Que Bueno!

So we made the bakery rounds this weekend, and we made some interesting discoveries. First, what most traditional bakeries consider wedding cake tastes like sponge and high-fructose corn syrup. The customer service was nice enough at the first place we went, and the decoration available seemed imaginative, but the cake samples seemed like they were straight out of 1955. Super sweet, dry as a bone, sicky-sweet filling, and very little flavor. I guess that must be what most people want out of a wedding cake, since that's what's available at most places.

But not us! On a whim, we checked out Arandas Bakery, and we were totally impressed. Not only did they have all the great Mexican pastries that we loved when we were in Mexico, but they do wedding cakes, too! The front window had a gigantic cake (designed for a quinceanera) consisting of no less than six individual cakes. Obviously, not quite our style. But here's the deal: they'll do a tres leches wedding cake! If you've never tried it, walk right over to your local panaderia and grab some! It's basically a cake soaked in three kinds of milk (hence the name), giving it a distinctively moist texture and rich taste. It comes in several flavors, including coffee, strawberry, and chocolate, along with the plain version. Yummmm....

We've got a few more places to check out before we make a final decision, but we've got at least one (very) good choice...

Crunch Time

After a nice, long lull in wedding planning, the time has come to actually get stuff done! We're only 4 months out (aah!), and this week we're trying to get our caterer nailed down. Most of the wedding-how-to books say you're supposed to book much earlier than that, but...we like to live dangerously. So this week we're meeting with two local restaurants (Hungry's and Niko Niko's!) to get catering proposals, and then we're heading over to Three Brothers Bakery on Saturday to scout out The Cake. Plus we've got two or three more potential caterers and bakers in mind. It's all somewhat intimidating - can't we just order a bunch of pizza and get a keg?

In other news, Zoe's found the seamstress who'll be making her dress, and we're working on finding a calligrapher for our wedding certificate (a tradition in Quaker weddings). The paper that we'll use to make the invitations (yeah, DIY, baby!) should arrive any day now, too. Plus we've been scouting out registry stuff. I swear, Crate & Barrel must make 90% of their annual profits off of couples who go in there and go postal with the scanner gun. When we went last Saturday, it was couples & scanners as far as the eye could see...