It's Marineh again, from Harsanik.com. Shant & I recently did our tasting at Taglyan Cultural Complex in Los Angeles, and I have to share what a great experience it was. I had heard from multiple people that the food at Taglyan, exclusively catered by Divine Food & Catering, is one of the best so I was excited to actually try it out.

Here is a 5 step guide for all bride and groom-to-be's on how to have a successful and enjoyable tasting experience:
1) Schedule in Advance - The Taglyan team was very easy to work and accommodating when it came to scheduling our tasting.

2) Request for a Copy of The Menu For Review - Taglyan has a standard menu available in PDF format that they emailed out to me. Note that the chefs at Taglyan can make pretty much anything from any country, so just because an item is not on the menu it doesn't mean they don't have it! So don't worry when you first see the menu and don't see one of your favorite dishes listed. I promise you they can make it for you.

3) Choose Family Style, Plated, or Buffet Style - This was a big decision for Shant & I. We debated between the options and decided to go with family style appetizers, and buffet style for the entrees and sides. We both preferred family style for appetizers because we wanted food on the table when our guests walked into the hall. And we agreed on buffet style for the entrees because it allows people to have their food when they want, avoiding having food get cold because they stayed on the dance floor too long! (I bet many of you have experienced eating cold meat because you insisted on dancing a few extra songs!)

4) Choose Items To Taste - Before I had my tasting, I wasn't sure how many items a couple gets to taste at a tasting. So I asked Gary, one of the owners of Taglyan Cultural Complex, and he explained to me a bit of background about tastings.

Traditionally, tastings used to be an experience where the bride & groom-to-be would come to the hall after booking, and the chef would present different plates based on the chef's preference. So there was no choosing process.

However, in modern times, the bride & groom get to choose different items from the menu to taste. Generally, you should follow the rule: 3 appetizers, 3 side dishes, and 3 entrees.

5) Enjoy! - This is the fun part! And I have to say the team at Taglyan made it extremely fun for us! Once we were seated at one of the set-up tables, they first brought out the appetizers. The two most delicious items were the sarma and the boreg! The side dishes were fantastic - our favorite being the rice with the toasted pine nuts, almonds, and cranberries. And last they brought out the entrees. The beef & chicken kabob was delicious. They also had prime aged Fillet Mignon with red wine reduction that was amazing. I also had made a special request for "fesenjoon', which is a Persian dish made with chicken, pomegranate juice, and crushed walnuts. And I was surprised how great that turned out!

Overall our tasting experience at Taglyan was fabulous! The food, the service, and the atmosphere were all perfect. Even the chefs came out and talked to us and asked us what we liked and if there were any changes that we would like to make.

After the tasting, we decided our menu for the wedding. At that point, we were even more excited about our upcoming wedding and we were both so glad we had picked Taglyan Cultural Complex as our wedding venue!

Hi there - it's Marineh from Harsanik.com. For my engagement party at Casa Del Mar, I decided to have a fruit table. There are so many advantages to having a fruit table - it adds beautiful decor to your event, it offers healthy and delicious food, and it's very popular amongst guests!

I contacted Hasmik's Party Services for my engagement, and Hasmik and her team did a great job! The fruit table arrangement was beautiful. The quality of the fruit was amazing. And they had a staff member stay throughout the whole event to stock up on the fruit and keep the fruit table clean & tidy.

Overall, I highly recommend having a fruit table at your next event! It really adds a nice touch. Hasmik's Party Services was great to work with! Just don't forgot to request extra chocolate covered strawberries. They were by far the most popular item at the event!

A few months ago, Shant and I had an engagement party to celebrate with our close family our official engagement. Our most important goal for the party was to allow our 2 families to meet and get to know each other. While Shant’s and my parents had met a few times in the past, our extended families had not met and we really wanted our 2 families to have a chance to interact with each other before the wedding.

Shant & I selected Hotel Casa Del Mar as our location for the engagement party. See my previous blog post for more details on why we picked Casa Del Mar.

I chose Tic-Tock Couture Florals to do all the centerpieces and engagement flowers.  I knew I could trust Eddie so I told him what color scheme I wanted, and I was pleasantly surprised on my engagement day when I walked in and saw the beautiful centerpieces!

My beautiful bridal party – I’m so lucky to have such amazing friends who share my joy!
 

One of the Armenian traditions of an engagement party is to have the groom’s family enter the hall (or house) with flowers, a bottle of cognac, and a box of chocolates. Eddie from Tic-Tock Florals helped arrange everything, which made it extremely convenient to have one florist handle everything , including the centerpieces , the floral arrangements and even decorating the “gift table”.

The families then circle the soon to be bride & groom and dance around us. The entrance and the initial dancing was my favorite part of the engagement!

To help facilitate the interaction between the 2 families, I decided to make name tags for everyone. I bought the name tags from Michaels and wrote down the name and the relation to either the bride or groom (mother, uncle, cousin, etc). I also bought pink & blue stickers from Michaels and added a pink sticker to everyone on my side, and a blue sticker to everyone on Shant’s side.

Here’s a picture of Shant & I with my grandpa!  The nametags read – Bride – Grandpa – Groom!

Heartbeat DJ was fantastic! He truly is an entertainer! He not only played a great variety of music, but he added a lot of small touches that made a big difference!  Although all good DJs do a great job playing good music to keep everyone dancing, truly exceptional DJs can fulfill the duties of being a Master of Ceremony (MC) for your event and entertaining your guests, and Heatbeat DJ did exactly that!

One of the best traditions about Armenian engagements is that the primary gift is jewelry for the bride! I received a lot of beautiful necklaces, bracelets, and earrings.

My parents gave Shant a watch so he didn’t feel too left out! If you're looking for a place to buy nice watches from, I recommend Dejaun Jewelers. They have a great selection of fine watches and jewelry.

After the gift giving ceremony and the toast, we all sat down to eat. The food at Casa Del Mar was amazing. Their salmon was off the charts, and their molten chocolate cake dessert was finger licking good!

After lunch, we danced a whole lot!

I got my hair done by Edward Jacob. I showed him a small picture of a style I liked and he did a great job  with my hair.  Linh Tran did my makeup. Both did a fabulous job and I got lots of compliments!

At the end of the day, my brother Garen took some photos of just Shant & I in the outside deck area at Casa Del Mar. These are some of my favorite pictures of Shant & I. Special thanks to Garen for taking such amazing photos of the entire event. Every picture in this blog is taken by Garen.

We had such an amazing time at our engagement! We really enjoyed every minute of the event. Everyone had a great time and there was a lot of mingling between the families. We all enjoyed the great music, the great food, and best of all, the great company! The engagement party was a perfect preview of how much fun we were all going to have at the upcoming wedding!!!

I can’t wait…

Hey there - it's Marineh, co-founder of Harsanik.com! After getting the wedding dress, Shant and I started making some decisions about our bridal party.

The first discussion was whether we wanted the best man and the maid of honor to be husband & wife. In traditional Armenian culture, you pick the best man, and his wife becomes the maid of honor (“kavor & kavorakeen”). We agreed that we did not want to do that since we both wanted to pick one of our best friends as the best man & maid of honor.

Next, we decided we wanted to have a smaller bridal party. So while there were lots of people we would have loved to be part of the bridal party, we decided to keep it intimate and have our closest family members and friends. So we ended up with 4 groomsmen and 4 bridesmaids.

Once we agreed on the size of the party, I decided I wanted to “officially” ask each of my bridesmaids. I also wanted to give each of them a small gift when I asked them. A couple options that came to mind were custom cookies and picture frames. Then Shant gave me the great idea to ask Cake Studio to make individual cakes!

I have worked with Sonia from Cake Studio multiple times and she not only makes the most delicious cakes, but she also makes the most creative and beautiful cakes! For my birthday, she had made a cake in the shape of a giant cupcake (click here to see my previous blog with pictures of the cake) and for Shant’s birthday, I had her make a cake shaped like a tiki!

So I called Sonia and asked her if she could make flower bouquet cakes for my bridesmaids and maid of honor. I also wanted something that everyone could keep, so Sonia designed the flowers out of sugar so they could last for a very long time!

When Sonia from Cake Studio delivered the cakes to me, I was speechless! They were the cutest things in the world!! It was like a little garden!

I also made little signs for each one with the phrase “Will you be my bridesmaid/maid of honor?”. I placed the sign on top of the cake and hand delivered each cake to my bridesmaid/maid of honor. They absolutely loved their individual cakes, and luckily they all accepted!

Planning Status:

• Wedding Venue -  Taglyan Cultural Complex
• Caterer - Divine Food & Catering
• Engagement Venue - Hotel Casa Del Mar
• Wedding Dress - Jobyna's Bridal
• Choosing our Bridal Party - DONE

Next Up: Our engagement party...