Two Left Feet

I *love* to dance.  A few years ago my perfect night was going out and shaking my booty.  Now I’m old and I get tired at 9 pm so my perfect Friday night involves jumping around our living room and playing Just Dance 2 on the wii.

But just because I can rack up the points on Just Dance 2 doesn’t mean that I can actually dance well!

Back in university I took swing dancing lessons with my friend Gord.  I may have convinced him to take lessons with me by telling him that it would be a sure fire way to meet girls.  We were total keeners and we practiced all the time.  Then life got busy and that was the end of dance lessons.

Mr. Gazelle and I have decided that we do not want to middle school sway for our first dance.  As soon as I googled “dance lessons Calgary” last week I realized that we better hurry up with those lessons.  Time is ticking down quickly to the Gazelle wedding and we don’t have much time to get our dancing skills on!  We decided to enrol in West Coast Swing lessons at Alberta Dancesport.  What does west coast swing look like?

Our first lesson was a lot of fun…but naturals we were not.  My previous lessons covered a different type of swing dancing.  I’m sure with plenty of practice we’ll get there!  Regardless, it is something really fun for us to do and learn together.  I’m pretty excited about that!  Are we going to go for some kind of serious kick butt first dance routine?  I have no idea, but we are learning how to move and get comfortable with each other on the dance floor at the very least.

Did you and your significant other decide to tackle your two left feet?

Tasty Food Tout Suite

Less than two weeks from now the Future Hubs and I will be in Vancouver for our food tasting at the Brock House!

The Brock House sets aside two Thursdays a month for food tastings for upcoming weddings, although if that schedule wouldn’t have worked with us we could have negotiated another day.  We are also allowed up to four people at the tasting and we each get our choice of one soup or salad, one entree and one dessert from their choice and buffet menus.  Since we can have up to four people my parents will be joining us at the tasting.  This way we’ll be able to sample as many different dishes as possible!

We have a fairly good idea of which buffet we’ll be choosing so we worked within that menu.  Here is what we’ll be sampling:

Salads

• Seafood Butter Lettuce Salad (lobster, mini shrimp, served on a bed of butter lettuce with a light spicy lemon dressing)
• Jericho Salad (mixed greens, dried cranberries, cherries, almonds, and feta served with olive oil dressing)
• Warm Mushroom & Asparagus Salad (served on mixed greens with hollandaise sauce and light balsamic soy dressing)
• Classic Caesar Salad (roasted croutons, homemade dressing, fresh parmesan)

Entrees

• Honey Roasted Duck served with seasonal greens and mashed potatoes
• Baked Maple Glazed Wild Salmon with matchstick pomme frites
• Baked Halibut with a lemon & coriander sauce, served with asparagus and mashed potatoes
• Mushroom Ravioli with a cream sauce

Desserts

• True Tiramisu: A true Italian “pick-me-up” drizzled with Tia Maria Liqueur
• Profiteroles: cream filled puff pastries, garnished with chocolate & strawberries
• Crème Caramel: made in house, individually baked and garnished with seasonal berries
• Homemade Cheesecake, served with a strawberry purée

Sounds pretty tasty, right?  You many notice something interesting about our menu choices.  No chicken or beef.  We’ll be going with our favourite foods and staying away from traditional wedding chicken and beef.  I can’t wait to reveal our full menu to you once we make a few last decisions after our tasting!

Did you decide to stray from the norm with your menu?

Our Cake Topper: Revealed!

I’m so excited you guys, our custom cake topper has arrived! 

Krista at Bent Branch was phenomenal to work with.  Once she finished up our birds she sent some pictures for us to look at:

Image by Krista Eytchison of Bent Branch

Image by Krista Eytchison of Bent Branch

We absolutely love them.  How great is the top hat on the little guy?  It wasn’t on her list of add ons for the birds, but when I asked about the hat Krista said that it wouldn’t be a problem.  The hat turned out great!  I also love the subtle trim on the wood base.  Before gluing everything down Krista changed up the glasses just a little bit by curving the bridge.

Image by Krista Eytchison of Bent Branch

Perfect.

The birds arrived well packed in tissue paper and secured to a cardboard base.  I slowly picked the pieces of tissue fluff away.We are so happy with them!  Not only will they be perfect on top of our wedding cake I think they will be something that we will treasure for a long time.  Thanks again Krista and Bent Branch!

When have your vendors blown you away with their awesomeness during your wedding planning?

Embossing Fail

This weekend I finally got around to making a mock up of our invitations.  I ordered supplies ages ago from the absolutely amazing Paper Circle.  Paper Circle is based in Canada, has fantastic prices and some of the most amazing customer service I’ve experienced.  Plus their products are top notch!

I wanted to make a mock up so I could know if:

• The design in my head would translate into the real thing like I hoped.
• I could print on beautiful shimmery paper with our laser printer.
• My ideas would work without having to sacrifice oodles of supplies.

All in all I was really happy with how my mock up turned out.  The laser printer did a great job on the shimmery paper.

There was however one thing that didn’t work out.Embossing was a bit of a fail.I love the idea of a white embossed graphic on black, but check out how messy it looks.  The edges are not crisp and there is white embossing powder flecked around the image.  After using the embossing heat tool to set the powder the cardstock warped.  I was not pleased with the result.

I’m worried about wasting a lot of cardstock to make the embossing work.  I’m also a bit of a perfectionist and I’m not so keen on sending the invite out if the embossing is going to look like this.  I’ve tried this stamp on different surfaces before (envelopes, magazines) and it turned out really well so maybe the powder is sticking to the cardstock?

I’m leaning towards ditching my plan to emboss something on our invitations.  Do you have any suggestions on what I can do to make this work?

Going the professional route

In the beginning of our engagement I decided that I might attempt to do my own make up on our wedding day.

This is a pretty funny notion if you know me considering that I very rarely wear make up.  And I’m going to attempt to do it myself on what will likely be the most photographed day of my life?  Perhaps not the brightest idea.  I had googled a few make up artists in Vancouver but I wasn’t in love with their portfolios so I figured I’d just do it myself.  I really want to look natural, to look just like me!  But maybe with some false eyelashes?

Thank goodness for my photographer who asked if I needed a makeup recommendation.  She really has been a great resource for advice and recommendations.  She suggested ML Makeup Artistry.  I poured over her portfolio and everyone looks so naturally beautiful.  Plus not only is she good, but apparently she is wonderful to be around.  Luckily she was free on our wedding day so I booked her right away.  She’ll come to the house to do my makeup along with my MOH and BM as well.  I imagine our photographer will come by just as I’m getting my make up done. 

This will allow for amazing pictures like this…

Image via Sakura Photography

Does anyone else see pictures like this and think, “Wow, I need a cute robe to wear while getting ready”?

Image via Anthropologie

Or is that just me?

Advice for the newly engaged bride

If I could share one piece of advice for a newly engaged bride it would be:Well, not right away, anyway!

Shortly after Mr. Gazelle and I had booked our venue we were wandering around IKEA one day.  We were in the candle section and I spotted these long white metal trays.

Me: “Oh honey, look!  These long trays would be awesome for building a centerpiece on for our tables.  And look!  They are on SALE!” 

Spurred by the bright yellow tag on the shelf that actually said, “Hurry, this item won’t be around much longer!” we grabbed 12 of them.  We wandered around the rest of the store, talking about placing tea lights in them and filling in the tray with small dark rocks.  Okay, I mostly talked about it, Mr. Gazelle mostly listened politely.

Perhaps this was a good idea, but at the time we didn’t have a clear vision for our wedding.  I had barely looked at inspirational photos.  Worse, I hadn’t really thought about the layout of our room or how big our tables are.

Photo by Randal Kurt Photography / Image via Brock House

I found a photograph of a typical set up of the tables in our reception room.  Wow, there isn’t a ton of room on the tables between the glasses!  I’m not really sure that there is a good space to put several of these long white trays out.

As the vision for our reception space developed there was less and less room for the trays.  I fell in love with milk glass and there will now be simple bud vases along the tables instead.  It is so easy to get those bridal goggles on and everything sounds like such a good idea.  However I now realize that impulse purchases relating to the wedding are a terrible idea!  Sure those metal trays were on sale, but now they are hanging out in our basement next to the coffee and Brita filters with no concrete idea for their use.  Maybe not such a good deal after all…Have you made any impulse purchases relating to your wedding?  How have those purchases worked out for you?

Saving the Date–Part III

In case you missed it, catch up with Part I and Part II first!

I decided to use Vistaprint to make our postcards.  I had made address labels and stickers through Vistaprint beforehand and I’ve been pleased with the results, value and the customer service.  My timing also just happened to be right for getting the postcards printed up because they were on sale.

How much were they on sale for?

100 postcards for free?  We just had to pay the cost of shipping.  Sweet! 

We didn’t actually need 100 cards, but that was the minimum order.  I went with the standard glossy finish paper and kept the graphic on the back in black and white in order to keep our costs down.  Vistaprint printed them up quickly and they arrived in the mail a short time later.  We were really impressed with the quality when they arrived.  They turned out exactly as I had set them up on site.  Our picture on the front was so vivid!  The card was thick – exactly the perfect weight for a postcard.  All in all I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Vistaprint if you are looking to print up some postcards!

So what did we choose for the front of our postcards?

Photo by Sakura Photography

There was something about the colour of the buildings and the sidewalk in the background, the streetlights, the texture of the bricks on the sidewalk.  It was the winner – both Mr. Gazelle and I agreed!

One last detail was the stamp – our postcards to the US got a baby fox on their stamp.

Image via Canada Post

Our domestic postcards within Canada got the super adorable kissing baby bunnies stamp.

Image via Canada Post

I wanted to show the stamp graphic on the back of the postcard a bit so I may have intentionally put every stamp on slightly crooked.  I dropped them in the mail box on Valentine’s Day.  Seems appropriate, no?  In addition to sending these to our guests I also sent cards to our wedding officiant and to our photographers.  We are so excited that they will be a part of big day that I wanted to make sure they knew that with a note on our postcard.

As for the cost breakdown, here we go:

100 postcards – $9.45
Postage – $24.95
TOTAL – $34.40

Not too shabby for a personalized yet simple save the date!  How did you decide to ask your guests to save the date?