So unique that everyone's got it!

I made my final payment on my dress yesterday (yes, I braved the -40 windchills and ventured outside to pay it off!). I was so pleased when I picked the dress because, as the salesperson assured me that my dress was unique, original, the only one they have like this, "designer" (though I can't remember which designer is it, not that it matters), and is only carried by their store ;-) ;-)

Once I bought my dress, I immediately went online to find dresses similar to it so I could show people what it looks like. Well, I couldn't. Not that I didn't try, really I did. Brendon can attest to the fact that I spent more time online on wedding dress website after I bought it, than before. And he still catches me looking online! But I couldn't find ANYTHING like it at all anywhere. That made me feel great! The dress really was original and unique!

Yeah, I've got a great big "SUCKER" written across my face now. I've started seeing dresses like mine all over the place now. The feature of the dress that I liked the most, which is the asymmetrical drop waist and the halter top making my torso look 9' long, is everywhere. And I mean EVERYWHERE! I can't go past a single wedding dress store in the Downtown (in the eyeglass and wedding dress district, not to be confused with the hammock district...) without some type of copy of my dress in each display window. So much for unique and *only* being carried at their store! (If you're really dying to know what my dress looks like, the closest I can find online is Mori Lee style 4507. It's not exactly the same but it's pretty damn close.)

On the upside, I am glad that the "Baked Alaska" look is slowly disappearing from stores. Some people (like Rilla) can pull off this look, but not me.

My sister comes home today (assuming the blizzard in Toronto isn't too bad) so at some point in her vacation, we may go to the store and try on the dress again letting her, my mom and my nieces have a look since the only people that know what it looks like are Kathy, me, Liane and my saleswoman. And since I switched to a new cell phone last month, I don't even have a grainy blurry pic to show off.

Theme song?

We've booked our photographer, the beautiful and insanely talented Chelsey Goodman of XOX photography. She also happens to have a MSc in Medical Microbiology... some people are just too ambitious eh?

Our next step is to find a dj, so I was online looking at different dj's in the city, which lead to websites on the top wedding songs , which lead to websites on just how many songs we're supposed to dance to. There's the First Dance Song, the dance with our wedding party, my dance with my dad, his with his mom, one for cutting the cake, another for when he throws my garter (which we're not doing), yet another when I'm throwing my bouquet (which we're also not doing), and apparently, another song when my maid of honour (Jenny) and the best man (Derek) are supposed to go around collecting money from all our guests to help us pay for our honeymoon. Huh? The last one is where I just started laughing. That's a ridiculous number of songs for us to be on the dance floor before the party's supposed to start!

Now we're discussing what our "First Dance Song" should be. We don't have an "our song". It's not like we met at the bar and this was playing in the background. We had our first kiss at work in the loading docks so there wasn't any music there either! We have to find something we both like, and that's proving to be a bit difficult.

His favourite song of all time is Threat Signal's "When all is said and done". Go ahead, click the link...ummm yeah, you can see why that's not going to be a particularly good "First Dance Song". I like bands like BNL, GBS, and Blue Rodeo so my pick would be something like "Dark Angel". Course, I'm a sucker for love songs so Josh Radin's "Today" and Amanda Marshall's "Marry Me" are on my list too. He's veto'd all my songs so far (booo!) saying they all sound like soundtracks to a bad teen romance movie! :-(

So far, the only one we can agree on is Nickelback's newest song "Never Gonna be alone". I have a feeling that it's going to be a very popular song when it's *officially* released on the radio.

We still have 10 months to decide, but it may take that long to come up with something we can both live with! LOL

Plans are coming together!

We had our first meeting with Fr. Mark to introduce Brendon and do the preliminary paperwork (names, baptism, ceremony date etc). We have to go back next week to complete the PMI, the Pre-Marital Inventory. It's 181 questions about our expectations about being married, about money, us as individuals, our future plans, personal beliefs etc. It's really quite weird but I think the entire point is to make sure we're both taking this seriously and have a chance to talk about all the important topics. We read the questions and choose either "agree/disagree". If there are topics that we have different opinions on, then that's something to discuss. And if there's a few important topics that we both agree on, then that's also something to discuss. My personal favourite question is "I am afraid of my future husband." Honestly, if it takes getting engaged, doing all the planning, meeting with the priest, then having a multiple-choice questionnaire to get that information out of me?? then there's a bigger problem! The question that made me laugh was "I have hobbies that I don't enjoy sharing with my partner" which I have to agree with! Apparently, that's bad. But I mean really, can you see Brendon tying on a coin belt and bra, getting on stage at the Fringe Festival and performing?? NO! (Although... the mental picture does makes me giggle!) I don't think having different hobbies is such a bad thing. I am worried about explaining tribal belly dance to my priest without making him blush! LOL

And we just put our deposit on the hall!! It's so exciting!!! We're toured three venues: the U of M Faculty Lounge, Red River College Princess Campus and the Irish Club. The Faculty Lounge was incredible and I have to thank Jamie and Kevin for recommending it (sorta...) but it was just waaaaay out of our price range. RRC was neat, but noisy and too industrial for us. All the exposed piping and concrete and glass makes a beautiful location, but it just wasn't the environment we were looking for. Plus, sound just reverbs off the walls so when the dj starts, you won't be able to hear yourself think! So, our last location was the Irish Club which we fell in love with immediately! It's so cozy and the pub is STOCKED! Plus there's a smaller pub off to the side with the dart board and the pool table so when we open up the dance floor, anyone looking for a quieter room can hide in there! Tony, the chef, used to work at the Marlborough and other big hotels in the city, but has decided to retire from large catering jobs (1200 people usually) to small events like ours (1/10th that). We have our choice of "anything you want" for the menu. We both have our hearts set on cabbage rolls and perogies, and probably a vegetarian lasagna and a meat...either roast beef or ham. The weddings so soon after Thanksgiving that we immediately scratched turkey off the list. Oh, risotto is also an option, which I know is a favourite of Catie.

And I got a quote for the wedding cake but while she was giving me the details, the fire alarm went off and they had to evacuate the bakery so... *fingers crossed* they haven't burned down!! Is that supposed to be a bad omen? ;-)

Guess I should update this more often!

I haven't been updating this blog because, well, there's nothing much to update on the wedding planning front. We've just been really busy with other things to worry about the wedding that much. However, I'm happy to announce that we've starting working on the wedding plans again.

Things that we can now check off our list include:
1) The date.
October 24th, 2009. My niece has started school this year, which is crazy because she's only 3! But next year is Kindergarten for her and there's some rule about the amount of time she's allowed to miss school. So, I asked Holly when the four of them can come home for the wedding. She said the week of Oct 24th or the week of November 1st, so we went with October 24th. I urge everyone to start driving their cars more and using CFCs to speed up global warming so we won't get married in a blizzard. Hey, it could happen!!

2) My dress.
Funny story. The store that I bought my dress from, I nicknamed "The Ugly Dress" Store. It's in "The Wedding District" of Graham Ave, and I don't want to name it since I did buy my dress there! Kathy, Liane and I had planned a girls' night out and were going to meet up with another friend for dinner at 5:30. I'm off work at 3:30 so I suggested we kill the 2 hours in between and go dress shopping, more for fun than to actually *find* a dress. I suggested the "Ugly Dress Store" because the display dresses in the window were so hideous that Kathy insisted we go out to lunch the week before just so I'd have to walk in front of the window and see the monstrosity of red taffeta, gold sequence and cream tulle in a hoop-skirted, fake roses, glittery, mess. All that was missing was a curtain rod and it could have been something from Carol Burnett! I figured if we're going to have a good laugh at my expense, goto a store like that one! At any rate, I got there early and discussed with the saleswoman what I wanted. Or, more importantly, my list of what I don't want: no lace, no pouf, no train, no strapless, no ruffles, no bows, and most of all, not $$$!! She brought me about a dozen dresses that fell into most of the categories and $300 price range I specified. The second dress she brought me was exactly what I wanted and it fit with very minor alterations (halter strap a little too long, don't need extra padding in the front). I kept trying on dresses until Liane and Kathy arrived. I put on a dress I was hemming and hawing about, they agreed that it's not the best one. Then I put on the dress I really liked. Liane's reaction sold it. "It's Old Hollywood style". Bingo. That's what I was hoping to hear. It's really pretty and I've never seen another dress like it anywhere.

3) Attendants.
Kathy, Sasha and Jenny for me. Keith, Jarod and Derek for Brendon. Ash and Francis have graciously agreed to be the MCs for the reception, which I'm really looking forward to because they're two of the funniest and sweetest guys I know. Ash'll make me laugh so hard I'll probably bust a gut, and Francis will probably make me ruin my mascara!!

Location. Location. Location. We've started scouting out locations for the reception. We're meeting with the first co-ordinator next week. Of the 6 or so locations we tossed around, two have already been booked for that day, which kinda freaks me out!

Lists...

We were at Safeway today picking up stuff we forgot to pick up yesterday (are we the only ones that happens to?? Is it too soon for Alzheimer's?) when I spotted "Duly Noted, A wedding guide to Winnipeg Spring/Summer'08" edition. Brendon's been joking that anything that says "Wedding", I make a quick b-line towards. I ``read`` the two magazines that Elda gave me that she'd inherited from Trish that they used for their wedding plans. This one was free and small and had local content, all things that the other magazines weren't. Like most bridal magazines, it's 99% ads and took the 3 block ride home from Safeway to read all the useful stuff. What I did enjoy is The To Do List at the back of the magazine. Left side is the bride`s list, right side is the groom`s. It made me laugh.

12 months before the ceremony, the bride is to:
-select the wedding date
-determine the number of guests
-look for a gown
-plan the colour scheme
-choose bridesmaids and flower girls (note the use of plural in this one....)
-reserve the church
-reserve the reception site
-reserve the florist, photographer, musicians or dj, and videographer

12 months before the ceremony, the groom is to:
-choose his groomsmen
-*help* select the ceremony and reception site

That`s it. He get 2 things. She gets 7. And one of his two things is to help her with one of her seven! The final countdown to the wedding (in three month increments), her list is 2-3x longer than his. And his list mostly starts with `Help to....` or `Go with your financee to....`
I laughed so hard I nearly dropped the book. So much for sharing the arrangements!!!

On a funnier note, Kathy found a wedding dress so absolutely horrible and ugly, it stopped her in her tracks (on the other side of the street) and she invited me out to lunch just to witness the monstrosity of bad fashion. It`s like the designer took elements of everything horrible and put it in one dress. It was metallic maroon with gold sequence, corset and boning, white and gold roses, rouching, hoop skirt, tulle, and bows. Scarlet Ohara would be proud...Actually, Carol Burnett would be prouder. The dress was only missing the curtain rod!

The Proposal

Everyone's been asking how he did it so I'll fill in the story.

August 19th was our 1 year anniversary of Brendon moving into our house, so I wanted to do something special and romantic to celebrate our first year living together. We'd both talked about how we'd like to go on the Paddlewheel Queen for dinner, so I went ahead and made reservations for dinner the night of the 18th for dinner and dancing (yes, we danced!) on the cruise ship. We had garlic toast, seered scallops to celebrate my cook-off in Montreal, I had the basa fillets and Brendon had the stuffed chicken breast. After supper we wandered the decks and I even got to navigate the ship until we came to a bridge and I was too scared that I'd crash the boat so I quit!

I didn't realize at the time, but Brendon had been planning on proposing to me on the Paddlewheel Queen but I beat him to the punch when I made the reservations to celebrate our anniversary!!

On the following Monday, we had AAA Alarms come in to install motion detectors in the house. We'd been told it should be a two hour job. The installer said it'd be more like five, but he figured he'd be done by 2pm. Brendon suggested we go to the zoo afterwards, it was a beautiful sunny warm day. We could wander around and maybe toss a football afterwards. Sounded perfect! Little did I know that he was planning to propose at the zoo, or while we were picnicking in the park!!

Well, the installation hit more than a few snags, some hidden wires and loads of plaster in the walls. The installer had to enlist Brendon to help with the wiring and the five hour job actually took nearly 9 hours! We were both tired, hungry, the house was a mess with plaster dust from all the drilling, Kitty was a nervous wreck from so much noise and strangers so I went ahead and made tacos for supper. Brendon left for Safeway to get sour cream and salsa, putting the alarm set on "Away" so when I went to check Facebook, I set off the motion detectors, the alarm and the horn set up in the basement. It's amazing how quickly you forget your code when all hell breaks loose!! Pretty sure the neighbours know we have an alarm now!!

After supper, I was relaxing in front of the tv and Brendon was puttering around the house. He came into the media room with champagne glasses in hand and says "You know I'm a hopeless romantic" and

pulled out a bottle of expensive champagne he'd bought the day before, with my ring tied to the neck of the bottle and says to me "I want to be with you the rest of my life. Will you marry me?"

To which my answer was "Oh my god! Baby! Of course!" *sniffle sniffle* *sob*



So, now we're engaged! And the proposal was perfect!