Sorry!

Sorry there hasn't been much posting, I've been slowly editing the photos from the wedding I went to on my birthday! This is one of my favorite photos of the day.

A ceremony site...

Well I think we finally might have found a place for the ceremony. Funnily enough it was sort of our first choice but we had to wait until the city got back to us and if you've ever dealt with a city employee you know that takes patience!

It's going to cost us about 325 after it's all done only because we want to have a toast and if you want to serve alcohol you have to pay an extra 110 dollars for a permit and insurance. BOO.

See that little sunroom at the bottom left corner of the house? It would be in there.

It might be blazing hot though. Which I only thought about right this second as I was just outside where it is a balmy 25degrees out and I was tres warm. BUT the garden, no wait...THE APPLE ORCHARD!!! for photos? Yes freaking please!! What makes me happy about this location too is that the room needs some sprucing up. Which means????? I get to do some little DIY projects!

Hooray!

It's sooner than I thought.

In one hundred and sixty seven days I will be getting married.

It's funny how when we first got engaged our time line was spring 2010 and our budget was 10grand. I'm not even sure when our budget got chopped to 6500 but suddenly I was brainstorming DIY ideas and cutting our guest list.
Then all of a sudden it was 2500 and the wedding was this fall on a Friday afternoon followed by dinner...then it changed to tea. We only made the switch to high tea after realising that the only cuisine that everyone across the board seemed to like was Italian and our favorite Italian places were either closed for renovations or in Montreal. Also people tend to drink at dinner and even if certain relatives swore up and down that they wouldn't get drunk I could not trust them to do so. Tea instantly got rid of that option. There will be two glasses of champagne but that is it.

It wasn't a matter of we couldn't afford our first and second options which is probably why I had such a hard time wrestling with my emotions over giving them up. Certain traditions that I was so looking forward to, first dance, cutting the cake, dancing with my father, now are all gone from my actual wedding day. Sure we will most likely do them next summer at the reception party but will it feel the same? I'm not sure. I'm incredibly fearful that the reception party won't even happen. It has to happen though. Has to. Here is one reason why....

Image from: Better Homes and Gardens
Seriously if that cake is not at the reception party I will shed many tears. I will make it a special invitation and it better RSVP yes or else!

Oh it's closer than I thought.

Things to do before September 4th.

Find a dress. Should I get something made? How much will that cost? Should I buy off the rack? Should I buy something I can wear again and again? How much should I spend? Should I buy that really awesome red Nanette Lapore dress? Do I wait until I'm 10lbs lighter? AGH!

Find an officiant. Non religious. Likeable. Etc.

Find a place to hold ceremony. Seriously the few places I've found charge an hourly rate but a minimum of 3 hours...making it silly to rent for one hour. I'm going to try to work a deal since it is a Friday afternoon and all.

Figure out ceremony. Will my dad still walk me down the aisle? There has to be music! Will I still have a bridal party? If so won't it be weird to have basically no guests because they are all in our bridal party?

Flowers. OK I have this figured out...lots and beautiful.

I've already got a photographer who were meeting with next week and the reception tea booked at the Windsor Arms and will now spend the next 170 odd days growing more and more anxious that I am forgetting something very important. Like pants.

A hint.

Things are coming together......here's a hint.

Ok so it's not really a hint is it?

Say Cheese!

I LOVE cheese. I have loved cheese as long as I can remember, my dad even taught me the alphabet by cutting out letters from cheddar and if I knew what letter it was I could eat it! I swear that this is the reason I could read by the time I was 3.

Without a doubt our wedding will have cheese involved during the meal at some point..probably more than once! Then I saw this.

It's a cheese cake! Honestly when I first saw it I thought "Wow they've made the cake look like cheese!" and then I saw that it was actually made of real different cheese wheels! This "cake" is from a company called A Cheesy Alternative based in Niagara region.

Everyone knows about Niagara Falls, which are pretty spectacular to behold. Well not that far from the falls is Ontario's wine region and some of the most beautiful wedding spots around. Niagara on the Lake is one of my favorite towns to visit and if you ever get a chance to visit it I highly recommend it, it is a bit touristy but in a quaint way and not in the same way that Niagara Falls is. If you were looking for a sweet place to elope that has it all or even a destination wedding Niagara has it all.

I know Montreal!

For a brief moment today I entertained the idea of having our wedding in Montreal. Montreal is very special to both of us as we go there at least once a year together and if I had to live in any other city in Canada it would be there. We heart Montreal.


I even IM'd The Mister and said "What would you think of getting married in Montreal?" and he replied "Ohhhhh!"


Then I started researching it a bit. If we got married in Montreal it would be at city hall I mean look at it!!
It's beautiful! Compared to Toronto's city hall....Yeah and the wedding chambers? blech.

So I got more and more excited, we could go for a couple of days and do things with our friends and family and have our reception at one of our favorite restaurants! I started thinking about going to the flower market in the morning.

I IM'd my another friend and asked "Would you come to my wedding if it was in Montreal?" of course he said yes but then added that although it would probably cut down on guest numbers it would also be a pretty expensive wedding for those that did come. He figured a minimum of 500 dollars. I realised he was right. I couldn't do that to my friends and family.

It wasn't a big dream or anything just a whim that I thought might be fun. I've also thought about renting out a cottage for a week in the fall but the price of that was pretty hilarious. I've thought about the restaurant option but the bar tab for that would be so much more than renting a place for a grand and bringing in our own beer and wine that we love and not beer and wine we can afford at restaurant markups.

So I'm back where I started which is fine with me.

Wedding trends of 2009.

There has been a recent trend in wedding blogging that seems to reflect the current economic state. That trend? We all seem to want nice weddings for less money.

Here's a fun exercise to do. Call up a limo rental place, ask how much a limo would be for your wedding day, I'm willing to bet it's well over a few hundred dollars. Then a couple of days later call up and ask how much a limo would be for a pick up to go to a sporting event or something of the sort, was it a less? Probably.

It's incredibly frustrating that as soon as you throw the word "wedding" into the mix suddenly that gives vendors the right/ability to jack up the prices. Is it because they know that there is a breed of bride that will not even blink when they are told their bouquet of calla lilies will cost 200 dollars? If I sent my sick aunt the same amount of callas but not wrapped in a silk ribbon I bet it would be more like 50-75 dollars.


Now I know that there is extra time and detail and not to mention talent spent on wedding items such as cakes and flowers but if your even the tiniest bit resourceful or know someone who is (and we all seem to know one person at the very least who is skilled and crafty like that!) then why are we paying top dollar for the same-ish end result? I know that vendors fees are also based on talent and there are some really awesomely talented vendors out there, but if all I want is a simple white buttercream icing cake with some flowers on top why am I being charged hundreds of dollars just because it doesn't say Happy Birthday?

Image from Martha Stewart

Seriously take the flowers off this cake...how much do you think it would be? Add a really awesome topper or some flowers on top and instantly it goes from birthday to wedding.

So strange.

I used to buy and arrange flowers for an office I worked at. For 80 dollars tops in winter I would buy enough flowers for two GIANT arrangements. I'm planning on doing a DIY photo series on this blog because frankly ladies I've had it up to here with paying more because we want to have the weddings we want.

As well I think there is a lot of pressure to use conventional vendors. When planning a wedding think about the weddings you've been to. Do you really remember the organza overlay on the table? The ornate 5 tiered wedding cake? I'll admit I only remember ONE wedding cake from all the weddings I've been to and I was in the wedding party so I actually was more involved in the wedding than a guest. Favors? Same thing. I remember a couple of them but more often than not I can't. The ones I do remember were always the most cost effective..cd's, homemade cookies, homemade soaps.

What I do remember is the ceremony, the food(good and bad.), the music, the love and the fun. Everything else? I'm not going to say it's a waste of money but I think there are ways we can all be cutting costs without cutting style. We just all have to start thinking outside the prettily wrapped wedding industry box.

The very first thing!!

This morning I did my first real wedding related thing! I emailed a venue! One of the message boards I like to read is Chowhound and recently someone asked about wedding venues here in the city. Most of the replies were places I'd already heard of except for one, The Children's Peace Theatre. No one I know has ever heard of the place but it's home is the Massey Gould Estate which is a short drive from my house. The website is pretty basic on the information front but their rental page does say a few magic words to me....

• Charming historic house and grounds
• Convenient location
• Number of meeting places within the building
• Reasonably priced
• Fully equipped kitchen
• Open to any catering company
• List of caterers available
• No corkage fee
• Free parking

Just that list makes it sound absolutely perfect. I keep checking my email over and over again to see if they have replied yet! Hooray!

I'm married to my money.

I have a secret. I'm not good with money. Never have been. My parents weren't either so I really had no one to learn from since my dad is often heard saying that his financial plan is "If you got it spend it." not that I'm blaming my parents for my current financial woes, I blame them for so many other of my flaws that adding that one just seems silly. I'm not in the cess pool of debt that other people my age seem to be but I am in enough that it makes me anxious when I get a bill. So this year I have decided is they year I cut my debt in half. It wasn't exactly a New Years resolution more of a conscious decision to own up to what I owe.

So I decided to make a budget. Something I've done in the past but have not really taken seriously. I have been known to justify things by thinking "Well I'm just going to end up buying it later anyways." or "If I don't buy it now it might not be here later." I also use my debit card for most things and then suddenly I take a gander at my bank balance and go "where did it all go?"
I wrote down all the things I HAD to buy each month and then gave myself a rather generous allowance for other things and then tallied it all up and found that I should have quite a nice little chunk of change left over. A chunk of change that could very well be used to pay down some of my debt on top of what I already am paying. A chunk of change that I've been previously spending on things like Starbucks, magazines, random thing I don't even remember that's how much I needed them and couldn't live without them! I could save a chip of that chunk and put it to the side for ohhh I don't know a wedding or something like that!

So I made some rules based on various financial advice that I've read and been told over the years.

The Rulz:

1) Cash only for everything.
2) Cash comes from what it was allotted in the budget for IE: No dipping into grocery money to top up the clothing allowance.
3) Take 90% of left over money and put it towards debt.
4) Anything not spent at end of the month from budget add to savings.
5) Keep all receipts and log all purchases so I can see where every penny is going.

Simple right? Honestly I think #2 will be the hardest for me. I think I'm going to have to really start thinking hard about how badly I need things now compared to how badly I want things in the future. Saving money now will make a difference in the future and that is what I need to focus on ultimately the bigger picture is what is more important. BUT I also have to remind myself that getting out of debt and saving up some extra is not punishment, I still can go out with friends because I have budgeted for it but if I blow the whole entertainment budget in one night then that's my fault and I can at least say I had one really terrific night right?
I'm going to treat my money like I'm in a relationship with it and that relationship needs to work for both of us and build us stronger over time right?

Cast your vote!

Recently I went out to look for a new winter jacket. I couldn't decide between two(a gray one and a shorter red one.) so I had my friend take a photo of each to show the Mister. Then I thought to myself "I'm just going to put them on my Facebook and let my friends vote" Now I thought maybe of my Facebook friends would see the "Vote On A Coat" album and comment. Turns out people love voting! By the end of the day I had about 20 or so votes. Almost all of them for the gray one!
Although I have to admit that I'm in love with both of them and the more I think about it the more I want them both for different reasons. In fact I have already envisioned all the cute outfits I could wear with them!

It got me thinking about how I'm so bad at decision making that I am known to regularly use the ennie meenie method to choose! Yes I know it's childish but sometimes I want two things equally so random choice is the best method AND if what I land in makes me feel sad then I go with the other one. Yes I'm secretly 6 years old.

Then I thought about how there are so many wedding things that I adore. So many things that don't mesh together well..how does one pick?! As much as I love total control over things, I also love letting others do all the hard thinking. Would I let strangers pick my wedding details? I'm not sure but if I couldn't decide between two things I might use the public voting system again.
It's only slightly more(hmm or less?) embarrassing then chanting and pointing frantically while I do an ennie meenie in public!

I'm a polyvorer too...

spring time by somethingweddings

Like every single other blogging bride to be I too have been sucked in to the fun world of Polyvore. Who doesn't like making a collage of things they like? It brings me back to my youth and all the cutting out of catalogs I did. A friend and I used to spend days planning our trip around the world in a school bus. Of course we were going to gut the school bus and put in bunk beds, a kitchen and a bathroom. We spent hours pouring over various catalogs and magazines cutting out everything we were going to need for our grand adventure. Five year olds don't really have a good concept of what is needed for a round the world trip but apparently we needed a lot of linens.

Since it is looking more and more like we are going to be having a Spring wedding in 2010. My first thoughts for colours were gray,yellow and teal. Each fall I plant a ton of daffodils as the squirrels don't bother them and love when they all come up in my garden. Since I know who I'm going to have in my bridal party(but haven't officially asked them.) I am taking into consideration what colours look good on them. Gray looks lovely on all of them. I have never considered floor length dresses before but the one about is simply lovely and could very obviously be worn again, dressed up or down and wrap dresses are flattering to all shapes. Heck they could even get it shortened if they wanted! Add some teal accents and some spring blooms in the happiest sunniest of colours and I think you have a certain modern elegance that looks lovely.