This past October, I attended a wedding that sticks in my mind mainly because of the way in which the reception hall was decorated. The bride, who was a florist and had an incredible talent with flowers, worked from approximately 8 in the morning to 10 at night the Friday before the wedding, putting together beautiful centerpieces and setting up the hall in such a way that hid the fact that it was just a community hall. As one of the groomsmen’s fiancee, I was there, helping out and hoping my own reception would look as well put together.
Unfortunately, I’m not a florist. And the expense of flowers means I can’t cascade my whole reception hall in flowers like I’d like to. That, of course, leads to a further problem. Currently, the only inspiration, the only theme I have decided on is this:
Tulips!
So, my inspiration is floral. But my budget is very not floral. Essentially, I have to think about something else. Like this:
Except I keep coming back to floral things like this:
And this:
I guess before I jump to the conclusion that these aren’t in the budget, I really should talk to our florist, run some numbers and some practicality. It’s with things like this though, that make me wish I had a slightly more bottomless budget.
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Tags: budget, centerpieces, flowers
Bon Voyage!
M and I went with pretty stereotypical planning assignments. I’m in charge of keeping track of and making many of the wedding decisions. He’s in charge of the honeymoon.
Turns out we both lean pretty heavily on each other for help making decisions that affect both of us. I’ve shared with and talk about almost every decision I’ve made (with some exceptions) and we both spent a few hours pouring over travel magazines and even went to talk to a couple travel agents together.
But, ultimately, I left the final decision up to M. And, last week, he booked it! He put his credit card number into tripcentral.ca and stared at the computer screen for a few minutes. We both agreed, as soon as it was booked, all we wanted to do was go!
So, the honeymoon is booked, a five star, all-inclusive, adults-only resort in the Dominican Republic for seven days.
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Tags: honeymoon
Invitation Extravaganza!
This weekend, M’s parents came to my small-town, rural area. The purpose was mainly to see the area their son would be getting married in, but my mom also managed to organize the paper and other supplies for the invitations.
I think this might be a topic I’ve neglected to mention on this blog. Invitations was one of the items on our list of wedding to-dos at Christmas time. We perused the Internet, admired expensive pocket cards and cards with beautiful designs or embellishments, all the while being slightly disappointed with the ones that were more within our price range.
At the time, I was also making a few thank you cards for gifts from our first engagement party (which I am guilty of an etiquette faux-pas and have not gotten written, signed, or in the mail yet…), so one day, while doing some errands in town, we stopped in at the small, local scrapbooking store to check out their supplies and what I might find useful.
We left with a piece of red paper, a piece of cream paper, two stamps, some glitter glue stamp, some embossing powder, and a length of ribbon. A few hours later, we had a proto-type and the crazy idea that yes, we actually could make our own invitations. From scratch. For a reasonable amount of money.
My dad, the Farminarian, did all the cutting. Don’t worry. They love their cat. They would never consider chopping her tail off.
My mom was really good with the embossing powder, once we figured out how the static reducing powder worked.
And Liia just didn’t care about the whole process.
My Future Parents-in-Law helped with tying ribbons and punching holes and scoring folds and placing brads. They’re a little blog-shy, however, so you’ll just have to believe me.
After approximately 3.5 hours of printing, cutting, embossing, scoring, punching, tying and stuffing, we finished with a pile of almost 100 invitations. I was amazed how smoothly it went and I felt terribly productive afterwards. I’m kind of excited to put them in the mail and send them off to people to adorn their fridges (or their random-paper piles) for the months of March and April.
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Tags: card making, wedding invitations
99 days!
We’re out of the triple digits and into the double digits!
And there is still so much to do…
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Some guestbook thoughts
For some reason, all the typical guestbook ideas are not thrilling me these days. A scrapbook of our engagement pictures with space for people to sign in the margins is a good idea, but we’re doing that for our engagement parties. Signing the matte around a framed engagement picture is something I’ve seen at more than one wedding, and it’s a good idea but not one that really excites me.
I thought about slips of paper that people could write on and put in a jar, which I could then use in a scrapbook project along with wedding pictures. But do I really want that much work after the wedding? I already have some potential projects planned, but I know I’m likely going to have all sorts of ideas for scrapbooks and photo albums that never come to fruition.
When my sister got married, we asked my uncle to take pictures of all of the guests. We printed them off right there and had people put together a guest book with their best wishes and their pictures. However, she had 60 guests. We’re at 162, or something like that.
This led me to some other thoughts. We’re not going to have a lot of pictures from the reception. M and I aren’t going to be running around with digital cameras, for sure, and we opted to not pay the extra that would get our photographer there. And, while most people are pretty generous with emailing their pictures to the bride and groom after the wedding, I feel like actually getting them might never happen. I’ve heard of people putting cheap disposable cameras on all the tables and letting whoever pick them up and snap some pictures for the bride and groom to develop later. I like this idea. It gives everyone a chance to take pictures and to catch the reception from their point of view.
And then, I thought about maybe taking this one step further.
There’s this popular thing in weddings these days called a photo booth. They can be rented for expensive, but people make them themselves too, with interesting backgrounds, props, and their own camera. They result in pictures like these:
I think they look fun and like they could turn into a supplement to a traditional guestbook. It would provide something for our guests to do in the time between the ceremony and the dinner as well. Of course, this kind of thing would not appeal to half our crowd probably, especially the older people. So, I expect it could end up being a complete flop. Fortunately, to set something similar up yourself would really not be expensive at all.
How much should I consider an idea that I like but am not certain any of the guests will be interested in? Would a photo booth and disposable cameras on the tables be overkill?
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Tags: disposable cameras, diy photo booth, guestbook, photos, wedding photo booth
During the dress search, I was terrified about finding the right dress. In hindsight, I’m not really sure why. If I had thought about it, I would have known that no matter what dress I chose, it would be the right one. I was in such unfamiliar territory that I felt couldn’t trust my own decision making capabilities, my own sense of what was right for me.
As I put my dress on on Tuesday, all those fears were gone. I stepped out of the dressing room, hugging the stiff boning to my body while my mom and Jen, the bridal consultant, laced me up. My best friend, J, who had not yet seen the dress, or even me in a wedding dress, sat in what seemed a little like shock until she could exclaim her approval.
The dress is perfect. I didn’t want to take it off. I wanted to indulge my ego and the pure elegance of the layers of taffeta and beading and crinoline and stand in front of that mirror all day.
But, of course, I couldn’t. They unlaced me and the beautiful dress went back into the plastic bag once more until my first fitting.
We bought my shoes that day too. And now, they’re on my feet, getting broken in, the beautiful red I had wanted from the moment I thought about my shoes.
And that essentially sums up my bridal outfit. There is one last small hidden detail that I have yet to really think about. But that’s likely for another post.
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Tags: wedding dress, wedding shoes
Excited Face!
Actually, I’m not very excited about bacon at all. Although, this blog is.
Rather.
MY DRESS IS IN!
After waiting for three months and having a consultant at the store we bought the bridesmaids dresses at tell me to not expect it for at least another month, I have received the call I’ve been dreaming about since the day I had to take the sample dress off. I’m one of those people who sits and stares at pictures of her dress, gets distracted by it and can think of nothing else for a day once she catches a glimpse of the detailed beading and folding and flowing and taffeta and gah! There go any plans for getting a Tale of Two Cities done this afternoon.
It’s the most beautiful dress I will ever wear and, I’ll be honest, I can’t wait to be wearing it again, even if it’s only for a few moments.
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Tags: wedding dress
My favourite moment
The woman at the store was covered in diamonds. Her hands put my mother’s ring-clad fingers to shame and she had pinned more than one glittering brooch to the lapels of her immaculate suit jacket. She presented the rings with an air of informative efficiency, friendliness at arms length. I was nervous putting them on. They glittered just so and the flashiness of them felt alien on my own almost bare fingers.
And then, there it was. Exactly what I was looking for. The diamonds set off the diamonds of my engagement ring and together, they sparkled like nothing else. It didn’t get lost on my finger like some I had tried, thin little wires of diamonds. But it didn’t overpower, either, stealing the show from my hands themselves.
It felt like a wedding band.
Now, it’s waiting for M, waiting for May 8, and the moment he slips it onto my finger. This symbol is more important than the wedding dress, more important than the chair covers, more important than the photographer or the cake or the place in which we hold the reception, or the dance, or the centerpieces on the tables or any of the other details.
With this symbol, I thee wed.
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Tags: diamonds, symbol, wedding band
The other dresses
One of the things on my wedding to-do list for the Christmas holidays was bridesmaids dresses. As many of you readers may already know, I had decided to go for black dresses on my sister (the maid of honour) and my best friend (bridesmaid). I wanted long dresses on one hand just to be different from the going trend and on the other hand for the formal look long dresses provide.
I love the current trend of having each girl wear different dresses. It just makes sense to me. My sister is kind of a stick: slim all over. J, on the other hand, is slim, but naturally curvy. There’s no way I could find a dress to flatter both body types. I certainly didn’t want to end up forcing one girl into a dress she did not look good in. Example: a dress that did absolutely nothing for my sister was the runner up for J. On top of that, letting them each choose their own dress was actually a lot of fun.
It took two trips. My sister lives in Alberta, so we had no choice but to find her a dress over the Christmas holidays when she and her husband were in Ontario. And J had a crazy work schedule over the holidays that, combined with family obligations made it impossible to find a time that worked for her until after the holidays — ie, today. So, we went twice.
There’s a small bridal and formal wear shop in a town near my childhood home. I bought my prom dress there and then, a few years later, they sold us both my maid of honour dress and my mom’s mother of the bride dress for my sister’s wedding. It’s housed on two floors of an old yellow brick house and has a welcoming, small town atmosphere. Unfortunately, they’ve been having issues with their furnace and the place has been almost unbearably chilly, especially for those slipping in and out of dresses.
My sister, my mom and I were in and out in about 15 minutes. She tried on about 5 or 6 dresses and ended up picking one off the rack. J, my mom and I weren’t much longer, maybe half an hour, but in that time, we settled on and ordered another beautiful dress for J and a gorgeous mother of the bride dress for my mom. They’re set to come in about 3 weeks before the wedding which makes me a bit nervous, but with no alterations required, my mom assures me it will all work out.
Now, if only my dress would come in…
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Tags: black, bridesmaid dresses, dress shopping, mother of the bride dress
Official engagement pictures
My aunt and uncle are professional portrait photographers, so it wasn’t particularly difficult to get some official engagement pictures taken. On the day of our family Christmas, we slipped away for half an hour or so and stepped into the coldness of winter in Ontario in our shirt sleeves and had some rosy-faced pictures taken.
Check some of them out on their blog.
My FMIL gave M and I some picture frames for Christmas that I already plan to use for a couple of these portraits!
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Tags: engagement pictures
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