Stinkerpants

Stinkerpants Wedding: Cupcakes!

November 3, 2008 in Wedding (also on Weddingbee) • Recap Photos • Reception

After a long hiatus (sorry), I am back!   I have been SO BUSY for the past week that I haven’t even had time to catch up on my favorite blogs!  But busy is a good thing.  :)  There are only two more posts (after this one) in my wedding recap!  Sad!  This one is about our cupcakes, which were DELICIOUS.As you might recall, my mom and I made the cake stands for the wedding.  I was totally thrilled with how they turned out; the display was delicious and quirky and totally perfect.

OMG how delicious do these look?!  We got our cupcakes through Sibby’s Cupcakery in San Mateo.  We did VERY extensive research before deciding on them (more on that below).  The folks at Sibby’s are super professional, and they definitely the most delicious cupcakes in the bay area. AND they’re the cutest.  I told them that I wanted the cupcakes to “look like a candy store, with lots of bright colors” and they really delivered.   So. cute.

We weren’t really attached to the idea of a traditional cake cutting, so we decided to feed one another cupcakes instead.  Lucky for us, Sibby’s makes an amazing GIANT cupcake.  Y ordered vanilla and I ordered chocolate (of course), and I made these little “his” and “hers” flags for them.  These giant cupcakes were on taller, smaller stands, so they stood out.

When it came time to eat the cupcakes, we were both very excited.  Actually, I think Y was more excited than I was (as a side note, I changed into my Chinese dress right before the Eating of the Cupcakes.  MAN I love that dress)!

He appears to have enjoyed his more than I did, too!

We’re a little weird:

The day of our wedding was also my cousin’s birthday.  He’s rather shy, but we decided that we HAD to humiliate him by singing him “Happy Birthday” and giving him a special cupcake.   His cupcake said “Happy Birthday Peter.”

Here we are, telling Peter he has no choice but to come up and get his cupcake:

And here he is telling us never to do this again!  He probably still hates me to this day (haha–I hope not!):

After the singing, it was time for people to enjoy their cupcakes!

We anticipated that people would eat a LOT of cupcakes, so we ordered a TON extra.  We had three boxes left over, and the next morning we shared them with the hotel staff and some of our guests while we waited for valet to bring our cars.  We gave my cousins Jeff and Peggie a box to take home, and they gave a cupcake to the lady who checked them in at the airport.  Apparently it was the best cupcake she’d ever had!  Here’s a (clearly non-pro) photo of Peggie and Jeff eating cupcakes at 9am the next morning!  So fun.

If you live in the bay area and happen to be interested in cupcakes, here’s a general overview from our cupcake tasting:

Sibby’s Cupcakery (San Mateo)–Easily the best cupcake I’ve ever had.  She doesn’t mark up her prices for weddings, which I appreciate.  However, they’re still really expensive at $39/dozen, $150 delivery and setup.  Sibby says that setup takes about 2 hours, which we decided to do because we wanted to make sure it actually got done!  She has really cute stands, if you want to go the rental route. 

Citizen Cupcake (San Francisco)–these cupcakes were so bad (dry and nasty) that we didn’t even make it to the cost part of the equation.  NOT recommended AT ALL.

Teacake Bakeshop (Emeryville)–we found these cupcakes to be a little on the dry side, but our main issue was the frosting, which was really waxy.  The cupcakes are $36/dozen, and as far as delivery…they apparently contract out for that, so they charge an unknown amount for delivery and don’t do any setup.

Kara’s Cupcakes (San Francisco)–I’m not going to lie, her cupcakes are good.  We enjoyed them very much.  When we tasted them, her cupcakes were marked up simply because it was a wedding–$45/dozen.  Now I see on their website that the cupcakes are back to $36/dozen (the normal cupcake price).  Delivery is about $30, but no setup.

That Takes the Cake (San Francisco)–I really liked Sara Lynn a lot when I talked to her on the phone.  She was super generous, giving us 8 full-sized cupcakes for our tasting, for free.  However, the frosting was way too sweet for me.  The red velvet was AWESOME, though.  Best red velvet ever.

Love at First Bite (Berkeley)–Their cupcakes were pretty tasty, for sure.  However, I’m not too wild about the fact that they charge $10 for a tasting, and at first I didn’t even want to try them because that irritated me so much.  $36/dozen, about $50 for delivery to the city.   Their customer service was the main reason we didn’t choose them.

American Cupcakes  (San Francisco)–I really liked these cupcakes a lot.  They aren’t quite as cute as Sibby’s, but they were very good–not too sweet.  We almost went with them, but at the end of the day, they weren’t very responsive to my emails or phone calls, which made me kind of nervous.  It probably would have been fine, but I don’t want to be worrying about that, you know?

Sprinkles Cupcakes (Palo Alto)–this place actually opened recently, so they weren’t an option for us.  We did, however, taste their cupcakes recently.  I thought I’d add my two cents!  I wasn’t a fan of Sprinkles, which is a famous cupcake shop in LA.  Their frosting was way too sweet, the cake itself was kind of dry and heavy, and it just wasn’t that great.  I do like their color-coding system, though!

Stinkerpants Wedding: Reception

October 27, 2008 in Wedding (also on Weddingbee) • Recap Photos • Reception

I am getting really, really excited about my new website.  I’ve been creating all sorts of new drawings to put all over it, and Bob, the wonderful Brother Bee from Weddingbee, has been helping me for months.  I’m excited.

What?  Back to the wedding?

Our caterer created an amazing outdoor bar by stacking martini glasses, glass blocks and sheets of glass.  It was amazing.  The bartenders made AMAZING drinks.  Seriously the best lemon drop (or shall I call it a “Dr. Miles”?) I’ve ever had.  The signature drinks were so popular that we ran out of vodka.  The bartenders were nice enough to run to a liquor store and get us more!

The signature cocktail bar menu…

SIL clearly enjoyed the drinks:

Do you see how the sugar is yellow?  The caterer brought that!  How special!

Our caterers did a very fancy thing with the soup: they presented the contents of the soup in a bowl, and then poured the broth on top of it.  Fancy.  I’d never heard of anything like it (although admittedly I am not one to dine out at fancy restaurants).

The bride and groom signs I made for the back of our chairs.  I also made some for our parents.

After dinner, my dad and I had our father-daughter dance.  We took lessons and learned how to waltz, and we were very proud of how it turned out!

The photobooth was a huge hit:

I am sooooo glad we got the photobooth.  It was worth every. penny.  If you have a photobooth at your wedding, make sure to go in multiple times with your new husband!  We only went in once together, and although it was a good photo, I want more!!

Up next!  Cupcakes!

Stinkerpants Wedding: Reception (#1)

October 21, 2008 in Wedding (also on Weddingbee) • Recap Photos • Reception

Whew!  It’s getting late in the day to be posting, but heck!  I’ve been working feverishly since 8am and haven’t really come up for air!

I’m not sure how interested in these photos you guys will be, but I thought I’d share them anyway–they’re the toasts.  We fed people the first course, and then the toasts began.  My dad did a magnificent job.  My friends asked to “rent” him for their own weddings!

The toasts are the #1 reason why I’m glad we got a videographer.  I can’t remember a darn thing anyone said, but I remember I was really touched and I cried.  I am excited to hear what they had to say (again).

Up next…the more interesting parts of the reception (haha!)

Stinkerpants Wedding: Cocktail Hour

October 20, 2008 in Wedding (also on Weddingbee) • Recap Photos • Reception

Hi!  After a four-day hiatus from posting, I’m back!  With photos from our cocktail hour!  I hope you all had a fantastic weekend. And now, back to the wedding.

Because we missed the cocktail hour, I had no idea if people looked through our memory boxes, appreciated our custom napkins or started playing with the photobooth.  Getting those photos back was so fun!  There were a lot of photos of people appreciating my hard-DIY-work.  :)

Guests looking through the memory boxes:

At the guestbook table…as you may recall, I put our photo reminder cards in envelopes for people to store their photobooth photos in.  Here, one of our guests opens an envelope and reads the flickr photo upload instructions.

And a guest appreciates our random facts cocktail napkins (more on that in a second)!!

The memory boxes, closed (note the empty glasses–people were clearly appreciating the signature cocktails):

and open…

Signing the guestbook:

My SIL and one of our groomsmen.  She was clearly quite a good salesperson with the photo reminder cards!

Overall, I think every single one of my DIY projects was worth it (besides maybe the programs: I’m not sure the pain was worth the product in that case!). They were really fun to make, and it was totally gratifying to see people appreciate them.

When I first posted about our Random Fact cocktail napkins on Weddingbee, people wanted to know what all of our facts were!  At the time, I didn’t want to share because I wanted our guests to be surprised.  Now that it’s over (and we’re using the leftover napkins every night with dinner!), I’ll share the facts with you guys.  :)

1. Growing up, Sara happily quit the following activities: Soccer, Violin, Recorder, Art, Golf, and Tennis.
2. Yorkey once walked on 1200° hot coals wearing a kilt.
3. When Sara was in elementary school, she wrote a newsletter for her neighbors called “Neighborhood News” and distributed it exactly 3 times.
4. Yorkey starred in a television commercial for Chabot College…but because he didn’t get the local cable access channel, he’s never seen it.
5. Sara makes $20/year selling advertisements on her website about rats.
6. Yorkey once ran out of gas in the Nevada desert…in his Prius.
7. Yorkey and Sara once convinced themselves that they had bed bugs.  They strapped their box spring to the roof of Yorkey’s car and drove it to the dump…only to realize two days later that it was most likely a mosquito.
8. When Sara was a little kid, her beloved Aunt Maggie gave her a copy of “the Velveteen Rabbit.”  It scared her so much that she threw it in the closet, slammed the door shut, and refused to go anywhere near it.

I had a few people come up to me at the wedding and comment on the random facts.  For example, I grew up in a very small town, and one of our next-door neighbors was my P.E. instructor at school, and also my soccer coach.  When he saw random fact #1, he felt the need to remind me that I had, in fact, once scored a goal in soccer, so I couldn’t have been that bad.  I reminded him that I only scored the goal because everyone was distracted by an injured teammate, and otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten near the ball!

One of my goals for the cocktial hour DIY projects was to include our guests.  Obviously you can only include people in the random facts to a limited extent, but the memory boxes were another story.  We included photos of neighbors from many years ago, old family pictures and dorky photos with friends.  I think people really enjoyed seeing themselves!

Next up?  The reception!

Stinkerpants Wedding: Grand Entrance and First Dance

October 14, 2008 in Wedding (also on Weddingbee) • Recap Photos • Reception

After our formals, it was time to head up to the reception!

One thing about me: I am always cold.  As a result, I knew I’d need something to keep me warm on the day of our wedding, especially given San Francisco’s summer weather (read: freezing).  After looking at boleros and other small jackets, I realized that my dress would look best with a pashmina.  My mom and I did a lot of “research” (read: shopping) before deciding on a color for said pashmina, and eventually settled on hot pink to match my shoes.  Sadly, the pashmina disappeared when I needed it most and I had to borrow a white one from one of my darling bridesmaids (so much for the research!).  When I got our photos back and saw this one, I wondered what happened to my pashmina.  And then I saw another photo, where my mom was wearing it!!  THIEF!!! hahahaha.

In the elevator on the way up to the reception:

Our caterer set up a special room for us to get some hors d’oeuvres before the cocktail hour.  Y was happily eating away and having a glass of champagne, but I was super antsy and couldn’t wait to get to the party.  I ate two hors d’oeuvres and drank a little water, then started begging Y to head into the wedding.

We decided to do something a little different for our grand entrance: we entered to our first dance:

Our first dance was kind of silly: “our” song is My First, My Last, My Everything, by Barry White, which is a pretty goofy song.  Our awesome band learned how to play it, and the horn section made it really cute. We decided quite awhile ago to choreograph our first dance (after falling in love with a few YouTube videos).  Unfortunately, our dance lessons were a bit unsuccessful and we kind of slacked off on our choreography.  We figured out some silly moves to about a quarter of the song, and then…we figured we’d wing it.  Not recommended. We were nervous and things kind of fell apart midway through the dance.

Because we were so nervous about the dance, we decided to go straight into the first dance from our grand entrance, which was a great idea.  Here are a few photos from the first dance:

This photo cracks me up.  Y is clearly an excellent dancer.

I think our saving grace was my spur-of-the-moment decision to grab a bunch of our guests and make them dance with us.  It ended up being really fun!

Overall, if you’re nervous about your first dance, I HIGHLY recommend starting off with it.  It was fantastic, and after we were done I totally relaxed.  We went right to our table, made a little speech to welcome everyone, and then started eating.  During the first course, we had some toasts, and then finished dinner.  After dinner, my dad and I did our father-daughter dance and opened up the dance floor to everyone.  It was so perfect.

Next up!  Flowers and decor!  I loved my flowers and decor!  Wait till you see them!