A Cozy Christmas Wedding: Our First Look

After I became suitably bridal looking, I was transported ever so glamourously to Spadina Museum for our first look. And by glamourously, I mean that I sat squished up in the very front of my dad's car so that there was enough room for our photographer's equipment in the back seat!

I know you've all heard this a million times before, but I'm so glad we did a first look. I actually can't believe that I ever even questioned this. I'm really happy with how the photos turned out which I think is great since neither us (obviously!) nor our photographer had done a first look before.

Mr. Knitting and his groomspeople made sure to get to Spadina Museum first and by the time we arrived he was set in position:



I slowly began to approach from behind:



This part was a bit awkward for me because while all of my people had thought to stay out of sight for this, Mr. Knitting's groomspeople, parents, and cousin were all standing about 50 ft from me. This might have been fine except this is the first time they had seen me all dressed up and this resulted in them yelling lots of things at me (mostly compliments, but the was definitely one "You're going to freeze."). I tried to awkwardly acknowledge them, and it definitely wasn't a huge problem, but it would have been a bit easier if we had just been alone for our first look.

Anyway, I kept on approaching while trying to keep my dress from getting too wet:















We eyed each other as Mr. Knitting finally got to turn around:



"Yay! We're in fancy clothes!":



Practicing smooches for later:





I then twirled so he could get the full effect:



Then we did some snuggling (mostly because I needed some of his body heat at this point):





So that's our first look. As I mentioned before, it worked really well for us and I highly recommend it. For me, I didn't feel like I lost anything by seeing him before the ceremony and it was actually much better for us to see each other in (relative) privacy before the wedding. If he saw me for the first time at our ceremony I probably would have done something weird like gotten to the front and then spun around to force him to look at the back of my dress, because it's pretty much my favourite part. Wait, that probably would have been really entertaining for our guests...

Oops, potential hilarious wedding moment missed!

Missed a Knitting Recap?:
First we yoga-ed
I spent the morning being anti-social
Mama Knitting figured out how to dress herself
I turn into a bride

A Cozy Christmas Wedding: I Turn Into a Bride

Now that all my people had arrived at my apartment (and my mom's dress wasn't about to fall off!), it was time to turn into a bride.

Mama Knitting fake zipped me into my dress:



That's right, fake zipped. She thought actually having to zip me into my dress seemed a bit difficult (my mom is a bit of a character in case you are wondering!). I found this hilarious because it's not the first time a Knitting woman has been intimidated by a wedding dress. My sister occasionally makes fun of me for being outsmarted by the corset lacing on her wedding dress and for the fact that we have a picture of me fake lacing her up.

Me being very confused by all the ribbon on my sister's wedding dress:


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At least corset lacing is a bit more complicated than a zipper! Apparently, Knitting women just aren't so talented with wedding dresses.

Anyway, after I was actually zipped into my dress I then got decked out in some gorgeous jewellery, including my wedding charm bracelet:









Since everyone in my family is notorious for being untalented with anything to do with hair, I asked my BMs to help pin on my head piece (and yes, that is a matryoshka Christmas tree topper in the background!):





They did a pretty great job, and despite the whole thing being made of wire, it was impossible to see a single pin!



I got some smooches from my sisters:



And with that, I was a bride:



Or more specifically, a Christmas bride:



All photos, unless otherwise stated are by the wonderful Josh Levinson.

Missed a Knitting Recap?
First we yoga-ed
I spent the morning being anti-social
Mama Knitting figured out how to dress herself

A Cozy Christmas Wedding: The Second Prettiest Dress at My Wedding

Disclaimer: Any complaining about my mom to follow is done with love!

As I alluded to in this post, while the morning of my wedding was lovely, it was not entirely stress free. The main source of stress came from Mama Knitting calling me repeatedly to discuss the fact that she didn't know how to tie her gorgeous sari. I was not amused.

Despite having had the sari in her possession for the past 4 months, Mama Knitting had not learned to tie it. In her defense during that time she worked her busy and stressful full time job AND completed her doctorate (that's right, she's Dr. Mama Knitting now!), but still. On the morning of my wedding I had other things to be concerned about. I can't say I offered very much help on these repeated phone calls about whether or not I had Indian neighbors who could help her, especially since I'm one of those people who live in a condo building and don't know my neighbors at all.

My parents did try to solve the sari problem on their own. They first went down to the front desk of their hotel to see if there were any people there that knew how to tie a sari. This sounds a bit crazy, but that's actually a strategy that worked really well for my mom when we were staying in Edmonton. Unfortunately, no one at this hotel knew how, although we learned later that about an hour after my parents left somebody who did know how to tie a sari arrived.

Their next plan was to watch a YouTube video and try to emulate it. Since neither of them had a laptop with them they planned to do this in the lobby of their hotel on the public access computer. My family is very fancy.

Eventually, they ran out of time and had to leave to take photos. My dad managed to sort of tie it and my mom figured she'd make do. However, when they walked into my building the concierge was really excited that my mom was wearing a sari and it turned out he had owned a sari shop in Toronto's Little India. He and my parents went into a back room and he showed them how to properly tie it.

The end result? A gorgeous sari that stayed put all night! I think you'll probably agree that Mama Knitting looked pretty amazing:


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I fully plan to borrow it as soon as I can! Did you have any early morning wedding stresses?

The Prettiest Dress at my Wedding (Spoiler: It Was Mine!)

Because I didn't want anyone to see my dress before the wedding, I didn't post any pictures of it here. However, now that the wedding is over, I wanted to interrupt my recaps to do a post about my dress!

I am really really proud of my dress and the fact that I found it. That's perhaps a weird way to feel about your dress, but there you go. I had initially been a bit worried about dress shopping because it was really necessary for me to find an inexpensive dress. This was partly due to finances and partly due to the fact that for me, personally, I couldn't justify spending a major amount on a dress.

I've written about my accidental dress finding experience before, but to recap, I found my ideal dress by accident a full two months before I even planned to start looking. Why was it ideal?

It had cap sleeves and was lacey:



It had a slim silhouette:


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It had an awesome back:


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I also loved that it was vintage. I love vintage clothing and since so much of our wedding was vintage it was really great to also have a vintage dress.

All that and it was super cheap. I paid $300 for it and my alterations came to a grand total of $67 because my super awesome former boss took me to her neighbourhood dry cleaners to have it altered. I feel so lucky to have found basically my dream dress for such an inexpensive price. I say this not to be super obnoxious, but just to illustrate to other brides that it is possible.

Interestingly, I didn't even realize one of my favourite things about my dress until after the wedding. I knew my dress had a polka dot lining, but what I didn't realize is that in certain lighting you can actually see the polka dots.

For example:



I was so excited when I found this out the next day and made me love my dress even more.

My dilemma now is what to do with my dress. I sort of always thought I'd be fine with passing it on to someone else, but now that the wedding is over I actually feel a bit attached to the dress and the idea of saving it. I'll have to think it over...

What are you doing with your dress after the wedding?

A Cozy Christmas Wedding: My Anti-Social Morning

The morning of our wedding began with me realizing that we didn't have the brown sugar I needed to make the pumpkin spice whoopie pies that I was making for our wedding dessert table. This resulted in Mr. Knitting having to get out of bed and run to the store to buy me some brown sugar.

Brown sugar disaster averted, I proceeded to make my whoopie pies:



Mr. Knitting then had to taste test the final result:



You wouldn't really know it from the look on his face, but I swear he pronounced them delicious!

We then balanced out the sugar high with green smoothies:



Eventually it was time to go our separate ways to get ready. Figuring out where each of us would get ready was a bit of a pain because both of us just wanted to get ready in our apartment. In the end though I claimed our apartment and Mr. Knitting headed off to the hotel all my family were staying in.

I was trying to spend as much of the day as possible with as few people as possible. That sounds really anti-social, but I can explain! I am a huge introvert and by that I do not mean that I'm shy and quiet and hate people. I mean that I draw my energy from being alone. Since I knew I'd be spending most of the day surrounded by lots of people, it was really important for me to delay that as long as possible. As a result I did 90% of my getting ready with just my older sister there.

I did my hair and make-up alone in my bedroom while my sister showered/took a picture of me:



After those tasks were completed we kept things very low key and munched on some sushi while my sister gave me a last minute MOH present. She made me a scrapbook entitled, "Reflections of a Maid of Honour". I'd show you the cover, but my sister used a very unfortunate (but hilarious) picture on the cover that I'm not desperate to post on the Internet!

It was set up sort of like a storybook, featuring pictures of us when we were younger. Here's a few examples of the pages.





I have no idea where those green fuzzy hats on our heads came from...

The back pages of the book were filled with marriage advice from some of my favourite women. It was a really sweet gift and I had so much fun reading through it that morning.

After that, my people began to arrive and the wedding fun really began. This was really a great way to start my wedding day. It was not completely stress free, but I was able to follow my regular breakfast routine and then to have a very quiet morning which I think was pretty essential for my sanity and my ability to enjoy the rest of the day.

Knitting Wedding Tip #1: Know who you are and what you need to get your wedding day started in the best possible manner. If being surrounded by all your favourite people will get you super excited and pumped, do it, but if you know you need quiet, make sure to organize that time for yourself. Don't worry about what other people do on their wedding days. Think about who you are and what you need!

A Cozy Christmas Wedding: Yoga Time

Mr. Knitting and I both believe that our choice to have a group yoga class the night before our wedding in place of a rehearsal dinner was definitely one of our very best wedding decisions. It was an absolutely incredible experience and I honestly can not say enough good things about it.

The class was held at 889 Yonge, our favourite yoga studio. I've written about yoga in the past, but in the last few months yoga has become even more important and special to Mr. Knitting and myself. We go at least 4 times a week and I really can't say enough positive things about the studio. The space is fantastic, the yoga teachers are incredible, the selection of classes is outstanding, the staff could not be kinder, and they even provide all kinds of awesome extras like delicious herbal teas! We both absolutely love this place and it really made sense to include it in our wedding festivities.

We had spent the day doing a whole bunch of errands, but we had a bit of time together before our class began, and decided to go get some food. After much deliberation we settled on Veda, which serves delicious, healthy, and quick Indian food.

Mr. Knitting went for the butter chicken and I got some palak paneer:





I know you're not supposed to eat before yoga, but I find if I haven't eaten I get really nauseous and I was not interested in getting nauseous the night before our wedding!

We then headed over to 889 Yonge nice and early.



Here we are all excited for our guests to arrive:



The class itself was really amazing. We invited a selection of our friends and family and made it clear that we understood that yoga is not for everyone (even though it is!) and that we would not be offended if they chose not to join us. Lucky for us, almost everyone we invited said they'd be thrilled to attend, including a few relatives to whom yoga was a completely new experience! We were so honoured that they were so enthusiastic about attending such a "kooky" (but AWESOME) wedding event.

Nicky Poole, the Yoga Community Leader for 889 Yonge (and one of my favourite teachers) taught the class for us. Nicky is sort of the coolest person ever and I absolutely love being in her classes. She's really creative in her style of teaching and extremely nice, but she also really emphasizes how yoga is about more than just movement and I really love that. For her it's important to stop doing yoga and to start being yoga. She taught an absolutely fantastic class that was accessible to all levels, which was just what we wanted.

Here's Nicky looking awesome:


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It was really incredible to do yoga with so many of our favourite people. I actually don't really know how to put it into words other than to say it was a really powerful class and frankly probably one of the most awesome experiences of my life!

Here we all are doing downward dog:



It doesn't look like it in the picture because of the flash but the room was almost completely dark and lit only by candlelight so it was really beautiful.

Here we are doing some cobra:



One of my favourite parts of class was when she played Donna De Lory's version of In the Sun as we did some seated postures. This is a song Nicky often plays as we do back bends in her class and Mr. Knitting and I absolutely love it. Seriously, I challenge you not to feel totally soothed as you listen to this no matter how not religious you are.

The hands down most special part of class was when she had us all sitting with our hands at our hearts and asked everyone to send Mr. Knitting and myself good wishes for our marriage. It was really amazing and a very special moment. Definitely one of the highlights of the weekend.

Here we are with Nicky after class:



After class we all hung out and drank tea for a bit and then headed our separate ways. Mr. Knitting and I headed to sushi with my family.

We split some sweet potato tempura:



I also had some spicy salmon rolls:



No one really wanted to be in pictures right after yoga so here's a look at the group avoiding the camera:



Oddly, at the end of the meal they brought us fortune cookies and look at what mine said:



This, of course, prompted many jokes about how we should just get married right then!

Overall I can't say enough good things about this yoga class. I am so glad we did it. I realize this type of event isn't for everyone, but if it's something that your friends and family would enjoy I would highly recommend it. It was definitely a major highlight of our wedding weekend and an incredible memory for us! It also really encompassed everything we wanted in our wedding since it was both extremely personal to us and very community centered.

To conclude, I think this awesome picture my cousin took pretty much sums up the feeling of the evening (K and W are our initials):



Cozy, lots of yoga, and filled with love!