How Sweet It Is

Brandon and I received some really great gifts from our friends and family. The following are pictures of Brandon opening his first wedding gifts when he came home before the big day. I was not considerate enough to wait for him to open the gifts that were trickling in for us so I let him have a go.

I love Crate and Barrel's fancy packaging

As a thank you for our guests, the caterers provided a candy buffet. These beautiful pictures were taken by our photographer, Hannah Suh.

We also placed little red baggies on each person's place setting. My mom purchased these adorable pouches for ten cents each in China. The Chinese symbol represents happiness. Brandon patiently helped place little Chinese candies in each bag while I worked on some other wedding project.

Each bag contained a photoshare card, candy, a free ticket to the Nixon Library, and a little note that read: "If Brandon loves history and Min loves Brandon, then Min loves history, too. If you share this love, please come back and visit the Nixon Library's beautiful gardens and amazing exhibits for free with the enclosed ticket. P.S. We love you, too."

I hope our guests will take advantage of this when the weather is a little nicer.

DIY Failure and DIY Success Stories

I had marvelous plans for making sugar cookies decorated with royal icing as thank you gifts for attendees of my bridal shower.

In my mind, I had imagined them to look like the picture on the left, but, instead, they were a bit of a tasty disaster.

I spent about four hours making the cookies and was not at all pleased with my results.

Here are my reasons why I think I failed:

1. I do not own a rolling pin, so instead I used a can wrapped in saran wrap.
2. I do not own a sifter or a measuring scoop, resulting in my royal icing being a clumping mess.
3. I had never worked with actual tips and piping bags before.
4. There was no room in my fridge to cool my cookie dough so my cookies did not retain their form very well.

I will perfect you one day, Royal Icing. You just wait and see!

But at least my little tags came out adorable! Flower art found from here.
I couldn't let my guests go home without sweets, so I made brownie balls dipped in chocolate instead. I forgot to take a picture of them, but they look similar to the ones on the right, except I drizzled with pink icing so that they would match my tags.

Use this recipe if you want to make them yourself (makes 48):

Ingredients: 13x9 cooled brownie sheet, half a can of chocolate frosting, one bag of chocolate chips, icing (or caramel) for drizzling

Procedure: Crumble brownies into a large bowl. Eat the yummy crispy edges because they won't crumble finely enough. Mix in half a can of frosting. Roll mixture into 1-inch balls and place onto wax paper. Melt chocolate chips over a double broiler. Dip the brownie balls into the chocolate to coat completely. Place coated balls onto wax paper. Refrigerate until completely cool.

The following project when much more smoothly and was pain absolutely pain free. I am going to have water and snacks available for the bridesmaids(man) and groomsmen when they get to the Nixon Library the day of the wedding.

I made personalized water bottle labels by using this template and this bird image.

Materials: water bottles, paper, ruler, razor, tape roller

Cost: $2.50 for 12 bottles of water at Target

Procedure:
1. Design your labels using PowerPoint and print onto regular printer paper. You can print them on waterproof paper, but it is unnecessary unless you are going to chill them in ice.

2. Cut labels using razor and ruler to get straight lines.

3. Remove original label.

4. Put adhesive on one end of the label.

5. Wrap and secure onto bottle.

Brandon and I went on a candle shopping spree at Ikea the last time he was home. We left with a lot of goodies, including red candle holders that were on clearance for 29 cents compared to 99 cents a piece.

I put them all in a box and moved them from one corner of my room to another and cringed when I heard these red beauties clanking together. My solution for this involved digging in a trash can next to the pear station in the grocery store.

The same packaging used to prevent bruising on pears can be used to protect glass objects from breaking.

Cost: $0

Dumpster diving for your wedding? That's dedication there, yo!

Dollar Store Love

Edit: Final results here

Finding a stand to hold our cupcakes has proven more difficult than finding a man to marry.

The stand that our baker wanted us to rent for $25 was really awful. It was made out of cheap acrylic plastic that was wobbly and dirty. It seemed impossible to purchase one that was large enough and cost efficient.

I won't go into how many different options I was considering (because there were dozens), but this stackable stand from Bed, Bath & Beyond for $19.99 was the top choice. I would have to buy two of these stands and a single stand to hold our six inch cake in between.

Luckily for me, the closest B, B & B did not have the stand in stock. Instead of ordering one, I decided to make my own.

I made three separate glass stands by using six 10-inch plates from the Dollar Tree, two 8-inch plates from Target, and seven candlestick holders.

I put on my Martha cupcake liners to see what it would look like and how many cupcakes I could place on the stands. I haven't decided if I want to put the cupcakes that won't fit on the table or just in the back until the caterers can serve them.

The top layer on the middle stand will be used to hold our six inch cake.

Final cost of project: about $16

I glued the pieces with a hot glue gun, meaning that after the wedding I can detach them all for easy storage.

Thanks, Dollar Tree!

Change of Plans

According to costofweddings.com, "On average, couples that live in Hacienda Heights spend between $21,265 and $35,422 for their wedding." Crazy, right?

This is slightly embarrassing to admit, but Brandon and I set our budget before thoroughly looking at our finances. I do not recommend this to future brides as it will just cost you a lot of grief later on. Some unexpected costs also came up so we had to make some changes.

Remember my post about passed hor dourves and open bar during cocktail hour? Well, we had to scratch all of that, which saves us about $1,000. A cash bar is still going to be available for guests if they choose to drink and we are serving plenty of food during the reception. We will be placing bottles of wine/champagne along with sparkling apple cider on each table to drink with dinner.

After the ceremony, guests will be directed to the hallway to mingle, drop off any gifts and sign wish cards while we take family portraits and recompose ourselves.

Without any food or free drinks, I feared that our guests would get bored waiting for the reception to begin so I made a crossword puzzle to keep them busy.

It tooks hours due to formatting problems, but I am proud of my results. The clues included things like "A lovable Labrador with sensitive legs" and "The number of years the couple have been happily in love."

We also made cuts with our florist. Our original invoice for flowers was about $1800, but we trimmed it down to about $900 by only asking Flower Allie to do our centerpieces.

I am going to make all of the bouquets and my dream of having peonies will be possible if I use fake flowers. Weddingbee blogger Miss Labrador made her own by purchasing her flowers through Afloral.com.

With fake flowers, I will be able to make them far in advance instead of the morning of the wedding. Another advantage is being able to keep them forever.

A fake peony bouquet is $17.99 plus shipping. A real one is $90. Score!

I will post about my results when I order and put them together.

Another Completely Unnecessary Detail

Edit: View final results here

(I craft when I'm stressed.)

When I was researching wedding cupcakes I came across numerous adorable flag toppers. They were too cute and cheap to resist making on my own.

Step 1: Format your flags on the computer and print. I found that PowerPoint was the easiest program to use. Include cutting guidelines in a light gray color.

Step 2: Cut and fold

Step 3: Glue halves together. Use the toothpick to spread the glue around so that it's nice and smooth. This also makes sure that the flag sticks onto the toothpick.

Step 4: If desired, make snips on the ends.
And voila! You have little flags to decorate your cupcakes...as if cupcakes on their own aren't already cute enough.

I'm going to have the caterers stick them in the cupcakes when they're served to the guests.

Sweet Stickers

As I mentioned before, our candy bar is going to be provided by our caterer, meaning I will have very little control of it. I am, however, able to decide what kind of container our guests can take their sweets in. They will have clear cellophane bags available, but Brandon requested Chinese carry out boxes. They have more character, is a salute to my Chinese culture, and I can get them for super cheap ($0.08 per box) from Paper Mart.

Since I can never leave well enough alone, I spent the afternoon designing sticker labels to attach to the boxes. I ended up with nine different labels, and I can't decide which ones to choose, so help me pick!


Please leave a comment with the number of your favorite(s). The sixth option will include part of a peony stamp, as pictured below. Thanks!

Microsoft PowerPoint has become my new favorite document design program.

P.S. This is my 50th blog post. Thanks for sticking it through!

Let's Eat!

Brandon and I finalized the menu for our reception while I was in Georgia, and we can't wait to eat some more yummy food from Jason's Catering.

Our choice of five passed hor dourves during cocktail hour: homemade pot stickers, brushette de pompadora, shrimp scampi skewers, caribbean rumaki, mini pizzadillas.

My suggestion is to gobble up as much of the caribbean rumaki (plantains wrapped in bacon and baked in a brown sugar glaze) as you can b/c they are delicious.

I spent about 40 minutes coming up with a template for our menu cards which will be tucked inside each guest's napkin. Microsoft Word and I have become very good friends after making our invitations and it has become a lot easier for me to format things the way I want them.

Each menu is printed on plain white cardstock (75 sheets for $2 at Big Lots). They are 3.67" wide and 8" in length. In order to create three perfectly even menus on one sheet of legal sized paper, first adjust all margins to 0" and select three columns with a spacing of 0".

Play around with font sizes and formats. Before printing, look at the print preview carefully to make sure that nothing gets cut off. Always print on scratch paper on the "fast draft" option first until you are absolutely sure you have what you want. Click on "yes" when it asks you if you want to continue even though the margins are wrong.

I used Albermarle Swash and Georgia fonts, which is consistent with the rest of my printed projects. The little swirls were made using Nymphette font. Make sure you leave enough of a border and to center your paragraph alignment.

If you have trouble with cutting paper evenly like I do, you can also click the "line between" option and use those lines as a guide.

I used my temperamental Martha Stewart punch for the top of the menu and embossed a peony stamp at the bottom.

Sorry for the poor quality of pictures. I'm going to have to start using my sister's camera for these posts.

P.S. Is anyone else besides Alvin still following this thing? I plan on blogging at least once every week until December.

Oh Happy Day!

Why am I so ecstatic? Because after 30+ hours of cutting, folding, twisting, fluffing, and sticking, I am finally done with making my twelve tissue pomander balls. When I say 30 hours, I do mean 30 hours. Future brides, pick a red color scheme so that these babies can be used again after their 30 minutes of glory during the ceremony.

Final cost breakdown after a few adjustments: 2 packs of six 3" styrofoam balls ($5.99), wire ($1.75), ribbon ($0.69), 120 sheets of tissue paper (about $11)= a total of $19.43. Not shabby considering that a pack of five red lanterns on clearance at Target is $14.99.

I also made a sign for our candy buffet table that is going to be provided by our caterer. Since I have no idea what the candy buffet will look like or even what candies they are providing, I wanted to at least create a cute sign. I was inspired by this sign and customized it to fit our own weddding:

I will also be making more stickers similar to the ones that were sent out with our STD to customize the cellophane bags that guests will be able to fill with their sweet treats.

I wish my camera took better pictures because this stuff looks better in person.

Cupcakes Galore

Brandon and I tasted cupcakes from four different locations in order to find the tastiest treats to serve to our guests. It was a tough job, but someone had to do it.

Tasting #1: Dots Cupcakes

Pros: cute decorations, variety of flavors, customizable fondant flowers, adorable shop

Cons: no free tasting, stale cupcakes, a huge disappointment,
Cost: $2.75 per cupcake, $1.50 per mini cupcake

We tasted: Red Velvet, Vanilla Chocolate, Chocolate Lovers', Apple Pie

Tasting #2: Polkatots

Pros: friendly staff, incredibly delicious, free tasting, completely customizable, cuteness factor

Cons: high delivery/set up fee, could not give pricing info right away, pricey

Cost: $3.00 per cupcake, $1.75 per mini cupcake

We tasted: Dulce de Leche, Red Diva (red velvet), Cookies N' Creme, Little Penguin(chocolate w/vanilla frosting)

Tasting #3: Violet's Cakes

Pros: super yummy, immediately in love, free tasting, freshly baked, large, very affordable

Cons: none (except for the fact that they are on vacation during the holiday season)

Cost: $2.50 per cupcake

We tasted: Twix, Strawberry Shortcake, Red Velvet, Carrot Cake, Hi-Hat (marshmallow creme dipped in chocolate)

Tasting #4: Cakes Created With Love (206 S. Glendora Ave., West Covina, CA 91890)

Pros: free tasting, completely customizable, cheap!

Cons: cupcakes were not fresh
Cost: $1.75 per cupcake
We tasted: Red Velvet, Chocolate, Cookies N' Creme

We are most likely going to go with Cakes Created With Love because Donna's pricing is so terrific.

Brandon and I are so thankful that his mother and step-father are picking up the bill for our cake.