Weddingbee Blog

Wedding morning dawned. I’m normally a pretty early riser and today was no different. I enjoyed some quiet time in the room by myself as Mr. Gazelle was checked in to a hotel. I took the opportunity to read through my vows and to finish putting pen to paper, expressing what I wanted to say. Soon it was time to emerge, say good morning to my family and friends all staying at the house, and then to make my way to the salon to get my hair done.

My maid of honor, bridesmaid, flower girl, and I all had hair appointments at Suki’s Salon on West Georgia in Vancouver. I picked this particular salon because they were open on Sundays and they had plenty of stylists on hand Sunday morning who specialized in updos. It is also where I have had the most amazing shampoo experience ever! I was pretty excited when my stylist suggested that they wash my hair at the salon in the morning so she could dry it exactly as she needed it for my style.

I had originally thought that I would go for a low side bun, as per my hair trial. The week of the wedding I found new inspiration while watching the Top Chef Canada finale. I love the host’s lost centered bun and the way her hair looked from the front. My biggest issue with my hair trial was that I wasn’t a fan of how my hair looked from the front (that I sadly never got a picture of). Here is my new inspiration, courtesy of Thea Andrews on Top Chef Canada:
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A little music to help set the mood…

A few of my girlfriends and I had a hot date to rush to after dinner. It just so happened that New Kids on the Block and the Backstreet Boys were playing in Vancouver the night before I was getting married. It was like fate!!

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The night before the wedding Mr. Gazelle and I kissed farewell and went off to do our own thing. He met up with his guy friends at the Pourhouse for a night of cocktails (which, by the way, was apparently amazing). I met up with some of the girls for dinner at Glowbal Grill.

It was a great chance to see some friends that just arrived in town and to catch up with some friends I hadn’t seen in ages! Even though a lot of the girls didn’t know each other we had a great time enjoying some delicious food and good conversation. It was nice and low key…
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After our rehearsal on the beach it was time for lunch! One of the tricky things about planning a wedding outside of our hometown was figuring out where we could go for a rehearsal lunch or dinner. I searched for a space with private dining rooms and the ability to select a set menu to keep our costs in check. It was tough.

When my mom suggested renting a house near our venue it changed everything. We’d have a big enough place that we could host a lunch at the house and keep the budget reasonable by making our own food and providing our own alcohol. Brilliant! After our blustery rehearsal we got back to the house and hung out on the patio.

We also got out our photo booth props to see if they would be any fun for use on the big day.
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On a blustery morning we got together to rehearse! We couldn’t rehearse at our actual venue since there was an event going on. Instead we all met up on the other side of the fence at Jericho Beach early on a Friday morning.

Our amazing marriage commissioner ran through the bones of the ceremony and told us all where to stand and what to do.
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The majority of our wedding guests were from outside of Vancouver. I really hoped that everyone who traveled to our wedding would be able to enjoy some of the great things the city had to offer. For those who were up for a bit of a challenge I organized a group hike on Thursday morning up the Grouse Grind—one of my favourite things to do in Vancouver!

Eight intrepid explorers set out to hike the Grind on a day where the clouds hung low over the mountains.
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After a few days in the interior of BC at my parents’ place for a bit of pre-wedding vacationing, it was time to make our way to Vancouver. My folks decided to rent a big house just a couple of blocks away from the wedding venue and it was large enough for both Mr. Gazelle, myself, my brother, sister-in-law, niece, and our best man to stay at, too.

Photo by Sakura Photography

It was one of the best decisions ever (good call mom!) as it was nice to have a home base as opposed to being in a hotel.

We were all supposed to arrive in Vancouver on Tuesday, but the morning we were to set off my mom said that she had way too much work left to do on the bridesmaids’ dresses. They wouldn’t be able to leave until a few days later, but we had to leave for Vancouver right away since I had my makeup trial scheduled for the next day.
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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.

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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 also had a frame that I had purchased from Pottery Barn years ago. I had originally wanted to peel the labels off of wine bottles and put them in a frame. When I found the peeling of labels trickier than expected the frame sat sad and unfinished for five years.
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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 card stock 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.

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Meet my dad.

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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 our 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.

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*I wrote this post before the wedding, but held off on publishing it until now.*

Shopping for wedding dresses and realizing I had just found THE DRESS

When we last chatted about my wedding dress I mentioned that I had the teeny tiny problem that it didn’t zip up. Somehow my 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.
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Something that I was never able to share with the Hive before the wedding were our finished bridesmaids’ 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:

Image via Butterick

And for BM-D, she would get the strapless version of Simplicity 4070.
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Our last day in New York for our honeymoon! We had a few hours that day before our plane was scheduled to leave so we figured we would make the most of it.

Mr. Gazelle had one thing left on his list of things to do in New York before we left: eat pizza. I scoured Yelp trying to figure out where to go but it seems like every place had its fans or its negative feedback. While it would have been great to go to one of the pizzerias in Brooklyn that some of the bees recommended I was worried we’d have issues with time.

Instead we selected Lombardi’s, hailed as America’s first pizzeria. I had been here years ago and I fondly remembered their clam pie (pizza with no tomato sauce and freshly shucked clams and garlic on top). We got there early and managed to get a table right away in the tiny restaurant.

Perhaps our eyes were bigger then our stomachs because we ordered a large pizza with pepperoni, mushrooms and anchovies. You have no idea how excited I was about the prospect of anchovies on top of my pizza!!
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