ABC 123 Baby You And Me Girl

Lookie here! A wedding recap! And it only took three weeks for me to put together. But it's really fancy! And alphabetical! And there is alot of pictures! And too many exclamation marks!

Wedding Recap: A - D

August 4, 2008: Monday. Upsetting to those who did not support the idea of having the wedding in the pub. August 4th was a stat holiday this year (the first Monday of August is BC Day) so the pub was closed. If we wanted to have the wedding on a weekend we would only be able to rent one level of the pub, we wouldn't have access to the sound system, and we would be charged a ridiculously high minimum spend ($20,000 before tax, liquor tax, or gratuity.) Because the pub was closed for the holiday, we had access to the entire venue, we had full control of the sound system (which was the whole point of having the wedding in a pub) and we had no minimum spend. I like the idea of our anniversary being on or around a long weekend - my birthday falls on or around the Canadian Thanksgiving long weekend and I love having the extra day to celebrate.

Best Ladies and Best Men: We didn't want to choose a Best Man or Maid of Honour so we had 3 Best Ladies and 3 Best Men. My Best Ladies were my sisters (Turtle and Bow) and my best friend (Robin Girl.) Shawn's Best Men were his brother, my brother (Westy) and a childhood friend.

Shawn, his friend, Shawn's brother, Westy

Me, Bow, Robin Girl, Turtle

Cake: aka Tower of Cupcakes. We didn't want a traditional wedding cake so we went with mini cupcakes and a small cake for the cake-cutting. We forgot to do the cake-cutting though. Actually, we did remember but we didn't want to break up the flow of the party so we just didn't do it. We put cupcakes on each table and people ate off the cupcake tower all night long so it wasn't a big deal. Shawn totally would have smeared cake on my face if given the opportunity so I'm kind of glad we didn't do it.

Ooh look, two C's. Too bad; this is my wedding recap. Don't like it? Get your own wedding recap.

Centrepieces: Source of much angst. I wanted casual centrepieces. I wanted it to look like someone went out to the garden and picked a bunch of flowers and stuck them in a jar. My aunt thought this was a ridiculous idea. Shawn's mom wanted something more formal and modern. I'm glad I stuck to my idea because it looked beautiful and was exactly what I wanted. It was bright and cheerful and a hodgepodge of colour.And now I have a bunch of canning jars instead of numerous vases that I'll never use again.

Dance: We didn't have a first dance. We wanted to do the Thriller zombie dance with our wedding party but it didn't work out. It involved way too much coordination and not everyone was enthusiastic about it, so we scrapped it. I wish that we could have pulled it off but it's one of those things that just didn't work out. We didn't want to do a traditional first dance because we don't have a specific song that has a lot of meaning for us. It felt a bit contrived. The first dance that we ended up both being on the dancefloor for was Sexyback by Justin Timberlake, so I guess that's now officially Our Song.

Dresses: I went on one wedding dress shopping trip with my mom. We went down to the states to go to a large bridal store. It was horrible. I wasn't overly picky about what I wanted, I just knew that I didn't want a train and I didn't want a strapless dress. The saleslady didn't believe me though; she kept trying to give me dresses with trains. I finally tried one on to shut her up and then tripped while trying to step up onto the pedestal thing in front of the giant mirrored area. That shopping trip was pretty much the worst shopping trip of my life. I found my dress when I went to a sample sale on a whim (by myself.) It wasn't strapless, fit me right off the rack so I didn't need to pay for alterations, had: cute little lace cap sleeves instead of large straps, no train, built-in boning so I didn't need to buy any special underthings, and a built-in crinoline so I didn't need to buy one of those. It wasn't perfect - I wish that it was off-white instead of white, I would have rather had a nice natural fabric instead of polyester, and it didn't fit me perfectly in the chest (though that was fixed with the addition of my chicken fillets) but it was easy and the price was right. Of all the wedding purchases we had to make, I had the most trouble justifying the cost of my wedding dress. The guilt I felt at spending so much on a dress I'd wear once was completely erased when I found my dress. After tax I spent a measly $316 on my dress. It's still the most expensive dress I own but it was much cheaper than the other dresses I tried on.

I hated trying to find the Best Ladies' dresses. I wanted something light, simple, more of a sundress than a formal dress. It took me forever but I finally found what I wanted at J.Crew. We ordered the dresses without the ladies trying them on (we have no J.Crew in Canada - boooo!) which was a bit of a gamble, but it turned out okay. The dresses were maybe a bit more booby than I had envisioned, but the ladies all looked fabulous.

stay tuned for more wedding awesomeness (hey, at this rate maybe I'll get to 'z' by Christmas!)