Bridal Shower in Batavia

On Sunday the 11th of February, my side of the family threw Laura a bridal shower at my Aunt Jane and Uncle Ken's home in Batavia. As the dutiful groom that I am, I also attended. It was great to see my grandmothers, aunts, and cousins all in one place. I realized I was out of my league when we played a game referencing the names of a variety of cakes. I believe my Aunt Rita and the Grandma duo split the honors for most correct answers.

We appreciated all of the presents that we received. It was exciting to start thinking of where all of these great things would go in our new home. The empty condo in my mind slowly began to fill up with each present we opened. I was much more excited about the iron we got, as Laura does not plan to do much of the ironing.

Unfortunately, my excitement did not show as well in the pictures we took that day. Although I was very sincere in my thanks in person, most of the pictures did not reflect my excitement with the pictures. I took a crash course in constant smiling for the next shower as Laura will probably note in the next post. A note for any groom who might stumble upon this post, Keep Smiling!

Anything related to food at the shower was great. The food that Jane cooked was delicious, the eclairs and other pastries from Naples Bakery were amazing as usual, and the box of recipes will bring us tasty meals for years to come. Yum!

*A note on the pastries - I took the extra sweets to my office the next day, as no one seemed to want the temptations at their house. They received rave reviews from everyone in the office that day, and I was surprised to hear how many of the women in the office who knew of Naples Bakery. I thought it was a well kept McCann family secret, and wouldn't you know it, the woman in the next cubicle had her wedding catered by Naples Bakery over 20 years ago.

The bride and groom are grateful to all of the women in Gavin's life who made the day so enjoyable!

Photos:
1.) The lovely Valentine's Day-themed details.
2.) Laughing at Colleen's joke and present-opening advice.
3.) Dessert from Naples Bakery. Mmmmm. Eclairs.

Bridezilla Army!

Hilarious picture I found while looking for a cartoon picture of a monster bride or wedding. Hopefully I haven't been one of these!

Luxe Tuxes

The tuxes are picked out, and the boys are turning in their measurements. This, coupled with 99% of the bridesmaids having picked up their dresses already, means we are not having a naked wedding. I believe the Catholic church forbids such celebrations anyhow, so this worked out well.

After bargain hunting and pitting a couple tux shops against each other, we went with the original tuxes we liked at After Hours. We somehow managed to get the tux we liked best AND get all the discounts we were gunning for – low price for the guys, half price for the ring bearers and Gavin and the Dads are free. Bargaining master, that Gavra.

During the process, we looked at the tux place next to House of Brides on Roosevelt – Back Tie. The stores are connected such that you can see from one into the other. While browsing the tie rack, the store of white dresses and all colors of bridesmaid attire caught my attention. The contrast was other-wordly.

The bridal shop was a frenzy of groups of women grabbing lots of lace, satin, etc off of racks, rushing them to dressing rooms, weighing in on every single thing they saw and cooing and emoting all over.

The tux shop’s four customers were looking stoicly at the few options on display, asking what their options were, color swatches please, ok let’s do this one for everybody.

What happened along the line to make bridal shops such a strange, over-the-top phenomenon, while tux shops stayed so simple? I’ve been saying all along that it would be fantastic if there were just one store with a finite number of choices on display for absolutely everything wedding related. The bride walks in and picks from each category, and poof!, wedding complete. Things would coordinate very well that way too. I’m sure couples could be creative enough to personalize a wedding in other ways… Quite the pipe dream, huh?

Decisions for this wedding have been like nothing I have ever experienced. Every decision is weighed in on by everyone who hears about it, although their opinion is usually not solicited. Even those decisions for which I knew what I wanted to do within days of us getting engaged have been questioned and dragged through the mud to the point that I’m not even sure what I had in mind originally! I was a strong decision maker before this process. Now I can’t even pick shoes without coming home and asking my Mom what she thinks, or Gavin if she's not around, or my poor Dad if all else fails as he looks at me like I've really lost it - asking him about shoes. Not normal! Perhaps I've become more democratic? Perhaps this is just a crazy process. It is what it is!


Picture: We don't know those dudes, but their tuxes are luxe.

Five Layers of Goodness

The cake was almost as easy a decision as Thomas, our photographer. Few things in life are simple lately, so we definitely enjoyed the Saturday morning when we met with Joy from Pastry Pantry.

When we walked into the office where they let her rent out a room to store her creations in Glen Ellyn, the smell of sugar was unreal. The room’s four walls were lined by cakes of all sizes, colors, frosting types and decorating persuasions. Very visual – perfect!

We viewed her book of past creations, showed her some pictures of our own, and settled on a customized buttercream design of our creation, combining the elements of our wedding day and the things we liked most about other cakes.

There are tiers, flowers, rosettes, pearls frosting and… oh yes, the innards.

The easiest part of the entire planning process thus far might have been picking our cake flavor. Joy had set out two plates of samples for us to try. The first one we tried was it. We sampled a couple others to make sure, but that was the one. We didn’t even try them all or finish our cake samples!

Picture: Generic cake. Not our cake.

The Invites, Cont.

Guests started to receive their invitations today!

We sent them hoping everything would arrive on Valentine's Day, but it seems some arrived early. So far, the only word used to describe them is "beautiful." Agreed! I cannot wait until the repsonse cards start to come back, for I do heart getting and sending mail.

To close the chapter on the invite saga, things worked out ok in the end. The stationer was completely awful to work with the rest of the time, refusing to fulfill very specific requests (an updated invoice - not hard), using phrases like "as I told you before" when I didn't hear back from her when the invites were due, etc. We weren't sure if we were going to have invites to send out, but she seems to have tried to prove to me that she was quite professional, and out-professional me.

Although she managed to be even more rude and uncomfortable after the incident resulting from the previous bad service, the irony is that we actually got much better service after the hiccup... or belch... in the process. Finally, everything was documented, I received very clear answers to my questions, and she always assumed the worst of our conversations, and so was actually prepared when I contacted her in any way.

I love the invites, but can't express how happy I am that I will never voluntarily have to work with that woman again.

On the upside, Jess did our awesome map that I'm loving. Despite the big deal made about the map coming from an outside designer, the stationer liked it so much she's tossing lots of side business to Jess. Hooray! Note that the map as shown here isn't quite right. The colors and illustrations got messy when saved as a jpg!