Ceremony

 

Here's a few pictures of our ceremony.  The walk across the property, the bridge and then to the area where the guests and Darryl were was nice, long, slow and peaceful one.  I thought for sure my Dad would whisper something and get me blubbering before hand, but he was good lol.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The groomsmen

 

 

The Bridesmaids

 

 

Darryl and I.  I had been so calm all day...

 

 

And then Darryl teared up and got me crying too.  I had no clue what the minister had asked me to repeat, so I asked him to repeat what he'd just said, hence the cry-laugh

 

 

The exchange of rings

 

 

Signing the papers and making it legal!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Taking a moment together

 

 

 

 

Being presented as husband and wife!

 

 

I wish I could remember what he said to make us laugh 

 

 

 

So there's a look at the ceremony, it was such a special day, and actually my most favourite part of the day, so I'm loving looking back at it all...next will be the formals.  

 

Thanks to my cousin, Shelagh, for taking our pictures!

Pre-Ceremony

So after a long blogging hiatus, I went back through a few posts and was reminded that I never, over an entire year, shared some wedding pictures with you.  So in light of our anniversary week (I call it that because last Sunday was our first wedding anniversary and tomorrow is our 12 year anniversary of being together), I thought what better time than now to reminisce over our wedding day.

 

Since there's quite a few to go through, I've decided to do them in categories, today's being Pre-Ceremony, then Ceremony, Formals and maybe a few bonus ones at the end.

 

So with that, here is a little of what was going on, one year ago, before the ceremony!

 

Where guests would be seated and where we would stand for the ceremony...

 

 

If you were a guest, sitting in the above photo, and turned around, you would see the venue, and the bridge I would cross to get to the ceremony...

 

 

As I walked from the venue, this is the view of the bridge I had - so pretty! - and a little peak of guests before they would see me...

 

 

Another shot of the bridge towards the ceremony...

 

 

For many bride and grooms a limo is the usual way to arrive at their wedding ceremony.  For me, the quiet family ride in our family car felt perfect.  It actually wasn't supposed to be in this car, my dad was going to drive his Cadillac as it's a little more fancy, but as we walked to the garage we realized that the Cadillac was blocked in with no car keys on hand to move the blocking car haha.  To me, I didn't care how I got there, I just wanted to be married.  In the end, it felt even more perfect to have driven our family Jetta.  As I sat in our car in "my spot" and looked to my left at my sister, my best friend, in "her spot" and my parents in front of us, it just felt right.  Like the many family drives we had taken in our lifetime together. 

 

 

Very excited getting out of the car!  Being very careful to hold the dress up so as to not get any car grease on it.  I love how it looks like my mum's got some walkie-talkie to connect with the bigwigs inside the venue...

 

 

Fluffing the dress out...

 

 

Upstairs in the bridal suite, taking a quick glance in the mirror...

 

 

Darryl chatting with our minister, Norm...

 

 

The bridge...

 

 

Darryl's boutonniere, which we now have enlarged and framed in our living room...

 

 

So there's a few shots of what things were like before the ceremony!

I remember feeling so calm all morning, and then nervous once we got to the venue at the thought of so many people staring at me, and then calm again once I got to Darryl.  Such a range of emotions to feel all in one day!

Thanks to my cousin, Shelagh, for our pictures!

One Year Later

Yesterday was our ONE YEAR anniversary of getting married!  I can't believe an entire year has gone by already.  We had some gift certificates for the Keg so we went there for dinner (Darryl got the Baseball cut sirloin steak, I got the Thai Chicken and we had the Billy Miner Pie for dessert, which they gave us for free for our anniversary celebration - so nice!)

After 12 years, I finally got to buy a "husband" card which I was so excited about because I always remember seeing them on display in my parents' home growing up. 

Darryl surprised me with a lovely plant:

It's our very own "love fern" haha.  Anyone know what movie that's from?

If you need to know the answer to that burning question, here you go (it's at about 1:12 minutes in)



I've been so bad in the last few years remembering to take pictures of us, and last night was no exception, sadly.  Suffice it to say that we had a lovely time and are looking forward to the next year!

What are you celebrating these days?

Celebrate!

Pardon me for being a little self indulgent, but I feel like celebrating today!

 

(Thanks for the pic Kar!)

 

This past weekend I did some karaoke with my girlfriends and it was wonderful.  Tonight, Darryl and I are going to O Noir, have you been there?  It's a restaurant where you dine in pitch black - should be interesting!  It should heighten all our other senses and it also aims to give diners a better understanding of what it is to be blind, "a project aimed at teaching the sighted about the sightless world and providing jobs for blind people" as all wait staff are blind.  If you're curious, check out their website.

 

Then to really ring in the birthday as it's a bit of a big one for me, my mum and I are going sky diving next weekend!  AH! 

 

And then to keep the birthday festivities going (this actually isn't birthday related, but in my mind it's for my birthday and keeps me in the celebrating mood for another month lol) my mum, sister, all our aunts and some cousins are going to Korean Karaoke as well in a few weeks.  We did this 2 years ago and didn't get around to it last year.  It is the best time with all of these ladies so I'm really looking forward to it.

 

And now I'm off to enjoy my day!  I'll be meeting up with my mum, sister and niece shortly for some thai food for lunch.  Don't you just love your birthday - doesn't it feel like it couldn't be any other day, like this one specific date is the only date it could have ever been for you?

 

YIPPEEEE!!!

 

 

 

 



There's No Turning Back Now

Family and friends!  It's been over half of a year since I've posted anything, for no good reason other than I've had nothing to post about.  But as of last Thursday the beginning of July (I even procrastinated publishing this post for nearly 2 months!), we have officially started our next renovation and finally have something to post about.  Since you aren't all nearby to see each stage, you can follow along right here if you like!

If you remember our updated goals for this year, we're finally getting around to #1 on our list - the upstairs bathroom!  In that post I listed the many, many, mannnnny reasons that this room needed to be redone so I won't revisit that now.  I'll just show you a few pictures to jog the memory and knowledge that it.needs.to.be.done.

 

 

So last Thursday in the first week of July we got to demo (thanks to Darryl's Dad who devoted a few hours of his day to getting us off on the right foot!), and demo continued for another three days.  Who'd have thought that one tiny little room would take more than the 1 day timeline we had originally projected??  Ha!  Out of curiousity I just had a scroll through some of my first posts from when we demoed our entire main floor and saw that we hadn't entirely remembered the lesson we had learned the first time around: when you're DIYing, things always take longer than expected.

 

So Thursday (July 4th) morning I had my last shower in that bathroom.  It was my last bonding session and farewell to that poor little guy (and my last chance at a half-decent shower).  That evening, there was no more bathroom up there...

I'll share the demo pics with you very shortly - and if I can stand it, I may even show you where we've been showering for the last 2 months *shudder*.

Have you done any demo recently?  Knocking anything off of your to-do list?

Table Numbers and Centerpieces

Remember when I had too many ideas for what to do for our centerpieces?  I so badly wanted to do the doily lanterns, I thought they were so romantic and would give such a nice glow.  I also really loved the freshness of the lemon centerpieces (but remember how the inside of a lemon gave Darryl the creeps...like the inner part of a sunflower?).  Well after days of him seeing me struggle to make the doilies work, he put his lemon-phobia aside and agreed to do something with them.  Thank you!  In the end I ended up combining a couple of the ideas.

Last summer we came across a garage sale that had this fabulous box of old mason jars...all for $2!)  Some of these jars were from the 1930s, total score!

 

With 11 tables and a couple jars left over, that's less than 18 cents per table!

 

At another garage sale later on in the summer I came across a box full of (12!) older hardcovered books labelled "free - take one!"

 

I hated the thought of insulting them, especially since there really wasn't anything else there that I wanted to buy (but having hosted a garage sale, I also knew that if they were like me, any left overs would just be driven to the nearest donation center...maybe I could save them the trip!)  So I shyly asked if they would mind if I took the whole box, explaining that they would be the perfect addition to my wedding centerpieces and they gladly welcomed me to them. 

 

Here are the flowers we decided on...

 

 

I loved how full and fluffy they were.  They're a type of chrysanthemum.

 

I decided to also use the mini mason jars from the brooch shower my mum and sister threw me to put some tealight candles in.  Worried that the lemons would kill the flowers, I did many, many trials throughout the summer, here's one...

 

Luckily the lemons seemed to have zero effect on the flowers' well-being (at least with these particular flowers...if you're considering a similar centerpiece, definitely do a trial run or two to be sure).  It was after this that I decided to give the lemon-filled mason jar a little bit of height by stacking it on a book.  I think two or three stacked books would have looked nice, but I just went with what I had.

I tied some twine around the neck of the jar and a grey tag with our table numbers on them (this was the only photo that semi-showed the table numbers, sadly)

 

 

We ended up deciding to put random dates, years and numbers that were meaningful to us and our relationship as our table numbers (ie: the year we started dating, our anniversary date, the year we went to Africa together, our ages when we met...) and then as a way for the guests to get us to kiss, instead of clinking their glasses, someone from each table would guess the significance of their table number (the DJ's alternative was for table to sing a love song which was also fun).

 

It turns out that the flowers that were delivered for the day-of were much much smaller than the ones I had been practicing with all summer (look how sparse they look compared to the trial ones I had done!).  They were very unattractive, in my opinion, but in the end I really couldn't have cared less because when all was said and done, I just wanted to marry Darryl and celebrate with those closest to us, I barely even noticed the centerpieces and decor all night.  Don't lose sight of the real reason you're putting all of these ideas and decorations together in the first place!

 

I think this was the last wedding related thing I had to catch up on, other than pictures of the day...coming next week!

 

 

The Bouquet

Photography is clearly not my strong suit, so after posting yesterday's how to, I want to show you some more professional looking pictures!

 

I may be biased, but...so pretty right!? 

 

 

It added some nice sparkle to the head table during dinner...

 

 

 

And added some interest to otherwise predictable wedding pictures...

 

 

And just because I love a little black and white...

 

 

I can't thank my cousin enough for capturing our day with her photography skills.  I can't wait to show a few pics of us and the rest of our day, I'm just going through them all and trying to narrow the selection down!

 

If you're looking to make your own brooch bouquet (I'd totally recommend it; it's beautiful, it's memorable, it's meaningful and it's a keeper!) click here for the how-to.

  

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