It's Chocolate. It's Marshmallows. It's Graham Crackers. What's Not Too Love?

I like salad bars. And coffee bars. And juice bars. And candy bars. And...well, you get the picture.

And the other day a good friend mentioned having a pizza bar at the reception and she got me thinking, "why stop at a pizza bar? why not have an "all bar" reception? what better way to feed a couple hundred of your closest friends?"

And not only that, but just think of some of the extra benefits to an "all bar" reception...

*We wouldn't need to set up any tables, just set some bars stools out and have at it.

*Put up a few sneeze guards and we could open up to the public and charge by the plate (the coffee bar alone could pay for the honeymoon)

*Make styrofoam to-go plates and hair nets available to all the guests

*Decorating the bars could be a snap. Stainless steel goes with everything

*I could sneak have some Italian Green Beans on the salad bar 

I tried to convince the happy couple that this would be the way to go for their reception. And I almost had them on board. That is until I mentioned the Smores lounge. Yes, a Smores lounge.

Hey if it's good enough for Reese Witherspoon it's good enough for the happy couple. I first heard about the Smores lounge while perusing the waiting room bible (People magazine) at my doctor's office. Mrs. whatever-her-last-name-is-now had one at her recent wedding reception in Los Angeles. And I thought it would be a really cool thing to do.

Alas, the happy couple thought otherwise.

While technically not a "bar" the Smores lounge would have benches or lawn chairs (take your pick) around a fire in a self contained pit with chocolate, graham crackers and marshmallows available. Plus sticks for roasting your marshmallows! You can't forget sticks!

When describing the Smores lounge to the happy couple the bride's only comment was, "Open flames, gooey marshmallows and my wedding gown all in the same room? I don't think that's a good idea, mom."

I tried...maybe I can convince the groom to have a juice bar at the rehearsal dinner.

So our correct choices are A and B! And our winner is Angel R.!

It's An Easy Giveaway!

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Oops! I missed the Friday giveaway! But I had a really good reason...it was the maid of honor's birthday yesterday and we celebrated by going to dinner and then for ice cream...

Ok, so I not only had one bad idea this week, I had two. Yes, two (it was a banner week). And it's your turn to guess which two they are...

We've been talking some about the reception this past week and all the details that need to be figured out. And I'm all about easy. Whatever's the easy way, I'm your gal. So which TWO of the following statements were my ideas for an "easy reception"...and what are you playing for?

How about...

(1) one $30 gift card to Subway

can't get much easier for dinner that that!

Here's how you play:

Read the three statements below and choose the TWO you think I actually "discussed" with the bride. TWO of the statements are absolutely true. I really thought they were a good idea. And then they were turned down quicker than Speedy Gonzales grabbing a piece of cheese.

Leave (just one!) comment with your guess of which TWO bad ideas I had (A, B or C) and when times up, I'll put all the correct guesses in a bowl and pick a winner!

so here we go.......which TWO of the following ideas do you think I suggested to the bride last week?

I thought it would be a great idea to...

A. Who needs a sit-down dinner at the reception? How about all bars, all the time...coffee bar, candy bar, pizza bar, cake pop bar, salad bar, juice bar...the possibilities are endless. 

B.  Instead of the wedding cake, have a smores lounge...in one corner of the reception hall: campfire, lawn chairs, marshmallows, chocolate bars (oooh another bar!) graham crackers...the works.

C.  Instead of the wedding cake, I make cupcakes. For 250 people. The night before the wedding.

Comments will be closed on Sunday, August 21, 2011 at 11:00 p.m. Eastern

It's A Miracle, But We're Still Having A Giveaway Anyway

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I didn't have any bad wedding ideas this week.

It's a miracle.

Well, it's not really a miracle in the biblical sense of the word but all in all a week without any bad wedding ideas from me is something special.

But...I still wanted to have a giveaway this week. So in honor of my tiny victory (and much to the bride's relief) this week's bad wedding idea giveaway is all about...

  Wedding Trends

I wrote a post this past week about the latest wedding trends (actually some have been around for a while, it's just when I planned my wedding, the latest trends included wedding dresses like this...

 and bridesmaid dresses that looked like this...)

 

So I'm probably not the greatest barometer of the latest and most current wedding trends. But that being said, I've done some homework and I've found a few wedding trends that are pretty...umm, well they're unusual...

But here's the catch...two out the three trends are true, and you need to pick which wedding trend is a fake, a falsehood, a fabrication, a fable, a fallacy, a fib...just pick the one that's not true.

Leave (just one!) comment with your guess (A, B or C) and when times up, I'll put all the correct guesses in a bowl and pick a winner!

so here we go.......which one of the following do you think is the false wedding trend...

A. Receptions being catered by fast food restaurants.

Instead of your choice of chicken or salmon you get your choice of  La-Nuggets (with all the honey mustard sauce you can handle) or a Captain Pete's fried shrimp sandwich! Toasting with champagne? Naw, cookies n' cream shakes for the house! And that pesky wedding cake? Replaced by fried fruit pies in convenient cardboard sleeves!

B. Required plastic surgery for bridesmaids.

Just thinking how you go about telling someone they need plastic surgery in order to be in your wedding is mind boggling. Good thing my mind is boggled. I think it might go a little something like this:

Bride: Susie, I've know you all my life. You're my best friend. I can't imagine having anyone but you standing next to me as I marry the man of my dreams. Would you do me the honor of being my maid of honor?

Susie: Oh, yes! I would love to be your maid of honor! We have so much to plan! Where do you want to start? Looking for gowns? Choosing your colors?

Bride: How about we start with those crow's feet you've been sportin'. You're gonna have to get some "help" with those babies. I've made you an appointment with Dr. Botox next Thursday.

C.  Having a life size wedding cake of the bride.

Yes, a life size cake, that looks like the bride in her wedding gown. Does the number of guests who get a piece of cake depend on the dress size of the bride? (ouch, kinda catty) What happens if the cake looks better than the bride? (oooh, another swipe, meow) Do you save and freeze her head to eat on your first anniversary? (hiss)

So there's your choices...and what are you playing for? Well, that's a surprise! I'll announce it when I list the winner!

Comments will be closed on Saturday, August 13, 2011 at 11:00 p.m. Eastern

It's Time For Another Edition Of "Name That Bad Idea!"

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It's Friday and you know what that means...no, it doesn't mean playing hooky from work and going to the craft store to look at fabric swatches for napkins...hmmm...

oops, sorry, got a little distracted there, thinking about napkins...

Ok, so it's Friday and that means it's Giveaway time!

Last week we had a post called "Name That Bad Idea" and I thought we'd continue the fun this week with another chance to win a gift card!

Yes, you get another chance to choose which bad idea I shared with the bride is actually true. And this week's idea choices have a theme...an Italian theme in honor of the groom's heritage.

And what's the prize this week you ask? Well, since we have an Italian theme this week, how about some Italian food? The prize is:

(1) one $25 gift card to Carrabba's

Here's how you play:

Read the three statements below and choose the one you think I actually "discussed" with the bride. One of the statements is absolutely true. I really thought it was a good idea. And then it was thrown out like a pot of bad spaghetti sauce. 

Leave (just one!) comment with your guess (A, B or C) and when times up, I'll put all the correct guesses in a bowl and pick a winner!

so here we go.......which one of the following do you think I suggested to the bride last week?

I thought it would be a great idea to...

A. Change the colors of the wedding to the colors of the Italian flag

B. Since our honeymoon 25 years ago was a disaster, take us with them on their honeymoon to Italy

C. Re-create the spaghetti & meatball eating scene from "Lady & The Tramp" for their Save-the-Date cards

Comments will be closed on Saturday, July 30, 2011 at 11:00 a.m. Eastern

Bouquets & Rice: Week 2 - The Rocky Edition

Some odds and ends from this week...

We're going back out there. Come sundown tonight it begins again. We're not gonna let it beat us. We're taking it to the mat. We've been in training all week long. We've been running, done hundreds of push-ups and sit-ups, punched slabs of frozen beef, drank dozens of raw eggs and have listened to the "Rocky" theme song over and over and over again...

...all in preparation for the big day.

We're going wedding gown shopping on Saturday...again.

 Yo, Kaaaiiitttllliinnn!

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Well, my plan to eat only foods that begin with the letter "R" didn't work out too well this past week.

Who would of thought only eating Rice Krispie treats, Ricotta cheese, Red Jolly Ranchers and Rocky (there he is again) Road ice cream all week would actually make you gain weight. And on top of it, we've been training all week to go shopping (see above).

Maybe I'll give the letter "Q" a try.
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Besides inheriting her father's level-headedness, love of list-making and general practicality, another gift the bride has inherited from her father is motion sickness. Yes, that happiest of all travel ailments affects two of our family members severely. Neither one of them can read in a moving vehicle, ride in a back seat or sit on a boat for more than 17 seconds without getting ill.

It's made some of our family vacations a real treat.

And since the happy couple are still discussing their options for the honeymoon, that means going on a cruise is out.

Sometimes boats can be a little rocky (I know, stretching the "Rocky" reference a little thin here) and even the big cruise ships will sway from time to time. And I have a feeling that the groom would rather not spend their honeymoon holding back his new wife's hair while she's "indisposed".

So no cruise for the happy couple. Maybe a train trip to the Rocky Mountains would be fun (ok, starting to get a little desperate with the "Rocky" references now).
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One way I deal with the stresses of planning a wedding is by escaping to our sunroom, turning on the Netflix and watching an episode or two of my favorite cartoon from childhood, "Rocky & Bullwinkle" (really!)

and so I leave you with one of my favorite quotes from the squirrel and the moose from Frostbite Falls, Minnesota...

Rocky: Well, they don't call him Wrongway Peachfuzz for nothing!

Bullwinkle: You mean they gotta pay?

Bouquets & Rice: Week 1 - The Odds And Ends Of Planning A Wedding

Some odds and ends from this week...

Well, there's no turning back now. It's official. Forget about getting the deposit back on the reception hall. And it's all because of three little paragraphs and a black & white photo.

The happy couple's engagement announcement came out in the local newspaper this week!
(thanks again Lindsey and Deidra!)

Living in a small town, word gets around pretty quick so most of our friends knew about the happy couple's announcement before it hit newsprint (and having multiply Facebook pages within the family doesn't keep things quiet for too long either) but as I was looking over the announcement I realized we'd forgotten to tell someone. And then the phone rang.

Yep, that was a fun conversation. :)
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Mark's role within all the wedding planning hoopla has been pretty minimal. And of course he likes it that way. But every so often he'll casually mention a suggestion that he has given some thought too (usually he prints out his suggestions and collates them for us...yeah, he's that guy) and this week he had two. And they were both about the wedding gown. (no, we didn't change our minds about the Kardashian dress)

Mark's suggestions about the wedding gown were the following:

1. Why don't we try to find a wedding gown at Goodwill?
2. Why don't we try to find a wedding gown at the flea market?

After the first suggestion, Kaitlin looked over at me and I shook my head "no" ever-so-slightly. After the second suggestion, Kaitlin looked over at me and I began hitting my head repeatedly on the coffee table. Surprisingly he didn't have much to say after that.
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In the quest to lose 782 pounds in the 6 months before the wedding, I have begun to consider some alternative methods of weight loss...and this week I came up with this plan...

I'm going to only eat foods that begin with the letter "R"--

foods such as Rice, Radishes,...Reese's peanut butter cups, Red velvet cake, my friend Mary's Really good chicken & dumplings...
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We're going wedding gown shopping this weekend...*insert-mother-realizing-daughter-is-really-getting-married-sigh-here* sniff, sniff

The Vegetable Whose Name Shall Not Be Spoken

My daughter has been engaged for about 6 1/2 minutes and we've already had our first fight disagreement.

Over green beans.

For the record, let's just go ahead and get who wants green beans and who doesn't want green beans out there in the open.

I'm pro-bean. She's anti-bean. (and if you ask me, it's just plain un-American to be anti-bean.)

Now we're not talking your run-of-the-mill green beans. We're talking about Italian Green Beans. Those big, flat, green beauties that we consume by the gallon around here at Sunday Dinner (we live in the South, and in order to do so, it's required that we eat a huge, fat-filled, butter-coated, artery-hardening meal after church every Sunday, hence Sunday Dinner). Needless to say, I'm a big fan of Italian Green Beans. Easy to make. Easy to eat. Just. About. Perfect.

And to hear my daughter say that she absolutely does not want Italian Green Beans served at her wedding is heart-breaking. Just heart-breaking.

It all started innocently enough. We were sitting around the kitchen table the other day and the discussion turned to the menu at the reception. Now granted we won't be nailing down a menu for a few months, but hey, we need to get a general idea about what we're serving. And since we're having an Italian-themed wedding I assumed that Italian Green Beans would be included.

Umm, not so fast.

The words "...and what about Italian Green Beans" were still hanging in the air, like a cartoon word bubble when I was quickly informed that there would be no Italian Green Beans served at the reception. I looked to the groom for some kind of back-up, a little support, a slight nod of the head, as if to say, "Don't worry future mother-in-law, I'll make sure Italian Green Beans are on the menu!".

Nope. Didn't happen. He was no help. (and now that I've had some time to ponder it, I'm beginning to think he may be anti-bean too...un-American I tell you!)

At this point, the hairs on the back of my neck were starting to rise up and my face began to get flush. No Italian Green Beans at the reception? How could they do this to me? What would everyone think? I could hear the whispers at the reception months from now...

 "Why aren't they serving  Italian Green Beans? I thought this was supposed to be an Italian wedding? I can't eat my chicken parmesan without Italian Green Beans! Where are the BEANS???"

The room began to swirl and get dark. When I came too, I was on the floor, with my loved ones standing over me, a look of great concern sweeping over their faces, including the bride and groom.

"Mom, are you ok?" Kaitlin asked as she knelt down and cradled my head. "Yes" I whispered in a weak, small voice, "yes, yes I will be...as long as we have Italian Green Beans at the reception."

Nope. Didn't work. She didn't take the bait.

So we will be having a bean-less menu at the reception. And I think I can live with that. Of course there's always the chance that a can or two might show up. She'll be too busy to check my purse.