We have started a very exciting but time-consuming phase of wedding planning: Meeting with Vendors! It’s actually an interesting phase because we’re moving from the “this picture of a centerpiece looks so cute on this blog” phase to the “HOW much does cake delivery and set-up cost?!” phase. There’s a lot of budget-considering going on and a lot of comparing and contrasting. I guess that technically our vendor meetings started on March 13th when we met with “our” photographer, but that meeting was so much fun and so simple (we all left feeling like “Yep, we can check that vendor category off the list!) that I almost don’t consider it part of this process at all. (And no, we still haven’t signed a contract with her yet… I keep hoping that the wedding budget fairies will give us enough for her largest package, but it looks like the medium one will have to do. THANKFULLY I know she will do SO much with that time and with those photos that I’m starting to get over it.)
It should come to no surprise to those that know us that the food/cake part of the planning process has been first and foremost to us. First of all, it (especially the catering) represents a huge part of the budget and the impact of the celebration, and second of all… we like to eat!
#1: Our first vendor “meeting” was at a local bakery that I will call P’s*. When we sent out all the vendor emails (and J has TOTALLY taken charge with this process and is totally amazing at it!), this bakery told us that we didn’t need to make an appointment to come in for a tasting. They have all their most popular cake and filling flavors available each day and you can schedule an appointment after that point if you decide to proceed with their services. It didn’t seem like a bad idea in theory, especially since I’m a very anxious person about things like this, but in reality it didn’t entirely work out. I will say this: All the cake was very good. It was moist and flavorful. When I held the slice of spice cake up to my face, it was so aromatic! The fillings, though… were not impressive aside from the cream cheese, which had a lot of tangy semi-sour character. The fruit fillings were all over-processed goo (and probably full of high fructose corn syrup, which my mom is steadily convincing me is the devil!) So, really, the cake wasn’t the problem. It was the service… The bakery was very busy with all types of business while we were there. A birthday cake, another wedding cake, and an anniversary cake were all being ordered while we were there. The couple who was there for their wedding cake had made an appointment to discuss the details, so we were left with HUGE albums full of pictures to wade through. The pictures were not labeled with details about which techniques, etc. were used and many of them were from magazines, which really bothered me. I want to see what THIS bakery can do, not what bakeries in general can do… Ominously, as I picked up the largest of these albums, the leather stuck to the glass-top table and I broke off two of my nails – my real nails. I was honestly too focused on the task at hand to make much of a fuss, but damn! That REALLY hurts**! Anyway, when we were ready to leave and had a few questions, the proprietor of the shop was still in her meeting, so we left without talking to anyone about our ideas. J’s very astute observation was that this bakery had the attitude that “We’re happy to have your business, but we don’t need it.” I’m not saying that we want to work with someone who is desperate for business, but it is nice to feel like someone special when you’re planning such a special day. We also, overall, felt that P’s was a VERY traditional bakery. There is really, really nothing wrong with traditional (especially when you are entering into one of the oldest traditions around), but I find it hard to believe that there will be anything very traditional about our wedding. I’d like to find someone to work with that really GETS our aesthetic for the day, and I’m not sure that P would.
As we left the bakery, we realized that we have three criteria for cakes: Cost (which most bakeries are very upfront about and which is fairly consistent and easy to calculate across the board), Taste, and Appearance. The first two are easier for me to asses, but the third is hard. We want a very simple but fairly non-traditional style for our cake, and we are finding that most bakeries do not have an example of this work in their portfolios… That makes me nervous! P’s had high marks for taste, but medium marks for price and low marks for appearance (according to our more non-traditional standard).
#2: The very next night, we had scheduled a tasting with SWB*. I was excited for this meeting because we had driven past this shop the night before after leaving the first tasting and it looked like the opposite of P’s: very small and non-traditional. From our first impression, I really liked this bakery. It is very cozy and you can see the kitchen from the SMALL sitting area out front. At P’s, the actual kitchen was sequestered away out of view and it made me feel strangely uncomfortable. The proprietor of this bakery appears to be a one-woman show, and she was very hands-on during our meeting. Her portfolios were all pictures of her own work and were labeled with the materials and techniques used for each cake. The BEST thing about this bakery is that there were 3 or 4 cakes in her portfolio that were executed PERFECTLY in the style that we want. No other bakery we have visited has had this going for them. My big sadness here was that I didn’t really like the cake. The flavors were good but not very strong (which I think is sort of important – I like to really be hit over the head with dessert flavors) and the cake seemed very dry to me. I actually sort of choked when I first bit into the spice cake. The fillings at SWB were MUCH better than at P’s, though! The best thing, for me, (besides the design) was that this baker was very focused on details of the day itself – what time could she deliver the cake, where would we leave the topper, etc. This really made me feel comfortable because I think day-of coordination could get tricky, and if all our vendors are this time-line focused, I am sure that will go much better. I also liked that this baker helped us to understand how many tiers we will need (100) and suggested that we choose two flavors: one for the top*** and middle (since the top only serves 10-12 people) and one for the bottom tier. SWB got high marks for price and appearance, but lower marks on taste.
#3: Our next meeting, which was last Tuesday was at SPS*. This bakery had lots of dummy cakes in their meeting area and had very cool albums as well. The only gripe I have with their designs is that a lot of them really looked the same, and unfortunately, none of them were more towards what we are looking at. There is a big trend with wedding cakes these days where the buttercream is spread on very carefully to look smooth and texture-less like fondant and then has ribbons between each of the layers. It is REALLY beautiful and professional looking (all the weddings I’ve been to over the past few years had this design), but it’s just not right for our little old barn wedding. Unfortunately, almost all SPS’ designs were of this ilk. Not unfortunately, SPS let us try BIG pieces of cake**** of like six or seven different flavors including (from my faulty memory): chocolate, white, red velvet, carrot, hummingbird, and pumpkin. We also tried at least 15 flavors including some silly ones like twinkie and cookies and cream. The cake and fillings were all delicious. Though I’d never choose it for a wedding cake, hummingbird cake is one of my VERY MOST favorite cakes ever and I was in Heaven eating it! The fillings were also totally delicious. I was obsessed with the three berry and the cream cheese icing, but I didn’t much like most of their mousse fillings – more of a personal preference, as J totally ate them all. Despite the huge servings, we basically cleaned the plate. (Except for the red velvet – total chemic
#4 – Okay… by this point we’re exhausted, but there’s the very serious matter of CAKE on the line, here, and we cannot slack. Our final meeting made us feel very trepidatious (fearful – and I only define this because apparently I made this word up from its cousin “trepidation”) when we realized that the baker runs her business out of her home, but a dose of fresh spring air, the ADORABLE Doberman puppies across the street, and her “Knot Best of 2011” plaque all assuaged our fears. Also, her house smelled like REALLY good cookies. Like actual cookies, not the “Sugar Cookie” candle from the mall. At TB’s, we tried her most popular flavors: Chocolate with a chocolate/hazelnut filling, white with a raspberry filling, and strawberry (it was so ungodly pink!) with Bavarian cream filling. I instantly clicked with this baker. While we were talking about our cake style, she started sketching out a model of the cake and she complimented my wedding-style inspiration and ideas. I mean, I know that flattery is part of the process, but she was honestly the first person to have done that, which surprises me. (Especially because I think it would really work on most brides: “You like me? You like my ideas? I’m incredibly vulnerable right now and everyone else is questioning me… You’re hired!”) Anyway, she, too, has not yet done a cake of our style, and when I showed her a picture of what we were thinking, she pulled up a photo of a recent cake that she did that she considered “similar.” Let’s just say that her definition of “similar” and my definition are… dissimilar. Random aside: While we were meeting, she divulged that she was working on an order for an upcoming event that required her to make 1,500 cupcakes… this woman is my kind of insane! Anyway, she was totally willing to do a custom tasting of pumpkin spice cake this upcoming Tuesday, so I’m looking forward to that! The funny thing about this tasting was that I loved, loved, loved her chocolate and white cakes, but J hated them! He said that they tasted chemically and were too moist. Too moist? Cake? Unless they’re raw in the middle… I think that there’s no such thing as “too moist,” but apparently my FH and I disagree on this! We both decided to wait until after the new tasting to make a final decision about that. TB had a medium score on all accounts.
So… we’re not even really close to making a decision about that, but we both have agreed that appearance is most important, followed closely by price, and then followed by taste. It’s not that we don’t want our guests to enjoy dessert – we REALLY do, but… pictures last forever, and we want the cake to look nice, so we are trying to make the most balanced decision that we can. Any thoughts about this, especially from already-weds are greatly appreciated! In any event, we’re not planning to meet with anymore bakeries, so at least we’ve got our choices laid out before us!
Another post will follow soon about our catering meetings (one down, one to go) our florist meetings (two down, none to go), and our DJ meetings (none down, two to go – this week!). Hope you’re all REALLY interested in my most minute thoughts about this process ;)
*If anyone wants the actual vendor names because they are planning a wedding or celebration, let me know… I just didn’t want to dish all the dirt in a completely open forum… protect the innocent and all that.
** Until about a year ago, I was a habitual nail biter, but when I found out that biting your nails can lead to infections, I somehow grew the willpower to stop biting my nails. Once I got engaged, I really started caring about my hands looking nice (to match Mr. Sparkly!) and have been “wearing” my nails long (though I have a feeling that phrase is not right…) So, needless to say, this nail-breaking pain was new and not so fun for me!
*** For those of you who have been married in the past, you may be staring at the screen in disbelief – EATING the top layer?! One of the really cool changes in the wedding cake industry over the past however-many years is that they serve the top layer and then bake you a new top layer gratis for your first anniversary. That way you’re not paying for freezer-burned, year-old cake!! It’s a cool tradition.
**** You’re right – these footnotes ARE getting out of control… but… FYI: When you are going to cake tastings, don’t expect more than a crumb of each flavor. Seriously, people! If you’re baking the samples fresh just for us, don’t use the mouse-sized pan! We can handle the extra sugar ;)
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