Weddingbee

I could not imagine our wedding without kids. My two sisters have six kids between them, with the youngest being an infant. The other kids range in ages from 3-12. With the exception of my infant nephew, all of the other kids will be in the wedding in one way or another.

Lucky for us, we are having our ceremony at a place that will allow the kids to run around and play before the ceremony. Then, as luck would have it, there is a playground right next to our reception site.

But I am not leaving it all up to location. We are providing the kiddos with goodie bags. Always keeping the budget in mind, we got most of the goodies from the dollar bin at Michael’s and then picked up a couple of things from Costco.

My favourite find was a massive box of gummy candies from Costco. How cool is this?!

My biggest barrier to the OOT bag was the bag itself. I didn’t want to pay an arm and a leg for it. There are lots of cute options out there, but even at $5 apiece, it quickly adds up to over a hundred bucks in bags. I also didn’t want to go the paper bag route because I wanted a bag that people would reuse. Then it dawned on me. Reusable shopping bags are everywhere in Vancouver. All of the grocery stores, department stores, and specialty shops have them. Around Christmas, Sears had the most adorable damask reusable shopping bags. Sadly, those are gone, but the Bay has some simple ones that we snatched up for .99 each. It even says “Esprit Global” on the bag (instead of “The BAY”), which kind of fits our whole destination wedding/travel theme. I am thinking that our guests will be more likely to take this bag with them on future grocery shopping trips than one that has our names on them.

Like everyone and their mom, I love the idea of photo booths in general, and at wedding, in particular. However, it was never something that I ever considered factoring into our budget, since our budget is 70%+ food. Sorry, I love photo booths, but I love food more.

At our shower we had a Polaroid guest book and I loved the finished product so much! Posing for photos seemed to make people super-creative and they wrote such cute little notes to go along with their sweet, funny, and/or goofy photo.

I’d originally planned on just repeating the Polaroid guest book at the wedding, but that would have just been too easy. Instead, I started contemplating what the photo booth would add. Okay, the obvious answer is “a booth.” Aside from that would be the entertainment factor and the opportunity to have multiple copies of photos that people would take. The Polaroid doesn’t allow for that last part.

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Miss GB 2.0 and I decided to take a few dance lessons before the wedding so that we could avoid the old sway-back-and-forth junior high version of slow dancing. We were really excited when we found a dance studio in Vancouver called Not So Strictly Ballroom, which specializes in same-sex ballroom dancing. The only beginner’s class available that fit our schedule was the slow waltz so we signed up for it. We had a blast at the class, but then we realized that most of the songs we considered for our first dance are not waltz appropriate. The song that comes up when you google “first dance” and “waltz” is Ann Murray’s “Can I Have This Dance.” I do have a soft spot for Ann Murray since my mom used to listen to her when I was a kid, but I think this is probably one of the cheesiest songs ever! (No offense meant if this is your first dance song).

Here are some more of the engagement photos that we took with Carlton Chan. Carlton’s interest in wedding photography developed after his wedding, as he wasn’t happy with his own wedding photos. He discovered that wedding photography is something he and his wife enjoy doing together. Carlton is great to work with because he’s passionate about photography. He says that he likes photography because it lets him exercise both his creative and technical sides. We had a lot of fun working with him and are looking forward to him shooting our wedding in a few weeks.

A while back I posted about wanting to be considered married on our honeymoon. This follow story is a frightening reminder of why this is so important. It’s also a good reminder to me to carry a copy of our marriage certificate when we travel abroad, including to the U.S.

A lesbian couple from WA, who were a couple for 18 years, were in Miami on vacation with their three children. Thirty-nine year old Lisa Pond collapsed suddenly and was admitted to an area hospital. Her partner, Janice Langbehn, and their three children were denied access to her for eight hours, because they were not considered family. Lisa died without her family and the state wouldn’t release the death certificate to them either because they were not recognized as a family.

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You can click here to read more about the story and see Janice Langbehn talk about her experience.

If I could only have one beauty product on my wedding day, it would be Bumble and Bumble’s Sumo Tech, hands down. I ran out of it shortly after moving to Vancouver, but decided that I should get a hold of some with the wedding quickly approaching. I grabbed some up just in time for our engagement photo shoot. Phew! Man, I forgot how much I love this product. It’s a must have for a short haired bride who wants good hold that is light weight and gives plenty of texture and shine.

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If you could only have one beauty product on your wedding day, what would be your must-have item?