So my youngest sister, who runs the shop, Shoda, from Boston, has recently added baking me and The Doctor’s wedding cake to the list of items she would like to do on May 9.

Mind you, she is also the same one who is designing my hot red wedding dress.

Chinese Red Dresses (But remember, Sue is half-Taiwanese!)

Let’s take a look at same of her sample wedding cakes from the other night.

Jewish Wedding Cake: Oy ve!

Just like Magnolia's Cupcakes

Okay, just kidding.  Sort of.  While my sister did bake these bagels (and, as The Doctor said, “I don’t even know any Jews on the Upper West Side who could make bagels like that!”), I don’t think we need to serve bagels as dessert to our families.

This is what my sister has been working on.

Sue and The Doctor's Wedding Cake: First Draft

My sister, let’s call her Debbie, has already been working on perfecting swiss buttercream frosting, and, I may or may not have requested that Nutella (that’s right Jen, did you just start foaming at the mouth?) be in between the layers of cake.

Hmm… will my cake look like this?

This looks like a cake of baby bottles. Or does it?

Or, perhaps, this?

This would merge perfectly with an orange wedding dress!

Or, ahem, like this!

Simple, elegant and all for me!

Frankly, I could eat that last cake all by myself.  Too bad there are going to be another 14 people at our wedding.

Love,

DomestiGal Sue

Dear DomestiGal Jen,

Sigh.

It’s so nice to be back in DomestiGal land.  You know, I imagine doing the blogger-to-wordpress transition must be more difficult than transitioning from being single-and-fabulous to married-and-still-fabulous.

What do you think?

At first we were having heavier than a 4 karat diamond problems with the transition, but, a last minute angel in the form of Ms. Sherika Henry swooped down and saved our DomestiGal derrieres!

I mean, our blog in Mozilla is now about as hot as Michelle Obama’s dress (hello, Jen, you *totally* failed to mention that Jason Wu is clearly my distant-Asian-cousin) thanks to Sherika Henry of Just Eat Smart.  Not only is this girl insanely talented with web design, she’s also smart, sexy and will be guest posting as our resident Health Expert!  DomestiGals HEART Sherika big time!

For now, it’s most important to focus our ladies out there in wedding-planning-land and our collective continued fabulosity.  These last 2 months have been insanely busy and wonderful with work, family introductions, more work, more family introductions and travel.

Remember how The Doctor’s family was going to come up to Vermont to meet my family?  It went ridiculously well.  Rid Ic Ul Ous Ly well.

My mom and his mom became BFF almost immediately.  They hugged, they kissed, they cried.

I became nauseous from all the love.

The Doctor took a nap, he was so overwhelmed.

We had a most excellent mixture of traditional Thanksgiving turkey, Asian food and too many bottles of wine to remember.  We showed them around Vermont, took them up to Montreal, and introduced them to grandma.

Since then, my mom and The Doctor’s mom can’t seem to stop sending each other emails and gifts in the mail.  It has gotten a bit out of control, I must admit.

Gift #1:  Doctor’s Mom sends pre-visit bottles of wine.

Gift #2:  Doctor’s Mom sends expired-cordials.

Gift #3:  Domestic Partner’s Asian Mom sends Vermont honey, Vermont maple syrup and Vermont Teddy Bear.

Catastrophe #1:  Doctor’s Mom realizes that she has sent expired-cordials and spends the next 3 days obsessing in person, over email and over the phone with The Doctor and The Doctor’s Domestic Partner (moi) over whether Asian Mom and White Dad realized (they did) and how she can make up for it (she can’t).

Gift #4:  Doctor’s Mom sends new cordials that are not expired with 2 page apology note saying she hopes these are better, she didn’t realize that the other chocolates were expired until she bit into the set of chocolates she had bought for herself, how these new chocolates are Swiss ones she bought in Aruba so that should really be okay, and how much she loves The Doctor and The Domestic Partner together.

Gift #5:  Doctor’s Mom sends flowers to celebrate Domestic Partner’s Asian mom’s birthday awesome-ness.

Phew.

While it’s not immediately clear from what I just posted, I do love my Domestic-Partner-Mom-in-Law.  And my Domestic-Partner-Father-in-Law who left me a message the other day saying, “Domestic Partner, I love you, I love your dad, I love your mom, I love your sisters and I love The Doctor.”

Like I said, I total and complete Love Fest.

But back to my Asian mom.

While my mom may not have the hard-as-ice body of Madonna when she turned 50.

Madonna

For a 54 year old woman, my Asian lil’ mom looks A to the Mazing.  I’m guessing she’ll look as hot as Suzanne Somers of thighmaster popularity when she turns 60.

Suzanne Somers

Which gives me hope that I’ll have all her successful Asian genes to lead me forth in my 30th year, and, that maybe, one day, I may actually want to be a Bride to Be.

xx,

DomestiGal Sue

I’ll put it this way – writing a ceremony is hard enough when you know what’s supposed to happen. Writing a ceremony when you don’t know what makes up a ceremony? That’s a fast way to burn three weekends in a row.

Thankfully for everyone involved, there were many parts of planning a wedding that I already had some experience in – planning special events is part of my job so contacting caterers, tasting little desserts, and making sure that table cloths were spic and span was something that I knew a bit about. But what I was looking forward to, hoping about, and imagining as we got closer to the wedding was, decidedly, the flowers.

No matter how many bridal magazines I looked through they were the only thing I saw. I had it all planned out – we would having a very local wedding, all the vendors would be within 10 blocks of the church, it would be eco-chic! I knew exactly what I wanted – but not being a florist I didn’t know what flowers went into it, so I drew up a list of everything I could describe my dream bouquet to be.

It would be woodsy, organic, local, the main colours would be green, white, and blue – it would be wild looking, with thistles maybe, and willow branches – something more undone than most bridal flowers.

I set up my first meeting, puffed myself up, put on my cute “I’m a young, laid back bride, please get me!” outfit and went out.

When I got to the shop I was pleasantly surprised – the woman was young, sweet, and owned the shop, it would work! I could feel it. We started talking – I used my best design terminology, pointed at pictures in wedding magazines and her portfolio, and then set my papers down. We were on the same page, I knew it all along.

And then she said it.

Florist #1: “I’m…..I’m thinking….Gerber daisies. And I
might be going out on a limb here – but I’m thinking all white Gerber
daisies. What do you think?”
Bea: “You’re….I’m sorry? No, I don’t think that Gerber
daisies are wild enough really that’s….we’re….all Gerber daisies?”
Florist #2: “No no, you’re right….what about Gerber daisies
and some Baby’s Breath? Or if you’re thinking wild we could do bear
grass instead – that’s very wild.”
Bea: “I was kind of hoping that you could shop with local
growers, so we could have something a bit more unique.”
Florist #1

I was shocked and disappointed, I knew I couldn’t be the only bride looking for something a little outside the norm! I set up meeting after meeting only to be told by four other florists that no one wanted what I wanted, that it wouldn’t be possible to find, and that I really should be Gerber daisies. Whoever this Gerber is – I tell you he is paying florists to push his damn daisies!!

The flowers were the biggest sticking point in the whole planning process. It took over a month in my four month wedding planning process to get them hammered out. Finally after being dragged from meeting to meeting with less enthusiasm every time, I met a woman whose eyes got wide when I described what I hoped for and who said, “Well, it’s not what we usually do – but I think I know exactly what you mean.”

Forget finding someone who is worth marrying - finding the right florist turned out to be one of the hardest relationships I worked at while we were planning the wedding. But opening the boxes of bouquets on The Day Of? It was worth every Gerber Daisy someone tried to sell me.