Yesterday we had a pretty long and thorough conference call trying to wrap up the details. We’re getting close. One the agenda: menu, decorating, ceremony details, cocktail hour, lighting.

The Menu – We did decide to scale back on the cocktail hour a bit. Instead of the individual appetizers, we’re going with a couple of displays. The tropical display with the yogurt honey sauce and a fruit and cheese montage. We’ll also server a pre-determined amount of a festive ’signature cocktail’ (still to be determined), beer, and non-alcoholic beverages.

For dinner, We’re going with the Marriott’s Four Corners Buffet. The ‘corners’ are Asian, Middle Eastern, Aruban and Mexican. We decided early on that we wanted to substitute one of the corners for Indian. Problem is that all four of them look so good that we’re having a hard time deciding which to eliminate. To complicate things further, I finally realized how many ‘meat and potatoes’ guests I have that will be a little lost surrounded by so much ethnic food. So we’ve asked for an ‘American’ corner. We’re really happy that they are very accommodating with menu customization. While the American corner won’t be exotic like the others, at least I know my family will eat! (How strange that I crave all kinds of exotic food when I was raised in a family that could live on hamburger helper, mac and cheesa and pizza!) We are supposed to have our menu selections submitted by today, but they are being gracious enough to give us until Saturday.

The Cake and Ice Cream – Each of the buffet corners does have a desert with it so we won’t serve cake for a while. When we enter the reception we will get the formalities out of the way. They will introduce us, we’ll do our dance, we’ll cut the cake, do the champagne toast and then eat! Halfway through the reception, around 9:30-10pm (as guests are hopefully hot from dancing and getting a little hungry), we’ll be surprising the guests by bringing out an ice cream sundae station! We figure that’s when we’ll also serve the cake. The picture here is the one they are supposed to be creating. My groom is kind of funny sometimes. A two tier cake should be more than adequate to feed our guests. However even he agrees that it looks nicer as three tiers so he’s the one insisting on getting way more cake than we need because it ‘looks prettier’! Each tier will be a different flavor combination. There is no extra charge for that. The base will be white cake with strawberry filling, the middle will be chocolate cake with chocolate filling and the top will be carrot cake with a cream cheese filling. Keep in mind with cakes – forget about buttercreme frosting – they have to be fondant (assuming your reception will be outdoors). Anything other than fondant will totally melt in the heat. And all that extra cake? We’ll have them box it up and send the guests with an extra slice at the end of the night.

Cocktail Hour: As mentioned, we scaled back the appetizers, added tiki torches and have asked that some seating be available for the older guests.

Ceremony Details: I think we have an arch selected. I STILL can’t decide between a carpet runner or rose petals. I’ve seen really pretty rose petaled aisles where they are laid out in an ombre pattern, blending from one color to another. I like the idea of starting with dark pink to medium pink to orange. But with the wind, will the rose petals just blow away? And I kind of feel like there should be some sort of decoration, but can’t bring myself to spend much decorating what will be a 20 minute ceremony. So, the ceremony is pretty weak.

Lighting: the latest challenge. I wrote plenty in “Lighting – No floodlights Please“.

Other details: Once upon a time I was told we would see some sort of computer illustration of the layout of our event. Well, the most important area I want to see is the pool deck where the lounge will be. Guess what is not in their software? The pool deck. The lawn is but I have never been sent any sort of illustration. I wonder, how much space will the tables / canopy take? Where should the bar be placed? etc. So, I’m afraid that stuff will just be decided when we get there. That’s not all bad, but this ‘computer rendering’ I was excited about is a mystery to us. Does it really exist? I was hoping it would help me see just how much of the lawn the tables take up, help me figure out how many tiki torches I might want, visualize the flow of things better. At least we’re getting down there three days before the wedding.