August was a sweet month of wedding planning! Read on to see what planning we did with 5 months until the wedding. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out my posts on the pre-planning I did before we were engaged, and the planning we did 9 months, 8 months, 7 months, and 6 months before the wedding. Enjoy!

Cake Tasting/Order Cake

We decided to try Cakes by Ron for our cake tasting. They’re a huge presence in Sarasota and Jared’s had cupcakes from them at work before. Jared doesn’t even really like cake and he said it was good, so I took that as a good sign.

We had our design meeting/tasting with Ron’s son at the cake shop and it was great! We were amazed at how he sketched out the cake design right as I was describing it to him. When he was done, I couldn’t believe it! It was exactly what I wanted! It was so beautiful already and it was just a super quick sketch done with pencil.

Then they brought out 5 of their cupcakes for us to taste. (L-R) funfetti, salted caramel, Boston cream, red velvet, and double chocolate. They were all really good, but we could barely take more than a bite of each because they were so sweet and rich. Our favorite was definitely the funfetti, but I didn’t really want funfetti cake for the wedding cake.

We ended up going with an almond cake with buttercream icing. I’m a big cake person so I’m super excited for it! I would definitely recommend Cakes by Ron based on our experience so far!

Picked up my wedding band

I had ordered my wedding band from Kay last month and it came back from getting sized this month. Now it’s finally in my possession! I wasn’t sure if I would like a wedding band since my engagement ring has an infinity band, but when I tried it on perfectly sized, I was obsessed! It’s so sparkly and blends in really well. You can hardly tell, but it fits right in along the bottom of my ring.

Book Honeymoon

Deciding on where to go for our honeymoon was a really difficult task – and COVID just made it even harder. We originally wanted to do a European cruise, but clearly that’s not a possibility with the pandemic going on. Then we started thinking of other places we might like to go. Jared said he wanted to go somewhere tropical and he started doing his research. (When he gets excited about something, he dives head first into researching it). He texted me one day from work and said, “Would you want to go to Bali for our honeymoon?” Of course I responded with a resounding YES!

We looked into it and Bali is one of the most price-conscious honeymoon destinations as far as tropical, international locations go. Jared didn’t want to just go to the Caribbean because we’ve been there on cruises. He wants this to be a trip of a lifetime.

We contacted the travel agent our family has used before, Monica at Cruz Bugs, and asked her if she had any packages for Bali. We told her the places and activities we’ve looked into and what we wanted the trip to be like. We also gave her a ballpark budget. She came back with an incredible 9-night package that included 3 resort stays and excursions at each one! We looked at it and said, “That’s pretty much exactly what we want!” She made the process so easy and walked us through everything, really listening to what we envisioned for our honeymoon.

We chose Bali because at the time, they were still open to tourists and operating during COVID. The day after we put our deposit down, Bali announced they are not accepting tourists through the end of 2020. Fortunately, we are not going on our honeymoon until July 2021 because of my school schedule. We’re hoping it will open back up before then. If not, Monica found us great travel insurance that we purchased when we put down our deposit and the deposit wasn’t too much money.

We understand things can change at the drop of a hat, but we’re choosing to remain hopeful that it will all work out!