As Mrs. Bee already reminded us, October is Breast Cancer Month and that means, for all of you pink brides anyway, this is a great time to stock up on pink M&M’s! They are perfect for candy buffets or favors, and purchasing bags of these candies helps out a great cause - Susan G. Komen for the Cure! What could be better?

* The Wreckers

One of the great things about my life this month is that I get to spend my weekends in Calgary. I love that city for many reasons, but some of the best things about it are the cute little eateries like Crave! Crave is a little shop in Kensington and they make the best cupcakes!

About 3 months after Mr. Pumpkin proposed, I bought the Martha Stewart Wedding Planner.
Inside there are sections for each area of planning (ceremony, reception, flowers, etc…) and information on each of these areas. Since I had already purchased every issue of MS Weddings and InStyle Weddings from the previous 5 years, I did not find the information particularly helpful but there is a lot in there to help if you are just starting out. What I found most helpful were the pockets in each section for you to keep and organize ideas of your own. In the back there are also two Ziplock type plastic envelopes as well as a place to keep business cards organized. This is what my book looks like now:
Like most couples these days, we had a dickens of a time deciding how to thank our wedding party for all that they did to make our day so special, and for the friendship and love that they have given us over the years. It is so hard to sum that up in a couple of small gifts! Do you go with tried and true ideas like flasks and terry cloth robes, or do you get more individualized gifts for each person? We are getting up there in age as wel,l so our friends and family have been a part of many weddings and we didn’t want to duplicate gifts they would have already received from other brides and grooms. On top of all of that you have the etiquette rules to follow like, “Something that you purchase for your maids/men to wear on the wedding day is not a gift for them, it is you dictating what they will wear” etc…
We eventually ended up with a hybrid of all of that. We paid for our Best Man’s tux rental, purchased his VANS to wear that day and then also bought him this sweet ass crib board since he loves both hockey and playing crib!
There was absolutely no question as to whether we would be having flower girls at our wedding since I have the two most adorable nieces in the whole world. Even though the rest of our wedding was child-free, there was no way that my girls weren’t going to be there and be front and centre with me. At least that was the master plan. I had completely prepared myself for the possibility that one or both of the girls may get spooked and refuse to go down the aisle. If this happened I was fine - I did NOT want them to go through anything like this!
My new favourite website is Pimp That Snack! It is just the kind of random silliness that I love and have been filling my days with until I start work. While snooping around the site I came across this entry which has very easy instructions on how to create a Rubiks Cube cake.
How cute would that be for a groom’s cake?
Mr. Pumpkin and I had never talked about buying wedding presents for each other. Quite frankly, when we had a short conversation about it on our honeymoon I was shocked that it had even crossed his mind! The funnier part of that conversation was that we had actually planned on buying the other the exact same thing! We have both wanted a puppy for ages but we have been living in apartments for the last 8 years so it was never an option. Now that we will be moving into our first home together we both (but separately) thought that a puppy would be a great wedding present for the other. We had even planned on buying the same kind of puppy, a Maltese (who we would name Falcon… because we are cool like that), but luckily we both came to our senses! Yes, we’d love a puppy and even though we now have a house, we don’t have a clue about what either of our work schedules will be like and we just can’t be sure that we could be around enough to properly take care of and train a new puppy.
In my recent post about the Candy Buffet at our wedding there were some comments asking about what quantities I had purchased and for how many guests. I had been putting off posting the answers because I was hoping that our professional pics would have some better shots of the candy buffet set-up so that you could see better what I was talking about. Unfortunately (but fortunately for her!) our photographer has been very busy and we haven’t received our professional shots back yet. Here’s a nonpro pic:

I didn’t want to wait much longer in case some of you who were wondering need to start ordering your candy soon so here is the information:
We had 155 people at the wedding, including the wedding party, but I really didn’t try to have enough of every one thing for everyone. I was really only concerned with filling the jars that I had once, and I was fine if certain things ran out.
Yesterday I got my post-wedding haircut and Thank God because knights of columbus has it been hot here! I was dying under all of that hair. I made an appointment with Grant Bray, the wonderful stylist who did our hair for the wedding and started looking for inspiration. I found this pic on TMZ.com and took it in to Grant hoping for something close to Katie’s new haircut.
I finally received the refund cheque from my first dress disaster in the mail today! It took them over 2 months to get it to me but at least it is now over and done with. Yay for happy endings!
*Avril Lavigne