March 2020 - Wedding Planning Update

In the midst of this Covid-19 pandemic, Blake and I are trying our best to stay home and stay positive. Unfortunately, since we both work in a health care facility, neither one of us are able to do our work from home and must be exposed to the front lines of this virus everyday. I want to take a moment, before I dive into the happier aspects of this post, to thank all of the nurses, doctors, healthcare professionals, plant operators, police officers, firefighters, paramedics, mail deliverers, garbage pickup, and everyone else that goes to work daily in order to keep this world running during this time. I see everyone thanking the front liners, but we should also be thanking those that we rely on daily/weekly in order to keep the electricity working, water flowing, internet running at top speed, and ensuring that we all don't fall into a complete pit of isolation and all go insane. So thank you! Also, thank you to those that are able to stay at home and have chosen to do so! You are all helping to minimize the spread of this virus and will hopefully save a life in doing so. My final plea is to those that are panicking. Please don't panic. We will get through this together and panic shopping is not the way to go as you are potentially depleting resources for those that actually need those supplies. Also, we are at the point of begging people not to purchase medical personal protective equipment (PPE) as the hospitals are running out! We need masks and other PPE to keep us safe and to eliminate exposure so that we can protect ourselves and are able to properly treat our patients. I have loved ones that work in these hospitals that are low on supplies and these amazing people have to make the awful decision to choose between their own health and their patients health in moments of urgent medical assistance. Don't make us choose between ourselves and our patients because we want to choose our patients.

Thank you for reading this. Now onto the happier point of this post! I want to update everyone on the planning process of our wedding! (I'm going to say "my" a lot, but I know it is both Blake and I's wedding, it's just easier to say "my").

There was a moment that I was in a rut of planning. I felt like I was falling behind and I was starting to get overwhelmed because I didn't know where or how to begin to kick-start the planning again. However, I took one step at a time and got a lot of assistance from my amazing support team; and I can now say that the planning process is going great! This may or may not be a long post depending on how much detail I give about these events ... here we go.

Let's start with the flowers. They are done!

My mom and I decided to go with a non-traditional florist for all of my wedding flowers. We hired the florist at a local Metro to do all of the flowers and I couldn't be happier with her. When I went to go and meet her she was great. She was incredibly informative and helpful in the planning. Apparently, she's been a florist for many years and has done many weddings, so she has a ton of experience - which definitely showed! She was attentive to us; however always made sure that the other customers were helped. She made me feel so comfortable and I was able to easily make decisions as to what I wanted. Also, because Metro is definitely a non-traditional route to getting your wedding flowers, I think I was able to get the best outcome for my dollar! However, I guess we will just have to wait and see. I'm hopeful that everyone will be surprised by how gorgeous the flowers are. I just have to book a follow up appointment to choose the ribbons for the bouquets and boutonnieres, but that will have to wait a couple of weeks until the virus restrictions end.

Wedding dress. Done!

I think I have previously blogged about actually choosing my wedding dress, but I finally got to take it home this past weekend. I only had 10 days to pick it up, as per the manufacturer warranty or something like that, so I had to go asap. It worked out though because Mady was down for the weekend and, ever since I took our mothers to go pick the wedding dress, I had always wanted to have my (future) sister with me when it arrived. I decided to take Mady and Paula with me. It meant a lot to me that they came and that they were both super excited about the experience. We weren't in the salon for very longer. I think with this Covid-19 virus, everywhere is just trying to get people in and out as quickly as possible, but I wish there had been a little bit more showiness to my appointment, They had booked me in for an hour, but we were only there for probably 15 minutes. All I did was try on the dress, make sure I still wanted it, paid for it, and then we took it home. It was still a fun experience and I was happy to have my girls there. I was extremely nervous about the dress since I wasn't 100% happy with my choice when I first chose it. I ensured that I had zero pictures of the dress because I knew that I would be second guessing my choice for months. I mean, I could find the dress online since I know the designer, so I still did that every once in a while; but it was more of a process than just pulling up a picture on my phone. So, I was very nervous about seeing the dress for the first time in months and not being happy. Everyone was so supportive and when I tried on the dress, I felt beautiful. Also, the dress seemed to fit perfectly! So that must be a sign that this is the right dress for me. I'm actually getting emotional thinking about it. I'm not sure if I still wish I had gotten a dress more similar to what I had initially envisioned and, unless I'm wearing the dress, I think I will continue to think that, but I feel beautiful in the dress nonetheless. Also, it made my mom cry and that's truly what every bride is looking for. Give me those tears!

After we finished with the brief dress appointment, the three of us went to Ikea in search of candles for my wedding. I walked out with one candle package and they both walked out with plants; so it was a successful trip I guess. Also, this was before they were closing everything and pressuring social distancing ... I'm now obviously taking it all more seriously since it's in my own backyard, but really we shouldn't have gone to Ikea.

Blake's suit ... Done!

A couple of weekends ago, Blake's parents came up and we went to a local Peterborough shop called Gentry to choose Blake's suit. If you've been reading this blog for a while, you might remember that Gentry Apparel came to our rescue when we had a wedding that upcoming weekend and Blake realized that he didn't have a suit on the Monday. They were awesome to us and when we got engaged, Blake set his mind on getting a suit from Gentry for our wedding. Again, they were great and helped us choose the best suit for Blake. The gentleman also helped us with choosing our suit colour for the groomsmen. We haven't gotten together with the groomsmen to try the suits on yet, but at least the decision has been made, so hopefully that process will be relatively painless. On a side note, that weekend was great! We got to spend a lot of quality time with Blake's parents which we don't get to do as much as we would like and we finally got to take them to one of our favourite restaurants that always seems to be hosting events when we've tried to go in the past. It was a great way to spend the weekend.

Bridesmaids Dresses are done!

Back in January, I was able to arrange for all 4 of my girls to meet up so that we could choose their bridesmaids' dresses. My appointment was the Saturday afternoon at Bliss Bridal in Whitby and my mom would be accompanying us to the appointment. I may have not gotten my wedding dress from Bliss as hoped, but I was definitely getting the girls' bridesmaids dresses here. Paula came early to my parents' house and we headed over together. Once there, we met up with Mady and Kristen. Mollie had told me ahead of time that she would be approximately 5 minutes late, but that she would be there ASAP since she was driving back from visiting her newest baby niece in Ottawa. We decided to head in without her and get started on picking the dresses. I had chosen my colour ahead of time - dark green - so our dress selection was more limited as not many designers create dresses in the particular green that I had chosen. The designer that I chose to go with was the Dessy/After Six collection. We had maybe 25 dresses to choose from in the Dessy collection and, after narrowing down the dresses that didn't fit my vision, I think the girls chose 9-12 dresses to try on. My consultant stuck us in a corner of the boutique with 3 change rooms and the girls got started. Kristen, Mady, and Paula all tried on different dresses. It was now 15 minutes into our appointment and Mollie wasn't there yet. The consultant discouraged me from checking the front since she was certain that they would bring Mollie back once she had arrived. Jump to Mollie arriving and stating that she had been sitting up at the front for over 10 minutes waiting as they had told her that we hadn't arrived yet. She decided to ignore their instructions to sit and wait and eventually came looking for us. She said that, although I'm usually late for most things, she knew I wouldn't be late for a wedding related appointment, so I had to be in the boutique somewhere. Nonetheless, all my girls were here now and we could finally get to picking! I have discovered that the deeper into wedding planning I have gotten, the more decisive I have become. Picking the bridesmaids dresses was one of the easiest decisions I made. I eliminated a couple of dresses very quickly and all I needed was to see Mollie in my top choices since the rest of the girls had already flown through trying them all on. I wanted a dress that looked flattering on everybody. I finally narrowed it down to two dresses. I asked Paula which dress she liked best and she gave a very "supportive of whatever decision the bride makes" sort of answer which I knew was total nonsense. I could tell that she preferred one dress over the other; so I told her that the maid of honor could be in a different dress than everybody else and I would be okay with that. She seemed to be happy with that decision and I let her choose the dress (out of the two that I had chosen) that she liked best. Honestly, when I had gone into the appointment, I wasn't sure if I wanted all the girls in different dresses or all in the same. The decision just ended up happening that the 3 bridesmaids will be in the same dress and Paula, as the maid of honor, will be in a slightly different dress. They will all look beautiful. Also, my consultant brought out one of the dresses in the colour that I had chosen ... however, I don't think it was the dress that I had been originally shown when choosing the colour as the colour of this dress just wasn't right. This green had an undertone of blue and, maybe it was just the lighting, but I didn't like the colour anymore. The colour is still green (hunter green to be exact - my favourite colour), just not the green I had initially envisioned (forest green ... totally different). Again, the girls will still look beautiful and that is all that matters!

After the appointment, Mollie and Paula came back to my parents' house and my dad had a hilarious time watching us eat assorted BeanBoozled jelly beans while trying to guess the disgusting flavors. I did make him eat one or two, but he always seemed to get the better of the two flavor options. It was still funny!

Next up ... the centerpieces are done!

The centerpieces aren't anything too fancy, but they are chosen! The only funny part is that when my mom and I were buying the items for the centerpieces, there was a mix-up with the boxes and we almost walked out with 24 painting canvas instead of our desired items. Good thing my mom asked me to check before we drove away. She knew the box was definitely lighter than it should have been, so I peeked and we took them back and got what we actually wanted. Everyone almost ended up with personalized paintings by Blake and I as their centerpieces and, as cute as that may have been, that's not really what I had envisioned for my wedding day.

I guess that's everything for now! I think we have made a pretty good dent in the wedding planning process in the last couple of months and it has been a huge stress reliever. I hope reading this post has brought some light to your day and I hope it gets you excited about our wedding because I'm definitely starting to get excited! Just over 8 months until the wedding!