Gimme the deets! All the stuff I spent hours on... Details details details...

I have to admit. I'm a little sad this is my last "official" wedding recap post for you. I've slowly been reliving our wedding vicariously through these recaps and it's been wonderful. I loved everything about our wedding, and I was so happy to see that when it all got laid out it was exactly what I wanted. Better actually. I had a few moments when I was 3/4 of the way through a project and thought "oh god, what am I doing?! How does all of this tie together?! This is going to look like crap! I've gone too far though!!!". I think we all have those moments. But I stuck it through and I'm glad I did. So. Here you are. The little details that made our wedding about "us" and not just "a wedding". Please let me know if there's anything I missed or that you'd like to see a tutorial on, I love hearing your feedback! These are in absolutely no particular order (the majority of these photos are from Stillmotion, they're amazing!):

Food

I've already said how we basically booked our wedding around our photographer and caterer. When they were available = our wedding date. Dan and I each got a priority, mine was photography, his was food. I think the two worked well together no? So anywho, the incredibly talented Ezra Title worked in a lot of what we loved from previous meals with him and from our own favourites. For example, the prosciutto and melon above. When I lived in Italy I don't think there was a day that went by when I didn't eat this eat least once. Usually twice. Or more. Don't judge me. We also LOVE organic beef, so Ezra did us the organic flank steak for dinner. The salted caramel ice cream was a favourite from Dan's birthday dinner the year before that we both would like to eat by the gallon. And the cake. Well come on, it's pretty evident by now that that was all me!

I think our guests really appreciated that we shared our infamous "Ezra meal" with them and appreciated every mouthful. Since the wedding we've gotten a number of comments about it being the best meal of their life, so mission accomplished I think!!

Teapots & Creamer/Sugar Pots

Once I found my inspiration with the teapots I went whole hog on them. I scoured thrift shops, Craigslist, and friend's parent's silver cabinets for old unused clunky teapots that no one loved any more. I would not spend more than $10 on a teapot (I had one exception but it was worth it and balanced out with some other bargains I got). In the end, I amassed something like 30+ teapots and 50+ creamers. I spent hours with bridesmaids, parents, and my parent's neighbours polishing those puppies up and making them gorgeous again. They were so pretty and added such a unique touch to the tables, they were totally worth the effort. Plus I think the fact that half our guests had had their hands on them at some point made it all the more special ;)  I still have them all in the basement, somewhat unsure of what to do with them. Maybe a rental company is in sight?! LOL!

A quick note about the flowers, the white roses were for my Omi (grandmother) who had passed away the summer before the wedding. She had the most gorgeous rose garden you've ever seen. I DIY'ed the baby's breath cream/sugar pots to save a good few hundred dollars off the floral budget. Totally worth it. Our florist, Pink Twig, was incredible to work with and I think they enjoyed the "outside of the box" edge the teapots brought to the arrangements.

Papergoods

I designed, cut, and assembled all of my papergoods myself. What a task that was! But it was full of love! My handy dandy Cricut worked late every night cutting my menu backers, place cards, and little placecard birds. I used Sure Cuts A Lot in conjunction with Illustrator to break out of the Cricut cartridge box. I love that program and the world it opens up for you! For the corners of my menu and placecards, I used a corner punch and emboss from Fiskars that added a bit of a vintage flair.

Table numbers were the bane of my existence for about a week. I would sit and think and google search for ideas. Nothing seemed just right. I eventually gave up and ended up slapping these together at the last minute with a lace border and the same font we used on our invites and programs. They were simple and functional, and looked cute with our vintage flair. 

Our programs I designed, printed, assembled and sewed, to coordinate with our elevator invites. Whew. Those were a lot of work! More than our invites!!!

 

 

 

 

Can I just say how much I loved our escort cards? I realize they got tossed out, but I freaking loved them. We sat them in flats of wheat grass spread out on a barnboard table Dan made for me. Each table got their own pattern of fabric covered button which coordinated with the fabric on their caramel favour. Yes. I am that anal retentive and I think it was worth it :)

 

 

 

I'm not going to lie and I'm going to totally toot my own horn, my banners were amazing. LOL! They made for my favourite shots of the day. They were actually on my DIY projects to-do list and I had scrapped them because I thought I didn't have enough time. One night we were sitting around and I thought "Oh screw it, I'm going to give it a go" and put together the banners while we watched a movie with a friend. The Just Married banner came out so well I thought I'd try the Going to the Chapel as well! I am SO SO SO happy I made that push and got them done, I think it just completed the Winnebago and put that polished touch on our photos.

Flip flops & Pashminas

 

 

 

Love your guests. Treat them like royalty. They've come a long way, gotten all dressed up for you, sat through the speeches, given you a gift, throw them a good party and make sure they're comfortable in return! I smashed the Old Navy $1 flip flop sale and bought as many sizes as I could get my  hands on. I think I ended up with about 50 pairs (both mens and womens), and honestly, I likely only needed about 25. I found another bride who bought my leftovers off me though, so that was great news for me! 

The pashminas I bought at a little cash and carry shop for $5 a piece. I bought 30 of them and I should have bought 50! They went like hot cakes! It started pouring rain halfway through our dinner, so I think the ladies snapped them up to cut the chill. I still get compliments from our friends and family who say they're the nicest pashmina they have and still use it all the time!

I put little tags on both the pashmina's and flip flops just to personalize them rather than just shoving them all (artfully) in a box. The baskets I bought in Chinatown for about $15 and worked really well and looked very cute and rustic. The flip flop tags said "nice shoes" around the edges. That was the first thing Dan ever said to me, so it was a little inside joke to us.

 Guest book

I made our guestbook using Photobook Canada and I loved it! The quality was fantastic and they had a special linen paper specific to guestbooks. I used our engagement photos and created a 12 x 12 book about 30 pages long. I loved reading through all the comments from our guests after the wedding. Every page had at least one note and some of our guests got creative with little bubbles over our heads, etc. It was fantastic and adorable!!!

Hangers

 

What bride doesn't want a Lila Frances hanger?! When I showed the hangers to Dan he was so excited about them he wanted one for himself AND all his guys. Our entire wedding party each got their own hanger, including the kids. Lila was great to work with and since we ordered early (and in bulk) she gave us a great deal!

Okay. I seriously have to take a break. I have so many more details to share with you, and I'm afraid of making this the post that breaks the site! I'll be back with details part two ASAP!

Carebear Countdown

(Source)

Well. Today is September 1st. My wedding is in ten days. The last few days have been a bit of a rollercoaster, emotionally, physically, and mentally. I had a to-do list a mile long that I managed to zoom through in a couple of days, and thankfully now there are just a few small things left. I have wonderful family and friends who have been so amazingly helpful, there just aren't enough words to say thank you to them. I'm getting all choked up thinking about it. 

Where to begin. Our fridge broke. It's two years old, top of the line GE Profile. Lovely. Upon inspection, a crack with scorch marks around it was found in the back of the freezer. Sears wasn't very obliging in helping until I had paid $300 to fix the control panel. Next I get to battle with them to replace the whole stupid fire hazard. This wouldn't be such a huge ordeal if I hadn't planned on making my homemade caramel this week which needs to be refrigerated. Thankfully we have a fridge downstairs (which was a dented special and hasn't given me a lick of trouble), but since it's holding all our groceries, I can hardly fill it with caramel jars. You can imagine the calls to Sears in which I tried being nice, I tried being mean, and ultimately ended up bawling my eyes out to some poor customer service lady while repeating "I'm sorry! I don't mean to be emotional, but I have to make 150 jars of caramel and put them in the fridge!!! Please just send the part and the technician!!!!" Talk about embarrassing. In any case, the fridge is fixed and is humming away cooling down and tomorrow I'll be making caramel. 

Thankfully I've been working diligently over the past 14 months getting everything done as early as possible, which means right now I don't have that much to do. Shhhh don't tell!! Even the items I had crossed off mentally as not having enough time for I've managed to get done! Yay! However, since I can now slow down and breathe, my body has been deciding how to react to this. For a few days I just felt sick. Sick sick sick. Couldn't eat. Couldn't sleep. Too hot. Too cold. Ugh. Apparently I'm allergic to relaxing. I seem to have gotten through the worst of it and am now acclimatizing to my new found friend: time.

Another big thing off the list that was totally stressing me out is our Winnebago. Dan and I got engaged at the beginning of a trip to the East coast in which we decided it would be a great idea to drive a 1973 Winnebago to the other side of the country. Vehicles that old that have been ill-maintained don't fare well on a journey that long just to give you a heads up. Right. Read the blog for the full story ;)  In any case, it was an amazing trip for so many reasons and we love our Winnie. We wanted to make sure The Colonel made it to the wedding after so many of our guests both helped us get her ready for the trip and heard all our stories afterward. The Colonel has been parked out in the country in a parking lot since last Fall so we weren't sure how she'd fare when we tried to start her up. 

(Personal Photo - The Colonel alive and kicking! Hooray!!!!)

Thankfully the worst problem was a flat tire which a willing set of hands helped us pump back up. Dan managed to get The Colonel rolling and we got her home! YAY!!!! I'm not going to reveal all the plans for her just yet because I want to save some surprises for you. 

Here's the lesson of the day that I learned from the Winnebago: Take a break, step away from the wedding planning every now and then. The Colonel was parked about an hour and a half from our house. I was really stressed out and I wanted to send Dan alone so I could work on wedding things at home. I felt guilty sending him to do all that work himself, so we loaded into the car and headed out. When we got there, a few classic cars pulled into the same parking lot. Then a few more, and a few more. Soon enough there were probably over 100 gorgeous classic cars in the lot for a car show! A dj set up and started playing some rockin' oldies, a chip truck with pulled pork, fish and chips, and all other sorts of goodies was doling out some awesome food. Oh my gosh it was amazing! I knew Dan still had things to do at home, and goodness knows I did too, but we took about half an hour to grab some food, enjoy the music and chat with some of the car owners before heading home. The entire drive home I had a huge smile on my face. It turned out to be an awesome surprise date afternoon. What I needed more than anything was to just walk away from "The Wedding" for a few hours and hit the reset button, I just didn't know it. It's so easy to get wrapped up in every tiny detail, stress about finding wooden toys for kids boutonnieres or getting silly rattan suitcases from that cool Chinese shop in the city. You know what? If those things aren't there, it doesn't matter. No one will know, only you. And really, there's going to be so much else going on, you're not even going to notice! I got my toys, I got my suitcases, but I also got some quality down time with my fiance and that is worth more than anything else. 

So brides. Take a breath. Close the laptop. Grab your fiance and go for a walk. Get an ice cream cone. Enjoy being together and being engaged. You deserve it.