M.I.A. on the Wedding Front

Wedding planning has been set aside for a bit while I try to get things in order for the big move. I have to pack all my stuff, notify people of my new address, hire a moving company...So many details to remember. Much like planning a wedding. :P

However, I am happy to report that our decorator, Polvy has been great so far. She took the initiative to contact the Event Coordinator at our reception site to start planning for our event. And when the Event Coordinator said that she was trying to focus on events that were taking place in the first half of the year and would get back to Polvy closer to our wedding date, Polvy was persistent until she got the necessary information she needed to do her work.

I'll be the King of the Castle

In anticipation of our life together, Denise and I decided in December that we would move her into a bigger rental apartment. This will also facilitate my ability to work from a home office for my current employer. We've spent some time recently looking at rentals, and now we're about to sign a new 1 year agreement. The building that we will be moving to is an older lowrise building, but with many similarities to another lowrise condo that we almost bought.

Well, I'm looking forward to living with Denise... UNDER MY RULES!!!

Status Update for Bullpen Larry

This post is dedicated to Bullpen Larry, who "requested" an update on the progress of our wedding planning. :)

After a bit of negotiation, Colin and I have secured Prodeco Workshop as our wedding decorator. We are pleased with our choice as the decorator was very understanding of our decorating and budget needs. The final decoration design details still need to be worked out. We'll probably meet with her during my next visit to Toronto in February.

The other bit of news to report on is the bridesmaid dresses were delivered in Toronto today! I received a message from Florence, who happily informed me of the dresses' arrival. Apparently, she was "prancing around in it" when she called. (She better not wear the dress until the day of the wedding!)

That's it for now. Over and out.

The Bridesmaid Dress Saga

Early on, I knew that the shopping process for buying the dresses for my bridesmaids was going to be a bit of a challenge. Ideally, I would be living in Toronto and I could go shopping with the girls after work or on the weekend. However, since I only go to Toronto about one weekend a month and the girls have their own busy schedules, I wasn't quite sure when we would find the time to look for bridesmaids dresses.

I had a good idea of what I wanted for the bridesmaid dresses:
1) I wanted to get a nice bridesmaid dress that the girls could re-wear again (not the classic, hideous bridesmaid dress).
2) Colin and I agreed on the colour: wine/ reddish-purplish.
3) We wanted the girls to wear the same dress (not just the same colour).
4) I had hoped that the dresses would not be too expensive as we were buying the dresses for the girls.

In the fall, I had checked out the bridesmaid dress collection on the JCrew website. Lo and behold, they had several gorgeous dresses available in the exact colour we were looking for. Of course, the prices were not cheap. On average, close to US$200 plus costs for shipping and handling. However, I forwarded the picture below to my bridesmaids and asked them to see if they could find something similar in the Toronto malls.


When I went back to Toronto for the Xmas holidays, none of them had any luck. At that point, I was pondering on when we could all go to a bridal shop to buy the dresses.

However, one day I was browsing the Sale section of the JCrew website and found their Fall bridesmaid dress collection! Unfortunately, the Emily dress in Spiced Wine (pictured above) was pretty much sold out. However, there were a variety of sizes available for the silk chiffon Sophia dress listed as US$119.00.

I still would have liked the dresses to be a little bit cheaper. However, since the dresses were exactly what we were looking for and I wasn't sure when I could get the girls together to go bridesmaid dress shopping, I decided to go for it. I had to call/email the girls. Try and figure out their sizes. Because the dresses were a sale item, I knew there were limited quantities. Plus, you could not refund/exchange the dresses. So, time was of the essence and we had to be very sure of the sizes. After much going back and forth, I finally placed the order on Tuesday night.

The next morning, Florence emailed me to tell me that she just saw the price of the Sophia dress go down to US$89.99! I immediately called JCrew to see if I could get a price adjustment. I was a bit worried as their website clearly states only one-time price adjustments are given to regular priced items. Luckily for me, a friendly customer service representative assisted in giving me a credit back on my credit card. Woo hoo! Now, we should expect the bridesmaid dresses to arrive in the next two weeks. Yet another item to cross off our list!

Another Task Complete

Invitations have been ordered! That's another task stricken from our list of To-Dos.
At this rate, we'll be done all of our preparation by mid February? Who says wedding planning is stressful? hehe.
Maybe in addition to the dance, I can take a few singing and composing lessons from a friend.

... alright... time for me to lower everyone's expectations again.

First Dances

Just a few weeks back, I saw a really original first dance at a Wedding on TV; naturally it would be on YouTube.

So who would like to see Denise and I perform something of this nature?



Better yet, who would like to see the groomsmen perform something like [this video]

If this post doesn't generate comments, nothing will :)

About the URL (Part deux)

For those of you who don't know, we have a new website address that will be easier to remember: http://www.colinanddenise.com/.

Thanks to all of you who have been reading so far... :)

About the URL...

... so a few people, including my friends, have kindly mentioned to me that typically, its the bride-to-be's name that usually precedes in any correspondence. To be completely honest, I was really only thinking about alphabetical order when I registered our domain name.

Call me avant-garde, or call me geek, its not worthwhile to change it now.

Do you still love me Denise? hehe

Correction in Terminologies

I've made some corrections to what was previously named our 'RSVP' page. To avoid confusion as to the intention of the page, it has been renamed accordingly to its purpose, to collect contact information.

The aptly named page, Contact List is now available to submit your information now so that we will have it readily available when we send out the invitations.

As updated in my previous post, an RSVP will be created once invitations have been sent out.

Special Note to S&S D: This means that 10 of your friends can send us their contact info, and Denise and I will have a good chuckle. However, if 10 of your friends purchase gifts from our registry, we'll be really happy for kind acts of generosity from strangers. ;)

Wedding Site is Officially Launched!

Denise and I have been working hard on our website for a while now, and I'm glad to say that the we're ready to officially launch this thing!

Some of the changes that you may notice include:

• a nicer design
• guest book
  
• an integrated registry
• Contact List

Please sign our Guest Book and take some time to complete our Contact List. We will be using the contact list to keep you informed of the last news and to send invitations.

Hope to hear from you all soon!