Dinner menu

We met with Anne (events co-ordinator) and Tony (semi-retired caterer) at the Irish Club to go over the reception details. Here's what's for dinner:

• Oven baked chicken
• Vegetarian cabbage rolls
• Green beans almondine
• Honey glazed baby carrots
• Perogies (fried, with onions)
  
• Sweet & Sour meatballs
• Pasta, tossed and caeser salad
  
• Apple Crumble with vanilla ice cream

There'll be 2 bottles of wine per table and everyone gets 4 drink tickets to use at the bar, good for anything at the bar except Guinness. Guinness lovers (KATHY!!) have to part with 2 tickets for "a proper pint" of the Irish Ale. We'll have a separate colour of drink tickets for anyone who wants soda.

Stagette & Shower

Liane, Jen, Kathy and I had a fun stagette last Saturday. Not the traditional, phallic-shaped objects and embarrassing the bride type, but something a little more...mature? Sensible? We started with mani/pedis at Tiber River Naturals, a spa on Academy. We got matching daisies on our toes. Our nail techs were howling with laughter as the four of us were giving them ideas on how to embarrass people on their staggettes and stories from our past. Since our toes were still wet, we wobbled over in our disposable flip flops (carrying our shoes) to Pizzeria Gusto for dinner. They have a great selection of Chianti wines that I had a hard time choosing a bottle from the extensive wine list. Despite my best attempts at warning the staff about my allergies to mushrooms, I think I ended up eating a mushroom so I was sick later on that night. Other than that, spectacular restaurant! Though there isn't much room to throw a punch. Kathy wanted to pay for dinner but I managed a few good smacks and she relented to let me pay. The waiter managed to get a good picture of us embarrassing ourselves at the restaurant as we wrestled for the bill!! From there, we headed for martinis at Liquid Lounge, only to find the windows boarded up! :( So we went to Saffron's instead. It's getting cooler and buggier at nights now so we opted for the indoor bar and managed to eat have one drink before the karaoke started. We left to get cheesecake at Baked Expectations. Mmmmm, super dark chocolate cheesecake!! (and I wonder why my diet isn't working???) From Baked, we went across the street to Academy Club (don't remember the name) but it was a smokey (fog machine) techno bar; not really our style so we went to Toad for beers. A creepy guy sat directly across from our table and just spent the entire time staring at us and refusing to move and it just freaked me out, so once our beers were done, we went home.


Due to the mushrooms at Pizzeria Gusto, I had a rought night and didn't get much sleep before my wedding shower the next day at Val's gorgeous house in St B . It was SO MUCH FUN!! It was a potluck that could have fed a small army! Chocolate dipped cream puffs, chocolate layer skor bar cake, chocolate chip cookie Kahlua cake, vegetarian sushi, blueberry cheesecake, lazy daisy cake, strawberry custard flan, oh it went on and on. Everyone brought the recipe for their dessert so I have a great recipe book now.


Liane surreptitiously emailed questions to Brendon that I had to answer to find out how well I know him. Well, I got an A (naturally!!) because I only missed a few questions. Woo hoo me! Bonus points because most of the married women at the shower couldn't answer the same questions about their husbands of 5-35 years! I got a pin for each one I answered correctly. As you can see, I did quite well!

Another highlight was a spectacular photo album that Sasha had put together of photos of us from university and afterwards. I nearly cried reading her letter; it was so touching and to see how much work she'd put into to, especially considering she just got married 3 weeks prior, just made it more special. Liane and Kathy and Jen had done so much work that I can't thank them enough for everything they did!

Wedding cake fun

We decided against having a traditional cake at our reception because 1) they're expensive and 2) they never get eaten. We've chosen instead, on having a large nanaimo bar slab instead since it's everyone's favourite. I went to Natural Bakery on Logan, who have the best nanaimo bars and they're walnut free, and asked how much it'd cost for ~200 pieces (enough for everyone to have 2 pieces). At first, they quoted me over $250 each ($1.25 per piece). When I called back to confirm the price, they said they wouldn't be able to get that much for us, but gave me the number of the bakery they buy the nanaimo bars from. I'd thought Natural Bakery made the bars on site, but it turns out, that they get them from Baker's Mark. So, I called Baker's Mark. They don't sell directly to the public, and the minimum order is $200 if I went through a commercial business. AND, Baker's Mark doesn't make the bars either! They're made by Mrs. Willamsen's in Calgary, frozen, and shipped to Winnipeg where Baker's Mark distributes them to other bakeries. I called Mrs. Willamsen's Bakery Inc in Calgary and they don't sell to the public either.

Now what?

Well, a co-worker suggested calling a different bakery so I went to Canada411.com and found Gunn's bakery and Weston bakery. Gunn's called back first and said that they make nanaimo bar slabs 24" long and 16" wide, enough for 192 pieces so everyone gets 2 1/2 pieces (if we cut them 1" x 2"). They'll deliver for an extra $8 and make it nut-free for me. Sweet!!

Brendon made our cake topper on a CNC mill. I can't really describe it, but it's so amazing that he should seriously think aobut buying and operating a mill from the basement just to make custom cake toppers!

My wedding shower is coming up in a few weeks and I'm really looking forward to it. Just hope the weather holds out and we get something resembling summer.

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.