Don’t forget to enter my Self Workout in the Park Giveaway.
This weekend Frank and I went upstate to attend our “grand tasting” and to take care of other wedding details. It’s getting down to the wire on booking things and we are in full steam ahead mode!
We are working with Mazzone, a company that is the exclusive caterer to many venues in the capital district. Rather than set up hundreds of tastings, they host four “grand tastings” a year and invite you to pick the one that works with your schedule.
It’s a cool idea because you get to sample so many different appetizers, entrees, sides and desserts. You also get to see how they serve a few hundred people at once. We didn’t get a whole lot of personal attention, but we have a meeting with our event coordinator next month and we’ll already have a good idea of what we want.
Here’s just a quick sample of what we tried. I only had my phone, so the photos don’t do the food justice.
I didn’t get a shot of any of the items from the vegetarian room, but they had cauliflower steak which was one of my favorite dishes of the night!
The real highlight for me might have been meeting photographer JP Elario. I read his blog almost everyday for wedding and vendor ideas. There are many great photographers upstate, but Elario has hands down the best blog. I always feel like I was at the wedding and he links to almost every vendor used. It’s actually been invaluable in my own planning! After I gushed all over about how great his blog was, we hopped in the Elario Photobooth.
I am still a very bad jumper.
The rest of the weekend was spent trying to run and getting rained out, which wasn’t ideal considering all the eating we did. But we did manage to get in one sweatfest of a spin workout.
Frank’s parents came into town to finalize the rehearsal dinner location. I’m happy to say–we did it! We even nailed down our after party locations. Somewhere along the way, I got to meet Giddy P. who works at the gift shop at the Gideon Putnam. He is one hardworking bear. And that is one hardworking dress 
While I was fairly exhausted when I got home from the weekend, I am more excited then ever to get down to the details of wedding planning! The one thing I really didn’t expect going into planning was how often you have to compromise or pick one thing over another. For example, we wanted to get married in a church, but we also wanted people to arrive at the reception venue during daylight since the venue is in a very beautiful park. However, the church only had a 5:30 ceremony, so it might be close-to-dark by the time people arrive at the reception. Yet, we didn’t want to get married at the reception venue if we couldn’t do it outside–and in late October, outside is a gamble. I’ve found that once I realized I couldn’t have everything I wanted, but I could pick the things I wanted most, I’ve been much happier moving forward with decisions.
American Red Cross 
