wedding cupcakes- the good, the bad, the yummy

I've decided to ditch the traditional wedding cake and do cupcakes instead! They're easy, they're cheap & it eliminates the awkward "cutting of the wedding cake" moment.

Now that I have all the basic details pinned down I'm starting to research what I want as far as the cupcake display. I figured it would be easy to order a cupcake tower/display/tree/whatever you call it thingy and be done with it. But nooooooo, they're apparently pretty hard to track down. And the ones I have been able to find are cheap and made of cardboard, or if they look halfway decent they cost over $200!

I like the look of this one:

It's simple and easy to look at. The tiers are nice and close together and the size is perfect for a small wedding.

but I'm kind of a fan of the more modern square look:

This is the best example I could find. It's a little too DIY-ish (because it was) but I like the modern lines. However, I do not like the hideous way these babies were frosted- what is written on those???

If I wanted to get really non-traditional I could go for this asymmetrical design:

Not sure what I think about this exactly. It's sorta ugly, but I'm digging the "out of the box"-ness of it all.

Or I could just forgo the stand all together:

I really dig this. I like the idea of using fondant or another icing alternative so that the cupcakes can be stacked on top of each other. And besides- I've never been a fan of icing anyway! And using fondant means you can create some cool and funky designs...

I've also noticed a trend of having an actual small cake on top of the cupcake stand. This example was by far my favorite of all the displays I've seen so far:

This awesome cake has already been blogged about here. 

Of course there have also been some awful cupcake monstrosities.  For example these unappetizing babies:

"perfect for a beach themed wedding" because everyone wants to think about eating sand, grass(?) & flip-flops.

Speaking of monstrosities:

seriously? I'm a little scared for that girls safety. I guess there are worse things in life than the threat of being crushed to death by a giant cupcake tower.

Along with the saddest wedding cake I've ever seen, you can file this one under the saddest wedding cupcake display I've ever seen:

Anyway... this is what happens when you're bored in Delaware. 

But I have to give a shout out to my Maid of Honor and little sister Morgan who graduated from the University of Delaware today!!!! Happy graduation little sis- you deserve a cupcake! :)

CLICK HERE if you wan to see the cupcake tree I finally went with.

myweddingwebsite.info

When it comes to destination weddings people have sooooooo many questions. In fact, when I hang out with friends now, we don't have back and forth conversations, I feel like I'm being interviewed the whole time.

The top questions being...

-When should we get there?

-Where should we stay?

-What should we wear?

-Why did you have to have a wedding Maui?

 That's why "wedding websites" are becoming an important wedding planning tool.

And I had no idea these things existed until a friend of mine sent me a link to his wedding site on weddingwire.com.

But somehow I stumbled onto mywedding.com and I like their site building interface better. So I've been working on our site for the past few days.

www.mywedding.com/finleytharpe

Hopefully this will answer everyone's questions and I can go back to having normal conversations with my friends.

the Catz meow

I found the perfect wedding dresses for a beach weddings. 

The designer's name is Tamara Catz, she's hails from Argentina but lives in Maui and I just bought my dress from her shop in Paia.

inside the Tamara Catz store in Paia

I searched and searched for the perfect beach wedding dress and found only ONE decent dress under $1000. I thought that was ridiculous. Most of the "affordable" dresses that looked like they'd be light and flowy, perfect for the beach, only just looked that way. They were actually very heavy because they were made of cheaper fabrics. The best dresses were WAY out of my price range. I'm sorry, I just refuse to pay $2500 for a dress that I'm only going to wear once, even if it IS the most important day of my life. I'd rather spend that money on pictures or drinks!

And then I found Tamara Catz and ALL of her dresses were beautiful, light and airy, and comfortable! AND most all of them were under $1000! Sweet deal.

Here's a collage I put together of some of her dresses from the website, 

the one I chose is not pictured.

I ended up simply choosing the one that fit me the best, but I loved all of them equally and I seriously would have been happy with any one of them.

Click here to see a picture of me in the dress I picked.

I found this entry on the Mango Tree Photography Blog that sums up exactly what I love about her dresses...

Tamara was recently interviewed about her new line [of wedding dresses] and this is what she had to say. "I wanted to create a beautiful dress that's suitable for an Island bride — not a Cinderella dress that you put on and suddenly you're someone else," Tamara designed always having the environment in mind, selected natural fibers in creams and beiges, with subtle touches such as shells, beads and embroidery that have the look of soft, sandy beaches. "When you wear it, you are part of the environment and you look like an Island girl, but in a wedding way,"

And on that note I'll leave you with an adorable picture I snapped of Tamara Catz's cat...

wedding reception sights in Maui

So today was not as productive as the day before. We got a lot of information about possible reception sights...

We found the perfect place to have both the wedding and the reception- a restaurant called Sarentos On the Beach. This place is literally ON the beach... on of the employees told us that it was the last place on the island to get a permit to build so close to the water. Its' amazing!

the view of the beach from the restaurant

inside the covered patio

But since I want to have music and dancing we were told that we'd have to rent the entire place out, which would cost $18,000!!! My dad did not like that number and neither did we. 

So we were off to find another perfect location. My cousin Jane told us we could get some place just as great on Maui for waaaaaaay less. And wouldn't you know it... 

Right next door is the Five Palms Restaurant, also right on the beach with just a beautiful green lawn separating the restaurant for the ocean waves.
 

the five palms entrance from the parking lot  

 

the outdoor patio

To rent out that place would be around $5,000! I'm pretty sure that this is going to be the place. It's perfect. We can get married on Keawakapu beach, walk right up to the Five Palms and party on the patio. 

We also spoke to our friend Michael O'Dwyer over here who owns Mulligan's (he's the guy in the green shirt) and Matteo's restaurants. He said that we could do a reception at Matteo's!

Matteo's on the golf course
We could have the whole place with a dance floor and everything!! But the only problem with that is that it's not on the beach and you can't even see the beach. It is on a really pretty golf course though, and it's owned by a friend which makes me happy.

And then our other option is having the reception at the Flatbread Pizza Co. When I mentioned that to Aaron he got really excited. You can have music and dancing in the upstairs room without renting the whole place, which is great, and the food is phenomenal, our favorite on the island, but it's in Paia, so it's a bit of a drive from South Maui.

So there we are. Our search continues...

Who needs a wedding planner!?

I'm on the right track. I just know I am. Things are just falling into place and one thing leads me right on to the next thing effortlessly. I'll explain...

This morning my cousin called us from her work and asked us to meet her at Starbucks because she had some free time to hang out. So we got coffee and sat at a table outside and started talking about what we needed to get done on this trip. One of those things is to find a photographer. Jane (my cousin) suggested Ben, a friend of hers who is an AMAZING underwater photographer and also a great guy. Turns out the person sitting next to us overheard us talking and introduced himself as Nante. As it turns out Nante happened to be Jane's neighbor and the guy Ben helps to teach young kids to box. The next thing we know, Nante is at our table helping us to plan our wedding and then this man comes out of Starbucks with a large portrait photo of a cute family all dressed in white on the beach. Nante knows him and introduces us and it turns out that he and his wife are well-known wedding photographers on the island. The husband, James, shows us some of his recent photos and then his wife comes out and offers her wedding planning services to us for free! As long as we hire them to take the photos.

So i mean, in MINUTES of starting our task we already met several people who have offered us help! But the coincidences didn't stop there...

Mom and I went next door to the grocery store to pick up a few things and at the checkout isle I noticed an Hawaiian Bridal magazine. It was the ONLY ONE on the rack and I've never seen it anywhere before. So I grabbed it. I was reading in the car heading back to the house when I saw an ad for a bridal store- Tamara Catz- on Maui with a dress i LOVED. It also was the only bridal store that got any mention on Maui at all in that magazine. It's located in Paia- a small town that has the most AMAZING flat bread pizza place. So we decided to get lunch at the pizza place and then look at dresses. Only I didn't know where that dress store was. I had the address in the magazine to go off of, but I still wasn't sure how we'd find it. But that wasn't going to be a problem as it turned out to be RIGHT NEXT DOOR to the pizza place.

We at and then shopped. And i found SOOOOOOOOOOOOO many perfect dresses. But only ONE fit like a glove and the price was right and so... we bought it! The best part about the dress is that the designer lives on Maui so we're keeping it local. :) The dress is raw silk and I'm just the 3rd person to buy that dress so it's pretty unique. I'm so excited.  I met the designer's husband while we were shopping, Fransisco Goya who's apparently a wind surfing champion, and talked to him about Aaron's shark attack. He remembered the attack and was excited to hear the update. In fact, most people remember Aaron around here and care very deeply about hearing how he's been doing.

The girl who helped us at the dress store- Crystal- was a sweetheart. She skipped lunch to stay and help us with the dresses and it turns out that she's from Coto de Caza, where my parents used to live in South Orange County and that her dad contracted Polio around the same time my mom did! Things were just so coincidence-y that day it was strange but wonderful.

Before I left for Maui people (like my dad and future husband) kept asking "why do you need to go to Maui to plan this wedding? Don't people plan destination weddings from their home all the time?" And they're right, people do, but I just knew that I needed to be here. I knew that I needed to get to Maui to be IN Maui for this wedding to get done. And, sure enough, after being here less than 24 hours I've accomplished more than I ever have in LA. I had to BE here to to meet these people and to make these connections. 

So tomorrow I'm hoping to have as much luck with all of that as I've had with everything else so far.
I LOVE MAUI!!!!

aloha!

well kids- I'm off to Maui to plan my wedding this week!! Wish me luck in finding everything I need at a good price. :) I'll be back on the 12th.

ALOHA!!!!

save the date!!

Okay, so the save the dates are ordered and will be sent out soon!!!
I made a postcard out of a photo I took in Maui...

front:

back:

I also designed some custom postcard stamps as well.

the stamps:

(recognize the design? It's the same picture from the blog title. I love these flowers, they were the ones that the Four Seasons had delivered to Aaron in the hospital.)

And these were all designed by yours truly using Zazzle.com combined with my Flickr account. It was super easy. I chose the postcard option from Zazzle and then clicked a dragged a photo I liked from Flickr and viola! Awesome save the dates. I can't wait to get them. 

Aaaaaaand I got 70 custom postcards and 80 custom stamps for a little over $100! Can't beat that. It was a really affordable and cute spin on save the date cards.

the invitations

I've been working with Karah of Bella by Karah designing the wedding invitations. She's awesome and is so easy to work with! I saw her beached themed wedding invitations and loved everyone one of them so I wrote her for a quote and they were wonderfully affordable. I had figured I'd have no choice but to pay close to $5 per invite, but thank heaven for Karah.
I immediately fell in love with this coral invite-

but combined it with the colors from this invite-

So, we went through over 15 mock ups and finally decided on one. I was happy with it, my mom was happy, Morgan (maid of honor & sister) was happy, Erik (man of honor) thought it looked great, even my friend Raina (my hair stylist) and her boyfriend who have very particular tastes thought it was great. It was feeling on top of the world. Everything was coming together nicely.
And then there was Aaron...
I nervously asked him if it was okay to talk about wedding stuff this morning and he actually said yes. So I proudly showed him the invitation I had designed and he hated it. Hated the colors- which also happen to also be the colors of the wedding.

turquoise & orange
so what do I do now!??????

upadate- May 3rd, 2008

Aaron and I have reached a compromise. We're gonna use a darker blue for the invites and then all should be well, I think. I have to wait until after the weekend to see the finished product.

the Calypso Color Collections

I went on a marathon shopping spree with my mom and my sister, Morgan, aka. the maid of honor.
We discovered the PERFECT store for finding bridesmaid dresses for a beach wedding. Calypso is full of beachy styles repeated in several of the same colors. Check out this line-up I've pre-arranged for you using my favorite colors...

The Orange collection

The Turquoise collection

The Green collection

What Megan wanted- 

Two different dresses from the Orange collection.

What Megan got- 

Two of the same dresses from the Turquoise collection.
How did I end up with the opposite of what I wanted?... Morgan picked her favorite (the first one in the turquoise collection photos) and them mom insisted we buy the same one for Amy (my other bridesmaid).

But here's the cool part; if Amy hates that dress or it doesn't look right on her, we can just go back to the store and exchange it for one that she does like in the very same color!

Now I just gotta figure out what to do with my Man of Honor!