Our Wedding Cake

I absolutely LOVED our wedding cake! I of course had to be involved in everything. I knew that I didn't want to have a circle or square cake. They're beautiful, but they're just so traditional so I asked for something different. The woman at Janet's Cakes in Bloomington, IL told me that they could do a hexagon. I was all for that! Then, we just had vanilla and chocolate as our cake flavors. I can honestly say that I've never had any other flavor of cake that I enjoyed. I don't like red velvet, coconut, strawberry (my least favorite), etc. The whole reason we chose Janet's cakes was because of their amazing frosting! It's the best I've ever tasted! The design on our cake was in one of the books that we were looking at, but I had the idea to do the different colors. Since our wedding colors were that beautiful aqua color and then silver, black, and white, this cake worked perfectly with our special day!


Pictures taken by Kelly Lyle Photography.

Get your bride the name hanger!

Have you seen the personalized hangers? You know what I'm talking about. The ones that are wooden and then your name or something is spelled out in the wire part! They are so interesting. You can find them EVERYWHERE on etsy. Shop around! I suggest looking at several peoples' work. Find the one that you think looks the cleanest and easiest to read before you buy. My sisters got me one for my wedding. I got my maid of honor one when it was her turn to get married. I also saw that one of my other friends had one when she got married. I could barely tell what it said, but when I did figure it out, it read 'Bride'. Those are fine, but I prefer the ones with the name. It seems so personal! The one I got for my maid of honor was even colored! Her wedding colors were black and pink so I got it made with a black hanger and pink wire. Here are some pictures of the hanger my sisters got for me: (It says Mrs. Lukow-my married name)



Pictures were taken by Kelly Lyle Photography.

This is the hanger I got my maid of honor (it says Mrs. Tipton):



The next time you're stumped on what to get the bride in your life and you want to get them something other than what's on their registry (which I suggest sticking to for the most part), get them this hanger!

My Wedding: Centerpieces

I've been married to my wonderful husband for 1 year 4 months today! I'm not really sure why I didn't think about posting things from my wedding before now, but I guess better late than never, right?

I personally think that flowers are beautiful, but we had a budget that we were working with that just didn't allow for huge flower centerpieces. What we ended up going with was basically a tall square vase. In the bottom, it had a waterproof LED light, clear beads, turquoise water, and a floating candle in the top.



These are the pictures that our photographer, Kelly Lyle, took. The candles weren't in them yet, but you get the idea.

This is a very easy concept to implement:
1. Buy the vase. We got ours from Michael's Craft Store. If you're on a super tight budget, they frequently have 40-50% off coupons. We bought one at a time over about a year and ended up getting them for a great price.
2. Put the waterproof LED light in the bottom. It's pretty easy to find some cheap ones online. You just have to do a bit of searching.
3. Add the clear beads. You just need to be very careful when doing this. You don't want to flip the LED light or worse, break it. The easiest way to do this is to put the vase at a slant and slide the beads in at an angle.
4. Put in some colored water. The easiest way to do this for me was to fill up an old milk jug with water. I worked out the perfect color and then for every milk jug worth of water, we used the same amount of food coloring for each one. To achieve the same color that I got, we put in 2 drops of blue and 1 drop of green. Then we just poured the water in over the beads. The leave room for the candle, we left a couple inches at the top. You could also put in some flowers (real or fake) for a completely different look.
5. Add the candle and light it right before everyone is set to arrive and you're done! They look great when it's a little dark in the room (which most reception rooms are).

I wish I had some pictures for you when the candle was lit, but I don't. Share what you did for centerpieces or what you would do differently! and I hope you have an amazing wedding day!