More Thoughts On My Wedding Photos...

The other day I was flipping through my professional wedding photos, trying to see how our escort card table had been laid out. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a single pro shot of this table. At best, were some pictures, taken by a friend, of how it looked later in the night, once it had been switched over to our midnight snack table.

This made me realize that I didn’t have pictures of a lot of the “little” and even not-so-little things. For example, I didn’t have a decent picture of my centrepieces or any of the guest tables. And while we didn’t have a lot of flowers as décor, if you look at our photos, it’s almost as if the bouquets and corsages were the only flowers we had.

When it came to photos, I had made up a list of shots I wanted taken but these were almost all formal “people” shots (you know, me and my grandmother, me, my grandmother, sister and mother, that type of thing). While I did have some other shots down (like the outside of the building), I didn’t list out everything.

Part of this was because I assumed our photographer would just take shots of certain things like centrepieces. The other part is because I didn’t realize I wanted certain shots until after the wedding. For example, we had a signature drink, which was explained in a picture frame. I would have loved to have had a shot of the drink by the frame, but I didn’t think of that until it was too late.

Several months ago, when I was putting together our Photobooks, I realized all the great, creative, people-oriented photos that we could have taken (be sure to flip through these example books before your wedding day for ideas). Now, as I’m trying to remember the various details that made up our wedding, I’m realizing all the other photos that I wish we had.

So my advice to you, future brides, is to write down every possible shot that you want taken and then give that list to your photographer. Odds are, this is going to be a long list so you’re probably going to want to break it up, by location as well as by priority (I do realize that not even the best photographer in the world is going to capture everything).

I’d also explain to the photographer that you’re being thorough, not crazy, and that you’re just trying to ensure that you end up with photos you love.

Because once your wedding day’s over, it’s over and trust me, it sucks to be sitting, wishing that you had a picture of A or B (and yes, I’m still disappointed that I never got my wedding day “wow” shot).

What Else To Write About...

Our second reception, held two Saturdays ago out in Alberta, went off fairly smoothly even if we did run a little behind schedule. And thankfully the snow waited until the next day to fall!

With that done, I’m planning on wrapping this blog up by the end of October though there is a chance I might occasionally make a post here or there.

I know a few topics that I still want to cover including my stagette, thank-you notes and a quick review of all of my vendors. Is there anything you’d like to see me write about?

Write Down The Details

I’m sure you’ve already been told dozens of times by now to get all the key details – start times, end times, deposit deals, etc. – in writing. And while I certainly add my voice to that chorus, I want to also take a moment to encourage you to also get all the little details in writing too.

Now, people say “don’t sweat the small stuff” but on your wedding day, someone will be sweating the small stuff. If you’re a super-carefree, go-with-the-flow kind of person, you might not be the sweater, but someone, your mom, your maid of honour, your venue contact, will at some point be staring at something and wondering if it’s looking the way it should. And that’s where having the small details documented comes in.


How these details are organized is up to you, the point is that you and those associated with you have a printed reference to everything from your timeline to your flowers to your cake. This way everyone’s on the same page, people are better organized (and therefor ideally calmer) and issues can be spotted and dealt with earlier.

Another reason for documenting the little details is that having all that stuff written down makes it a lot easier to get a refund, should things not work out. This seems to be a situation that pops up the most with florists and decorating, maybe because there’s so much “imagining” and “visioning” going on. Also, many decorators and florists sell packages that then get modified and well, if those modifications aren’t written down, you can see how things can easily go to a disappointing place.

The point is, it’s much easier to get money back if you can say, “Hey, there’s the email where you promise that for this price, I’ll get package A but with roses instead of lilies and no underlighting on the head table,” than to say, “Hey, I know the contact says that I’m paying for package A but don’t you remember how we talking about changing some stuff?”

A few details that you’ll want to get written down:

• All flower types and colours being used as well as approximate quantities; ribbons, bouquet jewellery and other related items should be detailed out


• Such vase/container/centrepiece details as size, shape, colour, quantities


• Such cake stand details as size, shape, material, any extras/enhancements


• Drapping details would include colours, fabric types, sizes and placement. This is an area where ideally you have a photo of what the drapping should look like, as well as a photo of what fabric(s) is being used


• Chair cover details would include colour, fabric type and any extras/enhancements. This is another area where a photo is ideal


• Your caterer should provide you with a detailed list of what exactly is being served and while you don’t need to know how many baby potatoes each person is getting, you will want numbers for your hors d’oeuvres and possibly even your midnight snack


• Bar details should touch on both alcoholic and non-alcoholic offerings and could even look at what types of glasses and garnishes will be available (though even I’ll admit that might be too detailed for some)

Your Wedding Day Plan

While I don’t think it’s possible to have a stress-free wedding, I think you can minimize the stress by being as organized as possible.

One way to do that is to have a wedding day “plan”, a simple-but-detailed-pack Word doc that you can email/give to your bridal party, venue and other key people.

I think everyone’s plan will look a little different depending on her own situation (and how detailed-oriented she it) but here’s an outline of how my plan looked:

Title: Lindsay & Shawn’s Wedding, Saturday, August 7, 2010

Total Guest Count:

Meal Breakdown

Beef:

Salmon:

Veggie:

Timeline

Friday, Aug 6, 2010

Details about delivery of our alcohol & décor

Saturday, Aug 7, 2010

A detailed breakdown on what was to happen when. Make sure to include the following items (assuming they’re applicable):

- Wake-up time

- Any times about when certain people should be meeting you/your partner

- Hair & make-up start/end times

- Photographer start & end time

- Other photography-related items such as when you have to be at, and leave, a specific location

- Officiate arrival time

- Live musician arrival time

- Bridal party arrival at ceremony site

- Ceremony time

- Bar start & end time

- Bridal party arrival at reception site

- Grand entrance

- Dinner start & end time

- Start time for any speeches

- DJ start & end time

- First dance

- Cake cutting

- Bouquet & garter toss

- Midnight snack

- Last call

- Last dance

Monday, Aug 9, 2010

Details on us coming back to the Berkeley to pick our stuff up

Contact Info

Bride:
Groom:

Best man:
Maid of honour:

Décor helpers:

Bakery:

DJ:

Flowers:

Live Musicians:

Minister:

Photographer:

Hair:

Make-up:

Floor Plan Guide

The Berkeley has an Excel-sheet floorplan that I marked up and included in my wedding day plan. I used this space in the Word doc to expand upon my markings.

I started by listing off all of the tables, what their table names were (since we didn’t use numbers) and how many seats should be at each table.

Then I commented on the placement of some of the other tables that were used so:

Table A = Cake table

Table B = DJ set up

Table C = Escort card table
Etc.

Other Notes

Down here I mentioned other key things that people, particularly the venue and my bridal party, would need to know, for example, that we wanted purple uplighting and that tea lights should be placed wherever it made sense

Be wary of putting in too many details. Try to keep your wedding day plan to about two pages in length; any longer and you risk people being scared off by the length. You can also put together a separate, more detailed-heavy document for people like your décors helpers who need more instructions.

10 Random Wedding Lessons

And we’re married. The wedding was this Saturday and overall it went quite smoothly and was a lot of fun.

But while the wedding might be over this blog still has a bit of life in it and I will definitely be making a few more entries to help you out with your wedding planning.

Let’s start with 10 random things I learned from this past Saturday…

1. Take time off before the wedding: Shawn and I were able to take the whole week off and that was very nice. If you can’t do that, try to take at least the Thursday and Friday off.

2. Take time off after the wedding: But I wouldn’t recommend taking your actual honeymoon right after the wedding. I’d be way too tired to properly enjoy my honeymoon if I was on it right now.

3. Write out a detailed timeline: Ok, maybe you’ll be the only one who really reads it but writing out a detailed timeline will likely help you feel more prepared and will help you discover any missing items.

4. Write out a packing list: A few days before the wedding, write out what you need in what bag and then refer to the list as you pack things up.

5. Remember, you can return liquor: As long as you have the receipt and your permit. So don’t lose those things and err on the side of too much rather than too little.

6. No one looks at the website: Ok, this isn’t completely true; I know some people did check out our wedding website. I also know that most people didn’t and so because of that fact, I’m glad I didn’t spend too much time on it.

7. The caterer always makes extra meals: Worried you screwed up the meal list? Or maybe someone decides they want ribs instead of salmon? Don’t worry, most caterer prepare extra plates.

8. Have a “quiet area” for the old people/non-dancers: For us, the quiet area was outside where the old people could also smoke.

9. Use your dress’ “dancing loop”: I found our first dance to be quite awkward because of my dress’ train. Then, maybe two-thirds in to the dance, I remembered that the dress had a special loop sewed onto the train that I was supposed to wear on my wrist so that it was easier to dance in it. Oops.

10. Get your baked goods from Sweet Escapes: Our cupcakes were a huge hit. We bought 120 and had about seven leftover. We only had 98 guests and I know not everyone had a cupcake so yeah, they were popular.

The Clock Is Ticking...

Only four days to go and I’m very glad I took this week off work. I have a few errands I have to run today and then tonight I’m steaming my dress and going over the music with our volunteer DJ (the real DJ doesn’t start until nine so the volunteer DJ will get the iPod started for the cocktail half-hour, dinner time and run it during our entrance/first dance/speech/cake cutting time).

This past weekend was super busy with my sister arriving in town on Friday night; my hair getting done on Saturday (it took four hours!), my stagette and Shawn’s stag on Saturday night (more on that later), my bridal shower on Sunday and then yesterday we finished these tasks:

• Created the centrepieces (at least as much as we could In advance)
• Packed up most of the décor
• Gave our pre-dancing playlists one last listen and loading them up onto my iPhone
• Created a super-detailed timeline (complete with key addresses) and sending that out to the relevant people
• Completed the set-up notes and sent those over to our décor helpers
• Finished off our “notebooks” (more on these later)
• Started organizing my day-of bag
• Wrote all the checks that need to be given out on Saturday

This morning I also steamed my veil and my party dress.

So while most stuff is done there’s still a handful of tasks that need to be completed. But at this point in time I have no doubt that everything will get done for Saturday.

Less Than Two Weeks To Go!

So things have been pretty busy over here, it seems like there’s always something else that needs to be done and that’s after all the big stuff’s been taken care of for months!

It doesn’t help that this past weekend was booked up with non-wedding activities. I was able to squeeze in a few wedding tasks but I didn’t get to take care of everything I wanted.

Most stuff though should be taken care of this week, with basically everything wrapped up by next Monday (including the steaming of my dress). I need to write up a thorough breakdown of what task we’ve recently wrapped up and what’s still left to do but I won’t get to that this morning. Maybe tonight though…

But while things are busy over here, they are nowhere near as busy as this wedding, supposedly happening this weekend.

Organizing Your RSVPs

So I am still alive; just busy with work and wedding stuff and other random events like concerts. Also, to add to the fun, I was without a home computer for almost three nights because we were having some window repair work done and this meant that everything near on windows, like my computer, had to be unplugged and moved away.

Not having a computer was very annoying, in part because this is the week the RSVPs have been flooding in. Our due date is today and the vast majority are now in. There are a few still outstanding on Shawn’s family side (though we’ve heard they’ll be getting in touch with us) and I’ve had to follow up on a few friends. I must say that Facebook makes following up on late RSVPs so much easier!

All this talk of RSVPs got me thinking that I should share how I’m staying organized. Basically I have two tools.

The first is an Excel spreadsheet. It has the following column headings:

Name – the names of everyone the invite went to

Number – this is the number I put on the back of the RSVP card to help me keep track in case people don’t clearly put their names on the card

Quantity – how many people are in this party; I change this number depending on the RSVP reply

Method – did we mail the invite? Hand deliver it? Did someone else hand deliver it?

Address – this might contain the actual address or just a note telling me that it’s in my address book

Status – things started as “Sent” and then got updated depending on the reply

Food – what meal option was picked

Gift – if they gave a gift, what it is

Because we’re also having a reception out in Alberta, I actually have three tabs in my spreadsheet: Toronto-Only; Alberta-Only; Both; with that tab having a slightly different column set up so that I can track who’s coming to what.

I was going to include another column called “Table Name” and then sort by that however, yesterday I received a spreadsheet from the Berkeley that I’m supposed to use to enter in all my guests by table number (or name in my case) and their meal choices. So instead of entering seating info twice, I’ll just use the Berkeley spreadsheet. I also have a Word doc where I’m sorting out who sits where since it’s easier to do that inside Word than Excel.

My other tool is this little blue file folder. It’s maybe three-by-five inches in size and is split up into a dozen pockets. I’ve labelled those pockets by food selections as well as added in a “No” pocket and “Yes” and “No” pockets for our Alberta reception.

When a RSVP card first comes in, I enter the info into the spreadsheet and then file it away in here. Then, before I send that seating/meal selection spreadsheet over to the Berkeley, I’ll double-check the info on it with the actual RSVP cards. I’m hoping this will result in no one getting the wrong mean!

One Month To Go

It’s now less than a month to our wedding day and while most things are done, there are still a few things that need to be taken care. Let’s take a look…

Done since our last to-do list update:

• Nail appointment booked
• Hotel room booked
• Hair highlighting appointment booked
• Ceremony music finalized
• Liquor permit form dropped off
• Marriage license done
• Favours purchased
• Favours packaging purchased
• Earrings purchased
• Wine sampled & purchased
• Cupcake flavours submitted to baker

Here’s what will get done next week:

• Order wine (need liquor license first)
• Order beer (need liquor license first)
• Book eyebrow waxing appointment (I forgot about this!)
• Finalize DJ playlist
• Finalize photo list

And in the two weeks after that:

• Finalize day-of schedule
• Create “décor plan” for décor helpers
• Meet with décor helpers and walk through plan
• Package favours
• Finalize seating chart
• Make escort cards
• Meet one last time with venue
• Check in with all of the vendors

Week of wedding

• Steam my dress (I’m just borrowing a friend’s steamer)
• Buy liquor
• Organize all the centrepiece stuff and other décor items
• Dozens of other little tasks

OK, that’s not too bad. I think we can pull it all off.

We Have Our Marriage License

We now have a marriage license. We got it on Friday, down at City Hall, and overall it was a pretty quick process though we did run into some bumps.

We arrived at City Hall at about 10:30 am, went over to the marriage license area, filled out the form (because we screwed up filling out the form we’d printed off) and then wandered over to a desk.

The woman there asked us for ID that contained our names as they would appear on the licence. I gave my driver’s license and that was fine. But then we discovered that Shawn didn’t have any ID on him that contained his full middle name; for some reason his driver’s license just had his initial.

So then we had two choices. We could head home, find Shawn’s birth certificate and then come back with that or we could apply for the license with Shawn’s middle name just being an initial. The woman warned us that the second option could potentially lead to issues down the road though she wasn’t quite sure what they would be. Another woman who seemed to be working at the same desk then piped up that our situation wasn’t that uncommon and that many people just went with an initial or no middle name at all.

So we decided to risk it and just go with the initial. Once that was decided upon, we were given a number and then had to wait about 15 minutes before moving on to the second and final desk.

I have to say that the marriage license department was, at least to me, surprisingly unbusy. There were a few other couples there but most of them were out-of-towners getting licenses so that they could marry during Pride weekend. I thought we would have to be there as early as possible to avoid a lengthy wait but thankfully that wasn’t the case.

Anyway, our number got called, we went to a desk, the woman there checked out IDs again, got us to double-check the form, then entered all the info into the computer, printed out the form and got us to double-check and sign that.

Then we got to pay, conveniently at the same desk we were already at. Normally you can pay using a credit or debit card but the system was down because of the HST or something that didn’t really make any sense so we got to pay $130 in cash. So that was annoying.

But we got our license as well as the form you need to fill out and submit to get your physical marriage certificate (I thought you’d be automatically sent that but apparently not). The license was placed in a City-addressed envelope that we were to give to our officiant prior to the wedding day.

Since our minister’s church is located downtown, we then headed over there and dropped off the envelope. And that was that.

So here are a few tips for you about getting your marriage license:

• Make sure you bring government-issued ID that contains your full name
• If this ID doesn’t contain a photo, also bring a piece of government-issued photo ID
• If you can, fill out your form in advance
• Bring a pen
• Bring something to occupy yourself just in case you do have a long wait
• Try to go in the morning, it’s generally less busy then
• And yes, you both need to be there

Getting Your Toronto Marriage License

If all goes as planned, on Friday Shawn and I will be picking up our wedding license. This actually involves a few steps:

1. Head over to the Service Ontario website and print off a marriage application form. You can also grab a physical copy from a Registry Services office.
2. Fill out the form and make sure everything on it is correct. Both of you also need to sign it.
3. Then head on down to a Registry Services office (we’ll likely do either City Hall or Etobicoke Civic Centre) Monday through Friday, from 8:30 am-4:15 pm. You’ll need to both be there and you need you bring your form, a piece of government-issued photo ID that shows your current legal name and a way to pay for the fee.
4. For Toronto, that fee is $130 (it can be cheaper in other cities) and can be paid by cash, money order, certified cheque, debit or major credit card.
5. A license is good for three month from the date of issue and is valid for anywhere in Ontario. This means that if you’re getting married in Toronto but you two can’t make it to a Toronto Registry Services office during business hours but can say, make it to the Oakville one, go to the Oakville one, you license will be good.

There are no citizenship/residency requirements for applying for a marriage license, there’s no required blood or medical tests and of course there’s no gender requirements either. But you do need to be 18 or, if you’re 16-17, have your parents’ permission.

Got more questions? Maybe Service Ontario can help.

My Wedding Day Shopping List

I’ve just put together a list of physical items that we’ll need to bring to the venue, some of which I’ve already got and some of which still needs to be purchased.

While some of these items are certainly personalized to my wedding, I think there’s quite a bit of stuff on here that you’d have at any typical Toronto wedding.

Need To Get

• Card box
• Paper to cover card box
• Tea lights for escort cards/candle holders (I’ll explain these in another entry)
• Clear labels for the escort cards/candle holders
• Mirrors for centerpieces
• Rose petals/jewels/something for table décor
• Three silver picture frames to hold drink menus at the bar
• Little favour baggies for our M&M favours
• The M&Ms

Already Bought

• Guest book
• Guest book pen
• Table numbers
• Escort card candle holders
• Rest of centerpiece supplies
• About a dozen purple candle holders as assorted décor
• Two or three silver runners as assorted décor

I’ll also be bringing my party dress, an overnight bag for the hotel, a fairly empty purse and another bag filled with emergency/back-up items. I’ll list off those things once I’ve figured them out!

How We Did On Our May To-Do List

Here’s an update on how we did with our May to-do list:

• Block off hotel rooms for guests: Not happening because the hotel we were dealing with said that we’d have to pay for unused rooms. So, since this is Toronto and there are tons of hotels out there, we’re just putting a list of few that are near our venue and reasonably priced
• Book late July hair appointment for cut and highlights: I tried to do this but then found out that my hair shop will be on vacation on the date I originally wanted to book on. So now I’m waiting to hear from them about when exactly they’ll be closing up and hopefully I’ll still be able to get my hair done there, just a few days earlier
• Meet with sister and figure out her shoes/jewelry, etc.: Meet with sister, didn’t find anything, it’s now in her hands
• Buy earrings for me: I looked while I was in New York but didn’t see anything. I’m going to try looking in Toronto this weekend
• Get Shawn’s brother to order his suit: Done
• Figure out & order favours: We know what we’re getting and we’ll place the order in a couple of weeks

So yeah, unfortunately we didn’t get everything done.

On the flip side, I have gotten started on:

• The photo list
• The music list (including banned songs)
• The alcohol list
• The timeline (the day-of and the week-of)
• Seating chart

And on Saturday I did my make-up trial (more on that in a future entry) and we now know what we’re getting Shawn’s brother as a thank-you gift so that’s two more things done.

Over the next month, we’re going to complete the following tasks:

• Order the beer
• Order the wine
• Book nail appointments
• Book massage appointments
• Book hotel room
• Finalize ceremony music (we have a pianist and violist booked and are meeting with them tomorrow to sort out the music)

I’ll do my best to keep you up-to-date on how things are going. I actually have a list of topics that I want to write blog entries about but I just keep running out of time to write them. Hopefully though I’ll be able to get up at least two, maybe even three, entries this week.

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.

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,

10 Planning Questions You Didn’t Know To Ask

What do you do with your veil after the ceremony? What about your engagement ring during the ceremony? Do you really need someone to hold your dress when you pee? The answers to these and seven other very reasonable questions are all presented over here on TheKnot.com (you’ll likely have to log in to see the full article).

Photographer Hiring Tips

This article on hiring a wedding photographer comes courtesy of My DeeJay, a Baltimore/Washington, DC area, DJ company. It’s a long one but it’s packed with useful info and questions you’ll want to consider (and maybe ask).

Sadly (but not surprisingly), all the photographers featured in the article are from the Baltimore/Washington, DC area, so you can’t call any of them up for your wedding. But you can certainly use the great advice they pass on.

Our Menu Consultation

Yesterday we had our menu consultation with the Berkeley and we came out feeling much more confident than when we went in. Let me explain why…

We’ve been having a bit of planner confusion with our venue. Shortly after we signed our contract last spring, we were assigned a planner named Kristin who turned out not to be the best at promptly answering emails.

Earlier this year, we got an email from her saying that we need to pick a date for our menu tasting. I was a bit confused because I thought we had a consultation meeting first but Kristin didn’t mention anything about that so we picked March 30 as our tasting day. Kristin and I then started emailing back and forth, kind of doing the consultation over email. Then she went quiet but since this had happened before, I didn’t think much of it.

A few days later we were invited to this wine-tasting thing at the Berkeley. We went, hoping to meet Kristin, but instead found out that Kristin was no longer with the Berkeley and that we’d be getting a new planner and that yes, we were to have a menu consultation.

I was then put in touch with Julie who was very helpful and told me that our new planner would be Kathy. She also booked a new date for our tasting since our original tasting meeting would need to become our menu consultation.

So you can understand why I walked into our meeting yesterday a bit concerned.

Thankfully Kathy seems to be much more organized and was ready to meet with us even though we were twenty minutes early. In addition to going over the food stuff, she asked how we saw the day unfolding and gave us a quick rundown on how liquor would work since we’re supplying that ourselves (more on that in another post). She was very helpful and had solid answers to all of the questions we had, whether it was about what vegetarian dish would be the best choice to how the uplighting worked.

I think it helped that we also came to the meeting very prepared. Because we thought that we weren’t going to get a menu consultation, Shawn and I had already talked in detail about what sort of food we wanted served and had a list of ideas and questions.

I definitely recommend walking into any menu consultation as prepared as possible. In addition to knowing what you want to eat (and spend), keep in mind your timeline the day. For example, do you really need appetizers? Or, because you’re disappearing for three hours to do photos, do you need a lot of appetizers? An issue for us is our photographer’s time. We only have him for six hours and because of that, we’re doing our first dance and then cutting the cake before we eat.

Also go in knowing roughly what kind of food your guests enjoy/expect; any cultural requests, allergy concerns, etc.

And don’t be afraid to ask lots of questions. Yeah, you might sound a bit annoying, but I find that asking a ton of in-person questions is a lot less annoying than a ton of questions over email.

The G20 & Your Wedding

Have you read this wedding disaster story that appeared in today’s Star? It’s about a couple who can no longer use their chosen church for their June 26 wedding because it happens to be located inside of the G20 summit’s security perimeter.

The article mentions that at least three other weddings have been disrupted by the summit’s security concerns and it sounds like it might impact at least a few more. While the exact coordinates of security perimeter probably won’t be released until two weeks before the summit starts, the tentative area covers from Lake Shore Blvd. W. up to Queen St. and then from Yonge St. to Spadina Ave.

If you’re getting married the weekend of June 26 and your wedding somehow touches on that area (think about where your vendors are located), you should probably start thinking about a “G20 back-up plan” in case that event does somehow impact your day.

That doesn’t mean that things need to be cancelled or dramatically changed, it just means that you should, for example, get in touch with the appropriate vendor and ask if they have any thoughts on or plans for the situation.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Sorry for the lack of posts lately but we’ve been super-busy crossing stuff off our today list. Here’s what we’ve gotten done over the past few days:

• Booked our cake (though we still need to figure out the flavours
• Ordered Shawn’s ring
• Booked my make-up artist
• Bought my dancing dress (I know, I said I wasn’t going to get one but then my mother offered to help pay and I found the perfect dress)
• Finalized the flowers
• Finalized the invites (they are being printed now)
• Blocked off the hotel rooms

Over the next week or so, I’ll detail out how we got all of this done.