Wedding Blog: Wedding Planning Tastes So Gooooood!

So I want to take a vote. Raise your hand if before ever being seriously involved with your future spouse, you had thought of (and possibly planned) how your wedding day would go. Keep 'em up! Now I'm almost certain that 99.99% of those who raised their hands were female!

Now be honest. How many of you girls were marrying your Barbie & Ken dolls??

I can't remember exactly when I first starting thinking about marriage. I want to say it was relatively late – maybe not until college. But even during those thoughts, I was more so thinking of what married life would be like, not how the wedding day would go. I mean, I'm sure growing up I probably had some assumptions about the wedding, based on things I had seen in movies and the like, but I definitely wasn't walking the red and pink Power Rangers down the aisle to unite them in holy matrimony!

I think it's because girls have been thinking about their wedding day for sooo long that the guys take a back seat during the planning of it. Shoot, some guys are in a whole 'nother car a few exits back when it comes to wedding planning.

Thus far, I've been pretty involved in the planning of our wedding. I've had my hand in just about everything, except for the wedding dress (because apparently I can't see it at all until our wedding day). I've actually been getting quite a deal of compliments for being such an involved groom-to-be. I'm very appreciative of the praise, but I can't take full credit like it's 100% altruistic. Of course I want to be a good fiancé and help out Rashida, but to be honest there are some ulterior motives behind me being so involved (aside from the fact that by nature I'm someone who's involved with planning).

My new mantra.

Ulterior Motive #1 is that the more involved I am in the planning, the more control I have over keeping us within our budget. Sounds kind of bad (and obvious), but the more money we don't spend on the wedding, the more money we'll have for our new life together. I'm not saying that if left alone Rashida would go all wild and crazy with the money (cuz if she would, we'd have much bigger issues than the wedding), but it's those "is it REALLY worth $300 more for the napkins to be "kelly green" instead of regular ol' green?" questions that help keep costs down.

You've heard the phrase "Happy Wife, Happy Life" right? Well there is the "happy fiancé, your engagement won't be doomsday" corollary. Enter Ulterior Motive #2. The more involved I am in the planning, (hopefully) the less stressed Rashida will be, which in turn will make my life muuuuuch better. As I'm coming to find out, wedding planning is pretty stressful when you can't afford a wedding planner. There are emails to send out, meetings to attend, decisions to make, etc. Rashida sometimes already feels overwhelmed with all the stuff that we have to do, and I'm right there helping her with everything. I can only imagine what it'd be like if she were rollin' solo. You may find it surprising, but her "stressedness" doesn't just go away when I go over to visit her. So in an effort to make our time together more enjoyable, I help with the planning to reduce her stress. Well, that and back rubs...

But fellas, even if you're like "Ben her parents are paying for the wedding so she can knock herself out for all I care!" or "Ben I'm too lazy... I'll just take an L during the engagement period", I highly suggest that you at least participate in the food tasting. Why?? Because it's free fooood!!! I never knew this (well honestly I never really thought about it), but as you're trying to find a location for the reception, you also get to taste the catered food they'll be serving. And guess what?! It's all F-R-E-E!!

One of the many dishes we got to try for free at the Biltmore Hotel

Rashida and I spent our lunch & dinner on Saturday tasting the food at our top 2 location choices. The first place gave us full plates and meals! Of course, all the meat-tasting was left to me, so I was definitely stuffed afterwards. Rashida ended up trying two veggie dishes, so she left the tasting 5 lbs heavier too.

Rashida slurping up a bite of the pasta primavera

The place was cool because for the meats, they had many different sauces available. So instead of getting multiple dishes of chicken and multiple dishes of beef (which I definitely couldn't have finished), they gave me one of each, with two different sauces to try for each. Rashida originally only got a pasta dish with marinara sauce, but after being wary of how that would impact her wedding dress, they also let her try an alternate ravioli dish.

Proof that going with the pasta was a bad idea. Where's club soda when you need it??

The second location wasn't as generous or accommodating of Rashida's meatlessness, but the NBA Dunk Contest (while extremely disappointing) was on TV so it made the experience a bit better. Instead of full plates to try, they only gave us little handful samplers. There was a greater variety of food, but after coming off a stuffed lunch, we were expecting a bit more. And unfortunately most of the food wasn't vegetarian-friendly, so Rashida was still hungry when we left. That's not a good sign for our wedding reception...

Feeding each other food is only one of the perks of food tasting

Rashida and I already have had two cake tasting as well. Those have been fun because not only do we get to try a handful of flavors, we get to take whatever's left over in a to-go box! We have another tasting scheduled for sometime this week and potentially a fourth for this weekend. I'm going to need to make an appointment with the dentist when this is all said and done.

With all this free food we've been getting, Rashida and I were joking around that if planning for a wedding wasn't so time-consuming (we still have to find a photographer, videographer, DJ, florist, etc.), we'd just spend every weekend scheduling tastings with various caterers who we're "interested" in. We could use all the money we'd be saving on food towards a better photographer or an hour more music with the DJ.

So fellas, if you're hemming and hawing about joining your fiancée (i.e., the woman you love) on the tastings, I would strongly suggest that you go! Not only will you get to taste good food for free, but she'll think you're so loving and caring for taking time out of your "busy" schedule to join her for the tasting. Unless of course she reads my blog too... Then it's just about the good food...

Be sure to check out the full album of pictures from the food tasting...

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