Simply Delicious Cake

Would it be possible to turn these 17 options into a poll? Thanks!

After the Hotel 1000 tasting came cake tasting time. If you didn't realize it before, cake buffet is a good idea. I don't think I realized how much I love cake until this experience. I, sadly, ended up throwing a lot of this cake away because I was attempting to finish all of these on my own as I live in a household of gluten/dairy/egg free people and I could NOT use the rule of moderation when it came to this stuff. From left to right, Chocolate White Chocolate, Strawberry White Chocolate, and Chocolate Fudge Cake.

Simply Desserts in Seattle gave me a list of flavors and I am overwhelmed by the 17 options I have to choose from. So you choose 8 flavors for me.

I'll list the flavors, and the top 8 choices win! Isn't this fun?

• Chocolate White Chocolate Cake
• Chocolate Truffle
• Milk Chocolate Truffle
• Chocolate Caramel Cake
• Chocolate Raspberry Rhapsody
• Chocolate Mint Dream
• Chocolate Fudge Cake
• Bittersweet Hazelnut Cake
• Mexican Chocolate Cake
• Strawberry White Chocolate
• Orange Pumpkin
• Carrot Cake
• Lemon Blueberry Cake
• Lemon Poppyseed
• Lemon Coconut
• Chocolate Velvent Torte
• Chocolate Fudge Torte
  

A Taste of 1000

After wholesaling and antiquing came my favorite part of the day, menu tasting. I chose 4 appetizers, 2 soups, and 3 entrees to sample. I also brought along a sister who is allergic to gluten/dairy/egg (you know, basically everything), and a mother who is allergic to dairy. This meant a lot of extras left over for me.

Poached lobster with avocado mousse on cucumber rounds, and miniature baked brie with fruit compote.

I wish I could build a menu completely out of appetizers. Not only do I like when food is served in teensy tiny portions, but you are able to get so many flavors in your mouth before you start to feel full. The baked brie rounds were a little hard to eat, so the chef is going to make them even smaller for us. Won't they look cute?

Seasonal bruschetta, and seared rare beef tenderloin on crostini with grain mustard.

Asparagus with tarragon creme fraiche

Ahem, there may be multiple soup cups surrounding me because I enjoyed it so much that I took the extras from all of the people that couldn't eat them (read: every person at the table)

I'm enjoying some roasted tomato bisque with creme fraiche and basil in this shot. Yummy.

We actually chose neither of the soups they brought out for us. My dad is an organic farmer, and his specialty is onions. Hotel 1000 is going to create a soup just for us, using onions we provide from our own farm. (If you are one of my guests, don't tell, we are going to keep it a surprise until the night of the wedding when he sees his name on the menu!)

My mom dutifully took notes. I was too busy eating to write anything down.

Roasted king salmon with wild mushroom risotto, baby spinach, and a pinot noir jus
Orecchiette pasta with rapini, radiocchio, pine nuts, golden raisons, gorgonzola, and olive oil
Grilled new york steak with roasted garlic mashed potatoes, baby spinach, and red wine jus

To be honest, I wasn't that impressed with any of the main dishes we received. Compared to the appetizers and soup, it seemed a little lackluster (although the steak was cooked to perfection). We might go with these, and we might end up ordering some completely different dishes and hoping they work out. It's hard to eat at the restaurant, and then eat the catered food because things can never taste as good when they are prepared en masse. I'm still very happy with Hotel 1000, and I don't expect anything less than the best for our wedding, but maybe I set my expectations a little higher than what can actually be met.

How did you personalize your menu? And what did you do if you weren't wowed by the food?

Unexpected Inspiration

The next stop in our wedding whirlwind adventure was my favorite antique store in all of Seattle. While browsing the aisles I passed by this postcard display. I haven't decided for sure yet, but there is a chance that I will be basing my guest book on this tree. We will attach vintage-eque postcards that we create using photos from Washington and Poland and have guests pluck their favorite option and write some well wishes. The postcards will be all ready with postage, and my mom will be in charge of dropping one or two in the mail every few days for us to collect over time.

I *LOVE* pictures, and I could likely use all kinds of fun ones for this project, even a few childhood shots of the Mr. and I from when we were kids.

In what unexpected locations have you stumbled upon wedding inspiration?

Wholesale Has It All

The day after I flew to Seattle, it was "Wedding Whirlwind" Thursday. I actually live in central Washington, 3 hours from any type of civilization, and so whenever I do wedding things I have to stuff them all into one trip. In one day we bought the reception/ceremony decor, did some antiquing and found a necessary guestbook component, had our tasting at Hotel 1000, found the bakeries for both our convention and gluten/dairy/egg free cakes, and visited Paper Source. I was almost too tired to do some guest list revising on the way drive like I had planned.

My MOH Shay brought along her camera because she knew I would want all of our adventures photo documented for blogging. We dressed alike and had an impromptu photo shoot to start the day.

We mapped out several different wholesale warehouses that we wanted to visit, but we ended up only visiting Northwest Wholesale Florists because it had everything we wanted. Apparently my mom is a card carrying member of the wholesale floral club, which allowed us to get stuff at unbelievable prices. I will warn you though, if you decide you want to handle all of the reception decor yourself, and you figure out how to get it all wholesale, the experience can be a little overwhelming at first.

You walk in and at first all you can see (and smell) is the flowers. They are so organized and pretty, and MOH Shay and I had so much fun walking up and down the rows inventing bouquets for ourselves. I took a few notes to remind myself what flowers I liked most.

We walked back a little bit farther into the warehouse, and that was when reality struck. The place looked like a jumbled mess to me, and I wanted to run back towards the entrance and bury my face in the pretty flowers and relax.

All of the sudden my mom was everywhere, pointing out things to me as we went to get my opinion. A kind of a theme began to emerge, and soon I was running around as well, grabbing elements I thought might work and adding them to the pile. I still can't believe what we came up with for the decor in just an hour or two of browsing. I won't be revealing the outcome to you until we create our table mockups, but it just may involve some of the feathers that you see MOH Shay peeking out from below. (I am a feathers bride! I never thought it would be true!)

Let's finish up this post with a lesson. As the MOH is demonstrating below, just because an item comes in your wedding colors, it doesn't mean you HAVE to have it.

Anyone else forgeoing the florist completely and using a wholesale warehouse to design their decor?

The LDS Temple Ceremony

I have known that I wanted to be married in the temple since I was a very young girl and it's kind of hard to believe that after so many years of waiting to go inside, my time is almost here!

I must admit that this is a post I have been apprehensive about writing, as the private religious ceremony which occurs in Latter-day Saint temples is a confusing topic for many that I am not quite sure how to explain. I hope that my fellow LDS readers will help me in the comments section as I attempt to explain what we do, and why we do it.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the LDS church, also known as the Mormons, has 140 temples built or in construction around the world. To quote the mormon.org website directly "Inside [the temple], members learn more about the purpose of life and make covenants to serve Jesus Christ and their fellow man. In addition, they participate in religious ceremonies that reach beyond mortality, such as baptisms on behalf of deceased ancestors and eternal marriage." Due to the extremely sacred nature of these buildings only worthy members of our church who have obtained a recommend may enter. Any member of our church can get a recommend by answering a series of questions to assess personal worthiness during an interview with a church authority. Men usually receive a recommend before they serve a mission at 19, and women receive theirs if they serve a mission at 21, or right before they get married.

Only members with a current temple recommend are allowed to come inside the temple for the sealing and the marriage ceremony, which means that the majority of our friends and family will be unable to witness our marriage. Some of you may be familiar with this concept if you have had friends or family members getting married who have told you that you would be unable to witness the marriage. As a couple, we have had to deal with this personally, since Mr. Avocado's parents are not members of our church and therefore will be unable to attend the sealing/marriage ceremony.

It is very difficult to tell someone that they will be unable to personally witness such an important event, but Mr. Avocado's parents have been very understanding and supportive of our decision to marry in the temple. The private nature of this ceremony is actually the reason why we are having a separate ring ceremony as well. This ring ceremony will allow us to share our feelings for one another and about marriage with all of our guests, whether LDS or not.

What goes on inside of the temple is so sacred that it is not discussed with anyone who does not have a recommend. This means that I have never seen or participated in the sealing ceremony that I will be doing with Mr. Avocado on October 11th. Although some brides might lament the loss of the ability to personalize the ceremony, I believe in this process and have never wanted to be married anywhere else. I want to be sealed in the temple because I believe that a marriage done by sealing will last forever, and that we will never have to say "till death do us part".

Long Distance Lovers

The Recent Avocado Timeline:

Sunday
8:00 AM-Get Engaged
9:00 PM-Learn that Mr. Avocado will be going out of town for work

Monday
7:30 AM-Drive Mr. Avocado to the airport
8:00 AM-Last kiss goodbye

Wednesday
4:00 PM-Miss Avocado boards a plane for Washington and moves home until the wedding

Result: 1 happy mother (as shown)

and a very lonely Miss Avocado.

Is anyone else attempting to have a long distance engagement? Does ANYONE believe that the Avocado's can go from now until 2 days before the wedding without seeing each other as planned (because my family sure doesn't)?

I lost 5 lbs on the daily gelato diet! You can too!

Before we left for Italy, I vowed that I would eat Roman gelato every single day. It wasn't a difficult promise to keep.

I blogged about our trip and sent out the link to family and friends so they could read about our adventures and see all of the photos we took. I am sure you have realized by now how much this avocado loves photography, and I become a little crazy when I can combine it with my other love, food. While on this trip I attempted to take pictures of every single thing we ate, which left me with an almost equal number of photos of Roman relics and squisito cibo (delicious food).

And then a few people asked me "Have you forgotten about the white dress you will be wearing in October and all of the people who will be looking at you?" Ick. Of course I haven't forgotten, but I'm not going to eat soda crackers and celery while touring one of the culinary capitals of the world. I'm working on molding a body that I love like most brides are, but that is not the kind of encouragement I am looking for. And if you were wondering, the title of this post is a true statement, I really did lose 5 lbs in Europe!

Have you had to deal with any outside pressure to "look your best" for the wedding?