfast ever and don’t talk about the wedding. A word to the wise: learn something about his favorite sports team and pretend you care. He will be ever attentive to you if you make what’s important to him, important to you.


Stop by the grocery store and get:
1 stick butter
½ dozen eggs
One of those tiny bags of flour
Vanilla extract
1 package strawberries (or your favorite fruit)
1 bag powdered sugar

This is the best souffle wanna-be/ pancake ever!
From Disney's Family Cookbook (A little kid focused but our favorite recipes; unique and easy.)
Puffed Pancake

Preheat Oven to 450 degrees
Place 3 Tablespoons butter in a pretty pie dish (or the only plan he’s got at his apartment, clean whatever that is off it first)
Place pan with butter in preheated oven until it bubbles (watch that it doesn’t burn)
Meanwhile, Whisk 3 eggs, 2/3 Cup milk, Sift in ¾ Cup Flour (ok he may not have a sifter- it just makes it fluffier)
Mix in ½ teaspoon Vanilla Extract
Remove the pie pan from the oven (It’s Hot!) and pour in pancake mixture.
On a low shelf bake pancake for 20 minutes.
Meanwhile slice 1 cup strawberries (or your favorite fruit) and sift powdered sugar over it.
Cut into large slices and serve it with Sports Center.

Your Event Bar

How much your guests drink depends on your crowd. Take into account what your friends and family like and whether or not they are Irish.
You do not need to offer every drink, nor do we suggest that you offer an open bar for more than 2 hours total. (Nothing says ‘classy’ like hurling off the balcony while dressed to the nines.)

We suggest that you do not open the bar until after the ceremony. Groomsmen are notorious for loading up and trying to get completely Kennedy’d. When you do open the bar make sure that appetizers are available. (Bread, crackers and other alcohol absorbent foods are always a good idea).
A convenient time to switch from an open bar is when your meal is served. Guests can be seated with their cocktails and then offered beer and wine with their meal. Close the bar while guests fill their tummies, guests are less likely to notice and if they do the wonderful taste that is free food will help alleviate their aggravation. If you wish to open the bar later make it clear that you will authorize the bartender to do so. Survey your crowd, some people are capable of governing themselves and some are not, those who are not will become blatantly obvious to you the longer you wait. Don’t jeopardize your event or your guest’s safety. It will take one hour for your liver to remove one unit of alcohol. That’s 4 hours if you had 4 drinks! It is wise to stop all alcohol 1-2 hours before your guests leave.

What about what to buy? Many sites allow or ask you to purchase your own alcohol.
As a helpful guide for a 3-5 hour event...
assume 3-4 drinks pp
50% beer
20% wine
20% liquor
10% will not drink
(This will vary depending on crowd)
We strongly suggest a no shot policy.

Bottle of wine = ~6 glasses Champagne toast (1/3 full) = 10glasses
1 Keg = ~140 servings
We suggest you purchase bottled beer in 6packs usually liquor stores will return unopened 6packs (as well as bottles of wine and liquor) as long as their labels are not wet.

Cash Bars: Really? If I invited you to my home and charged you $5 for your wine you’d never speak to me again. How badly do you need alcohol that you are not willing to pay for it? We have planned many classy non-alcoholic events. If you are very concerned about several of your guests (the marines, the Irish, your aunt slosh) consider limiting what’s available.

A note about tip jars: If you are paying for the alcohol you should also include gratuity and it is therefore not appropriate for the bartender to display a tip jar. It’s insulting to you. Confirm this beforehand with your licensed bartender.

Click here for a convenient online calc supply list.

(latter picture courtesy of Verge Photography)

"It's next to the viaduct across from the U-Haul Storage"

“Why don’t we have the wedding at The Steak Pit?”
“I don’t think you want the word pit on a wedding invitation” - Father of the Bride 1991

Even Annie’s little brother knew about wedding etiquette. There are many styles of weddings, but some things never look quite right.

You as a bride and your guests have certain visions about your upcoming wedding. These are perpetuated by all of the clues that lead up to your gala. People make all sorts of judgments based on these clues:

• What they will wear: words on your invitation that lead to images of dust, picnic tables, a barn, a park all lead to jeans and casual shoes. If you plan to dress your site up your stationary had better look money.
• What gift they will give you: think twice about those funky hot pink invites if you don’t want hot pink dishes. (You think we’re kidding!)
• That you’re cheap: were those self-printed smudged Michaels invites really worth the message they sent “I’m cutting every corner but if you could ship me a rather expensive bone china place setting it would be great”
• You got a deal on a site in the ‘revitalization’ part of town: drive several routes to your site- don’t just give guests the map-quest results. Being scared of where you’re sending them and what they’ve agreed to attend makes them more apprehensive about everything else throughout the evening.

Think about your event from your guest’s point of view. There are places you can save money and places where you’ve gone too far.

Some Red Flags to Watch For:

• Directions include: turn right at the U-Haul facility, just past the shooting range, next to the Pizza Hut
• Guests wonder if you were on a budget because the outside of your venue looks like a motel 8
• The elevator is so old and creaky that guests are almost wetting themselves in terror, at least that’s what it smells like.
• Your invitation contains the words “continue past the main entrance around to the back…”
• Security will be provided after dark to walk guests to their cars
• A disclaimer “not responsible for valuables left inside your car”
• Guests have to keep running out to feed the meter.
• Wedding scheduled not to conflict with the working hours of the Purina factory because of the smell.
• You book the Butterfly Pavilion and your guests never see a butterfly because you only rented the conference room.
• Three letters: V F W

Create an experience for your guests.
Your initial piece of stationary … your wedding website … how they respond … their car ride vistas to the ceremony … what they are expected to do with their time until the reception (FEED THEM!) … avoid the feeling of “now what?” at your reception … and finally how they feel when they leave - send them with a gift to a well lit safe parking lot or even better an option for a ‘Heavenly-Bed’ hotel room and Starbucks after a good night sleep.
“We’ll leave the light on for you"

The Cost of a Guest

How much does it cost to invite a guest to your wedding? If you haven’t thought about it, now is a good time to do so. Here are some categories to think about and a ballpark figure to do some preliminary calculations.

• Caterer $45


• Alcohol $25


• Cake $7


• Stationary $5


• Rentals $16 (Chair $8, Table $1, Linens $2, Place Setting $5)


• Centerpiece $8 (Flowers, Candles, etc.)


• Favors $4


• Shuttle Service $2


• Staff $6

All totaled up that’s almost $120 per wedding guest! Which means that the cost for inviting your cousin, his wife and their two kids to your wedding is fast approaching $500 – and the kids probably won’t even eat the food, let alone like it!

Parents who are footing the bill for a wedding are notorious for adding long lost relatives to the guest list and then grumbling that the budget has ‘mysteriously’ increased since the last time they were consulted. In reality, there’s nothing mysterious about it at all: E=MC squared and MG=M$ (More Guests = More Money).
Perhaps you should think of your guest list as an investment, sure invite the rich uncle who doesn’t know what to do with his money, but you might want to think twice before you invite that broke cousin who gave your sister the pastel green candy dish… or was that a single martini glass? I guess the ambiguity is part of the charm.