Planning in MKE

Well friends, my time in Milwaukee was super brief.  But I got so much done!  Pardon the lack of pictures...my travels did not go smoothly and I was rushed (one of my least favorite state-of-minds).  Here are the things I did and/or was supposed to do...

Visited my venue:  Right after arriving in Milwaukee, I checked into my hotel and walked a few blocks down the street to pick up a rental car.  Immediately after that, I met with Amanda at the 333.  Good news:  I absolutely love the venue!  It's unique and open and rustic-y beautiful.  More good news:  There was another room I loved more that freed up, the 325.  It's got wooden pilars and street-lamp-like light fixtures...when Kori told me about the space being available, my eyes lit up...I love the wooden pillars so much!  But seeing it in person made me realize it's just not a big enough room to do everything we want to do.  Our ceremony AND our cocktail hour AND our reception will all be in one room, and it's much better suited to the 333.

Discussed decorations with Amanda:  the absolute best part was getting to sit down with her and go over details!  And she knows a carpenter that may be able to make a torii gate for me...I will do a separate post about decorations soon!

Met my florist:  Bobby is amazing, and lovely, and warm.  And his house is gorgeous.  And he was really excited about my ideas!  I think our centerpieces are going to be different than what I originally envisioned, but I'm still stoked to see them.

Went to two catering tastings:  Catering was something I was really struggling with.  Have you ever tried to pick out a menu without tasting stuff?  It's impossible.  For me anyways.  So Amanda set up two appointments for me.  Our first one was at Chef Jack's.  I was drawn to them because they mention trying to use local ingredients and staying as green as possible.  They had a good selection of food (and lots of it), but I felt like it was fairly ordinary fare.  The second tasting was at Gracious Events.  Amanda said from the very beginning that she thought I would like this place, and she was far from wrong.  I absolutely loved it...it was well thought out food that was literally mouth-watering.  It started off with a lemon-ginger spritzer and some beautiful appetizers.  It got even better with each dinner option she brought out...scallops, pork tenderloin, mahi mahi and beef shortrib.  I had to choose three of them and it was one of the more difficult decisions I had to make!  I eventually cut the mahi mahi because I didn't want to scare people off with fish (I'm from Kansas...we're not used to fish that's actually tasty).

Had my first gown fitting:  Before I knew I was going to be able to fit a trip to America in, I was going to have my dress altered in Japan...but that scared me because I didn't want anything lost in translation.  So when I planned the trip, I got a recommendation to go to Caron Sherer.  She was warm and fantastic and friendly as well!  I love the Midwest.  I was prepared to make quite the payment to have the dress taken in and bustled, but was happily shocked to pay less than $300 all together.

Ate cake:  Caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaakkkkkkkkkkkkkkkke!

Hyperbole and a Half

I already basically knew what we wanted for cake, but Susan put out all kinds of stuff to make sure.  I ended up going with one layer of marble cake with chocolate buttercream inside, and two layers of lemon cake with cream cheese and raspberry inside.  The outside will be vanilla buttercream with a semi-pleated look.  This was the original inspiration:

Charm City Cakes

But the buttercream will make it look a little rougher.  That's ok.  I like it rough!  Heehehe...  

The cake was also pleasantly inexpensive!  It's a smaller cake, because we're going to have a beautiful yummy desert bar, but it was nice that I have a few dollars leftover from the cake to put towards other deserts.  

Got my hair did:  But oh wait....that didn't happen. At Neroli Salon & Spa, the first recommendation I got was for Sydney, who was on vacation.  The second was for Dez, who doesn't work at the downtown location anymore.  And the third was for Madison, who doesn't work on Saturdays anymore.  Amanda felt terrible...they hadn't shared their changes with her!  But I got all set up for October with Sydney.

Set up our rehearsal dinner:  Another failure...the restaurant we wanted to book for this not only didn't have our reservation written down, they also let us know we wouldn't be able to reserve the whole room.  Arrrghhh.  Jason and I talked about it and decided to go back to the drawing board for this one.