Guess what folks? It is time to kick off the Gazelle wedding recaps!!
The week before the wedding Mr. Gazelle and I packed up the car and started the drive from Calgary through the Rocky Mountains. 
As soon as we were in BC the first thing we wanted to do was get our wedding license!
We drove down to Oliver, BC – the wine capital of Canada – for lunch at Miradoro Restaurant at the gorgeous Tinhorn Creek Winery.
Did you decide to do a bit pre-wedding vacationing?
In conjunction with our personalized menus I wanted to create a seating chart to let our guests know which table they would be sitting at.
You may remember that we decided to letter our tables instead of numbering them and we spelled out “Me & You.” We had a friend take pictures of us holding the letters that would be a part of the table centerpieces.
I trimmed the photos and glued them on the same purple cardstock I used for our menus. Time to check for layout and placement!
Here is the seating chart on display at our wedding:
It was another really simple project, but it really tied all of the elements of our tables together. From our milk glass, our centerpiece photos…
our letters…
and our personalized menus.
What are you doing for your seating chart?
Mr. Gazelle and I talked about all kinds of seating options for the wedding. We contemplated designating tables for our parents but then leaving the seating for everyone else open. I then had visions of friends or family not being able to sit together if they weren’t on the ball about picking seats. I figured they wouldn’t be too happy about that. Coming up with a seating plan is one of the trickiest things in the end stages of wedding planning. I quickly realized that while we maybe couldn’t make everyone happy it would be better in the long run to let everyone know where they were sitting.
So…what would be the best way to tell everyone? I wasn’t feeling creative on designing escort cards. Instead I decided personalized menus would be the way to go! This way our guests would know what yumminess was waiting for them at the buffet and it would also let our gluten free guests know that we had special meals for them.
I picked up a few more sheets of the same gorgeous sparkly white paper that we used for our invitations from Paper Circle and some purple cardstock from Michaels. I printed the menus off on our laser jet printer at home and assembled them one weekend with the help of my girlfriends.
How did you decide to let your guests know where they were sitting, or did you decide to go with open seating?
*All photos courtesy of the supremely amazing Sakura Photography*
Meet my dad.
Men At Work? Catchy tunes, but no. Dire Straits? The songs weren’t quite right for a father-daughter dance. The Police? Er, songs not appropriate.
Phil Collins? None of his tunes that I remembered listening to as a kid were quite right… But there was one song. You’ll Be In My Heart from the Tarzan soundtrack.
What song did you and your dad pick for your father-daughter dance?
I had a few special people that I wanted to remember on my wedding day who are no longer with us. I’ve lost three of my grandparents and I lost my aunt about five years ago. In some ways the loss of my aunt during wedding planning was particularly tough. She LOVED weddings. She was also my Godmother and I remember one day years ago that she proclaimed to me that she would host a bridal shower for me when it was my turn to get married. Knowing that she was missing my wedding was difficult.
I was inspired by Mrs. Crab Cake’s post on bouquet charms using Scrabble tiles. I bought the DIY Scrabble tile pendant kit from Annie Howes.
The kit came with almost everything I needed – Scrabble tiles with letters for the first names of my grandparents and aunt, glaze and heavy duty glue. I did pick up a different kind of glue to stick my pictures to the tiles though. I printed off some of my favourite pictures on regular paper on my colour laser jet printer.
How did you decide to remember loved ones at your wedding?
*I wrote this post before the wedding, but held off on publishing it until now.*
When we last chatted about my wedding dress I mentioned that I had the teeny tiny problem that it didn’t zip up. Somehow or other by chest had inflated 2 inches in the last few months when I wasn’t looking? After that I watched what I ate, hit my bikini boot camp classes in the rain when no one else (save for one other lady) showed up and it was paying off. A few pounds lost and half an inch from my chest. But it was too late. I tried my dress on again a month away from the wedding and the zipper was still a good 1.5 inches away at the top.
My mom told me to stop worrying about losing the inches and just take the dress in for alterations. I called the dress shop up at 6:30 pm on a Friday and sheepishly asked if they had an appointment for the next day. And I even more sheepishly said the wedding is in July. Luckily I was able to get in at 4:00 pm the next day. Phew, I was lucky because I almost left it too late.
The seamstress was really nice. She ripped apart a seam near the zipper but there wasn’t enough seam allowance to allow us to let it out. Taking the zipper out and changing it to a corset back is simple enough so that is the direction we decided to go. (Sigh, I’m going to miss you zipper with pretty little buttons overtop…) 
After the zipper was replaced with a corset back the chest was too large (oh the irony)! They had to take it in now, but I also had to switch out from my bust minimizing strapless bra for something that wouldn’t smoosh the girls down quite so much – the Victoria’s Secret Biofit 7 Way Bra. I also picked up a pair of Spanx Simplicity Panties so I wouldn’t have to worry about sucking my tummy in all the time during photos.
After two rounds of alterations my dress was ready to pick up just a couple of days before Mr. Gazelle and I had to leave Calgary. I was so lucky that they were able to make all of the alterations in time. If I have any advice, if you are worried that your dress won’t fit, don’t put it off. Just get it altered. I feel beautiful in my dress and I’m happy with the changes that were made to it. Now I can’t wait to wear it!!
Something that I was never able to share with the Hive before the wedding were our finished bridesmaid dresses. My mom, being the awesome seamstress that she is, offered to make the dresses for our girls. We settled upon Butterick B5322 for MOH-T:
And for BM-D, she would get the strapless version of Simplicity 4070.
My mom would adjust the skirt of the patterns to include box pleats similar to our Alfred Sung inspiration dresses.
You guys, Mama Gazelle was awesome and amazing. She made several treks out to Calgary (a 7 hour drive one way) to fit the dresses on the girls to ensure that the girls would feel beautiful and that the dresses would fit perfectly. Plus, not only was she making the two bridesmaid dresses, she was making our Flower Girl’s dress and her own dress. She had to pull a couple of all nighters the week of the wedding to finish everything off, but at the end of the day everyone looked so beautiful.
First up, our super cute and adorable niece as our Flower Girl:
Next up BM-D:
All together:
Model shot!
*All pictures courtesy of our awesome guests – thank you!
Even though the girls could pick any shoes they wanted (except preferably not black) they both chose the Dasa from Nine West in pewter satin.
Mama Gazelle then made a tie for each dress in a matching fabric to the shoes.
I think the girls looked amazing and their dresses fit them so well. Many thanks to Mama Gazelle for all of the hard work that she put in. It definitely paid off!
Did your bridesmaids order their dresses or are you having them made?
