Happy Holidays Shutterfly Style

Have you figured out your holiday cards yet?  If not then you definitely need to scope out the holiday cards available at Shutterfly!  If you aren’t familiar with Shutterfly, it is a great *free* site with unlimited photo storage online.  Now you can turn you favourite photos into amazing Christmas cards!

How cute is this one?

And this one?  This would be perfect if you can’t quite get your cards out in time for Christmas.  Now you can say “Happy New Year!”

I love how simple and modern this one is:

Of all of them this one is my favourite because it really puts the emphasis on the picture:

And in case you want to highlight those engagement shots just a bit more you could always get a calendar made up (you know, in case you are trying to really get your money’s worth of those engagement shots):

The calendars can be personalized with you awesome niece’s birthday, or with a helpful reminder for you future hubs…

Right now Shutterfly is offering up to 30% off on Holiday Cards and buy one get on 50% off on calendars.  Hurry though, as these offers end on December 1.

But, even better, if you are a blogger then you can sign up for Shutterfly’s holiday card promotion for 50 free holiday cards!  What are you waiting for?  You have until December 31.

Do you send out Christmas cards and don’t you love getting them in the mail?

Lucky Me! Or Lucky Us!

Remember back when I was waxing poetic about non-floral boutonnieres awhile ago?  I fell in love with the boutonnieres at Pomp & Plumage on etsy.  When I saw that Souris Mariage was holding a giveaway for three boutonnieres from Pomp & Plumage you bet I threw my name in the hat.  And I won!

Or rather, future husband wins since they are for him.  Here is what we picked:

The Rosseau for the future hubs:

The Goldstein for one of the groomsmen:

The Jonathan Livingston Seagull for another groomsman:

And we are going to order three of the Oscar Wilde boutonnieres for our fathers and our master of ceremonies:

I was going to make the boutonnieres myself so I now have a bunch of feathers that I’ll have to find an alternate use for.  Any ideas on what to do with a few peacock, Lady Amherst pheasant, silver pheasant and guinea feathers?

A DIY Filled Weekend

We had a busy weekend around here, full of DIY!  Not a whole lot related to the wedding, but here we go!

1. On Friday night the Future Hubs upgraded my computer from Vista to Windows 7.  So far I really like new operating system and I’m trying out Windows Live Writer 2011 for the first time.
2. While FH upgraded my computer I got to work on a little craft project – a felt dahlia brooch.  It was a little finicky, but I love it as an accent on my black pea coat.
3. On Saturday the FH and I tackled a home project together – installing a new faucet in our kitchen!  We have been busy turning this place from mine (since I bought it four years ago) to ours over the last few weeks.
   The before is your bog standard faucet that the builder installed:And after, a fancy schmancy Moen faucet!
4. And finally, this is just the beginnings of a wedding DIY project, but I got these awesome wood frames from someone on kijiji.  I’m planning on repainting these and they may have another life as a chalkboard sometime in the future..??

How was your weekend?

Meet our Flower Girl

I don’t think I’ve introduced you guys to our flower girl yet!  Ladies and gentlemen, my niece Avery! Isn’t she cute?  Check out those blue eyes.  Avery will nearly be four by the time we get married next year, and I’m pretty sure she will be excited to be such an important part of our big day.  I can say without a doubt that Avery is my favourite niece.  The fact that she is my only niece is somewhat irrelevant…This is the first time I held her.  I had never held a baby this tiny before (it might have been my first time holding a baby period) so if I look scared, you know why.

I am convinced that there is a chance that she might just steal the show when she walks down the aisle.  We now have her look for the big day all figured out.  Wanna see?

Her dress will be Butterick’s B3351 pattern. My mom will be making it out of this fabric, a beautiful off white organza with lilac floral embroidery over a lilac toned fabric. I also plan to make her a flag similar to this one, so she can wave “Here comes the bride”!  I’ve got the felt purchased and ready to go.  I think this may be a project for while I am at home over Christmas…  I know Avery will get a kick out of waving this!

Source

If you want a flag just like this visit The Ritzy Rose on etsy. 

Did you have a flower girl that stole the show at your wedding?

Hair Dos and Hair Don’ts

Ready for some fun and embarrassing pictures? :)

My hair is super duper fine.  I think I’ve had an updo twice in my life.  The first time was probably the hair trial for my brother’s wedding.  The second time was at my brother’s wedding.  When they got married back in 2003 my hair was also quite likely the longest it has been in my life.  I don’t have a great picture to show how long it was, but this probably gives you an idea of how fine my hair is.When I went in for my trial for my brother’s wedding the stylist asked me to flip through some magazines to find pictures of updos I liked.  Every single one that I pointed out to her she said wouldn’t be possible because I just didn’t have enough hair.  So instead she put some rollers in and got to work.I don’t remember what the trial was like, but I absolutely HATED my hair at the wedding.  It was like a modified French roll, with all kinds of ends sticking up out of the top.  It looked like I had a mini birds nest piled on the top of my head.  (On the plus side, don’t my brother and sister-in-law look awesome?)I know I look like a complete sour puss here, but this was me trying not to cry!  I have ugly cry face in most of the pictures of me during the ceremony.  What was up with that?Needless to say when I think about how I would like my hair to look on my wedding day, an updo like that one is not top of the list.  When I saw pictures of Lauren Conrad rocking the side pony I thought that might be it!

Image via BuzzFeed 

My hair still has a long way to go in the length department but the biggest concern is if I can have a full enough pony tail to make this look work instead of it looking limp.  So today I got out the curling iron, spun some ringlets halfway up my hair and tied in a low side pony.  I still have some work to do to make sure the entire pony doesn’t turn into one giant ringlet.  I didn’t take any before pictures, but I did take some pictures when I got home.  Happily the curl held throughout the day – a miracle!  Plus I got complimented on it too! Do you have any hair updo horror stories to share?

The Marriage Commissioner

It is so easy to get wrapped up in the little details surrounding a wedding – things like centerpieces, what to use for a card box, what the invitations are going to look like, what is our flower girl going to carry and can I make it?

And, if you are like me, you probably spent countless hours pouring over pictures of venues, reading catering menus, and looking at the portfolios of different photographers and florists. How much do they charge and is it above or below the average? How does it rank on a scale of importance for us?

In all of the searching for the details and the right vendor it may be easy to overlook quite possibly the most important vendor of the day that you will hire – the person who will perform your marriage ceremony. After all, the main purpose for the day is to marry the person you love and the rest is just the party to celebrate that marriage. If you are getting married in your church then this decision is probably pretty easy. If you are looking for a marriage commissioner then not so much.

To find that right person for the ceremony I started the search off with Google. Luckily everyone in British Columbia (the province we are getting married in) who is legally allowed to perform a civil marriage ceremony can be found through a search on the BC Vital Statistics Agency page.  I perused forums online looking for recommendations and searched to see if our venue recommended anyone. A few names kept popping up. I picked one that our photographer liked and we started e-mailing back and forth.

Mr. Gazelle and I met her at her home on our trip to Vancouver in October. It was raining outside and we sat down on comfy couches in her living room. Right away we felt at ease with her. She was like the long lost aunt we didn’t know we had! We talked about the rehearsal, then about how the ceremony would go. She asked us about how we met, where we grew up, and about our families. It is important to her that our marriage ceremony reflect us as a couple and that it is a memorable part of the day even though it will take less than 30 minutes. Mr. Gazelle is very keen to craft the ceremony and we will be writing our own vows. Just as long as we say the phrases that legally need to be said, we can personalize our ceremony as we wish. It was obvious from talking to her that she really enjoys what she does.

As we stepped back out into the rain Mr. Gazelle and I looked at each other with big smiles on our faces. We both loved her and she was exactly the person we had in mind to perform our marriage ceremony.

Image via Sakura Photography

How did you decide who was going to perform your marriage ceremony?

Styling the Girls

Decisions have been made for the bridesmaids’ dresses!

We loved the dresses from Alfred Sung…

Alfred Sung Style D438/Image via Toronto Dresses

…and while I was in the mall the other weekend I found another source of inspiration.  These super cute bubble dresses from RW&Co.My mom will be making the dresses for the girls so I scoured the internet for a pattern to pull together all of the elements in the dresses that we really like.  Enter the following patterns:

MOH-T will be sporting Butterick B5490:

Image via Butterick

And BM-D will be sporting the strapless Simplicity pattern 4070:

Image via Simplicity

I love the pleating at the waistband on these dresses!  We will be going the different dresses in the same fabric route.

As luck would have it we found fabric too!  The other week I was lamenting to BM-D about the difficulty of finding purple fabric.  I was thinking that if we couldn’t find a suitable fabric in the right colour that maybe silver would be a good back up choice?  BM-D was pretty adamant about having a purple dress so she went off to the fabric store and found some purple stretch taffeta that is really pretty.  The fabric store was having massive sale later that weekend so we bought it at 50% off!  Many thanks to BM-D for being so proactive in finding the right fabric for dresses.  And thanks to my mom I think we will have some absolutely beautiful dresses for a fraction of the cost of a dress from a bridal salon.

Did you have a proactive bridal party to help find the perfect dresses?

Sparklerless Saddy McSad-Pants

On Friday afternoon I was perusing the Brock House’s 2011 catering menu.  As I skimmed over various rules and such my eyes focused in on this one:

20. DECORATING

The use of nails, staples, glue or any like material is not permitted on any walls, doors, posts, ceilings or any like objects of the Brock House. Rice, confetti, sparklers and table sparkles will not be permitted on the property. Please ask the catering department for alternative recommendations (i.e. bubbles, birdseed and flower petals).

No sparklers?  That means we won’t be able to do a fun send off and get cool pictures like this one:

Image via Sakura Photography

Le sigh…  I am so sad… 

I also have a rule.  Just say no to bubbles. 

What are our other alternatives besides birdseed and flower petals?

1. “Yay” flags are super cute and Mr. Gazelle is a big fan. 

Yay Flags via tiny bird arts on etsy 

2. I really like ribbon wands and they look like such an easy (and reasonably inexpensive) DIY project.  Plus visually they look great!

 Photo by The Schultzes/Image via Ruffled 

We know that we won’t need our photographers to stick around until we are ready to leave in the evening because there won’t be cool sparklers.  I think the best way to incorporate some kind of fun “lets wave something around in the air” idea would be to make this part of our recessional. 

Image via Your Best Wedding

Since our ceremony and our reception is in the same place this probably makes the most sense.  Then I think Mr. Gazelle and I will sneak away quietly via a taxi cab when we are ready to call it a night.  Um yes, we are totally thinking of going the inexpensive route and just cabbing it back to the hotel rather than renting a fancy limo for a 10 minute drive.

What would you do?  Would you DIY the “Yay!” flags or would you make your own ribbon wands?  And do you think the best time to break those out would be for our recessional?

Mission Milk Glass – Success! Plus the back up plan…

When we last left off on the saga that is our centerpieces, I had a vision for milk glass bud vases filled with flowers set up along our tables. 

Flowers by La Partie Events/Photo by Erin Hearts Court/Image via Elizabeth Anne Designs

Just to give you an idea of what our reception space looks like, here’s a picture of the set up:

Photo by Randal Kurt Photography/Image via Brock House

We’ll have three tables of ten people and two tables of twelve people.  How pretty would it look to have bud vases set up down those long tables?  I figured I’d need 22 vases in total, so I was on a mission to source them!  If I wasn’t able to track enough down I had a back up plan however…

The other week Mr. Gazelle was working the 7 am to 7 pm shift at work.  I decided to put the hours between when I got off of work to when I had to pick him up to good use.  I printed off addresses for almost every single Goodwill, Salvation Army and Value Village in town.  Plus I scoured Kijiji for ads and estate sales.  Armed with my trusty Garmin GPS I ran around the city on a mission.

I had no success at the Salvation Army at all, and while Value Village did have vases, they were clear glass versions of the milk glass ones I had been searching for.  It wasn’t quite what I wanted but it would have been a good back up plan.  I lucked out at several Goodwill locations though.

Luckily I was able to find all of the vases I thought I would need!  Here’s a look at some of the ones I found:I love the short round hobnail one that is actually a perfume bottle!  I pulled the cork out to give it a rinse and it still had some extraordinarily stinky perfume in it.  I also found a few large vases to hold our bouquets at the head table.

In order to save costs on the floral centerpieces we’ll actually be doing them ourselves.  Costco has an amazing selection of fresh cut flowers and did you know that you can order flowers in bulk from them in Canada?  I figure that we will pick up a bunch of white or cream roses and fill in with other colours or other flowers if there is anything else that catches our eye.  I would have loved to echo the flowers in our bouquets but sadly that was a little out of our budget.

The Back Up Plan

What was my back up plan if I couldn’t source milk glass?  Well, it starts with the snartig vase from IKEA, available for $0.99 here in Canada:

snartig vase via IKEA

I found a great DIY milk glass tutorial on Ruffled where a can of white glossy spray paint can turn ordinary glass into pretty white glass! 

Image via Marry You Me

So if you want the look for less or can’t source inexpensive milk glass this would be a great alternative!

Do you have any suggestions for inexpensive vases or flowers?

How to accessorize?

Does anyone else feel like they could use a stylist?  I feel like it is harder to figure out my entire bridal look than it was to find my wedding dress.

True, I have plenty of time to think of accessories before the wedding, but they have been on my mind lately.  What accessories should I choose that will all complement the dress, will go together, and yet not be over the top?  Ideally I would like to pick jewellery that I would wear again too.  Pearls are always a classic choice but I’m not sure if I want a standard string of pearls.  I am also in the process of making a hair fascinator with a vintage rhinestone brooch in the center.  The flower is a big statement and I don’t want to over accessorize!

Here is what I’ve picked up already:

The beautiful pearl cobblestone bracelet from J.Crew.  A pearl bracelet sprinkled with rhinestones will match some of the detailing on my dress perfectly.

Image via J.Crew

A small pair of pearl and rhinestone earrings:

Here are the necklace choices I need your help with!  What about this pearl and rhinestone lovely from luxedeluxe?

Celine, Triple Strand Rhinestone & Swarovski Pearl Necklace via luxedeluxe on etsy

I think the necklace is beautiful but I’m worried that it would be something I wouldn’t wear all that often.  I’m also worried it will be a bit much between my bracelet and hair flower as well.

My mom has a necklace I can borrow.  It is a really simple pendant consisting of a pearl inside a gold cage.  This necklace was a gift from her mother for my mom’s wedding.  It was the necklace my mom wore when she married my dad!  *tear!*  I think my mom is a little sad that I have proclaimed that I’m not wearing a veil (as otherwise I could wear the veil my grandmother made for her) so this is a wonderful way to incorporate a little “something old, something borrowed.”

The only thing is the necklace is gold and all of my other accessories are silver.

Last up, I have a few necklaces that I already own that I could wear.  Maybe my Tiffany heart pendant, although truth be told, I wear this one every day.  Maybe my diamond pendant?  Or otherwise I have a small and simple pearl pendant.

I’m leaning towards wearing my own pearl pendant, but what do you think?  Which option is your favourite?  Do you have any other jewellery suggestions?