Weddingbee Blog

Wow Hive, sorry for being MIA for so long! Work got crazy busy right before Christmas, then Mr. Gazelle and I were having a blast at Disney World over the holidays. We are back now, so let’s get back to recapping the Gazelle wedding, shall we?

After our first look it was time to have a little fun and take a few photos!

Granville Island was an amazing place for photos because we were able to get such a huge variety of backdrops. First Mr. Gazelle and I hung out on a hill.
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Mr. Gazelle’s made to measure suit has arrived!

Doesn’t he look handsome? Very GQ…
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The Gazelle men have their suits! We tossed around a ton of different ideas—purchasing here in Calgary, ordering custom suits over the internet, and renting.

First up we went shopping with Groomsman M. Finding a suit for him was relatively easy and he scored an awesome three piece suit from Le Chateau.

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This past weekend the awesome Gazelle girls threw me a bridal shower! If their phenomenal invitation was any indication, it would be quite the party.

My parents, my grandmother and my aunt all came out from BC just for the shower. They worked so hard to get everything ready, along with my MOH and BM:

at casa Gazelle the morning of the shower

I put on my best tea party dress and hat: Read more…

Well Hive, confession time. Ever since university I’ve struggled with my weight, going up and down 20 pounds here and there. Training for long distance triathlons was my way of keeping my weight in check. Unfortunately after I finished Ironman Canada back in August I was completely burned out. I was completely unmotivated to do much of anything in the fall and well…it came around and bit me in the behind. I gained weight. After buying my sample dress that fit perfectly.

I tried to come up with a game plan in the new year to drop the weight but I had difficulty being consistent with my plan. The scale didn’t budge and my measurements stayed exactly the same. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about my dress fitting.

Long story short, I tried my dress on this morning while my mom was visiting. It zips up over my waist but the zipper over my bust is a complete no go. My mom suggested I try a different bra, but there was no padding whatsoever in the bra I already had on. Yeah, the bra wasn’t the problem. Crap, my dress doesn’t fit.

There isn’t much point in crying about it, I need to do something about it.
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In anticipation of my tea party themed bridal shower my Maid of Honour wanted to know my favourite types of cookies. My response?

• Chocolate chip cookies
• Shortbread
• Homemade Oreo cookies
• Girl Scout Thin Mints
• Pims chocolate and orange biscuits

There are so many variations on chocolate chip cookies! Do you want them soft and chewy or more cake like? In order to determine the best chocolate chip cookies my MOH decided we needed to do a chocolate chip cookie taste off!

She baked up a batch of Neiman Marcus chocolate chip cookies and a batch of Alton Brown’s Chew chocolate chip cookies.

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Once I figured that a wedding might be on the horizon, I decided it was time to start growing out my hair. For the last few years I have kept my hair around the same length, varying within an inch or two and resting around my shoulders.

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Guess what hive, you’ve got mail! Your invitation to the Gazelle wedding has arrived!

We went with a square invitation so we used 6-1/2” square matte linen 80 lb. brilliant white envelopes.

I love the look of wraparound address labels. I wanted to tie them to our envelope liners so I scanned our envelope liner paper into a jpg. I then used it as a border for our address labels that I set up in PowerPoint. Can you see the bikes? Read more…

Mr. Gazelle and I perused a bunch of invitations online, but we didn’t find anything that we really loved. That meant that I would definitely try to DIY them; I just needed to get inspired.

My first source of inspiration was courtesy of the awesome Ms. Stripes. I fell in love with her bicycle-motif envelope liners:

Image via Ms. Stripes

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I totally fell for mini Moo cards. I blame Mrs. Pretzel’s invitation suite for that one.

Image by Mrs. Pretzel on Weddingbee

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My hairdresser in Calgary is also planning a destination wedding right now. At my last hair appointment we talked about wedding hair, updos, and hair trials. She encouraged me to get a hair trial done when we went to Vancouver for our food and cake tasting in the spring and to not wait until the week before the wedding. This way I’d know how I felt about the stylist, and if there were any problems I’d have plenty of time to figure out a backup plan. I’d also know how I felt about the style I had chosen!
Trying to find someone who is good at updos when you don’t patronize their salon frequently? Tough. Trying to find someone good who works on a Sunday, plus has multiple coworkers also good at updos that work on Sundays? Tricky. Luckily a lot of the bigger salons in downtown Vancouver are indeed open on Sundays, so I had a variety to choose from.

I decided to try Suki’s on West Georgia. Why? Mostly because they were across the street from the hotel I thought I’d be staying in (although those plans have since changed). And because the one time I had been there I swear I had the most amazing shampoo experience in my entire life. Luckily Suki’s website is really informative, and all of the stylists have a blurb about their expertise and their prices. I called to find out who worked on Sundays, picked one of the stylists with the most experience, and booked a hair trial.

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I’m so excited, you guys—I’ve been invited! My super-awesome maid of honour and bridesmaid are planning my bridal shower. The girls know that I love tea. This is my shelf at work, full of a ridiculous amount of loose-leaf tea.

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We had a few short hours between our cake tasting and our meal tasting at the Brock House. I hoped that we would have enough time to digest all of our cake prior to our meal!

The Brock House has a set amount of days in a month when they hold tastings; although, since we would have to fly in, they would have worked to accommodate us on a different day if need be. We could have up to four people at the tasting with everyone getting a salad or a soup, one main course, and a dessert. In order for us to try some additional dishes, my parents were kind enough to meet us in Vancouver.

Mr. Gazelle and I already knew what buffet package we’d be picking, so we wanted to try whatever dishes we could from that menu. First up: the salads! We tried a simple but delicious house salad, Caesar salad, seafood salad, and a mushroom and asparagus salad.

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This past week has been all about one thing and one thing only.

The Gazelle invitations!

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The number one thing that I’ve been looking forward to on this wedding-planning journey would have to be the cake tasting!! Trying to find an awesome cake baker might be a really daunting task when you are planning your wedding in a different city, but our venue made it so easy. The Brock House offers a reception package that includes canapés, a cocktail hour, a buffet dinner, desserts, wine with dinner…and our wedding cake!

Amazing deal, right? We just had to go with one of two preferred cake vendors. We opted to go with Sweet Thea because her list of cake flavours made our mouths water. She promised to have a variety of flavours for us to taste when we came to visit Vancouver.

Our tasting appointment was the same afternoon that we were scheduled to arrive in Vancouver and, as luck would have it, our flight was delayed. It was a big rush to get our rental car and get on the road, but luckily we pulled in to Thea’s driveway right on time. Whew!

Thea welcomed us into her house and we sat down to discuss our vision for how the cake would look. I talked about elements of cakes that I liked—white-on-white with texture—inspired by vintage milk glass.

Photo by: Kristen Jensen Photography / Image via The Knot / Ana Parzych Custom Cakes, Chesire, CT

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