Brave New Groom

I’m sure most florists would hate seeing the title of this post.

We’ve been trying over and over to make floral arrangements for centerpieces ourselves. The savings can be significant, if you either 1) have the time to set it up they day before (or on) your wedding, or 2) decide to go with silk (or true touch) flowers. It’s not very easy, but definitely possible.

There are definitely places you can get quality flowers for cheap. For instance Costco.com has 100 roses for $99.99 (of almost any color), or 70 stems of Asiatic Lillies for $109.99, shipping and handling included on both. But who has time to do that on the day of the wedding?

You could go with silk flowers. My take on it is that no one (or at least very few people) are going to notice or care that your flowers aren’t real. For the cost of getting married these days, who is going to look at you and say “Psshh.. I can’t believe you skimped on the flowers.” And if someone did do that, hopefully they’ll also have the nerve to leave immediately. Anyways, you can also take a 50/50 approach where the majority of the flowers are silk (such as aisle pedals and centerpieces) but the ones that truly matter are real (bride’s bouquet, boutonnieres, etc). With prices of center pieces hovering around $40 per table and up, I think silk will do the trick just fine.

Is it so easy a caveman can do it? If you have the flowers, do you have the skill to make it work? Maybe you can just go to the store, pickup some flowers and transform it into a beautiful arrangement. Most people can’t. One alternative you have is to purchase the kinds of flowers you’d like to use from the craft store, take it to a trusted florist and have him/her make an arrangement for you. From there, you can replicate it as many times as you’d like, but at least you have a pattern to work with.

And the best part about using silk flowers is that your arrangements can be made weeks ahead of time and you can be sure they’re exactly what you want. All you have to do on the wedding is put them where you’d like (or have someone else do it) and enjoy!

Well maybe most people have already long forgotten the first few awesome Geico commercials that ran with the tagline “So Easy A Caveman Can Do It”, but they were certainly excellent in their time. One of Geico’s commercials with the “So Easy A Caveman Can Do It” theme showed the caveman finding a portrait of himself signing up for auto insurance in an airport as the music featured Royksopp’s “Remind Me”:

Well the engagement session went pretty well. It was a beautiful, warm (not too warm) August day. We spent a couple of hours are Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens and then went to downtown Cuyahoga Falls near the Amphitheater and Cuyahoga River (yes, the one and only Burning River) and took Lindsey and Hartley of Memory Productions with us.

I have to say that it was rather weird making some of these poses in front of a couple of people I barely know and letting them take pictures of us. Seriously, it’s not that Jennifer and I aren’t romantic together, but it’s weird to hear your photographer say “Go ahead! Get closer! No one is watching!” or “I know this pose might make you uncomfortable… but let’s try it anyways…” But in all reality, Lindsey and Hartley are great to work with and they were a lot of fun. And as you can see, they took some amazing pictures.

A side not about Stan Hywet: We have time reserved to take pictures there after our wedding on June 12th, 2010. Well, it cost us $400 for the reservation, which is no small chunk of change. They did however, included a year long “Contributing” membership to Stan Hywet which gives us all kinds of benefits at Stan Hywet. We get invited to private parties, special wine tastings, free admission at 240 parks across the country, AND we get unlimited admission throughout the year for us AND up to four guests. Therefore, we didn’t have to pay for Lindsey and Heartly to get in!

More information about Stan Hywet Membership Options

Anyways, now on to the good stuff:

On July 17th, there was a wedding reception planned at the Natatorium. Just like all the other receptions that have been there since March of 2009, we went just to take a look. Earlier that day we were also on the south side of Akron talking to some helpful employee’s at Sully’s Party Rental who said they provided the rental equipment, including a staged head table, and that it looked very nice. I took my camera, and this is what we saw…

Pretty fancy, eh? That’s what we thought. Definitely the fanciest wedding we’ve seen at the Nat to date. They (whoever got married that day) did a really good job at getting things setup and making the Natatorium look very nice. We happened to talk to the mother of the bride who said she did all the floral arrangements. She worked with a local florist who made mockups from silk flowers which she then replicated based on flowers she bought from Michael’s and Pat Catan’s. I think she also said the cake was from Sam’s Club or Giant Eagle (something like that) and she found the stands for like $30. So I think the cake, all together, cost about $100. All of the equipment was provided by Sully’s, who will also be doing all our rentals. It’s goo to know they do good work, as evidenced here – gives you confidence they’ll do the same for you.

We also really liked what they did with the foyer at the Nat. This was the first couple that had done anything with it and they basically did the same thing we’ll do – move all the furniture to the outside and place a couple tall bistro tables with long table clothes and tall floral arrangements on top. Definitely makes the Nat feel more elegant.

They only thing we weren’t sure of is where the DJ was going to setup. We looked around the room… didn’t really seem to find a place he was going to fit in quite right… maybe they were having a silent reception.

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So no matter where we looked around North East Ohio, we couldn’t find any Gable Boxes anywhere. What are Gable Boxes, you say? Yeah that’s exactly what I thought until I found this post on WeddingBee about DIY Out Of Town boxes made using Gable Boxes. I think they’re pretty awesome – and a lot better than a paper bag.

Jennifer and I have decided to use those for our OOT boxes also, but we can’t find a single one in North East Ohio. Thanks to the power of the intertubes, I’ve found lots of stores online that sell them at a relatively decent price:

The Box Depot Gable Boxes

Box and Wrap Gable Boxes

PaperMart Gable Boxes

ULINE Gable Boxes

MrTakeOutBags.com Gable Boxes

The Packaging Source Gable Boxes

USBox.com Gable Boxes

It seems that Gable Boxes come in a lot of different sizes and colors, but you have to be willing to pay for special order items. There are some metallic colors also, but most of the minimum orders for those boxes are around the 500+ range. No, we’re not having 500+ out of town guests.

I ordered some samples from USBox.com because they seem to have decent prices and are one of the only websites that have a way to order samples. I ordered five samples and it cost me $8. Not bad. I think the most common sizes for this use if 9” L x 6” W x 6” H – which is what I ordered for the samples.

While I was there I also ordered samples of some sealable paper bags that we might use for the cookie table:

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When I say “Jump”, you say “How High?”. When I say “Eat”, you say “Where’s the buffet?”. And if I bring you your meal, don’t you dare ask for seconds. Why does everything have to be so black and white? When meeting with 99% of our caterers, the only two options they offer for dinner are sit down, individually plated meals or stand up, get on your feet and wait-in-line buffets. Really? Is that the best you could offer us? Well, family style is making a come back, with a vengeance.

Buffet vs Sit down

My fiancé thinks, and rightfully so, that there is nothing worse than getting your collection of friends and family dressed up, enjoy their company during a big event, then bring them to a fancy banquet hall and make them stand in line for their food like swine waiting their turn of the feeding trough. Maybe that is a bit graphic, but it is the truth. Buffets are appropriate for some events, especially the ones where you don’t have a full service catering staff at your disposal (bbqs, picnics, family reunions, etc). But at elegant events such as your wedding reception, no one should have to wait in line for food.

Equally so, no one should be required to decide 2 months in advance what they would like to eat on your wedding day. Nor should anyone be required to eat a serving of beef and a serving of chicken if they would much rather have two servings of chicken (or beef). These limitations are usually imposed by fancy (pain in the butt) sit-down meals. Either that or your guests happen to change their order at the reception (the caterer gets mad) or they decide to share amongst the table anyways, passing food from plate to plate without the proper equipment. Anyone ever seen a helping of potatoes and gravy smash into a freshly pressed table linen? It’s not pretty.

Family Style

It’s making a come back. The basics are as you’d expect, just like you’ve had at most family meals (that weren’t take-out) and seen at nearly every family gathering since the beginning of time. All plates and utensils are set at the tables before guests arrive and when it is time to eat, the caterer will bring the meal out on large platters with enough food for everyone at the table. Once the food has arrived, everyone can share around the table the goodness the server has brought. If the caterer does it right, the food should be brought in courses, expertly timed, such that as soon as the last course is finished, the next course is brought to the table – piping hot from the kitchen. This means the food is at it’s peak and the extra serving plates are removed from the table, leaving everyone more than enough room to eat and enjoy themselves.

So if you couldn’t tell, we are choosing family style. In a nutshell, here’s why:

Pros

1. No one has to wait in line for food – especially not while dressed up for a fancy event
2. Get what you want: Want more beans, less potatoes? You got it, take what you want!
3. Motivates people to engage each other in conversation
4. Less formal than individually plated sit-down, but far more elegant than buffet
5. Price per person is usually much closer to buffet prices than sit-down prices

Cons

1. Some people may feel uncomfortable asking for another helping of food

Cost? What cost?

That’s right, based on the dozen or so caterers we interviewed we found that 1) family style was significantly cheaper than sit down and 2) only slightly more expensive than buffet. When I say slightly, I mean about only 4-5% more than buffet. In contrast, we found sit down was around 15-20% more than buffet. Why is this the case? I think it is because you just need less service staff. For family style you obviously need more equipment for serving plates and utensils, however you also don’t need the chaffers and serving utensils you would’ve needed for buffet anyways. So I think the added cost comes from employing significantly more service staff to handle plating hundreds of individually plated meals in a matter of minutes and clearing them appropriately, if you do a sit down meal.

Jump on the band wagon

Make it family style and enjoy the benefits of a sit down meal without the cost of a sit down meal. That’s what all the cool couples are doing!

In the third (and probably final) installment we feature: St. Thomas Banquet Hall, Todaro’s Party Center

As you might have read, we chose the Cuyahoga Falls Natatorium as the banquet hall for our wedding reception. With this, we get the freedom of choosing any vendors we would like (including the caterer, obviously) which has worked out very well for us. However, there are definitely advantages in choosing a hall that has a dedicated caterer. Most of the time, the food is prepared on site and the caterer knows the kitchen and hall very well. Preparing food onsite can be a good thing because preparing food offsite and serving it at it’s peak perfection is not something easily taught – it can only be learned through years of experience and experimentation. If you do decide to go with an outside caterer, you need to be aware of your caterer’s experience in that area.

There are also some halls that offer the complete package, usually including a wedding coordinator (or at least reception coordinator) that will handle a lot of the details for you. This can be good if you don’t have a lot of time (or patience) for planning a wedding yourself and would rather let the professionals handle it for you. Usually going with a place like this will mean you spend less in the long run, rather than hiring each service individually. I did say usually because that is not always the case. Do the homework, interview vendors, make some lists, then make a decision.

And now we cover two more reception halls in North East Ohio…

St. Thomas Banquet Hall in Fairlawn, OH
555 S Cleveland-Massilon Rd Fairlawn, OH

St. Thomas Banquet Hall has a very nice, large hall that will accommodate up to 400 (I think, maybe a little less). They have a nice serving room that is off the main hall and can be used for the buffet (if you go that route) or anything you choose to use it for. They also have a stage, which you can see in the pictures is where they normally have the head table. They also have a very nice courtyard where you can hold the cocktail hour (very fancy).

Todaro’s Party Center in Akron, OH
1820 Akron-Peninsula Road Akron, Ohio 44321

Todaro’s is a very nice banquet hall. They have a nice outdoor area where you can also
have you ceremony. I would say that it is similar to Guy’s Party Centre in that they have a decent
idea of how each wedding reception should be ran. They provide a good amount of services for
you, so if you’re looking to make your wedding planning simple (if that’s even possible),
Todaro’s might be the place.