A Tardy Post

Here are the latest updates:

Registry

It's almost DONE!!!! One more trip just to add a few things and we are done done done. I'm excited about that. The most humorous part of the last registry trip with my grandmas, mom, and Chantelle, was accidentally putting a $900 set of pots and pans on the registry - turns out we saw that price after we scanned it. They're taken off of course and replaced by a much cheaper set which I think was around $250. I don't remember though.

Vacuum

My grandma is hooking us up with a vacuum deal, so we're excited about that. Yes, that's right, excited. ... ... about a vacuum.

Invitations

Making the invitations was by far the funniest 4 hours (or was it 12?) that I have spent in recent memory. Grandma T was going on about how it was a Japanese sweatshop, and lamenting the fact that she couldn't go out into the garden to practice her yoga. That was really just the beginning. It was a lot of fun. We're not done the invitations by any means, but I'd say we're 80% of the way there. That's my conservative estimation.

Flowers

It looks like everything is lined up in the flower department, so that's some good news.

Guest Book?

We're not having a guest book, we're having a guest ... table. I won't ruin the surprise (not that it's some extremely exciting thing... I guess it's just more laziness actually) for y'all by explaining it... but my lovely cousin Chantelle is going to man the table. This is good.

Suits

Believe it or not, I think that it was actually harder to shop for suits than bridesmaid dresses. we don't have anything lined up yet, but I do believe Tyler will wear a vest with his suit, which I think will look really nice and help him to stand out from the rest of the men in the party. :)

Well, that's about it for now...not very exciting.

Seamstress-ness

Yesterday my mom and I went to the seamstress with our wedding dress - it was not nearly as awkward as I expected, AND I really liked the seamstress! To add to all that, the hair pin thing that I really like will work well to hold my veil on my head, so that's exciting. The whole alteration should only be $60-80. This is a very good thing.

I'm supposed to go back at the end of August to try it on. I'll keep y'all posted!

Complete Day of Wedding Craziness: Confirmed

That's right, ladies and gentleman! Come close, gather round, do not! be afraid, though this is quite the spectacle. Here's Rachel's zany schedule on Saturday, July 8th:

9:00-9:15 - Meet with the gramster (the Calgarian grandma)
10:00 - Add Chantelle to the gramster/Rachel duo
10-1 - Shop around and be the 3 delightful ladies that we are, have some lunch
1:00-??? - add to the fantastic trio GrandmaT (from England) and MOBster, add cookware/kitchen stuff to the registry, hopefully finishing off the kitchen portion of the registry
3:30? - convoy back to the house, make some delicious snacks, hopefully add Erin to the amazing quintet and....
4:00? - start making the wedding invites....

Now we will do that...until they're done. My suspicion is that with 6 people it shouldn't take TOO long at all, and that a wonderful day will be had by all! Tyler will probably come by at around 4 provided he gets off work at around 2:30 or 3, but, provided Lyden is home and available, he will probably end up playing FIFA 2006 downstairs (or perhaps NHL. It's a toss up). However, if Lyden is not home and available, he gets to make invites with us, which I'm sure he'll enjoy more than most (less confident) men would like to admit.

Oh the joy.

Now for today's update:

Stationery

I'm sure you've been sitting at home, biting your nails, wondering "how did Rachel's tiara time with her mom go today?" ... well, maybe not. But I'll get to that in a minute.

At lunch time today mum and I went first to get the stationery needed to make our invites. She had her mock invite created already, and while the template will change somewhat from what she initially created, what we ended up with will be quite nice and perhaps EVEN BETTER than her demo. We had to go to 2 places, the second place much better than the first. I won't mention what the first is, but the second very helpful and cheerful place we went was Scrapbooker's Bliss. I shall confess it immediately, this will never be the type of place I would hang out, but that is because I am not a scrapbooker. However, if you are, you're going to want to go there. I have linked it on the side! I must say, with all this advertising I'm doing for these various places, I should be getting paid.

Tiara?!

Did she do it? Did she cave? A lesser woman may have, but I entered and exited the tiara store without a tiara. It's not actually a store dealing ONLY in tiaras, they have other hair stuff and jewelry and all sorts of stuff I'm not particularly interested in. However, after receiving some considerably terrible service, I did end up with two hairpieces. One is a headband with all sorts of diamonds (not real of course) on it, and the other is this great piece for the back of my head/hair/whatever. It was too beautiful not to get. I don't know if I'll use them both, but I figured I'm not doing this trip twice, so I'd better get both just in case. With tax and everything they cost me under $50 (but not much under), so I thought it was worth it - ESPECIALLY considering the exorbitant prices I have seen for tiaras - $100 (AT LEAST) +!!! I was like "what kind of mental case spends that much on a ridiculous tiara that they will wear once?". I got 2 nice hairpieces for $50, and I'm proud of it.

Hopefully this evening over dinner Tyler and I will confirm that our pastor friend will be doing our ceremony. If not, we're in quite the fix...

That's all for now, folks!

Long Awaited? Update

I haven't written much lately just because nothing much has been happening with wedding stuff - lots of wait and see at this point. I'll give what updates I have though...

Seamstress

It looks like my mom and I are going to see the seamstress on Sunday (enter scary music here). Nothing like standing around in your knickers in front of a stranger. However, it needs to be done, so I'll just have to deal. Now, if for some reason the dress can't be altered, then I "get" to go wedding dress shopping, which is NOT my idea of a good time.

Photography

On the photography front, it seems as if we will go with Jenni Shores Photography, which is good. It's not a complete lock, but it is looking that way.

Registry

As for the registry, there's a never-ending joy :P ... we're going to add on to it on Saturday July 1st, I've made an appointment, so off Ty and I will go. After scrounging around the Bay, we're also going to check out a travel agency and see if we can register there for our honeymoon. Some people would rather just give money/contribute to our honeymoon, so I say, why not let them. Also on the docket that day is suit shopping with Sean (the best man/one of Tyler's brothers) and Lyden (my brother/one of the groomsmen). So that's Saturday July 1.

On Saturday, July 8th, it will be off to the mall again! - this time with my Grandma (from Calgary) and my cousin Chantelle in the morning - we plan to hang out, shop a little, then have lunch. After lunch we'll meet up with my mom and my other Grandma (from England, she arrives in one week [June 28th] with my grandpa and they're staying until July 18th) to add cookware to the registry. Tyler won't be joining that little hen party, he'll probably be working.

At that point, hopefully we will be about 80 or 90% done with the registry, and only have to make one more trip. Hopefully.

Invites

My mom has been making up mock invites for Tyler and I to look at. The first couple of invites were nice, but not really "my" style, but the latest one is exceedingly fantastic and I think we'll go with it. I'm excited about it! Who ever thought I'd be getting stoked for wedding invites? Not me. Anyway, then we have to make them all - I don't know what that party will look like but we'll have lots of help no doubt - Grandma from Calgary has said she wants to help make them, and perhaps Grandma from England would be willing to help as well, then of course Chantelle if she wants, and Tyler and me, and maybe one of the bridesmaids, Erin. I don't know ... I've basically just volunteered all of them :p. Of course they can say no though. If we have that much help, I'm sure they'll be done in no time. If not, it'll take a little longer, but I'm not worried about it.

Tiara?

This Friday mom and I are going to look at tiaras. Yes, that's right, tiaras. You may be thinking "Rachel couldn't wear a tiara, it's just not in her to do it", and you're right. But apparently they have other hair pieces too. We're also getting the stationary for the invites that day - it'll be quite the lunch break (minus the lunch).

Well, I think that's it - I guess more has been happening than I thought!

cake ideas

Imagine those cakes smushed together. Sorry they're different size pics - didn't know how to fix that...

Wedding Band & Potential Photographer

Today we picked up Tyler's wedding band :) If you really want to see it, you can take a look online: www.benmoss.com, then hit the "wedding bands" tab, then on the left hand side, hit "engraved", and then it's on the first page, in the right hand column, on the very bottom: # 420110043009. We like it. :)

We were also referred to Jenni Shores Photography: http://www.jennishoresphotography.com/content.html, so we're going to get a quote.

On the flower front, we got the quote and it was more than we anticipated, so we're changing some things to get it back down to the price we want. However, that's almost a lock.

That's pretty much it, I'm back to having 2 bridesmaids in town (Erin and Chadley), Christine is now in Saskatoon, and Kristen is in London, Ontario. I hope to see Christine and especially Kristen (haven't seen her for the longest), very soon.

More updates as they come!

The Countdown....

At this time in exactly 7 months, we will be officially married, and just sitting down for dinner at the reception.

:)

:)

The Bay Registry

Today Tyler and I worked on our registry. We added some plates/place settings, flatware, stemware, a kettle, a colander, knives, a salt/pepper grinder... stuff like that. We were lucky, because we hadn't made an appointment, but there was a scanner that they let us use and they helped us out A LOT. We were happy to get over that hurdle. There's still tons of kitchen stuff we should put on the registry, but that's ok, we accomplished a whole bunch today, and at least we've put a dent in it. Apparently someone at our church already went and checked out our registry and commented that there wasn't much on it! lol - at least people want to buy us gifts... that's a good "problem" to have!

I added the website of the flower place to the side bar...I didn't even know where it was til we checked it out, and I've been in Douglas Square countless times.

I also added a link to the Bay Registry site...

The Latest Developments...

Reception

Mom and I visited and booked the Ranche Restaurant this week (link on the side). We're excited! :) It's beautiful there and we'll be able to get some great pictures.

Flowers

Mom and I also went to a florist in Douglas Square today and picked out the flowers. Yikes! We picked out all the bouquets and corsages. It was quite the ordeal. The florist was good help and I'm happy with what we've decided. They're going to put together a definite price quote and then we'll go from there. I can really see how people would blow a LOT of money on flowers, there's so many different places you COULD put them, and so many different types. However, we kept it pretty simple. I'm a simple girl. Thankfully, lots of the decorating will be done for us already, since our wedding is so close to Christmas. :)

The Registry

Tyler and I have started our registry at the Bay (we actually started a couple of weeks ago, I just failed to mention it), but I'm afraid our first attempt was rather pathetic...we only picked linens, towels, and bathroom accessories, and we were there for about 3 hours. We're picky! Plus, we don't want to but a whole ton of stuff on the registry that we don't want, or that is exorbitantly priced. I don't want my guests paying silly prices for things! We're going to have to book some time in the coming weeks and try to add to it.

The next big hurdle will be the photographer. I have some friends who are photographers so we'll have to see how that all works out. After that, I'm not sure where we go... I suppose the men's suits...

What I'd really like to do is plan the ceremony... that will be the most special time for us. The celebrating will be great, we just hope that through the ceremony we can portray just how much there is to celebrate.

In 32 weeks today, Tyler and I will be getting married. A little bit surreal! In all this, may we be faithful to remember our Companion on the way...

The end of the bridesmaid dress drama

Unfortunately, my bridesmaid in Edmonton was not going to be able to make it to Calgary before September, which made it just too hard to be able to get a dress for her, so we decided that she could be a part of our wedding in a different way, and that I'd find another bridesmaid.

As sad as I am about that, I'm VERY excited to have my good friend Christine (fellow Grace Baptist Church intern) be my bridesmaid instead.

So tonight Christine met my mom (and grandma, and our friend Alice) at Bellissima, and they bought all 4 dresses... one is coming from Edmonton after all.

So, the color is dark navy, and it's pretty, and we're good to go.

Both sides of the story...

My mom has a blog! I added her to my links.

Happy Birthday Grandma!

The reception....

...will more than likely be held here: http://www.crmr.com/theranche/. Mom and I are going to check it out on Wednesday. We would have the place from 11am-4pm. The ceremony will be held at our church (I've linked it on the side bar as the place where I serve), likely at 10:30, and we hope to be over at the restaurant by noon.

Welcome to my new blog! :)

This is the place where those who are interested can hear the latest on preparing for my December 30 (2006) wedding ... it will hopefully be especially helpful to my out of town bridesmaid/maid of honor... hopefully I can keep everyone abreast of things!

I am very newly engaged (2 weeks today in fact), yet it already seems like we've been planning this thing for a month ... in a good way, mom! On Saturday my mom, Chadley, Erin S, and I went bridesmaid dress shopping. We went to a couple of bridal shops and then abandoned them for the mall, where we thought we may be able to luck out and find something good. In fact, we found some nice dark blue dresses at Bellissima, and I'd link you to pictures of the dress on their website if they had one. No matter. I'll post pictures of the dress once we get our hands on them, that is if we can.

The situation with the dresses right now is that we can get 1 small and 2 mediums of this dress in Calgary, but we can't order a matching dress from a store out of town (ie Edmonton, where there is one waiting, hopefully) without buying it. So I'm hoping Erin T will be able to make the trip to West Ed at some point this week to take a look at it, try it on, and if it works, purchase it. If it doesn't work... well, we're probably hooped. 3 dresses - 4 bridesmaids = we need to find a new dress. But hopefully it doesn't come to that.

I have my dress already, I'm wearing my mom's dress, which her grandmother bought for her, so there's some fun history behind that. I pray I won't become a psychotic mother who tries to force her daughters to wear the dress because of some silly "tradition" that I'm trying to establish here! (For the record, that's not what my mom's like, it was my idea to wear her ... "our" ... dress). I just like the dress and would like very much to wear it. We need to take it to the streamstress, I expect we should probably do that within the next couple of weeks.

Once we get the dresses, then hopefully we'll have the color, and then we can send the men out suit shopping. Tuxes aren't Tyler's thing.

I feel like I am already walking down the aisle, it's just extremely long and windy. By December we will be approaching the end of a long pilgrimmage, yet at the same time it's just the first watering hole on our journey. And as we walk, we will have Company along the way....