Big Syd Silver Formals Sale

Is your groom thinking about buying his suit? Then you’ll want to check out the massive Syd Silver Formals bankruptcy/receivership sale that’s running all next week.

The popular Canadian formalwear chain declared bankruptcy a few months ago and while this was undoubtedly bad news for those couples who had booked their suits through the chain, there is a big plus side: amazing suit deals.

The chain’s entire rental inventory is being sold off, with the basic adult package going for $99.99. For that price you’ll get a tuxedo jacket, pants, a shirt, tie, cufflinks, studs, suspenders and a pocket square. Fancy deluxe packages, that include such extra as shoes, and packages for ring bearers and teens are also available.

The main sale site is 79 Wingold Ave, North York (west of Dufferin St.) and you can call 416-256-4784 for more details, including the addresses of the other two sale locations. You may also want to ask what brands are being sold. My understanding is that suits from Syd Silver could really vary in quality.

The sale runs Monday - Wednesday, 11 am - 7 pm; Thursday - Friday, 11 am – 9 pm; Saturday, 10 am - 5 pm and Sunday 11 am – 5pm.

Happy shopping!

Custom M&Ms & Promo Codes

By the time you’re reading this, I will have just gotten back from my trip to New York City.
One of the things I was originally planning on picking up while I was there were some customized M&Ms to use as our favours.

The reason why I was going to pick them up in NY is because Times Square is home to a big M&M store and I was thinking that by picking them up there, I could avoid having to pay for shipping. Sadly, you can’t get personalized M&Ms at M&M stores, you have to buy then online. Sort of annoying…

Thankfully, through the magic of Google, I was able to find some promo codes that at least make buying these things a little cheaper. I did a test order with the Thanks15 code and it totally worked but I think I’d save more with the free shipping code so I’m going to try that when we go to make our actual order.

Hopefully a few of you will find those codes and the site they live on, RetailMeNot.com, useful. While that site definitely caters to Americans, you can find the odd promo code that can save us Canadians some cash when we’re doing our online shopping.

My Florist Now Has A Website

Jenn, my florist, now has website! You can check it out at: http://www.flowergirlsdesign.com/.

The best part about the site is the blog section. It showcases some of the arrangements that Jenn has put together and provides a bit of background on them. While there’s not a ton there now since the site is quite new, it looks like it’ll shape up to be a great source of inspiration for brides.

Finding An Officiate

For some people, finding the officiant is one of the easier parts of wedding planning. They go with the family priest, the aunt who’s a justice of the peace, the guy who did their cousin’s wedding.

But if you don’t know off the top of your head who your officiant will be then this can be pretty tricky. I was actually dreading this part but thankfully our venue had some recommendations and then I left this task in Shawn’s hands.

Those recommendations were the two ministers over at Metropolitan United, a church located just down the street from the Berkeley. While we originally planned to go with a justice of the peace, we decided to give these guys a shot since they often do weddings at the Berkeley and we were told they were pretty open minded and flexible when it comes to conducting ceremonies.

While one minister was already booked for our wedding day, the other, John Joseph, was available so we met with him back in March. He was a perfectly nice, friendly guy who asked us plenty of questions in order to get to know us. He also told us about himself and by the end of our meeting we both felt quite comfortable with him.

While we did discuss a bit about the ceremony and what we pictured, that first meeting was really just to get to know each and see if this could be a good match. Since it was, we booked him.

We then met him a couple weeks ago and talked a bit more about the ceremony (something short and sweet with no readings) and looked over the vows we’re going to say. We also figured out the rehearsal time.

I thought this would be a fairly quite meeting but it probably took close to an hour because the minister did spend some time asking Shawn and I about ourselves and our relationship. While it was unexpected at the time, it kind of makes sense now that I think about it. I mean, this guy is a minister after all and I’m sure he wants to check and see for himself that we’re not some couple that’s going to end up in divorce court in a couple of years. And since none of the questions were overly probing or personal (they mostly focused on our communication styles and personalities), this part was less weird than it sounds.

I don’t know if trying to get a good sense of your relationship is something more officiants try to get but hey, it’s something to be aware of.

Anyway, if you’re on the hunt for an officiant, definitely start with your venue because they can likely recommend someone who they’ve worked with before.

If your venue can’t help you out, you might want to check out Kettle Creek Weddings, a company that hooks couples up with Toronto officiants. While they aren’t cheap (the basic package is $400), they are quite reliable and professional (or so I’m told).

There’s also always Google, if you’re looking for someone with a particular background (certain language, religion, etc.). Google actually led me to this site, TorontoOfficiants.com, that allows you to pump in a few basic details and then get a list of suitable officiants back. They aren’t reviewed or anything like that, but you can always turn to the bridal boards if you’re hoping to get more details on a particular person.

Off To NYC

I’m off to New York City this afternoon for a few days to visit my sister. While there, I hope to accomplish a few wedding-related tasks:

• find earrings
• possibly find something for my hair
• figure out my sister’s accessories

I do have a trio of posts lined up for while I’m gone, including one about M&Ms.

See you next week!

Green Wedding Services in Toronto

Green weddings are the in-thing these days and if you want to make your big day as environmentally as possible, check out this blog post over on BlogTO that highlights some of the city’s greenest wedding venues.

Here my thoughts on a few of the places they’ve highlighted.

Cabaret Vintage: a must-stop for any bride who wants vintage, or vintage-style dress. While the dress prices are hardly steals, they are reasonable for a wedding dress.

Vert Catering: I’ve heard great reviews about these guys but I’ve also been told that they are on the expensive side.

Mill St. Brewery: I don’t drink beer but Shawn and many other beer drinkers I know love this brewery. I think we’re actually going to get these guys to provide all the beer for our bar.

Pure + Simple & Elixir Organic Spa: While I’ve never been to either of these spas, I’ve heard great things about both of them and am considering both for them for my pre-wedding pampering.

Toronto Botanical Garden: We checked this out last spring and my review is over here. It’s a nice place, just not for us.

Kortright Centre for Conservation: Another venue we checked out and that review is here. Kortright is quite pretty and eco-friendly, but it was a bit too far out-of-town for us (plus it didn’t have AC).

Ring Picked Up; Invites Almost All Sent

Friday night we picked up my custom wedding ring from Made You Look and it looks just like the jeweller said it would.

When I first put it on it was too tight but I was told that that’s to be expected since it’s easier to make a ring too tight and then have to loosen than to have to deal with the opposite situation.

The store was able to get one of their on-site jewellers to stretch it out a bit and now it fits just fine.

It also fits just like it should with my engagement ring. The whole reason we went the custom route is because the stone setting in my engagement ring has these “bump outs” that don’t allow it to sit snugly with a regular ring. My wedding ring has a pair of notches that accommodate the bump outs and allow the two rings to sit nicely beside each other.

My ring’s designer is Jill Maddin and I totally recommend both her and Made You Look for any custom work you need done. Made You Look also some great already made pieces is a variety of price points.

In other good news, all the invites are out except for a small handful that is waiting on Shawn to find addresses for them. They’re for family on his side and as soon as he calls this one aunt and gets the missing addresses, we can get them in the mail and be all done with invitations (well, at least until we have to start tracking down RSVP cards).

Big Worry #2:Wedding Day Set Up

So my other big wedding worry has to do with getting the venue set up on the day of the wedding.

While we have a florist who will be delivering and setting up the flowers, all of our centrepieces and all other venue decorations, from escort cards to the card box, will have to be taken care of by myself and whoever else I can guilt in to lending a hand.

This isn’t the part that worries me. While I’m not really a DIY-er, I do like to organize and supervise and I’m actually glad that I have an excuse to go down to the venue before the wedding starts and help with setting everything up.

What I’m worried about is the amount of time I can spend doing that.

While our ceremony isn’t until 6:30 pm, we’re doing our photos first and I think the plan is to start doing those at about 4 pm. The photographer will be arriving at my place at 3 pm and shortly after he arrives I’ll be getting into my dress so that means my hair and make-up should be done by say, 3:15 pm.

Now I know some brides are probably a bit jealous of this timeline since they had 6am hair appointments but here’s where I run into a stress point: We can’t get into the venue until noon. So if I need to be back at my place by say, 1:30 pm for hair and make-up, I’ll only have an hour at the venue to get stuff set up (I’m allowing for 30 minutes of travel time).

And when I say “I”, I also mean my mother and sister since they’ll be following my getting-ready timeline.

While I can organize people to work pretty efficiently, there’s no way we’ll be able to get everything done in an hour and so I’m going to have to left the venue before it’s done being decorated and yeah, I’m really not comfortable with that idea.

The Berkeley does supply a day-of planner and I’m really hoping that I can in-list and then entrust her to at least look things and make sure they look right (I’ve already been told that the day-of planners don’t assist with things like actually setting up the centrepieces).

That way I, my mother and my sister can leave at noon and a handful of people (including Shawn) can stay behind and finish setting everything up under the eye of the planner.

But while that sounds like a good plan, it’s one that still worries me. What if the planner doesn’t have the greatest eye for detail? Or what if my helpers don’t? Or what if I can’t find anyone who can help with setting things up?

It’s this kind of thing that makes me wish that we’d gotten our own independent wedding planner. Too bad we don’t have the cash for that.

Big Worry #1: Money

In my last post I mentioned that I have a couple of big wedding-related worries. The first one has to do with money.

I would say that this is a fairly common worry for any bride who’s neither wealthy nor from a wealthy family. However, it hadn’t really been a concern for me until a week or so ago, when Shawn and I sat down and looked over our wedding finances.

I should mention that Shawn and I are covering most of the wedding costs ourselves. My parents are covering certain areas such as my dress and Shawn’s side is covering part of the liquor cost but we’re covering everything else.

We had started off on the right path, with a good overall budget and what I thought were reasonable area-specific budgets. While we did go over in some areas, it certainly wasn’t because we were being frivolous. Shawn still gets on my case about our photographer being $300 over budget but finding a good Toronto photographer who will shot at least six hours for $1500 is damn hard.

It turns out that I under-budgeted certain areas and so a few months ago we bumped our $20,000 budget to $25,000. At the time, this seemed like a reasonable, doable number.

Now, after our more recent financial review, I think that number's still doable but it’s going to be tight and there’s no room for anymore wedding-related spending. This is because while our budget went up, our savings didn’t and so now we have a bit of gap that I’m understandingly worried about.

As I’ve said numerous times throughout this blog, I think it’s silly to go into debt for a wedding and while I don’t mind putting stuff on a credit card, that card should always be paid off in full. My goal is that come September, our wedding is paid off in full and the only way for that to happen is to start saving hardcore.

Still, even the idea of having all the needed funds sitting in a bank account doesn’t completely end my worries. I know this will sound odd but I wish we could just pay in full as many wedding-related bills as we could right now. I know that’s also a stupid idea but not having to worry about those outstanding bills would certainly relax me.

So that’s big worry number one. Tomorrow I’ll go over big worry number two.

May To-Do List Check-Up

OK, so let’s see what’s left for us to do:

May

• Block off hotel rooms for guests
• Book late July hair appointment
• Meet with sister and figure out her shoes/jewelry, etc.
• Buy earrings for me
• Get Shawn’s brother to order his suit
• Figure out & order favours

June

• Do make-up trial
• Book nail appointment
• Book any other spa appointments
• Book our hotel room
• Figure out the rehearsal lunch
• Figure out transportation
• Figure out what Shawn’s brother’s getting as a thank-you gift (I already know what I’m getting my sister)

July

• Create seating chart
• Write up escort carts and put that all together
• Ideally meet with photographer, wander through High Park and plan photo locations
• Finalize playlist for DJ
• Get wedding license
• Email list of cupcake flavours to bakery and confirm all of that
• Make card box
• Send RSVP follow up emails if necessary
• Start assembling centerpiece bundles
• Create itinerary and
• Go to Berkeley, review itinerary and give final guest count
• Last week of July confirm everything with:
  - florist
  - make-up person
  - hair person

On Sunday, before I made this list, I was getting a bit worried about what we still needed to figure out/get done. Now that I see what we have left, I feel a bit better about the volume of tasks. However, I still have a couple of other big worries and I’ll write something up about those this weekend,

We can now cross a few more items off our to-do list: we’ve finally ordered Shawn’s tux and gotten him fitted.

We wrapped that up on Monday night, over at the Dufferin Mall Moores. We met with a different woman than the one we previously met with, but she was just as nice and helpful.

We also placed the order for the best man’s outfit. As mentioned in my earlier blog post about the guys' outfits, I wanted my maid of honour's dress to match the BM's vest/tie combo as much as possible. And while the Dufferin Mall Moores did offer a wide range of colours, none of them quite matched the swatch that my MOH sent me (wedding lesson: don’t go with purple if you want everything to be really matchy-matchy).

But one was fairly close and so we decided to go with that. We could have purchased a matching tie from the designer that’s making my sister’s dress but it would have cost $80; $80 for a dark purple tie that the BM would likely never wear again. At some point you just have to say no and so now we're going with an almost-matching tie.

We also ordered a suit for my Dad so that he doesn’t have to bring one out from Alberta. Ideally he would have gone to his local Moores and gotten measured there but since he doesn’t live near one, the woman helping us give me this card that explains on one side where he should be measured on and then on the other has spaces for those measurements. So that’s a pretty useful tool and a good thing to have if you're dealing with out-of-town groomsmen. (I'll try to remember to post a picture of it before I mail it off.)

Shawn’s BM is his brother and now he just needs to go and get fitted and then that’s it for the guys’ outfits.

Some Amusing Reading

I’m quite busy today with addressing envelopes, tracking down addresses, updating our wedding website and figure out what else we have left to do (less than three months to go!).

So because of that, I’m skipping writing a real blog entry and instead am going to point you over in the direction of this funny blog entry over on Groom With A View.

Make sure to read the Cracked article that he refers to; it’s a bit course but it’s certainly educational.

Out West Invites

The other challenge with getting our invites out is that some of them incorporate a DIY aspect and if you’re been reading this blog for awhile you know that I suck at arts and crafts stuff.

Let me provide some background on this situation. Our actual wedding is in Toronto in August. Then, about a month later, we’re flying out to Alberta for an out-West reception for my family out there (my parents and most of my dad’s family live in Alberta).

The has resulted in our guest list being divided up into three groups that each have their own “invitation package”:

The Toronto-Only Invites

These are the easiest invites to put together since we just have to put a pre-made invite and a stamped RSVP postcard inside an envelope and then address it.

The Alberta Invites

These guys get a special Alberta invite that I created (more on that later) and a stamped RSVP postcard. I thought I was going to have to make the RSVP card too but then I realized I could use the first batch of RSVP cards we were sent. These were missing the meal options and therefore no good for our Toronto wedding so I thought they’d just end up as recycling but nope, I’ve been able to find a use for at least a few of them.

Toronto & Alberta Invites

These lucky people get the pre-printed Toronto invited and its matching RVSP postcard, the handmade Alberta invite, another RSVP card (more on this later) and an envelope to return the two RSVP cards in.

Because I have no design skills, the Alberta invite started off as just being copy and a couple decorative borders printed on shiny silver paper. However, once I cut these up they looked kind of crappy.

Thankfully, the black envelopes we had bought to use for the Toronto and Alberta invite RSVP cards turned out to actually be backing cards that the cut-up invites fit perfectly on (yeah for not properly reading the packaging). So now, while extra worked is involved because I have to glue the silver paper on to the black, the Alberta invites at least look good.

The same cannot be said for my homemade RSVP cards. They are small and ugly and we used up all of the silver paper and Shawn doesn’t want to buy any more of it because it’s expensive and he thinks the cards look fine (sorry for the run-on sentence but this is a bit of a sore spot).

So here’s what I’m thinking of doing: I want to take menu-less RSVP cards and cover up the back, which currently has the return info printed on it, with silver paper.

Then I’ll do the same thing with the Toronto RSVP cards and write on the back of each card which venue it’s for. I realize this might look a bit odd but I think it’ll look better than using my ghetto homemade RSVP cards.

Anyway, I'm going to give that a shot tonight and see how big of a hassle it is.

Missing Addresses

My goal for this week/weekend is get our wedding invites out. So far, I’ve run into two big challenges, the first being missing addresses.

I started my address gathering back at Christmas when I was at my parents’ place. I used my mother’s address book for a bunch of addresses but sadly it was missing quite a few. I should have borrowed my paternal grandmother’s address book when I saw her but I didn’t and now I’m going to have to call her and get her to read off a bunch of missing addresses. So that’s a bit of a pain.

My mom’s side is a bit easier since I’ll be seeing a bunch of them on May 15 and can probably hand deliver quite a few invites. But since I know some people will be missing, I’m going to have my maternal grandma bring her address book so that I can copy out missing addresses into my address book.

A mass email to our friends/cousins who I have email addresses for quickly gathered their addresses. I can’t imagine what a hassle gathering addresses would have been prior to email and Facebook.

Oh wait, yes I can because we don’t have email addresses for most of Shawn’s family and he doesn’t have any close relatives who already have these missing addresses written down. So he’s going to have to call this one aunt who hopefully does have these addresses. I feel those invites might be sitting on my desk for awhile.

I have tried looking some people’s addresses online (Canada411.ca is a good place to look) and haven’t had the best results with that. Also, to do that you need to know someone’s full name and Shawn has some cousins who we don’t know what last name they are using.

So maybe getting all the invites out by Sunday is a bit ambitious, maybe I’ll aim to get 80% out instead.

A Tale of Two Moores

With only four months to go until the wedding, Shawn and I decided that we better rent his and his best man’s suites. So on Sunday we found ourselves at the Oakville Moores located at Dundas and Winston Churchill. It turned out to be a less than ideal experience.

We went to that location because it’s located near where Shawn’s brother, his best man, lives and we went to Moores because, well, isn’t that where everyone gets their suits from?

Back in January, we’d gotten a Moores catalogue from its booth at a wedding show. The suit selection looked alright, it seemed to have the colours we needed (silver and dark purple) and for $149 you got everything, even the shoes.

So our appointment should have been pretty simple. However, it quickly became clear that the woman who was supposed to be helping us could have cared less that we were there. After explaining the packages, getting our info and pointing out the most popular three styles, she seemed to lose the ability to speak.

I thought she would help us pick out a style but nope, the only fashion advice she offered was that Shawn should have a white pocket square and I had to ask her which shirt was best for an August wedding (turns out the one we were considering was the wrong choice, a choice she probably would have let us make).

She was absolutely useless when I started freaking about the surprisingly limited vest/tie colour options. Yeah, there was silver but there wasn’t quite the silver I wanted. And the selection of purple was absolute shit.

Angered and annoyed, we left and then made an appointment at the Dufferin Mall Moores because Shawn had a theory that the colour selection varied greatly by store. And it turns out he was right; this second location had dozens of other colour options, including dark purple in a pattern that also comes in silver.

Also, not only was the colour selection much better at the Dufferin Mall Moores but the service was excellent. The woman who sat with us was very helpful and after dealing with her I felt much better about renting from Moores.

We haven’t booked the suits yet because I’m waiting to get the colour swatch for my sister’s maid of honour dress (she lives in the U.S.) but assuming that that swatch works with the dark purple that the Dufferin Mall Moores offers, we’re going with that location.