Random Update

I checked the Irish Club's website and found out that our caterer had decided to retire...again. This is his third retirement, the previous two from being the head chef at the Fort Garry and from the Ramada Malborough. It was a bit of a shock and panic to the system because it'd never crossed my mind that he'd even want to retire again! I sent an email to the club to find out if they'd found a replacement yet, and they have!! *phew* Sigh of relief. We're going to arrange a meeting with him (or her) in late August or early September, once they've recovered from the craziness of Folklorama.

We also have to arrange a meeting with Ron, our DJ from Topps Music, to pick out the playlist. Which means, we have to have a playlist. And playlists are made of songs and we had to pick "Our First Dance Song" (see previous blog post). We'd heard a song on the radio a while back that we both really liked, but neither of us can remember what it was so I've spent a fair amount of time online trying to track it down. When I finally figured out what it was, I made sure to write it down in three different places so we won't forget again! We don't have an "Our song" and I'm sure in 20 years, we'll play this song for our kids and they'll groan in embarassment. Sweet....

Another sigh of relief is having nearly all of the RSVPs in. We're only waiting on just a handful of guests now, so we know that we're going to have about 80 guests, which is the perfect size! It's unfortunate that some people aren't able to attend because of prior commitments, like amazing cruises through Patagonia and Turkey!!, but we know that we're in their thoughts and wish us the best of luck for the wedding day (and for the rest of the marriage I suppose?).

I can't believe it's only 3 1/2 months left until W Day and there's so much more to do! I haven't even tried my dress on in 4 months. I should really do that, but what's more important is renewing my passport so we can go on our honeymoon to Puerto Plata!! Sooooo looking forward to two weeks there!

Back it goes!

After picking up our rings and sorting out Brendon's, I finally had to concede that no matter how much weight I lose between now and October (less than 4 months away!), I won't fit my ring. For some reason, my engagement ring can come on and off my finger while my wedding band, which is the same size, goes onto my finger and won't come off. Some may see that as appropriate for a wedding band, but my finger turns purple if I wear it too long. I'm sure when Brendon said "Take your hand in marriage", he meant with all my fingers! So, back to Appelt's to get my size 5.5 wedding band increased to a size 6, while my size 5.5 engagement ring fits just fine.

Invitations are in the mail!!

The invitations have been an endless source of frustration for me. We bought what we thought was a nice looking, easy DIY, kit from Michael's but what was supposed to be a quick weekend project has turned into a two month nightmare of epic proportions!! Most of the problems stem from computers and printers. We downloaded the template, included all the relevant information, and printed a "tester" only to realize that the font sizes and formatting was all wrong. After some tweaking, we got it the way we wanted and printed the first "official" invitation out. Only, my printer doesn't like printing on textured card stock so it smeared all the lettering. After getting permission from the IT department here (Shhhhh, don't tell!), I printed out the invitations at work early one morning...except the printer here doesn't have the same fonts as my PC at home so it substituted different fonts when I sent the first ones through the printer. Fixed that problem, but then the printer decided to randomly print invitations either left or right justified. Then one got stuck in the heat transfer unit and started to burn.

The next step was to punch out all the little oak leaves on the slider and thread the two brown ribbons through it, which seems like an easy task but when you have to do it 50+ times, it becomes an overwhelmingly tedious process. I did this (and made a huge mess) while Brendon was out at a hockey game. Kitty enjoyed playing in the ribbons and confetti as I wasted what few brain cells I earned at university, watching a marathon of Next Top Model (America's, Canada's and Britain's... the latter was the dumbest and most incoherent of the lot, sorry Patrick!)

From there, Brendon and I had to adhere the ribbons to the invitations to the decorative dark brown border and in the kit, they included 100 little double sided bits of tape which didn't hold worth a darn so we "borrowed" a few rolls of double sided tape from work to do the job. Surprisingly, Kitty didn't like being taped?

I have completely illegible handwriting, we decided to use my printer again to address each one. See above on my printer's dislike for textured paper...and as the week's dragged on and as the envelopes were moved around, all the addresses SMEARED OFF the envelope. I had to hand trace everyone's address back onto the envelopes so that Canada Post can deliver them correctly!

The final task was to seal the envelopes and when you see the stack ahead of us, the first thought was "Ugh, no way I'm licking all those" and attempted to seal the envelopes using a variety of different "time saving" methods...none of which worked and so, yes, we ended up licking each and everyone of them. YUCK! You'd think that the envelope maker would put some flavouring on the glue or something?! *shudder*

Long story short, they're on their way! Hopefully. I mean, we *are* dealing with Canada Post on a long weekend soooooo.... fingers crossed!

Follow up to last post

So our salesperson at Appelt's called to say that Brendon's ring had arrived and, after a little pressure on him by me ;) , we headed over to the store to pick it up. Well, *A* ring arrived but not *his* ring. We'd ordered a rìng with a distinctive bevel on each side. The ring that'd arrived was "bevel-less". On top of that, it was the wrong size. Two saleswomen tried to convince us that the larger ring in front of us was in fact, the one we`d ordered, so the four of us headed over to the counter where the original rings were to show that what we wanted and what was in front of us were two entirely different designs. Not to mention the wrong size. Our original saleswoman looked at the ring that`d arrived through her monocle and tried to say that there was a `slight` bevel. But we didn`t order one with a `slight` bevel, we ordered one with a distinctive one!! They`re sending the ring back, getting smaller one that fits properly, and hopefully will have a bevel!
Needless to say, I`m a little nervous about my wedding band...which hasn`t arrive yet & I`m getting a little anxious about it being the wrong one, or the wrong size.

Rings 'n' Things

We picked out our wedding bands a few weeks ago. We had one of those lazy weekends and heard a radio commercial on Power97 for Appelt's Jewelers "Wedding Band Blow Out" and thought we'd take a look. We've been searching for weeks for a band for Brendon, even going to a custom jeweler to see if we could get something designed for his, but nothing really suited his tastes. Plus, most stores have millions of rings for girls and usually only five rings for guys, none of which were good. Appelt's was the opposite, millions of rings for guys and only handful for girls.
Brendon's band is titanium, 8mm wide, with a beveled edge on either side. In the middle is a band of mokume game, which is a japanese technique where two metals are heated together and folded in half, heated again and folded in half. The result is a series of wavey lines of gold and copper. It's awesome! And it was on sale! Speaking of, a very similar band to match my engagement ring was also at Appelt's but for $280 less than what People's wanted so we bought my ring too.
We're still waiting for the rings to arrive, but as a thank-you for buying the rings, we got a gift certificate for lunch at the Gates on Roblin, which is an insanely expensive restaurant that we'd never go to...but if it's free we will!

Oh, I also got the flowers sorted out. The first florist wanted $352 for everything (included delivery from 'Scona). What bugged me is that she wanted to give each bridesmaid only 3 daisies for $25 each, but the sign behind her head said "5 daisies for $15". Huh?? So, I got the phone number of florist that works from her basement. She wants $260 for everything and the bouquets will be larger & more elaborate. AND, she'll make me a trial bouquet out of silk flowers as a template to approve, and I get to keep the slik bouquet afterwards. It'll all be daisies, sunflowers, and chrsythanemums with some fall leaves and berries wrapped in gold ribbon. The bridal party will have daisies. :-)

Free Press Announcement

We posted our engagement notice in the Free Press. The girl at the FP office said that "it might" be in today's paper, so I didn't want to send out an email telling everyone to go buy a paper in case it wasn't published. However, it was so here it is for those without subscriptions.


No, Brendon doesn't have leprosy and lost his nose. It's just a scan from the paper. When the Free Press updates their "Celebrations" website, the original photo, nose included, will be online.

Engagement photos online

We got the disk of photos from Chelsey today. Click here to see them. There are so many good ones, it's hard to pick which one is my favourite!