Woohoo! Finally!  Benn and I finally got the invitations out!  It took TWO WEEKS to get them done.  Holy cow.  If I were to do it over, I would definitely spend the money to have them designed and printed.  Let me tell you why.

First, while we only spent $80 on the invitations, not including stamps, they weren’t as fancy as we wanted them.  We decided to go with do-it-yourself invitations because we were running out of time and we didn’t really have the money to do the fancy invitations.

Second, they were not easy to print.  I was using my awesome printer I had gotten as a high school graduation gift.  Unfortunately, while I was printing the envelopes, the text would move over varying degrees, sometimes completely getting cut off of the envelope.  I would print an envelope and it would mess up, so I’d print it on a regular sheet of paper and it would print fine!  The only thing I could think of is the rollers must not have been grabbing the envelopes correctly.

I ended up hand writing a lot of the envelopes because it was so frustrating wasting printer ink.  To print the invitations, I had to sit by the printer and push the “continue” button before each sheet could print.  I don’t know why.

Oh yeah, and then!  I included some maps in the invitations that had regular RSVPs (for those who may not be computer savvy) and I forgot a word in the description of the parking options.  Fail.  I didn’t want to waste more ink to make the correction. lol  oops!

Though this was a stressful process, I’m happy with how they turned out!  I just wish I could have printed each envelope!

I’m excited that we have the electronic RSVP system!  Benn set it up, and I think it’s very easy to use.  If you’re having trouble with it though, give Benn a call 269-779-6815 or email him, bennthewolfe@gmail.com.

Thanks for reading, and we can’t wait to see you at the wedding!

Mindy

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The Fountains got a makeover!  They have a new logo, sign, and where the maroon canopy used to be, there’s now a very classy black canopy type thing, and man does it look sharp!  I love it!

Benn and I went to The Fountains on Saturday for our food tasting.  We’ve been looking over our menu options but didn’t feel completely comfortable with our choices without tasting some of the food first.  Some venues will offer the bride and groom-to-be a taste test of some of their menu options twice a year, but The Fountains doesn’t.

I asked Jennifer if we would be able to taste the food at all, and she said we could!  There were two weddings coming up and she e-mailed us what they were having on their menu and we got to choose which menu to taste!

The reception started at 5:00pm and we were asked to be there at 6:45pm.   We walked into the office area and she had her desk all set up like a table for two!  It was so cute!  She came up to say hi and brought us the Hors D’Oeuvres…little did we know, we were going to be stuffed.

We had the asparagus wraps, which are asparagus and provolone cheese with a garlic parmesan spread wrapped in prosciutto.  YUM!  That was delicious!  They also had stuffed mushrooms, which looked amazing, but they were a little too breakfast-like for us.  We also tried the bruschetta, which is tomato, basil, garlic, red onion, balsamic vinegar and olive oil on a croustini.  Also delish!

For the main course, we had the Steamship Round of Beef and Chicken Marsala.  The beef was so good!  The chicken was cooked perfectly, but the sauce was a little too heavy for our tastes.  We’ll definitely be having the beef!  So good!

For the sides, we had green beans almondine and roasted potatoes.  I’m not a huge fan of green beans almondine, but these were very good!  The roasted potatoes were also delicious.

We also got to try the Caesar Salad and their homemade rolls!

We were so happy we were able to taste some of their food!  I’m so glad we’re having our reception at The Fountains!  Jennifer is always willing to help us with whatever we need, and she’s so sweet!

In other news, Benn returned the necklace to Kay.  Unfortunately, Debbie wasn’t there.  I was hoping she would be because I’m sure she would have had something hilarious to say about Benn’s impulse purchase!

I also want to congratulate Arin for scoring a goal in soccer yesterday!  I know she’s been working very hard, and I’m so proud of her!  Congratulations, Arin!  We love you!

Mindy

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This weekend Benn and I picked out our wedding rings!  We went to Kay and waited for Debbie to help us.  (She helped us pick out my engagement ring.)  Benn had his ring picked out from the last time we were in there which had a crosshatched pattern, but he tried on a few rings that were new, and he ended up choosing a different one!

I didn’t like it at first, but it’s grown on me!  The edge of the band is so cool!  It’s not perfectly round; there are really short lines that are connected to make the edges.  The rest of the band kind of has a reflector quality.  It’s very handsome, like my husband to be!

I also chose a different ring.  The last time we were in there I thought I was going to get the same band as my engagement ring, but I’m actually going to get a band with smaller diamonds.  I wanted two bands, one on each side, but we’re just going to try one so we can save money.  We might end up getting two, but who knows.

Benn is usually very careful with our money, but he had a small…moment…while we were at Kay’s.  There was a necklace on clearance in the case, and he said “You need that!”  It was $1,000 but it was on clearance for $750…and we bought it.

Benn and I were watching T.V. later that night and he turned to me and said, “I think I made a bad choice.”  “About that necklace?” I asked.  “Yup.  We can’t afford that!  I think I’ll need to sleep on it.”  So he slept on it and we decided we’re taking it back.  I guess there is such a thing as too many diamonds!  Don’t get me wrong, it’s a beautiful necklace, but I wasn’t in love with it.  He kept saying that he just wanted me to have the best.  Aw!

We also went to Libins, it’s a tux shop in Kalamazoo.  We checked out a few tuxes.  Benn really liked a pinstriped tux.  It was actually a raised pinstripe…I don’t know if it’s called something else, but it was pretty cool.  The guy who was helping us had Benn try on a white jacket, cane, and fedora! It was awesome!

One year for prom Benn wanted to wear a white suit and mom said that that was something he should wear for his wedding, and ever since he’s been saying that he’ll wear a white tux lol.  He decided to go with black though.  Phew!

I hope you all had a Happy Easter!

Mindy

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As we (almost entirely Mindy) get more and more things finalized for the wedding, I just wanted to take a moment and thank our families for their incredible support. I know that I can speak for Mindy and myself when I say that the support and generous financial assistance that we have received from our parents so far throughout this process has been absolutely unbelievable.

I would specifically like to thank Dave and Julie for their generosity with their time and their money. We have needed to run around and do this and that – tasting cakes, shopping for venues, getting dresses, et cetera, et cetera – and they have helped us every step of the way and we just could not be more appreciative. And more generally, for everyone who is helping us through this process, our parents, our grandparents, our uncles and aunts, I just want to say that we could not have this beautiful wedding that we are going to enjoy in June without you guys.

What I’m trying to say is that you are all angels to us.

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That’s the question! We’d love to hear about places you’ve been that you enjoyed or thought were romantic. Benn and I don’t know where to go for our honeymoon, so maybe you can help us out! We’d like to stay in the states, but we’d love to hear about your favorite places in the world!

Benn and I went to Kohls and Target today to finish our registries! We were out for 6 hours. It took a lot longer than I thought. It was fun though! My favorite part of the day was when Benn picked out a mat for the kitchen that has a chicken on it! lol It cracked me up!

Side story: I’ve been wanting to find a dress to wear for the rehearsal, and I found one at Wetseal, which is one of my favorite stores, and I got it in the mail, tried it on, and it was very poorly made and didn’t fit right.  While we were out today, we went to Burlington Coat Factory and I found two dresses!  Benn spoiled me with both!  I’m going to wear one for the rehearsal and one for the Sunday following the wedding for the lunch with our families while we open our wedding gifts!

I also figured out where we’re getting our white wooden padded chairs from for the ceremony. We’ll be using Bell Distributing . They’re local and only charge a $40 fee for delivery.  Their chairs cost $2.25, and I couldn’t find a chair for less than that.  I feel pretty good about that decision.  That’s one of the last big tasks we had to get done.

Since we have the chairs figured out and the time of the ceremony decided, we can print the invitations and send them out!  Whew!  I was hoping to get them out by the end of this month, but I know we’ll be able to start printing them this week and hopefully get them out by the end of this week or early next week.

It’s getting so close!  We’re under the three month mark!

Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a Happy Easter!

Mindy

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I realized after I wrote the post yesterday that I didn’t talk about going to the Boonzaaijer Bakery! Benn and I went to a cake tasting at Boonzaaijer’s a few weeks ago. It was the last cake place we were interested in trying out…simply because we just wanted to get this step over with. We decided if we didn’t like their cake we’d go with Confection because we really liked their cake.

We tasted a few flavors: vanilla, chocolate, vanilla raspberry, and strawberry, and looked through their pictures. They didn’t have very many modern designs, but we saw a picture of a round cake with four or five tiers and the design looked like a Christmas tree. The tree was made up of paisleys, swirls, and many other designs. We liked the swirls and a few other designs, so we asked if the baker could make us a test cake with our colors and on wavy frosting.

We want a square cake, and we thought the designs could be on the corners of the cake and spiral up to a point. Kind of hard to explain. We got a six inch cake with the designs in different colors and on the wavy frosting. We really liked the frosting, but the designs didn’t look very clean.

I’m glad we got a test cake though! As I said in the last post, I think we’re gonna do the wavy frosting, and probably cascading flowers. We’ll see!

Any ideas?

Mindy

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How do you like the new blog?! Benn got it up a few days ago, and I think it looks very nice!

Well, Friday was a pretty productive day. I came home to go with mom to get my dress fitted. Turns out it didn’t fit and she has to let it out a little bit. We went to see Loretta. She has a really small shop in Portage…I can’t remember what her business is called at the moment.

Saturday we went to Boonzaajier’s to pick up our test cake. Unfortunately the cake didn’t turn out like we thought it would. The frosting looked very cool, but the decoration didn’t look great. The frosting is textured…very cool! We talked about putting ribbon around the bottom of each cake layer and laying flowers on the cake in a cascade.

Speaking of flowers, Benn and I went to see our florist a few weeks ago. She’s great! We went through all of the bouquets, boutonnieres, corsages, and center pieces and decided the flowers and the colors. It was pretty fun! I only had an idea about what I wanted for my bouquet, but everything else I was kind of clueless, and Benn didn’t really have a preference. I was hoping to stay between $500 and $800, but we went just over $800, so I wasn’t too disappointed. We’ll be using orange tiger lilies for a few things, which are really pretty. I was looking around the internet for a picture of flowers for my avatar for comments on blog and I found a picture of these really pretty tiger lilies that are white with orange and yellow in the middle. I’m thinking about trading them with the tiger lilies in my bouquet and the centerpieces.

We also went through the menu and chose a few things we’d like to taste. Unfortunately The Fountains doesn’t offer a taste test, so we’re going to have to ask them to have one for us.

Benn has been working non-stop on the RSVP page. He was up all night last night coding it and he got it up! It looks very simple, but it takes time when you don’t really know what you’re doing. He’s done such a great job with the blog!

We made a list of things we still need to do. It’s not too bad. A few major things are left, like deciding where to get our chairs for the ceremony, whether or not we’re getting chair covers for the reception, the ceremony music, and the rehearsal dinner. We still have quite a few smaller tasks, but I think everything is coming together quite nicely!

Thanks for reading,
Mindy

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Well, if you haven’t noticed, the blog totally crashed for a while…and the design was lost.  Benn has been working non-stop on the new blog design.  I can’t wait for him to finish it up, I think it looks much better than the previous one, as much as I loved it.  What happened was he tried to update the blog and sometimes if you don’t do all of the recommended updates in order when it tells you to update…it fails.  That’s probably my bad.  But, the good thing is the new one is almost done!  We will be doing our RSVPs online, so he’s gotta get that working too.  Just wanted to let you know that I haven’t given up on the blog, we’re just working on the new one and it will be up ASAP!!

Hope you’re all doing well!

Mindy

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So Benn and I met with Giti from Confection on Tuesday to talk about our cake and taste their flavors!  We chose four flavors; vanilla, chocolate mint, peach bellini, and honey maple carrot.  We didn’t get to try the peach bellini because the peaches aren’t very good right now.  In place of the peach, she brought us honey lavender cake to try.  They were all very good!  The cake was of a thicker consistency, but it was still moist.  The chocolate cake was also thick and moist!  I think Benn and I would disagree as to the order of our favorite flavors, but in general, we liked the vanilla, chocolate mint, and carrot cake.  The honey lavender was really sweet.  The cake had lavender in it and it definitely had a flowery taste.

We talked about the kind of cake we want…which was hard because we hadn’t really decided what we liked.  I showed pictures of the cakes I had looked at and liked, but we had to narrow it down to our top three together.  We decided we liked ribbon on the bottom of each layer with a cascade of flowers.  Giti priced it out for us, and including delivery and set up, it would be $700.

We want to taste cake at Boonzaaijer’s because their prices might be a little better.

Overall, we were very happy with Confection, and Giti was very friendly, and I think she could bake us a delicious wedding cake!

About the bridesmaid dresses and my dress…instead of driving out to Quincy a few more times, I just picked up the dresses and we’re going to have them altered in Kalamazoo along with my dress.

Thanks for reading!

Mindy

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Well, it’s Wednesday and Benn and I got back to Grand Rapids yesterday after spending the weekend in Mattawan, and we’ll be back there Monday again! I’ll explain, don’t worry. But first, yesterday Benn, Mom, Dave and I went to The Fountains to check it out again and get some questions answered.  When I walked in I noticed that they used to have three windows on one wall that are no longer there.  Jennifer, from The Fountains, said people kept saying that they would have liked it darker in the building, so they decided to take out the windows and just put up a wall where they used to be.  I’m happy about that because we’re thinking about putting some Eiffel Tower vases in front of the windows, and I was worried about spacing, since the ledge continued on a wall with no windows.  Anyway, I’m not worried about that anymore.  Jennifer gave us a lot of ideas about what to do with those Eiffel Tower vases.  Benn really liked one of her ideas, which was spray painted sticks in vases with lights.  That could look very cool!  I brought a centerpiece vase and candles we’d been experimenting with to see what it looked like with a mirror.  I don’t think the small candles will be able to sit on the mirror; it looks too claustrophobic.  It was definitely nice to go in again to get a better idea of things.  We were able to get more information as to what would happen if it rains.  If it does rain, I know it will still be beautiful!

So, next Monday, Katie, Mom and I are going back to Quincy to Patty’s Bridal so that Katie can get fitted for her dress.  Patty’s allowing me to bring in my wedding dress to see if they can alter it to fit me.  I’m hoping they can!  They mentioned that not all dresses can be altered…so I’m kind of nervous.  I’m pretty sure we’ll be spending more on the alterations than the dress itself!  I spent $207 on the dress!  I don’t remember if I mentioned this before, but I found the dress at Bridal Creations, which used to be in Kalamazoo, but then it moved down the road to Paw Paw.  I bought every prom and formal dress from that shop (except for one) and I of course went to the dances with Benn, so it felt right going there for my wedding dress!  Unfortunately for the shop, but fortunately for me, they were going out of business and had a 75% off everything sale.  The dress was the second one I put on and it was my favorite!  The other dresses were pretty, but I definitely fell in love with this one and it was cheap!  So, hopefully they’ll be able to alter it!

Then Tuesday, we have a cake tasting scheduled with Giti from My Confection.  I have a Kalamazoo Bride magazine and one of their cakes is featured on the front of the magazine! (The first cake is the cake featured on the cover of the issue I have.)  They were originally based in Richland, but they’re moving to Kalamazoo!  Benn and I have to pick four flavors we want to taste, and man do their flavors look delicious! (Just scroll down if you click on the link.)  I’m so excited!

I’ll let you know how all of that goes!

Oh, I went to the chiropractor today and Dr. Gillis went over the last scan of my back, and my back looks soooo much straighter!  I’m really happy with the results.  We’re at the maintenance stage, so now I’m only going in once every two weeks, but I can go in of course if it gets screwed up.  Last Friday it was so bad I could hardly open a door.  Benn and I were helping my friend move, and it was fine in the morning, but by about 2pm I could hardly move my neck.  Even if I wanted to get my neck fixed, I couldn’t have because the office is only open until noon.  Once Benn and I got back home to the apartment I just laid down and cried.  Not fun.  I used a heating pad the rest of the night once we got to Mattawan.  It helped quite a bit, but I could’ve used an adjustment and a massage and a hot tub…and about a half hour on a roller.  I’m feeling much better after my adjustment today.  He recommended ice…it’s still pretty tight today, but it’s way better than Friday.

Hopefully today Benn and I can work on Save-the-Dates today!

Thanks for reading!

Mindy

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