THE Indy Area Vendor Showcase – BRIDAL SHOW 2009

When: Sunday, March 29th, 2009
Time: 12pm – 5pm
Where: The Sheraton City Center31 West Ohio Street21st Floor
Indianapolis, Indiana 46204
Cost: $5/attendee a portion of the proceeds to benefit THE PINK ENVELOPE PROJECT

Come and tour the newly renovated 21st Floor of The Sheraton Hotel City Centre. The Panorama Room is a favorite among area brides with it’s spectacular views of Indianapolis. You’ll meet some of Indys best wedding and event vendors from photographers and videographers to invitation, cake and floral designers and get wonderful ideas from e-vents: a wedding and event planning boutique for beautiful table scapes and decor. Enjoy over the top extras such as free champagne and food samples, photo booths, entertainment and spa services. We’ll even have a mini chapel set up. It is a great way to meet area vendors. You may find the vendor you are looking for!

Better yet, youll be helping a GREAT cause The Pink Envelope Project - a division of Making Memories Breast Cancer Foundation. You’ll also have a chance to win some fantastic prizes including free hotel stays, event planning, free engagement or photo sessions,makeup makeovers, spa products and services, i-tunes gift cards and MUCH, MUCH more.Early bird registration entitles you to even more prize entries.

The first 100 brides to register will receive THE Bridal Swag Bag full of great items!

The Hummingbird Card Company

Following the image you have it straight from the horse's mouth on how these incredible works of art you can be included in your wedding stationery.

{image: The Hummingbird Card Company}

"Irresistibly simple and sophisticated, the Hummingbird handwriting can perfectly set the scene for your day. Each card from the 'Letters' collection can stand alone or be mixed in with our other designs. The letters collection looks fabulous in all the card ranges, but works particularly well on the white cards... contour and laid, with any colour ribbon and! Add a sparkling diamante to really make them stand out. The range includes: save the date, R.S.V.P., day and evening invitations, order of service, order of the day, menu, place cards, favour tags, table plans, table numbers and thank you cards."

Pretty, Pretty Aprons....

I pretty much love everything on at Anthropologie, but these aprons just make me want to cook! And if you know anything about me personally, that is saying a lot. I just figure if I am going to be trying my hand at cooking now that I will be "Wife," I should look good too.

Maybe these little ladybugs will prove lucky for me!

How could fireman yell at me for starting too many fires if I looked so sweet and innocent in this?

Imagine how great turkey would taste when I'M properly "dressed."

{images: Anthropologie.com}

New York Daily News Article w/Sylvia Weinstock...

{image:1weddingsource.com}

I couldn't resist sharing this great article from the New York Daily Times featuring Sylvia Weinstock. The one thing to know about cakes is Sylvia is the "Queen" of taste and style when it comes to event cakes. Her wedding cakes are something stand apart from them all.

NY wedding cake icon dishes out the secrets of her stunning treats
BY PATRICK HUGUENIN
Sunday, December 14th 2008, 4:00 AM


Sylvia Weinstock has long been the wedding cake queen of New York. In the past three decades, she has risen from home kitchen roots to the kind of culinary fame that invites, among other accolades, a name-check on "Gossip Girl." Her lavish book "Sylvia Weinstock's Sensational Cakes" (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, $45) shows off a generous helping of buttercream. We caught up with Weinstock for the secrets behind her show-stoppers........

In the introduction, it says that you had no cake at your wedding. Why not?
That's true. When we got married, we were very young and very poor - we were two college students! I wore a gray dress that I wore for 10 years. Didn't have a wedding cake. Didn't have a honeymoon. We were college students and we went back to school. I went to Washington Irving High School and then to Hunter College. My husband went to Queens College and NYU Law. So we're very committed to this wonderful city.

You also say that you hate fondant. Too chewy?
You see, people who like fondant like it because of the way it looks. But if you're a food person, you're not going to eat that. I also think that if you have great skills, as my staff does, you can make buttercream look just like fondant. Every one of those cakes in the pictures are made with buttercream, only it doesn't look it. They're smooth, and they're well put together.


Your flowers are your trademark, and they are shockingly realistic. What's the process to making them?
How I first started was to get a real flower, like a real rose, and to take each petal off and lay them in a row to see how it's structured, and then try to make them in sugar and work it backward. So you make the core and then the inner petals and then the outer petals and then you put it next to a real flower to see, what do I do to make it look even better? In that book, there are photographs of two flowerpots of orchids side by side; one is cake. Our goal is to try to duplicate as closely as possible what nature does.

And you do it by hand?
It's a sugar dough; you roll it out, and you cut each petal to shape and put it in the palm of your hand, and you build up the petals and you put them together. So if you have a peony, you've got many petals. A big, fat rose has many petals. [It can take] thousands of hours of work.

How did you develop this goal of imitating nature so closely?
I started almost 30 years ago. At that time, people put fresh flowers on a cake. I'd seen Mexicans make flowers out of bread dough, and when I learned to make this sugar and I could roll it thin and stretch it, I realized, why can't you make a flower out of it?

What were the first reactions you got?
When I started in the '80s in New York City, everybody thought, "Wow, not only is this beautiful, but the cake is delicious." And the reason is because you could make these flowers in advance and stockpile them and you can put them on a freshly baked cake. So the cake you eat is maybe 24 hours old. Some cakes back then, they could spend three weeks decorating them, so who could eat that?

Have you had a chance to make a great cake for yourself recently?
Sunday morning, I make a yeast coffee cake. For me. I happen to like yeast coffee cakes, so my husband and I will do that.

I've only had ones made with baking powder.
You've never had a yeast coffee cake? Oh, no. Try yeast. Yeast is wonderful. You do it in the morning, let it rest, roll it, let it rest, and then you put it in the oven and let it rise. You'll have it in the afternoon. You should try yeast. It's easy.

And what's your favorite dessert cake?
I love yellow butter cake, and I love it with lemon curd and fresh raspberries. I always find that delicious.

Russel+Hazel Wedding Planner

If you are just starting out or haven't yet found a wedding planner that can really be tailored to your specific needs check out Russel+hazel's Wedding Organizer Set. If you can't spring for the binder, don't let all of their templates go to waste! I think they are one of the most comprehensive free checklists available online and all you have to do is print them out and add them to a cute binder you find at your local store. Make sure you have a few places to place anything you tear out of magazines. The three-hole punched, plastic, presentation sheets works for me. Get a binder pouch filled with good graph paper, ruler, tape measure, and calculator and you will be ready for anything. [Hint: Fill everything out in pencil so you won't sweat having to make the envitable changes in your planning.]

Silhouettes..... a Saturday indulgence.

If you are looking for a party favor, great decor, and some memorable fun for your guests, consider hiring a silhouette artist!

Each guest takes one silhoutte home and displays the other.

The bride and groom get to keep those put on display!

Snip! Snip! Snip!

I don't know why but if you mention silhouette anything, I go nuts. The co-creator of our Save The Dates and I had briefly thought of using silhouettes in some way but we just couldn't think of what to do. Now I have been drowning in fantastic ideas to incorporate them into a wedding. Duet Weddings, a great blog I check every chance I get, thankfully has a similar obsession and I found these great shots of a silhouette artist in action.