Wedding Advice

Now that the wedding it all over I though I would offer some advice on things that I did that helped/things I wish I had done.

1. Have a plan, but be flexible

I think we did pretty well with this one. We made things work despite the weather and made the best of it. There are a few things that I think I should have planned out a bit better ahead of time to avoid some confusion and chaos though. For example having a list of who is doing what and what should be done when would have helped.

2. Make sure everyone knows their role

I wish I had done a better job of this. I felt like when we were setting up we didn’t really have enough help because a lot of our help took on their own projects (which weren’t necessarily things I wanted done) and so we didn’t really have enough help setting up outside. Also people brought things without letting us know so we ended up with a lot of things that we didn’t need. This is probably would have been hard to avoid without hurting people’s feelings, but I
wish I could/would have told people, if you want to help you can do such and such, and everything will be taken care of. Maybe this is just my family and their communication/listening problems though!

3. Assign someone to bring you food/drinks

This may sound strange and unnecessary, but I would seriously suggest it. I went the whole day without having anything to drink and this caused a serious migraine later in the day. It’s important to stay hydrated and fed, but you may not remember with no much else to do.

4. Ask someone to take pictures of everything set up

I didn’t do this and so we don’t really have any pictures of everything set up before people arrived.

5. Have a list of pictures for your photographer

My aunt did the photography and she made sure I did this before hand. It really helped keep things orderly and it made sure that we got pictures of all of the groups that we wanted. I’ve been told by friends that they were so disappointed when they got their photos and realized that they didn’t have one with their brother, or whatever.

So there you have it, five pieces of advice from a recent bride!

Leftovers Stirfry

After the wedding we had heaps of food left over. We divided it up and sent some to various places, but we were still left with lots. Here is one recipe that I made to try to use some up.

I used some mushrooms, broccoli and carrots from the veggie tray and well as three leftover sausages.

I chopped an onion and added it to a hot pan with a little sunflower oil. After the onion had browned a little I added the broccoli and carrots. I threw in a little water to allow the vegetables to steam a little.

I chopped up the sausages and added them to the pan along with the rest of the vegetables. I made a sauce with minced garlic, honey and soy sauce and poured it over the meat and vegetables.

I served it over rice. It was a very good meal and it didn’t feel like I was eating left overs. Tasty, quick and not too much chopping, definitely a winner!

P.S. Sorry about the crappy phone pictures, I don’t have my camera cord right now.

DIY Guestbook

These days guestbooks come in all shapes and sizes, and most of them are not actually books. I wanted something that could be displayed and not just tucked away after the wedding destined to end up as clutter. I found what I was looking for on etsy, but they were way out of my price range so I decided to make my own.

I ordered some little paper hearts in the colours I wanted. You can easily do this yourself with thick scrapbooking paper and a punch or one of those fancy paper cutting gizmos if you have one. We just bought ours because we were super overwhelmed with all of the colour choices in the store, so by ordering the hearts are choices were limited. I also bought a shadow box from Ikea and a piece of scrapbook paper that fit the hole.

On the day of the wedding I had the hearts in a jar with a small bowl beside it. I had a chalkboard explaining to my guests to pick a heart, sign it, then drop it in the bowl. I know if you buy them, they come already put together, but I thought it would be better for the hearts to be loose and not glued down yet in case someone made a mistake.

After the wedding I took all of the signed hearts and counted how many I had. I decided to add some blank hearts in just so that it fit the space better. I ended up using 81 hearts so my display is 9 hearts by 9 hearts. The hearts then all had to be folded. Putting it together was a little stressful at first. I determined the centre of the paper and put a glue dot on a heart to attach it there. I worked in rows gluing on hearts with the opposite glued down each time (this will make more sense if you look at the picture). I didn’t use a pattern, I just tried not to do the same colour twice in a row.

All in all the project cost less that $40 and took about an hour to assemble. I think it is a really cute way to remember the guests at my wedding and it’s a nice sort of 3D piece for the wall.

Wedding Decor- The Little Things

I tried to keep things as simple as possible for the wedding. I didn’t worry about the plain wooden chairs we had rented from a nearby community centre. I didn’t have any fancy typical wedding décor. I just did I what I thought looked nice. The location where we had the wedding (my grandparents’ farm) is beautiful enough that I didn’t need too much stuff.

We had flowers everywhere. Planted all over the yard, hanging from the tent, and as I’ve already talked about, on the tables. I also bought little lanterns that were placed in different places.

For the tables we had white plastic table cloths (from the dollar store), burlap runners (which we cut ourselves from a bolt to save money), and then the clusters of flowers and mason jars. I had candles in the lanterns and mason jars, but they never got lit. Because of the weather, they probably wouldn’t have lasted long anyways!

We had two white tents set up. We originally wanted to put the food in them, but because of the constant threat of rain we put the tables and chairs in them. The same chairs were used for the ceremony and the lunch, we just turned the chairs. There were hanging baskets with flowers and paper lanterns hanging from the tents.

We also had a wooden gazebo, which my dad built earlier in the summer. This was where we housed the guest book, favours and gift table. After the ceremony, we moved everything and put the salads and desserts there. The food for the bbq was outside. In the gazebo I had flowers, lanterns, and pictures hanging.

For a ‘guest book’ I had small paper hearts for people to sign, we also had a matte for a picture that someone gave us. For favours, I had the seed packets and someone brought bagged jelly beans. I also prepared little buckets with toys for the kids.

All in all, we didn’t have too much for decorations, but because the ceremony was at 11, there’s no way we could have got more set up. Everything looked beautiful, colourful and simple and I wouldn’t have had it any other way!

Wedding Decor- Flowers

Flowers proved to be one of the trickier parts of the wedding planning. I knew exactly what I wanted and had pinned all these gorgeous pictures of wild flower arrangements in mason jars, with plans to do the same thing. However, when I actually got around to inquiring about the prices of the flowers, I was shocked, $8 for one flower! Also, many of the flowers I wanted are unavailable in July. Darn.

So onto Plan B. About a week before I went around to all of the grocery stores and scouted who had the best flowers for good prices. Two days before the wedding I drove around to 3 stores and bought a bunch of bouquets. The night before I separated all of the flowers into piles and put them into a big bucket of water for the night.

The day of I arranged smaller bouquets and put them into the old bottles that I had previously spray painted. I put the bottles in clusters on the tables with the little mason jars I had glued lace to. I also put some in antique jars and put them on the gift and favour table.

I really loved that there was a large variety of flower types. This really made the tables cheery and colourful.
The flowers have lasted an amazingly long time. I now have them in vases all over the place and it is such a happy reminder of our day every time I see one.

Newly Weds

The sun never shone, not even for a second. At one point it absolutely poured. The flowers all fell over in the wind. My hair did not co-operate. But none of that matters because on Saturday, I married my best friend and it was perfect.

Wedding Tomorrow!

Well tomorrow is the big day. Finally. I feel like we’ve been waiting forever for it. I’m trying not to sweat over the little things and to enjoy the moment. It will be beautiful, and unforgettable no matter what.

We have family and friends who came early to help set things up. There is food to be made, photos to be taken, tents to be pitched. So much planning and work have gone into this day. So much thought and imagining. And here it is, nearly here.

I’m excited to be marrying my best friend and I am nervous to be doing it in front of so many people. I am happy that so many wanted to come celebrate this moment with us, but I am worried we forgot something.

The day will proceed and at the end of it Kurt and I will be married and that is all that matters. That is what I will try to keep in mind through the stress and nerves!

There will be pictures next week!

Wedding Clothes

I chose my wedding dress fairly early on in the engagement. I didn’t order it right away because I needed to make sure it would fit. The website I ordered it from make it to measure. You just fill in a few of your measurements and then it’s made. I do have to say, I was nervous about ordering online and talking to people about it certainly didn’t make it better, but when the dress arrived it fit perfectly. It is longer than I would have liked, and because of the tulle-y fabric on the outside it can’t be shortened without changing the appearance. It is also very well made. The only problem I had with the whole process was that the customs fees when it arrived were half the cost of the dress! I was definitely not expecting that. Still, all together it cost me significantly less than any other dress would have, and I do love it.

Shoes were much harder. I knew what I wanted and I scoured the mall time and time again, but I just couldn’t find anything. I eventually ordered a pair I liked online, but when they arrived and I tried them on with my dress it was clear that they wouldn’t work. I was about to settle and just buy some sandals that were appropriate, but not at all what I wanted, when I finally found what I wanted. They are really close to what I wanted, and they only cost $24! So, the moral is: don’t settle!

Wedding Beauty

Happy Canada Day! We are spending our day driving to the airport hotel. Hopefully we will be able to see some firework from there.

For our wedding there are many things we have done to save and spend as little as possible. One such thing is making our food. Another smaller thing is that I will be doing my own hair and makeup. I was planning on doing my own nails as well, but then I thought that going to get my nails done with a friend is a fun tradition that I would like to do (especially since I’ve never gotten a pedicure in my life).

For my hair, I plan to have it down in loose curls. I’ve been practicing for a few months now to get it right. I used youtube videos to learn how to do it with my straightener, since I’m generally lost when it comes to this type of this. I also purchased flower hair clips from here on etsy.

(phone picture, sorry for the quality)

For my makeup, I’m not really sure what I’m doing yet. The only makeup thing I regularly wear is mascara. I’ve bought some mineral makeup to use and other than that I think I will just do something simple with my eyes and put on some coloured lip gloss and that will be that. Since it’s an outdoor event at my family’s farm I don’t have to do anything fancy.

I’m trying to keep things simple and reflective of who I am and I think these are some ways to do this. I will be posting on wedding clothes soon also, so stay tuned!

Summer Slow Down

Our summers are usually fiercely busy and therefore go by way to fast. The main problem is that we try to stretch ourselves too thin. We spend most of the summer in Northern Ontario where our parents live. We then split our time between Kurt’s father’s camp, his mother’s house and my mom’s. Plus there are also other random people to spend time with. This all equals a lot of driving around and being stretched thin. It’s hard because we want to be able to spend time with everyone, but on the other hand summer is our vacation time so we should be able to relax.

This summer will be especially busy because we have our trip to Belize, then our wedding, plus we have our own home now that we will likely spend some time at.

But this summer I’m going to make a conscious effort for things to be different. I would like to slow down and enjoy my time with my family. I will say no to some things, and try to leave time to be spontaneous. I am going to try to savour every last minute of my summer. I’m going to try to have this attitude during wedding preparations also. Hopefully I can succeed at my mission!