Wedding Details – Intro and Carytown Cupcakes

Did you know that the average wedding today costs about 25 grand?! Personally, in today’s economy, I have no idea how the average is so high.

Dan and I both have decent paying jobs, but going into our wedding planning, we promised ourselves two things. First, we would NEVER go into debt over a one-day party (no matter how unique a day it was going to be). Second, even if we miraculously won the lottery and could afford an extravagant wedding, we would keep our bottom line well under the $25,000 mark.

Taking these two guidelines into account, I am extremely happy with all of the wedding vendors that we chose to work with. They all provided excellent services, and each one came at a very reasonable price. My best advice to any newly engaged couple is to shop around, get recommendations, and don’t go with an expensive venue just because they have a good review on The Knot. Chances are you can find someone equally as good for much less.

For my next few posts, I am going to take a little time to give props to the venues that Dan and I got to work with. These posts will be FULL of wedding photos and what we liked or didn’t like about each venue.

Carytown Cupcakes
For today’s post I am going to send a big THANK YOU to the folks who made our wedding cake and cupcakes – Carytown Cupcakes.

As many people do these days, Dan and I decided to have cupcakes at our wedding instead of the traditional large, tiered cake. Cupcakes are so much more manageable, and you can usually get more than one kind of cupcake for your guests to enjoy.

Choosing a vendor was easy for us because we are both big fans of Carytown Cupcakes in Richmond, VA. Their price was unbeatable (under $300, compared to the $700 and up prices of the bakeries in northern Virginia), and we are STILL getting complements from our guests about the cupcakes.

After sampling many different types of cupcakes, our final list included:

• Red velvet (my favorite)
• Vegan pumpkin chocolate chip (Dan’s favorite)
• Gluten free caramel apple
• Dirt/oreo, complete with gummy worms
• Carrot cake

Our only challenge for the wedding cake was bringing the cupcakes up from Richmond. After speaking with the owner, Dawn, we decided to freeze the cupcakes and have Dan’s father bring them up from Richmond with him. This worked very well, and did not hurt the flavor of the cupcakes.

To display the cupcakes, Dan and I purchased old wooden farm crates, which we laid on their sides and stacked on a table. This made fun little compartments where we could stash all the cupcakes.

In addition to the guest cupcakes, Dan and I had a little six inch cake made for us. This enabled us to do the traditional cutting of the cake, without having tons of left overs. The edges of the cake were decorated with grape vine clippings that we gathered from local vineyards, and the cake topper was made of Leggos. :)

PS: Special thanks for the pictures goes to our fantastic photographer, Stephanie!