Please give a hearty hand to Ms. 122, the winner of The Beau-coup Wedding Favors mini contest! If you’re reading this, Ms. 122, someone from Beau-coup Wedding Favors should be contacting you shortly so you can snap up some of the plantable seed favors you like so much. Congrats!
As far as I’m concerned, Memorytube is a neat idea with a pisspoor name. I know tubes are in…we have YouTube and snarky references to the “Intertubes” (Thanks Senator Stevens!) and the extremely NSFW RedTube…but Memorytube?
The people behind the company want brides and grooms to ditch the guestbooks, photobooths, and videographers in favor of five foot tall kiosks that empower attendees to make multimedia memories that will later be stamped in a DVD for the newlywed couple. So what does it actually do?
Hiring out a Memorytube kiosk costs about £299 — oh, right, it’s currently only available to our friends in the UK.
Now I could see this being a big hit at a reception populated by tech-savvy guests, though if yours is a big wedding you may have to cope with watching your guests queuing up to see what all the fuss is about. I can’t say that I particularly love or hate the idea.
On one hand, it’s neat…sort of the upscale version of the brides and grooms who set up a laptop at the reception so guests can upload their photos before the last dance. On the other hand, people tend to be a touch more thoughtful when they’re leaving their mark in a proper book. I can just imagine the sorts of things all the kids at my wedding would have been saying into the poor kiosk’s cam!
What do you think? Is it a fantastic idea…or a gimmicky one?
I don’t know what it is about the Nintendo themed cakes that I love so much. I’m guessing it’s a nostalgia thing, seeing as that I spent most of elementary school with a NES controller in my hands. We’ve featured a Super Mario Bros. cake and a stacked console cake, and now my good friend Miller found a Super Mario Kart/Super Mario Galaxy cake!
According to the Flickr set, the entirety of this amazing confection is edible, from the chocolate decadence cake itself to the Piranha Plants and turtle shells. The couple who chose this as their dessert centerpiece both play video games, and they chose Let The Eat Cake in Costa Mesa, California to do the honors.
Having a friendly and easy to work with baker was… well the frosting on the cake. We felt we made the right choice in choosing Beth for our Mario cake when on the way out of the bakery we heard her ring tone, it was the Super Mario Bros. theme.
I love it, though I have to say that I’d be a little afraid of damaging it while dismantling it to cut and serve.
It’s nice to get a little help in what the radio keeps telling me are these tough times, especially when everything wedding related costs a pretty penny. Why, favors alone can eat up a good portion of your extras budget when you’re trying to ensure that your guests aren’t going to toss your gift in the nearest trash bin!
If you’d like a little help, you’ll be happy to know that Beau-coup Wedding Favors got in touch with me the other day because they want to give one lucky bride-to-be (or nuptial enthusiast) a $75 gift certificate toward favors. To enter to win, just leave a comment on this post telling us what kind of favor you’d like to receive at the next wedding you attend. Personally, I’d like a mini tin of loose tea.
At noon on Thursday, July 31 at 12 p.m. EST, I’ll use my trusty random number generator to choose a winner.
Second hand and sample gowns aren’t for everyone — there’s always the risk of loose beading or a spotty hem or worse, the ghost of a failed marriage — but they are a great way to cut costs, especially when you want to wear a designer gown but you can only afford to pay off-the-rack prices. Encore Bridal is one site that’s capitalizing on the fact that many brides-to-be want to wear an unforgettable gown even if their budget doesn’t allow for it.
The site sells gowns on consignment, as well as a limited selection of sample gowns that come from upscale boutiques making room for new inventory. The pros are that it’s easy to navigate and you can buy your gown right there online. The biggest con, as I see it, is that you can’t visually inspect your frock before making the purchase. The good news is that Encore accepts returns, as long as you get in touch within seven days.
How sweet are the deals? The limited-edition Monique Lhuillier gown above was marked down from $5,700 to $2,590 by the seller. Size two and strapless, this asymmetrical organza number has been embellished with a unique botanical pattern in black and steel gray. If you have that kind of scratch — and that kind of body — it’s still available!
What do you do when, for years, your plans to get married are thwarted by unaccommodating work schedules? If you’re George “Bubba” Mathis and Pamela Christian, you get married at work! The couple always dreamed of getting married on their July 4th anniversary, but it just never worked out. This year, Pamela got the day off at the last minute, but George was scheduled to work the morning shift.
Perhaps it was fate or maybe it was the lure of a post-wedding hash browns, but whatever the reason, the couple decided to tie the knot at Waffle House.
Before walking down the makeshift aisle that led from the back of the Waffle House out to the eatery’s parking lot, the happy bride-to-be chatted with a reporter from the Gwinnett Daily Post.
“Waffle House is as much a part of our lives as our kids are, and we’ve been working together at Waffle House for almost three years now. When he had to work, we just knew then that we were going to have it here.”
Congrats to Pamela and George, and kudos to them for making an unusual venue choice to avoid having to compromise on the date! Though, truth be told, I do have to wonder why their boss wouldn’t just give them the day off.
Let’s get self-referential here for a minute or two.
My esteemed colleague, Never teh Bride, has recently had her book, iDo: Planning Your Wedding With Nothing But ‘Net, published. She was kind enough to send along a copy to me. Of course we all know that free copies of new books to the media are meant to be review copies…okay, she seemed both surprised and amused when I broached the concept to her, but you don’t send a copy of your latest novel to the New York Times Book Review in hopes that they won’t write it up, and, well, I do write about weddings and wedding planning and wedding goodies for sale. It seemed only reasonable to me that our readers should get the skinny on this volume if not precisely from the horse’s mouth, then from the mule next door.
So what did I think? Click the link and find out. Yes, I’m a tease. What? This surprises you?
Have I told you guys lately that you rock? Because you do.
Last week I confronted you with this bizarre image:
and asked you to come up with snarky captions for it. You rose to the task and made me proud.
Of course, there can only be one winner, and this time it’s (bride) for this inspired bit of insanity:
The World Wet-T-Shirt Contest Finals would never be the same after sponsorship changed hands from Hanes to Hjelm.
Congratulations, (bride)! And thanks to everyone who played.
Oh, and keep dry on your wedding days.
The lovely Laura posed this query:
I’d like to do cupcakes for my wedding in September — I didn’t realize it was so trendy, I just wanted a variety of flavors and the convenience — and I’m appalled by how much people want to charge for them! I’m seriously considering breaking out the mixer and just making them myself. Of course, everybody thinks I’m nuts. But if cupcakes will last for a while in the freezer, it’s entirely possible I could make a couple of batches every weekend and then just have an icing party the night before. What do you think?
Creating your own wedding cupcakes is easy because they’re simple to bake (single serving sizes and no worrying about tiers), plus the frosting doesn’t have to look as polished as it typically does on a big wedding cake. In fact, the most charming cupcakes are usually those that look like they came out of a real kitchen, not some high-tech baker’s mecca.
Speaking of frosting, cupcakes freeze best when they’re frosting-free because frosting is the most perishable part of any confection. (Hint: You can freeze frosting, too — buttercreams and fudge freeze well, while custards and egg white frostings do not.) Cook’s Illustrated has this to say about the best way to preserve taste and texture in a frozen cupcake:
“In terms of taste, there was little to differentiate [between cupcakes stored in a plastic zipper-lock bag with most of the air removed, in plastic wrap, in foil, and in plastic wrap and foil]. For longer periods of storage, where the likelihood of freezer burn increases, we recommend double-wrapping cupcakes in plastic wrap and foil (in groups or individually) before placing them in the freezer.”
They note that when you do thaw them, unwrap them first to prevent the buildup of condensation that can turn a cupcake gummy and gross.
As to how long you can freeze your cupcakes, it depends on the kind of cake. Cakes with a butter base (like yellow cake) can be frozen up to six months, but I’d recommend keeping them frozen for no more than two months. Angel food cakes can be frozen for up to two months, but should probably be eaten before then. Natural essences will freeze better than artificial ones, and the flavor may grow stronger over time.
I should note that I have a lot of personal experience with this because when I bake, I BAKE. My freezer is currently full of frozen cakes and sweet breads that are wrapped in nothing more than a layer of foil, and I have never once had a cake suffer ill effects from being kept on ice for weeks or months.
But I will say this — fresher is usually better. Within the two month window, decide how much time you’ll need to make a great cupcake without stressing yourself out, and bake them as close to the wedding as possible to ensure great taste and texture.
