And Then There Were Two...

Last Saturday Eric and I were scheduled to meet with the manager at the Grapevine Men's Warehouse, then meet with two different bakeries that came highly recommended by my mom's co-worker, Michelle, at The Piazza. Well, it turns out that Eric didn't feel well on Friday morning, and then felt even worse on Saturday. We ended up having to cancel our Engagement Pictures scheduled for Sunday! He couldn't stop coughing and had developed a full-blown cold. So, we cancelled the Saturday morning meeting with Men's Warehouse, but my mom went with me to the bakeries to taste test more cakes. We went to The Cakery in Southlake first and then to Sweet Expressions by Selina. We were very impressed with both bakeries and we will definitely be choosing one of the two. The Cakery gave us the best price quote, but Sweet Expressions is owned by a very talented European woman who only takes on ONE cake design per week. Therefore she has the time and ability to spend as much time as needed to make the cakes perfect. Also, she is extremely detail oriented and her own worst critic, so I think she would do an incredible job simply for her own satisfaction in addition to wanting to please Eric and I. Both bakeries are fabulous and I will be thrilled to work with either one... so I will keep you posted with the final decision!

Sugar, Spice... and not very Nice!

I realize it's been exactly a week since I was jumping for joy about going to taste test cakes and meet with the photographer, but a LOT has been going on which has caused a delay in posting my findings.

First of all, I don't know if I have ever specified which photographer we're using, but we have chosen JosephMark Photography. As far as I'm concerned, this husband and wife team is the best. I am completely obsessed with their documentary style photography and I have yet to find a photographer who is able to capture so much emotion and life in their photos. And trust me, I have looked at a zillion websites. I also love the use of color, contrast and light with JosephMark. I could go on and on about why this photography team is my favorite... but I'll spare you for now.
We met with Joseph at their super awesome photography studio, which is located in the old Sears and Roebucks building in Dallas. It's incredibly artsy and perfect for a studio. He showed my mom and I a slide show of some of his favorite pictures projected onto a giant screen (seriously, this thing had to be at least 72 inches wide), and then we looked at the package and album options. All of their albums are leather bound with one of two photo layout options: they can mount the photos and create a framed and matted look, or they can design a page layout for every single page with a custom designed arrangement of photos. The second option allows for about 80 photos to be included in a 50 page album, and it looks incredible, not to mention it's totally custom, so naturally this is the design my mom and I prefer.

All and all, I would say it was a very fun and successful meeting. Eric and I will be taking the first round of many photos, our engagements, on Sunday, August 23... I can't wait!!

AFTER the photography studio, we headed 15 minutes across downtown Dallas to Romano's Bakery. The guy who greeted us when we walked in (if you call it a greeting) was less than hospitable and without saying more than a couple words, immediately handed me a clip board with paperwork to fill out. After several minutes, he came and sat with us at a round table and began quizzing me about my wedding details and started telling me how many layers I needed on my cake... not even stopping to find out that my mom works in the wedding industry and she was already fully aware of what we needed and wanted. We told him my wedding would have around 250 guests, so he started adding a ton of layers to my cake until my mom stopped him and explained that it's only common sense to plan for most but not all of your guests to eat cake. Plus, we would have a large groom's cake also, and we didn't want to end up with enough cake to feed a small army! He was clearly just trying to tack on dollars to our order. He was pushy and curt, never spending enough time explaining anything or making the experience fun for us. My mom then asked him, based on the experience of a Bride who had her wedding at The Piazza only one month prior, what Romano's would do if they got into a car accident on the way to the wedding and the cake was ruined. His response was simply, "Well that's never happened." My mom explained that the bakery delivering the cake for the Piazza's Bride had not experienced that before either, but she wanted to know if they had a game plan-- just in case. He then replied, rather snarky, "We would just get it fixed." Our thoughts: Right. You're going to 'get it fixed' when you are an hour away from your bakery and the cake is in shambles. Whatever. My mom just starred displeasingly at his lack of effort to find something even remotely reassuring to say. Once I was fully annoyed, I told him that we had not officially decided on a bakery for my cake design, and the reason for our visit was to view the cake design in person and meet the staff at Romano's to see if we would even want to work with them. At that point he became slightly nicer and more animated... barely... but at least there was some attempt being made. We taste tested 16 flavors of cakes, which I will say were delicious. My mom and I agreed that we liked the Amaretto Liqueur best in white flavors, and the Caramel Turtle best in chocolate flavors. The guy then asked us about our design for a groom's cake, and I explained that we had found an amazing cake at Creme-de la-Creme in Fort Worth which was a to-scale cake model of the TCU football stadium. He quickly stated, "We've done it." I just rolled my eyes at this point thinking: Sure. You don't even know what it looks like. I pulled up a picture of the amazing cake on my iPhone to show him... he took one look at it and said, "Oh wow that's a lot of detail." As I think to myself: Oh but I thought "you've done it". He asked me to email a picture of the cake to the bakery for the head baker to look over before they could quote a price for the design. When the meeting finally came to an end, the guy stood up and stuck out his hand while saying, "I'm so-and-so, by the way." He had never even introduced himself. We shook his hand and politely thanked him.

In the car on the way back from the bakery we pretty much concluded that I would be taking a picture of the beautiful cake with the fondant bows to another bakery, preferably one in Fort Worth where people have manners, and have them recreate the design. This will eliminate the almost $200 delivery fee Romano's would have charged to deliver the cake to Fort Worth also.

I was definitely shocked by this meeting, but I can't say it was a huge failure. I did get to see the design of the cake I love in person... and it was even prettier than the picture! I just hope another bakery can create the same design! We will be visiting Creme-de la-Creme very soon to taste test their cakes and see if they can design the cake with the bows. This would be the best idea since they are also the ones who make the stadium cake that Eric wants for his groom's cake. Everything will work out just fine... and the great part about getting started early is that I have plenty of time to figure things out if I need a Plan B!