Local Vendor Spotlight: The Downtown Athletic Club

We planned our wedding for 15 months and for 9 of those months we had our whole reception planned at a reception site in Corvallis, OR. Then one day we received an e-mail telling us that our reception site had sold out from under us. I obviously flew into a panic, we had 6 months to basically re-plan our whole reception. During a panic moment I called up the Downtown Athletic Club (DAC) and an amazing man named Kevin thankfully answered the phone. He very calmly told me to take a deep breath after I told him everything we had planned for our reception and how now everything was obliterated. He then told me that planning a reception should not be as stressful as it currently was and that he would make everything okay. And you know what? He did! Kevin helped us pick up the pieces of our reception and then even elevated it. By switching to the DAC we were able to save a bunch of money that we were then able to put into decorations, food, and even a photobooth. We were able to add Japanese lanterns that hung from the ceiling and up-lighting on the large columns of the ballroom. We also rented their projector and projected the movie "Singing In The Rain" onto the far wall that played silently in the background of our reception.

The chef at the DAC put together an amazing tasting menu that included a "Grown Up" Mac & Cheese consisting of chevre, bacon, spinach, and sun-dried tomatoes!

The food was amazing. We came up with 2 signature drinks that were hosted at the bar. The "Ginger Chuckanut" which was a strawberry infused vodka strawberry lemonade and "Gin O' Clock" which was a gin and tonic.

 My family is Italian American and so we requested that there be vinegar, olive oil, and focaccia bread on the tables. They set up all of the tables, placed all the centerpieces, lit all the candles, just all around made sure everything looked perfect for our special night.

The staff at the DAC went above and beyond in every single way. We went in the day before the wedding to drop off the lantern and votive centerpieces and had a chance to actually meet the staff that would be at our reception. Everybody was so welcoming and you could tell that they really cared and wanted to make our wedding very special.
During the cocktail hour the line for the bar got really long and my father found Kevin and asked if they could add a bartender or do something to fix the problem. Kevin immediately got behind the bar HIMSELF and began serving drinks! I can't think of a better example of how the DAC staff was willing to do anything to make our reception an experience to remember.
Even though our wedding is over, the staff at the DAC continue to work hard for us. For our one-month anniversary, E and I went back to the DAC to have dinner in their restaurant and the chef actually made the Mac & Cheese from our wedding especially for us (it is not on the menu of the restaurant) and I was able to order a "Ginger Chuckanut" also. They told us that we can come back anytime and they will continue to make our Mac & Cheese for us.
If you are looking for a reception site in the Eugene, OR area and want a site that is aesthetically beautiful with a personable staff who will do anything to make your wedding special then please check out the Downtown Athletic Club at http://www.downtownac.com/.

Do As You Please

This is your and your future spouse's wedding so do as you damn well please! I will admit that etiquette is important but sometimes you have to say "to hell" with tradition and make your wedding about you as a couple. Decide what is really important to you and make it happen.

Personal examples:

• E and I had 3 beautiful little girls who were very important in our lives but no little boys at the same level. So we chose to have 3 flower girls but no ring bearer.

• When we first started planning the wedding I saw a photo of flower girls wearing beautiful white tutus and completely fell in love with the idea. We tweaked it a little though and chose to have each little girl in a tutu that went with our colors (pink, yellow, and orange). When I received my First Communion my aunt made me a flower wreath to wear in my hair and I wanted our little flower girls to have the same experience so we ordered head wreaths with flowers from the bouquets to be made for each little girl.
• I have been blessed to have a loving father as well as a loving step-father and I wanted both to be a part of my walk down the aisle. I chose to have my father begin by taking my arm and escorting me halfway down the aisle where we paused and my step-father joined us and took my other arm and the three of us walked the rest of the way down the aisle arm-in-arm. I chose to do this to symbolize my father being there for the beginning of my life and then my step-father coming in halfway through and so the moment I reached E at the end of the aisle I was escorted by both my father's. 

• We had the traditional father/daughter and mother/son dances but E and I wanted to also honor how important our step-parents are in our lives so we added a step-parent dance where I danced with my step-father while Eric danced with his step-mother. As I danced with my step-father he pointed out how my mom was watching us and mentioned that he thought she was jealous that he got to dance with me, at the same moment we both motioned for my mom to join us and so the three of us swayed and danced the rest of the dance away. Who says a dance is only for two? I would not have changed that dance for anything in the world.

 E and his step-mom dancing

Me and my step-dad dancing together.

Me, my step-dad, and mom dancing together.

• I decided early on while planning the wedding that I did not want to throw my bouquet, instead I wanted to present it to my grandparents. My grandparents have been married for over 50 years and are a beautiful example of love and marriage. I wanted to honor them and their love by presenting my real bouquet (not a tossing bouquet). 

 About to throw my bouquet.

Fake out.

Presenting my bouquet to my grandfather (my grandmother was in the bathroom).

• Halfway through planning our wedding one of my dear friends passed away suddenly. I was devastated by the loss, especially because the last thing we talked about together was the wedding. It crushed my heart knowing that she would not be there in person to share the day with us. This reinforced my decision to not toss my bouquet because I felt that it would be unfair because not all beautiful single girls would be present to have a chance to catch it. As a symbol of this I had an extra bouquet made and took it over to her family two days before the wedding and took some time talking about her, how much she meant to me, and how much I wanted to include her in our day and honor her. We also took some special time before the ceremony to light a candle for her.

• My maid-of-honor decided to skip her college graduation in order to be a part of our wedding weekend. I was crushed that she gave up such a milestone for me but I wasn't havin it. I found out what her school colors were and what tassel she would have worn to represent her department. I then got a hold of a cap in her school colors, went down to the local university and purchased a tassel for her graduating department (kinda weird how easy that was), and set it up with the DJ. When toasts were over and my Maid-of-honor thought her time in the spotlight was over the DJ asked her to report to the dance floor, I was standing there waiting for her and placed the cap onto her head, the DJ then played the Graduation March and made her cross the stage, I then instructed her to move her tassel from the right to the left, the DJ announced her as graduated, and her parents ran up to congratulate her. She later told me that she had never felt so special in her whole life.

• Another fantastic celebration occurred the day of our wedding that we wanted to recognize. Our friend came to our wedding even though it was his birthday. The DJ announced his birthday and had everybody sing Happy Birthday to him before eating cake. It was wonderful!
• Chicken or fish? Chicken or fish? FORGET THAT! I love me some mac-n-cheese so we had two different kinds served at our wedding! There was a plain cheddar mac for the kiddos and a gourmet mac for the adults with bacon, spinach, and tomatoes. It's your wedding, and after watching what you eat to look on your day you deserve to eat what you want!

• E and I love a little local patisserie and would go there for many dates. It was an obvious choice when choosing a wedding cake but what flavor would we choose?! Hell, we chose 3! We had carrot cake (no raisins) with white chocolate ginger mousse, chocolate cake with chocolate mousse and chocolate ganache, and a red velvet cake with raspberry compote center covered in whipped cream and coconut. The guests loved it and loved the chance to try multiple cakes.

• In college my best friend's father lived part-time with them and he would be there most weekends. Now, I enjoyed a nice mixed drink in college as most do but Papa taught me how to take a whiskey shot when he started up the tradition of "Friday Night Shots". Papa would come home with a bottle of Bush Mills Black Bush whiskey and we would celebrate the weekend. For our wedding we asked our reception site to special order a bottle of Black Bush and a large group of us went out into the lobby and continued our tradition of Friday night shots (seeing as the wedding was on a Friday night) with a group toast of whiskey. There were many amazing memories from our wedding and this one ranks right up there with the best of the best.

•  My grandfather passed away before I ever had a chance to meet him but I was always told that he loved ketchup on his spaghetti and smoking cigars. In honor of my grandfather we decided to have a cigar bar at our wedding. My dad provided the cigars and the reception site allowed us to all go out on their balcony and smoke a few. I think that some of our more stunning photos came from that experience.

Let Them Eat Cake

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Here are my tips when it comes to cake

1. Choose the flavors (and however many) you want!
2. If you have a skilled enough bakery, buttercream can look just as nice as fondant (and your guests won't have to peal it off).
3. Order less than your projected guest count because some guests won't show up, some will leave early, and some may prefer pie.
4. Make sure to clearly lay out a cake cutting plan with your reception site. We thought we had talked this all out with our reception site but they ended up only serving the sheet cakes in the back so nobody even got to taste any of the 4 tiers of our actual wedding cake! It was a huge waste of money and now we are stuck eating freezer cake for a whole year. So make sure you have a talk about when, how, and what you would like them to cut and serve.
5. www.etsy.com is a fabulous site to find unique cake toppers!

We chose a patisserie that we loved to go to on dates. We decided to choose 3 different flavors. We had carrot cake with white chocolate ginger mousse, chocolate cake with chocolate mousse and chocolate ganache,

red velvet cake with raspberry filling and covered in whipped cream and sprinkled with coconut flakes.

My family is Italian and one of our traditions is to serve pizzelles (an Italian cookie) at weddings so my grandmother spent days making the beautiful cookies.

We chose to have our cake covered in buttercream instead of fondant and it looked beautiful.

We also chose to have our top layer consist of a collage of words that we chose that were then piped onto the cake.

I found a vendor on www.etsy.com who could bend wire, so we asked him to bend E + C (the patisserie accidentally assembled them to say C+E but that's okay) for our cake topper. We also wanted to use bend wire so that we could use them again. Our cake toppers now sit on a shelf in our living room so we can see them every day.

Flower Power

When choosing flowers there are 4 things to think about:

1. Price
2. Quantity
3. Type
4. Color

If you feel very strongly about flowers then you probably do not need this blog post at all so go ahead and do what you do. If you were like me in that you had no idea what to do about flowers then come along with me. We began figuring out our flowers by deciding on our budget. How did we do that you may ask? We added up everything else we were going to pay for and then what was left over we used for flowers. Haha. Next we figured out how many bouquets, corsages, and center pieces we would need. Here is how to calculate all that out:

• How many bridesmaids do you have?
• How many groomsmen (or groom's ladies) do you have?
• How many flower girls do you have?
• How many ring bearers do you have?
• How many mother's do you have?
• How many father's do you have?
• How many grandmother's do you have?
• How many grandfather's do you have?
• How many usher's do you have?
• Do you want to have pew bows or pew flower arrangements?
• Are you going to decorate the ceremony site with flowers?
• How many tables will there be at your reception? 

Our process was to think about what colors we wanted for our wedding. We chose red, orange, yellow, and bright pink. We chose to use these colors in the bridesmaids bouquets,

pew flowers, 

altar arrangement,

and centerpieces

We also chose to have our flower girls have head wreaths of flowers in the same colors. 

I chose to have my bouquet be all red flowers to be separate from the other flower arrangements and also because the bright vibrant colors would have clashed with my subtle dress. 

For the bridesmaid bouquets we also did something a little different. We decided to have the colors be the same and for the background flowers to all be the same but we chose to have the focus flower be different for each girl. Each of my 3 bridesmaids chose their favorite flower (1) lilies, 2) gerbera daisies, 3) roses) which were then the focus flower of their bouquet.

Since we had 2 Groomsladies as well, we chose to have their bouquets match the boutonnieres that the men were wearing.

What Are You Made Of?

As my fiance and I planned our wedding I was addicted to reading BRIDES magazine. I had every issue from the 15 months of our engagement plus any issues that my step-dad found while garage saling. In each issue there was always a section where a bride and groom would come up with 5 or 6 words or phrases that described them and then the magazine would challenge a wedding vendor to come up with something original for the couple. I always thought this seemed cool but challenging. My fiance and I never took the time to sit down and really define things for the wedding. Things sort of defined themselves over the 15 months.

I WISH WE WOULD HAVE SAT DOWN AND WRITTEN OUT SOME THINGS!
Our wedding ended up being made of us, but it took us 15 months to get there. I wish we would have just sat down and talked about words, phrases, and things that we were made of. I also wish that the magazines would not make it seem like you need to do this the second you get engaged, it is never too late to get focused (although the sooner the better).

So how do you exactly go about finding out what you are made of as a couple?
First, think about you personally. If you had to think of objects, colors, places, even smells that define you what are they?
For example: I am a teacher, I wear flip-flops as long as there is less than 1 inch of snow on the ground, I love the movie Singing in the Rain, and I love Mac-N-Cheese
E is incredibly creative and works as a marketing director, his favorite color is green, he loves animals, and he enjoys trying new restaurants.
As a couple we love eating good food, we love going on dates to the local patisserie, we met in elementary school, our nickname for each other is Sunshine.

How did these things come out in our wedding?
We had the caterer make a gourmet mac and cheese for dinner.

Our wedding cake was from the patisserie we frequented on many a date.

We incorporated blackboards as menus and the seating chart to represent us meeting in elementary school and my passion for teaching.

We chose colors that represented "sunshine" to us: red, orange, yellow, and bright pink or fuchsia if you will.

E made us a logo that we used on our wedding ceremony programs and on the thank-you cards attached to our favors. The logo was made from a photo of when E wrote "E+C" in the sand during a beach trip surrounded by sun rays to represent our nickname for each other of "Susnhine".

So this picture that E drew on the beach plus our nickname of Sunshine became

this wonderful logo that we used all over our wedding

Themes have become pretty popular with weddings (just open up any Oriental Trading Wedding magazine and prepare to be assaulted by visions of seashells and snowflakes) and that is fine and dandy, but please people, make the theme about you as a couple and your special love! Our wedding sort of turned into a Midsummer Night's Dream/summer fun soiree. Your wedding does not have to be a cookie cutter wedding, if you want to mix blackboards with lanterns and Dahlia centerpieces then rock your world!

Choosing a Timeline

The day I returned from work after I got engaged my dear friend said to me, "Prepare to be the happiest and most stressed out you have ever been in your life." I scoffed at this, I am great under pressure, I thrive in chaos. I am sad to say she was correct, even I crumbled under the pressure of those first few days. The way that I came out of it though was by getting organized and beginning to plan. The second you tell someone you are engaged they ask, "When is the wedding?" and you're like "What part of I just got engaged do you not understand?". How come as soon as you hit one milestone people are asking about the next one. Prepare yourself for this for the rest of your life. As soon as E and I got married people started asking about kids! Live in the moment people! Enjoy being engaged, enjoy being together, enjoy being a couple no matter what milestone you just hit or are working towards.
Got off track a little, I'm sorry. Back to getting organized and making a plan. There are many things that should go into your choice of a wedding planning timeline and the date of the wedding you choose. Here are a list of considerations:

• What season or month do you want to get married in?
• Is there are a particular day that holds special meaning or can you be flexible with the date?
• What day of the week do you prefer? Fridays are becoming more and more popular.
• What else will be going on in your life during the wedding planning? Any other stressors coming your way? Academics, job, family?
• How many guests do you plan on inviting?
• Who is paying for the wedding and how much time do you need to get all of the money together?
• How many DIY (Do It Yourself) projects do you plan on completing?