Credit Cards Can Be Your Friends

There’s nothing wrong with paying for your wedding expenses with a credit card – as long as you pay that card off in full at the end of the month.

There’s actually a lot of pluses for paying with a credit card: it’s quick, convenient, the preferred choice of many vendors and a great way to rack up bonus points such as Aeroplan miles.

But then are also some pretty big downsides, debt for example.

Thankfully, it’s easy to avoid debt: simply never put anything on you credit card until you have until cash in your bank account to cover that particular item. Then, as soon as the charge appears on your credit card statement, pay it off. This way your never incur any interest or late penalties.

Of course, the downside to this method is that you have to already have the money to cover the expense. This isn’t really a big deal if your purchase in question is a $100 pair of shoes but if the purchase is say, your $3200 venue deposit, this situation is a bit trickier.

Still, if you’re really having a common sense wedding, you should have saved up that cash first. This doesn’t mean that you have to have your entire budget in the bank first before you announce your date; it just means that you need to stay ahead of all your expenses and have to cover them as they come up. So if your venue is costing you $12,000, you don’t need that $12,000 in your account on the day you sign your contract with the venue, you just need enough to cover the deposit and then enough to cover each subsequent payment.

If family is contributing to your wedding fund, sit down with the contributors and find out exactly how much is being given, in what form and when so that you don’t end up carrying a bunch of expenses on your credit card while waiting for the funds.

While your parents giving you $5,000 is extremely generous, getting that cash somewhat early in the planning process is much more useful than getting it on the day of your wedding, after most of the bills have been paid. Alternatively, they could put that $5,000 directly towards one of your bigger costs, catering for example.

Looking for a cheap dress?

My friend Bev (check out her food blog here) passed along the following announcement about what sounds like a great wedding dress sale. I think I might have to check it out.

WEDDING DRESS BLOW-OUT SALE
HIGH-END dresses at WAREHOUSE prices

Blow-Out Sale Date: S
aturday, June 6, 2009, 11 am to 4 pm

The sale is located at:
Windfall's Warehouse,
29 Connell Court, Unit 3 (Evans Ave and Horner Ave)
Toronto, ON M8Z 5T7
View Map

Lots of Free Parking!

For more information contact Cindy: (416)703-8435, x 13

Size 2 - 24. Styles are classic to the perfect destination dress!

New styles have arrived! We have received designer gowns that include Blumarine, Nicole Miller, Maggie Sottero, and Alfred Sung. These dresses are gorgeous and will go fast!
Wedding Dresses are priced as low as $200! Nothing is priced over $1,000!!

We accept Cash, VISA, M/C, and AMEX.

Join us for a complimentary slice of wedding cake generously provided by Cynthia's Sweet Sensations. Stylish bridesmaid jewellery and makeup from Elizabeth Grant can also be purchased at the sale.

All proceeds raised go directly towards Windfall's charitable programs.

Altarcations Is Back

Gawker is one of my favourite blogs. Posting mostly about New York City-related topics, it brings humour and skarkiness into my life as well as lets me pretend that I live in NYC.

Today, Gawker gave me another reason to love it – it brought back Altarcations, a feature in which couples who appear in the New York Times’ Sunday “Weddings and Celebrations” section are rated and essentially pitted against each other. Yeah, it’s immature and not very nice but it is funny and sometimes a bit disturbing.

While there are exceptions, most of the couples appearing in Altarcations held the antithesis of a common sense wedding (in this crowd, a Vera Wang gown would be considered “common”). Because of that, I don’t mind the piss being taken out of them. After all, if you’re going to pursue attention, you need to be prepared to take the good with the bad.

Want to be on “Wedding SOS”?

Slice’s popular “Wedding SOS” show is looking for couples! It’s looking for GTA couples who are getting married between now and August 2009 and whose weddings could use some help from a fairy godmother. Below are the details.

If you end up on the show let me know, I’d love to hear about your experience.

Dear Brides and Grooms,

Let’s face it, getting married isn't a picnic. The flowers arrive at the last minute and they're the wrong color; the bridesmaid has gained weight and can't squeeze into her dress; the fabulous location for the reception has been accidentally double book. The hidden stresses and high tensions on the special day can all but undo the best laid plans, then there are those that haven't planned at all.

Enter celebrity wedding-planner extraordinaire, Jane Dayus-Hinch, to save the day! Jane tackles everything from meddling parents and reluctant grooms, to ornery caterers and a no-show DJ.

Back for a new season with a whole new crop of wedding emergencies, Wedding SOS gives viewers a front row seat to the pre-marital madness.

Unpredictable, comedic and emotionally charged, we are looking for couples whose wedding is just around the corner and are getting married this year within the Toronto GTA. If this is you contact me now at dvirgo@cineflix.com with a picture of yourself and your intended telling us your own personal story.

Thanks,

David Virgo,Talent and Casting Director, Cineflix productions
110 Spadina Ave
Suite 400
Toronto, ON
M5V 2K4
Tel: 416 531 2500 x 409
check out our website : http://www.cineflixproductions.com/shows/32-Wedding-SOS

Our Trip to Michaels

On the weekend Shawn and I checked out Michaels – the arts and crafts store. We went there because I’d read on assorted message boards that it was supposed to be packed with useful wedding-related stuff. We’d also seen a Michaels flyer that contained an ad for some nice-looking, print-yourself wedding invites so we‘d figured that it would be smart to a least see what this store had to offer us.

It turns out that Michaels actually had very little to offer us. Oh sure, it’s packed with craft and art supplies but I think to truly get the most of that store, you need to be a very creative and visionary person. To someone like me, who is about as anti-DIY as they come, Michaels appears to be packed with, well, tacky shit.

The notable exceptions to this are the quasi-DIY invites/paper products. These do not look like tacky shit and while not as nice as what you’d get if you paid $7 an invite, they are certainly nice enough to do the job (really, beside yourself and maybe a few relatives, who’s going to keep your invite?). The BRIDES line also offer a cohesive look for all your paper products (so matching invites, programs, guest book, even favour boxes).

However, colour-wise the selection of these products was rather limited. I was actually quite surprised at how few colours were represented but I guess the limited variety helps to keep the costs done. We were able to find an invite kit in silver so at least we’re taken care of.

The invite kit we’re looking at is this one (but in silver instead of black) and at $60 for 30 invites, it’s cheaper than custom but not as cheap as a true DIY invite. Still, I have no problems paying a bit more if that means I don’t have to cut or glue anything. Also, Michaels flyers regularly contain 40 percent off one item coupons so we’re going to track down a trio of those coupons and save ourselves a bit of cash.

We also looked at Michaels for centrepiece supplies (we’re thinking of using a bunch of rectangular candles of varying heights on a mirror with maybe tea lights in glass cubes around that) but for the most part the store didn’t quite have what we are looking for and what it did have (the candles) could be bought for cheaper at a candle outlet store.

To be fair, maybe it was just the Michaels that we visited (in the Dixie outlet mall) that was less than packed with great stuff. A quick look on its website does show a nice selection of packaging for favours (though the favours themselves are a bit tacky). Maybe I just need to try another Michaels.

We Finally Have a Date

Saturday, August 7, 2010 - that's the day that Shawn and I will get married.

As I mentioned in a previous post, we were considering getting married on a Friday but in the end, we decided that going with the Saturday was the better choice, if if that day does cost a little more.

I know that once the date and venue are picked many couple send out save-the-date cards but honestly, I think those are waste of paper and money. Instead, we'll be using word-of-mouth and the many wonders of the internet (such as this blog) to get the word out about our wedding date. Maybe those aren't the classiest methods but they'll do the job and let us save some cash for our Saturday night wedding. 

The Wonderful World of Colours

I *think* we’ve settled on our wedding colours. They are black, silver and dark purple. Below is my sad attempt at a colour swatch.

I knew right from the start that I wanted dark purple. I’ve always been partial to that colour and it’s a colour that you can get some lovely flowers in. So that choice was easy. Choosing the other two colours was a bit trickier.

We’re going light on decor (no drapping or elaborate centrepieces) so I wanted to keep our colours simple yet at the same time interesting so I was thinking dark purple, gold (because it’s interesting and could be worked into my outfit) and white (because all the linens will be in white). But the more I thought about this colour combo, the less I liked it.


So then I thought about swapping the gold with a green and maybe even adding some brown in.


Then we paid another visit to our future venue, the Berkeley. It was dressed for a wedding that was using black linens and the Berkeley’s standard silver and black chairs. Shawn loved the black and I agreed that it looked great. The silver chairs, while not in the greatest condition, really suited the venue and matched nicely with the church’s other silver elements, like its tin ceiling. And since silver is my favourite colour, the idea of using it as a wedding colour just made sense.

So as of now the plan is to go with black, silver and dark purple. Not the most traditional of wedding colours but I do think that they’ll look great together.

A Friday Wedding?

So we’ve picked our venue and we’ve almost picked our date. It’s going to be either Friday, August 6, or Saturday, August 7. Yeah, that’s right, we might have our wedding on a Friday.I know it’s unorthodox but there are some great reasons for getting married on a Friday:

• it’s cheaper (we’ll save $700 at the Berkeley)
• it’s easier to book vendors
• instead of just one day to recover, you get two

But while I’m all for this idea, Shawn isn’t. His reluctance has to do with the fact that we have a pair of friends who already announced that they’re getting married on a Friday and some of our other friends grumbled about this. Now I’ll admit that I participated in this grumbling but now that I’m planning a wedding I completely understand why someone would pick Friday over Saturday.

And steps can be taken to minimize the hassle for guests that Friday weddings can be. For example, our ceremony likely won’t be until 7:30 pm. In theory, you could put in a full day’s work and still make it to our wedding. Our venue is located downtown and, for our 905 guests anyways, is situated against the flow of rush hour. And finally, we’re getting married in August. Taking off from work an hour or two early on a Friday in August is practically the norm.

We currently have the Berkeley on hold for both August 6 and 7 but need to make a decision in the next few days. I’ve essentially put this choice in Shawn’s hands (now he can’t say he didn’t have his say in the wedding) and I’m curious to see if he’ll pick the cheaper Friday date or the more popular Saturday date.

We Have a Venue

We've finally picked a venue - the Berkeley Church. Now just to pick a date.

Here are some pictures we took of the Berkeley when we stopped by there last night for a final look.

Fun With Caterers

Shawn and I were hoping to have picked a wedding venue by now. However, because we’re still waiting on catering quotes we’re still waiting to figuring out whether it’ll be the Berkeley or the Steam Whistle Brewery.

While Berkeley only works with one catering company, Steam Whistle works with seven. Dana, the events manager at Steam Whistle, told us to send a mass email to all seven that contains our wedding’s basic details (number of guests, what sort of food we wanted, when we were having it, that sort of stuff). So I did that and six caterers emailed me back.

Three wanted more details over email. They wanted to know things like where we were having the ceremony, approximately what time dinner would start and what my fiancé’s name is. So answered all those questions and one caterer, Rose Reisman Catering got back to me with a proposal. While the end number is likely a little too high for us, the proposal was very thorough and it’s very clear that this company consists of true professionals who would be great to work with.

The other three caterers wanted to talk over the phone. I was able to talk with representatives of Amazing Food and Eatertainment restaurants/panorama/ relatively quickly and both companies promptly sent over detailed quotes.If took me a little longer to get in touch with the representative of Beyond Catering but when we finally talked, she had a ton of questions for me. However, she wanted the answers sent to her over email. While I understand that me emailing her the answers certainly makes a lot of sense, I didn’t quite understand why she couldn’t have emailed me her questions. It certainly would have saved us some time.

So now I’m off to write that email and then once we receive her quote we’ll make our decision.