Category Archives: Wedding

I <3 Google Weddings

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As an ardent Google lover and obsessive organizer, you can imagine my glee at discovering this amazing Google powered suite of wedding planning tools. While not everything included here was relevant to my needs, I already had a website set-up and we designed our own custom invitations, the creation of Google Docs ready wedding planning templates did turn out to be extremely useful.

I’ve been using Google Docs for a while now as my go to word processor since it runs smoothly, contains all the features I need and makes sharing documents an absolute snap. It also makes my files in progress available from anywhere I have internet access, which means that downtime at work can be spent updating my budget or editing a new article or blog post instead of just googling cute videos of cats.

It’d already created my own spreadsheets to keep track of my progress on wedding projects and create an itemized budget, but the pre-macroed seating chart spreadsheet was a godsend. Colour coding, auto-totaling and easy emailing to the in-laws for a final say. For people at the start of their planning process I highly recommend checking these tools out.

Details, Details, Details

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In order to jumpstart my return to blogging, this week will focus on wedding recap, tips and tricks and a preview of what’s to come in the weeks to follow.

As I hinted at in my last post, this one will focus on the awesome DIY & nerdy details that made our wedding all about us.

The Ceremony
Since I’m not Catholic & converting at this point would be a bit of a pain (not to mention my feelings on the Pope & the Vatican), we opted to have a civil ceremony and chose a venue where we could do the ceremony and reception in the same place. As luck would have it, Rick’s great uncle is mayor of a small town up north and has already officiated weddings in that capacity. Also, he plays Santa Claus every year at the annual family dinner and it was an honour having him officially make us man and wife.

In order to keep things cheery and cheerful in the absence of grapes on the vines I made a butt-load of tissue paper flowers to decorate the chairs, arch and table for the ceremony. A big thanks to our friends an family for putting it all together so beautifully on the day, it was even nicer than I could have imagined.

Ring Pillow

Instead of using my sub-par sewing skills to build some overly precious confection out of ribbons and lace, or falling back on the now ubiquitous book ring box, we decided to instead give Rick’s childhood teddy Tata a mini-makeover with a new purple velvet bow that we tied the rings into. Luckily, my two year old nephew ring bearer managed not to gnaw on him on the way up the aisle, so everyone was happy.

Escort Cards

Riffing on something I’d seen online, I ordered a bunch of tags in our wedding colours from etsy seller California Craft, hand stamped all of the guests full names on them, then attached a button from Vickinator that coordinated to the videogame character that served as our table “number”. I hung them all with mini-clothespins from a great big frame that Rick had found on the street that I had spray-painted a nice glossy white. Much to my surprise a number of the guests actually wore the cards and pins as name tags the whole wedding.

Centerpieces

As I mentioned above, instead of the usual numbers, we designated each table with an old school videogame character, stacked atop some vintage books and a scattering of thesaurus pages cut into little heart shapes. A friend of Rick’s made the bead sprite characters and I added some mason jars in various sizes picked up for pennies at the thrift store for some added country charm.

Cake & Topper

The cake was homemade vegan red velvet (made with carob powder to be GamerWife friendly) with vanilla vegan buttercream and marshmallow fondant. The gumpaste flowers came from tinydiesel and the amazingly detailed wedding topper, made to match our 16-bit invites, was handcrafted by my ridiculously talented sister, puttenkat.

Cupcake Table

Upon further reflection, 120 cupcakes in 5 flavours with three kinds of icing, plus 2 kinds of brownies and peanut-butter truffles in heart shapes was probably overkill, but I still wanted to prove that I could do it. The younger people loved the do-it-yourself aspect to it, while the older folks stuck with the catered crême brulés and other more conventional deserts. Bonus, our co-workers were eating cupcakes for a week afterwards.

Fingerprint Tree

Another idea I found online. Instead of writing some mundane message in a generic book, we asked guests to “leaf” a print on our tree, continuing the theme of our fabuluster wedding rings. Since Rick’s best friend/best man is a graphic artist by trade and I was serious aghast (ahast! I say) at the prices some etsy sellers were charging for plain-jane MS paint trees, he kindly agreed to draw us a tree as a gift. When he warned me that his art wasn’t “wedding-y,” I pointed out that’s exactly why we asked him. Now we finally have a gorgeous focal point to hang above our bed.

Other details that didn’t make it into this post: handmade ribbon brooches for the ladies, paper bouquets for the attendants, a kusudama ball for the flower girl, bespoke boutoniers for the boys, “Player 1″ and “Player 2″ signs for the bride and groom’s chairs, vintage handkerchiefs for weepy guests and handmade maplesugar candies in the shape of space invaders. Let me know in the comments for this post if you’d like a tutorial for these, or any of the above projects and I’ll try to whip one up in a future post.

Special thanks to Leah, Carolanne, Kat, Doug and James for the awesome photos and to everyone who helped us set-up on the day of.

Confessions of a Second Time Bride

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gamerwife weddingWell, it’s been exactly one week since I officially became a (gamer)wife and I figured it was about time I got back into this blogging thing with a few reflections on what I’ve learned this second time down the aisle:

1 – Most importantly, more so than anything else you will do while planning, listen to YOURSELF. What you’re feeling might be jitters, might be excitement, or it might be something much more difficult and much, much darker. While everything is certainly much clearer with hindsight, I know now that the crying fits in the shower while preparing to join my mom for dress shopping where the harbingers of my first marriage’s doom. Serious depression, no matter how brief, should be examined. Talk to someone, a bridesmaid, a trusted aunt, your priest, or even a therapist. No one will judge you and if they do, talk to somebody else.

2 – Let people in. As a self-avowed control freak, this one was hard to do, but you will have to do this either physically or emotionally at some point during the planning process. Let people share your joy and excitement. You’re not showing off, you’re being genuine. And don’t be afraid to call in favours. Since Rick and I have most of what we need already, we actually requested gifts in kind from many of our talented friends. My sister made our amazing needle-felted cake topper, Rick’s best man illustrated our awe-inspiring fingerprint tree and even our wedding photographer provided his services as a gift.

3 – You can do it yourself. While this probably sounds self-evident to anyone who’s been on the internet or perused a Martha Stewart Weddings magazine, you can take charge of many aspects of your wedding without going mental. I made my own wedding cake and 120 cupcakes in 5 flavours, made most of the decorations, maple sugar candy favours, programmed the playlist & even did my own hair and make-up. Despite the occasional freak-out, careful time-management and a realistic assessment of my abilities kept me from becoming the weeping bridezilla some of those close to me feared I would become. Grab your glue gun and get started.

4 – Fiances want to help. Not always in the way you expect them to, but I truly believe this whole “it’s the Bride’s day” attitude is dated and tacky. If it’s all about you, why do you need a husband? Rick actually helped me pick out the colour theme, designed our invites and helped keep track of vendors and other official things. While there were some things I probably should have listened to him more on (i.e. music), I feel like we both played to our strengths to make sure the day represented both of us.

5 – Make friends with Etsy. Sadly, the indie-design juggernaught did not exist the first time I attempted this nonsense, but for crafty, DIY minded brides like myself it is a godsend. I got my dress, our rings, ties, craft supplies, cake making supplies and about a billion other things from various sellers with only one disappointment. Read the feedback, get recommendations and shop, shop, shop. Bonus, you can do it in your pyjamas.

**Don’t worry, I’ll be posting pics of all the amazing handmade and geeky elements in the days to come, along with a couple new features I’m really excited about. Stay tuned!**

Massive Wedding Project Update

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After endless holiday speculation from friends and family alike we finally decided to buckle down and get moving on the epic list of projects needed for our decidedly DIY wedding this May. While I’ve already posted about our invitations and Honeymoon registry I figured I should post some pictures of what’s been keeping me from cleaning the toilet.

Fascinator/Veil
blue fascinator veil

Have glue gun will travel! The first wedding project I completed, constructed entirely from supplies garnered on etsy.

Bouquets

The bridesmaid bouquets have been done for a while and are wrapped with the lace cuffs I’d originally purchased to wear with my dress that didn’t fit as well as I wanted them to. My bouquet includes blue origami roses purchased pre-made on etsy and flowers crafted from poetry Rick wrote for me.

Cupcake Tower

The problem with having a cat that thinks it’s a dog is that it chews on EVERYTHING. Including the brand new white cupcake tower I bought. So, $1.25 at the discount fabric place later, we have a classier, more colourful tower customized to our theme.

Book Wreath

Inspired by these amazing creations I decided that I would make an attempt at one to keep with our literature theme. Came out a link wonkier than I would have liked, but not bad for a first try. I used pages from Signet Classic Shakespeare plays and the circle in the center is covered with wrapping paper purchased at the dollar store.

Doily Flowers

Down time at work is generally spent scowering the web for the best tutorials, so as soon as I saw these I immediately envisioned them adorning the trees by the patio. Also considering making some bird seed hearts to hang alongside them.

Banner

There’s a gorgeous fireplace in the reception hall that I thought would look nice with a little banner with our names on it. After looking at the price of custom banners on etsy I decided that it would be more cost effective to construct my own version using fonts from Dafont, that same dollar store wrapping paper and some super cute doilies.

Invitations & RSVPs

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Invitations will be going out in late January, 2011. See below for a sneak peak.

In order to save paper and the environment we have not enclosed the traditional RSVP postcard. We invite you to instead email us at mariko.mcdonald@gmail.com, call 514.567.4154 or use the form below by March 31, 2011.