Our engagement pictures are up on Studio D2D’s website! If you would like to see them or order any please feel free! They will be up until November. Click here to get to the page. You’ll have to find our names either by clicking the “choose your event” or scrolling down the page and looking for our names and pictures. Our password is wolfe2010. If you have any questions let me know!
Mindy
What a day! This weekend was the first weekend all summer that we didn’t need to drive into Kalamazoo, so we took advantage and scheduled our engagement pictures for the 15th. What a beautiful day it turned out to be! Nothing could go wrong…or so we thought.
Benn got his hair cut on Wednesday at a salon down the road from work which was suggested to us by Ellen, our coworker. It looks much better! It’s still pretty long, but now there are layers in it. One of the hair stylists had her hair half up and curly and I thought it was so cute! As we were leaving I scheduled an appointment to get my hair done like that for our pictures. Our pictures were scheduled for 7pm at Grand Haven, and my appointment was over around 1, so we stopped at Burlington Coat Factory to pick up some swimming trunks for Benn and to see if there were any nice blouses for me for our pictures. Benn found two trunks and I found a top. I didn’t wear it for the pictures though because it wasn’t a solid print. We decided to go to Panera for lunch. We still had about 4 hours before our pictures. We both got the you-pick-two with the delicious turkey bacon bravo sandwich, Benn got the clam chowder in a bread bowl and I got the broccoli and cheese in a bread bowl. Benn mentioned that his soup was sandy, but kept eating. Then he pulled out this white chunk that looked like a piece of a shell. He finished the soup though, and started on the bread bowl. He pulled another white chunk out of his mouth which also looked like a shell. “What is in this soup?!” he said. I just looked at him. “I know what that is…” he said, and he smiled. His front tooth was half gone! Luckily it was just his cap. He ran into a fence years ago playing softball and broke his tooth. So we’re sitting there, my hair’s done and his front tooth is half gone! Now what?! I immediately called Rich, our photographer, to see if we should cancel or if they could photoshop his tooth back in. He didn’t answer and his voicemail wasn’t set up. He was supposed to call me the day of to make sure we were still meeting. We were afraid he had forgotten! I kept calling and calling. We didn’t want him to drive all the way out there for nothing! Finally around 5-5:30 Rich called and said it wouldn’t be a problem to photoshop it in, so we decided to have our pictures taken anyway.
It was a lot of fun! We stopped at a barn on the way, and had a nice sunset for a while. The clouds came in pretty quickly though so could only get a few pictures with it. Grand Haven was so busy! We couldn’t get any pictures by the lighthouse because there were so many people. I thought it worked out really well! We were able to get some pictures in the dunes and the sand. It was a fun experience. It was kind of weird being so cuddly in public with a ton of people staring at us. Benn was a good sport smiling with his broken tooth. What a sweetheart. We can’t wait to see the pictures! The good news is Benn was able to get his tooth fixed today!
We also had another cake tasting today. This was with a lady who makes cakes out of her home. Her name is Pam, and her company is called 4 Gooodness Cake. She actually lives just down the road, which was convenient! She has the cheapest cakes I’ve been able to find. Her cakes are very simple but still elegant…and delicious! Benn and I are still going to look in the Kalamazoo area for cakes because we figure we might be able to use the money we would need for this cake to make our cake a bit more extravagant. We’ll see though. I’m glad I’ve had a lot of free time lately because I’ve spent a lot of time looking for wedding stuff. It gets tiring after awhile!
That’s all for now! Thanks for reading!
Mindy
Joshe, I hope you got a kick out of the title 
Tonight, Benn and I tasted the BEST cake in the whole world! We went to a cake tasting, just the two of us, in Grand Rapids. The company is MiraBella Confections. We met with Ken, and he asked us what kind of cake we’re thinking about, our colors, and how many people we’re planning on having. We chose a cake from the website to give him an idea of the kind of cake we liked….this cake. It’s a bit more fancy than we were thinking, but we liked the shape of it. Since we will be having between 200-250 guests, we would need 6 tiers. He priced out how much 6 tiers would cost…are you ready? $1150! Keep in mind, our budget allows $400 for a cake. Then you ad the actual design and carving (and other things) and it brings the cake up to $1650! I was expecting their prices to be a bit on the high side, but I was NOT expecting that!
He then brings out a dinner plate of about 6 different cakes and fillings. Each piece had a cake and a filling, which included 2-3 different ingredients such as carmel and toasted coconut, or raspberry and cheesecake. Each piece was amazing and would be worth every penny. If we could afford a cake like that I wouldn’t think twice about it! I jokingly asked Benn if we could have our guests pay $3.50 for their piece of cake so we could have an amazing cake. I don’t think that would go over well. I still can’t believe how delicious each of those cakes were! I would highly, highly recommend them to anyone looking for a unique, delicious cake they’re willing to spend a bit more on. Ken did say we could have a very simple cake with just chocolate or vanilla cake (which is amazing) for $700-$800 which is about double what we want to spend.
We have looked into a few bakeries in Kalamazoo like Boonzaaijer Bakery and MacKenzies’ Bakery and they’re around $400. Mom got me a small Boonzaaijer cake for me for my birthday, and it was pretty good. A cake like that would be great for the wedding…not too sweet, not too boring. Their prices are better than MacKenzies’ Bakery, too. So if we amazingly make enough cuts in our budget we might be able to have our cake made by MiraBella.
I’ve been trying to make cuts all weekend. A lot of brides use theknot.com, but my favorite is weddingchannel.com…I think they’re the same company…maybe not…but I prefer weddingchannel. Anyway, I use their budget tool which has been very helpful. We set our budget and it recommends how much we spend on each item. We have a category where we can say how much we think we’ll spend on each category so we can compare it to what the computer recommends. Our budget is at $10,000 but when it ads up the expected amount category it’s $15,555. As I said I’m trying to cut that category down to $10,000. I was able to cut it down to $14,130! Not a whole lot, but a little is better than none! Thinking about the money is the most stressful part. I think it will work out in the end, I just want to do my part. All of the planning has been really fun, and I try to be as price conscious as possible. Work has been super slow for me because Kirk has pretty much eliminated my job which is working with stencils. So, I haven’t been able to put in my weekly amount for about 2 weeks. I did put a lot of birthday money in the account though, which has helped a lot! I’m also spending a lot of time at home looking for internships. I think I need to find a new job, but I think it will be difficult to find one that is as flexible as the one I have now. Anyway, I just wish I could contribute more. Any (well, most) money I make after I graduate will go in the wedding fund, so hopefully I’ll get a sweet j.o.b! Thanks for reading!
Mindy
Benn and I FINALLY got our engagement session scheduled!! I spoke with our photographer, Rich, yesterday and we will be doing evening/sunset pictures at Grand Haven on the beach! He also has a surprise spot for us that he loves to take pictures at. We have to wear solids…yikes! I think the hard part will be figuring out what to wear. I’m looking forward to getting these done because I want to send out save the dates before class starts again.
I’m also planning on ordering the bridesmaid dresses as soon as I can. I’m just waiting for Sierra’s measurements and then we’ll be good to go! I saw Devan yesterday and she’s so excited to get her dress!
I also just set up a meeting with a cake company in Grand Rapids for Sunday at 9pm! I’ll let you know how that goes!
Mindy
