I Already Have One, But...

I'm at a point now when whenever I'm in a store or out shopping somewhere I'm always unconsciously on the lookout for things for the wedding. This is not always a good thing, because a few times I've come across something that would be perfect for the wedding and I then have to remind myself I already own something else that will perform the exact same function at the wedding. For example, we bought our card box almost a year ago during a Boxing Week sale at Pier 1 Imports.

Here it is:




I spent about 6 months second guessing my choice because of the fact that it's made of wire and not solid, but then realized that birdcages aren't solid either and they make fantastic card boxes, so who cares?

Anyway, yesterday I was shopping at Winners and found this gorgeous Christmas box that would be perfect for cards (no pictures, sorry!). I liked that box more than I like the one I already own and I spent about 15 minutes staring at it. It was $8.99 so it was affordable, and I told myself it wouldn't be the end of the world to have purchased two card boxes. They were both cheap, so I wouldn't really be wasting to much money.

Then, I came to my senses. No one, other than maybe me, is going to care about the card box. Most people probably won't notice what it looks like. Even if it is inexpensive, that's money I could spend another way (like on sushi dinners!). What am I going to do with 2 card boxes after the wedding? For that matter, what am I going to do with 1 card box after the wedding?

Situations like this have happened a few times. Sometimes I manage to avoid buying the new item and sometimes I don't. For example, I now have 2 ring bearer dishes.

First one that I wrote about here:



New one:



See my problem? Yes, these came to a grand total of $13 altogether, but there's no need to have 2 ring dishes. Clearly, I need to start avoiding stores until my wedding...

Are you having problems with buying too many things for your wedding?

Frolicking in the Snow: Keeping Warm(ish)

Source

Okay, it will probably rain, but still...

I'm really happy with the place that we ended up booking for our outdoor photography. We've booked Spadina Museum, which is is this gorgeous old Toronto home that now functions as a museum depicting life in Toronto in the 1920s and 30s. While the home itself is fantastic, it's the grounds I'm most interested in at the moment.

Spadina Museum has the most gorgeous gardens. Here's a few images to give you an idea:





As it will be the middle of December when we're taking our photos it won't look quite like that in my photos, but it gives you an idea. I have no idea what measurements like acres mean, but suffice it to say we will have tons of space to do some frolickling (great word). The current plan is to take wedding party photos and some family photos here before the ceremony, although we suspect that Mr. Knitting's parents might prefer to do their's inside and not stand in the cold for an hour.

However, now that we've booked a spot I'm realizing that I'm going to potentially be outside for an hour in the middle of winter. I say potentially because frankly if there's a giant snow or rain storm, I will not be prancing around outside for very long.

That being said, I am hoping to be outside for an hour so I now need to figure out how to stay warm(ish). Or at least how to avoid pneumonia. I haven't thought about this too much yet but so far my plans include wearing hideous super thick stockings, and my Wellies.

Wellies in action:



Close Up (yes I love my Wellies a lot):



I also plan to have my winter coat there for me to wear in between photos. I don't have any nice winter wrap or cloak and I don't think that's something I want to spend money on, so I'm okay with looking kind of weird in my winter coat in between photos. I think I might keep an eye out for an affordable option when I'm browsing Kensington Market.

Something like this would be lovely:


Source

My other thought was to have some kind of drink available for warming purposes. I liked the idea of having some whiskey around to warm us up, but then I remembered how I'm a cheap drunk so I really shouldn't drink anything before the wedding unless I want to have a ridiculously pink face and be a bit giggly during the ceremony. There's also the fact that drinking alcohol outside is illegal here. Strangely, the thought of doing any wedding photos in jail just doesn't appeal.

So picturesque:


Source

I'd say we'll have some coffee or hot chocolate instead, but frankly this is something that I could easily see myself forgetting to do on the day of. I think we'll have to make do with warm clothes and comically hopping around in an attempt to stay warm.

How are you planning to keep warm during winter wedding photos?

What a Turd

That's right. This guy is a major turd. Here's the story. So a couple of months ago my wonderful photographer/BIL Josh asked me to send him all the info I could about anything to do with photography. About two weeks later I sent him a general email about the photography and got back this response,

"You sound like a total bridezilla. Please don't email me again."

I knew he had to be kidding, because there's no way he would ever seriously call me a Bridezilla to my face. I also knew that my email was pretty reasonable and went on about how we really trust his eye and are open to his suggestions. Still, I was a bit annoyed at this response and didn't really think that was a funny response.

About 2 weeks later I sent him another email with a lot more detail about the photography and got back the response,

"Not interested. Thanks."

This time I went and asked my sister/his wife to confirm that this was his idea of a joke and she confirmed that it was, and that it's best I get used to his sense of humor now. I was glad to hear he was kidding, but I didn't find these emails really funny. I found them a bit rude actually.

However, later that day, I get an email from Josh asking if I'd had to time to think about the photography at all. That's right, I had been sending the emails to the wrong address and the turd of a person I'd been sending them to hadn't thought to mention that I'd been contacting the wrong person. What a jerk!

Not a turd:



Anyway, it's all fixed now and Josh responds to all my emails with appropriate and kind responses, but here's even more evidence of what a turd this other guy is. Josh is very (very!) close to completing his PhD and a few months ago his university was sending him emails about his thesis. In response they were receiving these very rude emails saying he wasn't interested and that they needed to stop contacting him. They eventually had to contact Josh's supervisor to ask why he was responding so rudely to all their inquiries. That's right, they also had the wrong email address and the turd didn't bother to mention that they had the wrong person.

I really want to start sending this guy lengthy daily emails about all the photography ideas I have. Really, really annoying emails.

Have you come across any turds in your wedding planning process?

Sob!

One of my biggest concerns for our wedding is how I'm going to get through the day without looking like this:


Source

I'm not a big crier in real life. I definitely cry on occasion, especially during award acceptance speeches (yes I'm weird) and while reading books like The Time Traveller's Wife (Mr. Knitting got annoyed at me for reading that in bed at 3am while sobbing profusely!). Despite these instances, crying is hardly a daily occurrence for me.

However, when it comes to weddings I'm a bit of a sobber. I can't help it. When I see a bride walk down the aisle my eyes immediately start tearing up. While this is kind of sweet when it's my sister walking down the aisle, it's slightly more awkward when it's someone I barely know (yes, I'm speaking from experience).

Much more difficult will be getting through my own wedding without sobbing. Even just walking down the aisle without tears streaming down my face seems pretty much impossible. I'm kind of hoping that I really only get this emotional about other people's weddings, but I suspect that's not the case. I think it will probably be worse at my own because I'll be so touched that all these people have come to support Mr. Knitting and myself.

If it was just a tear or two running down my face, no problem, but it's more likely that I will turn into an incoherent sobbing mess. I'm particularly concerned for when I plan to speak at the reception because I spent a pretty big part of my toast at my sister's wedding in tears. It turns out I can't talk about my dead grandparents without bawling. The tricky thing is that I often have no idea what will make me cry. I know now from experience that I cry when a bride walks down the aisle and if I mention my grandparents, but I suspect on my wedding day I'm going to learn about a whole bunch of other things that make me cry.

Because of this I've been spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to get through our ceremony and the toasts without balling like a baby. However, most of the strategies I can think of for avoiding crying involve somehow blocking myself off emotionally and I don't want to do that. I want to feel everything as it happens. Yes, walking down the aisle will probably make me cry, but that's because I'll probably feel so special, so loved, and so lucky to be marrying Mr. Knitting and I do not want to block myself off from feeling those things. I don't want to make myself feel numb. I think my strategies may have to be things like biting my cheek, having a lot of tissues available, and wearing a lot of waterproof eye makeup. I may need to also start practicing my attractive crying face so I don't end up with photos of me looking like this:


Source

How do you plan on dealing with crying at your wedding? Are you worried about turning into a big sobbing mess?

My First Impression

While the movies tell us all about love at first sight, I read somewhere once that it's often the people we have the most vague first impressions of who are the people that end up having the most significant influence on our lives. This is certainly true for Mr. Knitting and myself.



I transferred high schools in the middle of grade eleven and I went from a school of 150 people to a school with something like 1,500 people. One day I was getting something out at my locker and I heard my friend Julie say, "Mr. Knitting, stop staring at Miss Knitting's butt." I turned around to see my friend snickering hysterically next to this tall, somewhat awkward and embarrassed looking guy who clearly was not staring at my butt. We were introduced, but since I was being introduced to something like 50 new people a day (okay I'm exaggerating slightly) I promptly forgot about him. I may have wrote him off as Julie's vague friend.

Lucky for me that wasn't the end of our story. A year later Mr. Knitting and I became friends and then we began dating. At some point I made some comment about us meeting in the library (because that's what I remembered) and he responded:

"Um, no, that's not where we met."
"What? Yes, it is."
"No, we met in the hall. Remember? I was with Julie. She made some comment about your butt...?"

At this point I started dying with laughter. I couldn't believe I was dating the pretend butt ogler. My mom and sisters and I had laughed over this story a lot (since I had come from a practically all girls school where this kind of thing didn't happen) and I couldn't believe that I had no idea that it was him.

So there you have it: my first impression of Mr. Knitting was so vague that I pretty much forgot about him and yet 7 years later he's had the most profound effect on my life and is definitely my favourite and most important person (sorry parents and sisters!).

What was your first impression of your SO?

How Charming

I am completely in love with charms and charm bracelets. For me, the best jewelry is very much about sentiment, emotion, and memory and I think that's what appeals so strongly to me about charm bracelets. They're literally a record of memories and moments and I really love that.

I started making my first charm bracelet on my 19th birthday. Here's a (blurry)look at it now:


Each charm on that bracelet represents something in my life, whether it's a place, a moment, a trip, an achievement, a person...etc. Needless to say more than one of them has something to do with Mr. Knitting! I've now started my second "life" bracelet.

Our family isn't really big on heirlooms which is sad for me, but my grandmother passed down her amazing charm bracelet to me, which of course I'm completely thrilled with.

Here's a look at what she collected over the years:



Some of my favourite charms from her bracelet include her mother's wedding ring (who had some SERIOUS man hands!) and a little gold heart with a pearl in the centre.

While my favourite type of charm bracelet is the type that is slowly put together one charm at a time, I also love "ready-made" charm bracelets. Check out these two beauties from the Met in NYC:

Winter themed!

Source

So pretty! I normally I'm not a fan of anything heart shaped (or made of yellow gold), but I love this bracelet.

Source

However, the current bracelet I’m working on is my wedding charm bracelet. Throughout my engagement I've been slowly collecting charms related to my wedding. Surprise, surprise, all of the charms are from the St. Lawrence Market Antique Market.

Here's how the bracelet looks at the moment:



Here's what each charm represents (from left to right):

The ring: Our engagement
Ball of yarn with knitting needles: Miss Knitting!
Snowflake: The fact that our wedding is in the winter
Scholarly Owl: Faculty Club (our venue)
Blurred Out One: This one actually has our wedding date on it, hence the blurriness
Bagpiper: The fact that our wedding will be strongly influenced by family. You can find a few examples of this here, here, here, and here.

I still plan to add a charm representing Toronto, one for our honeymoon, and a "Date to Remember" charm engraved with our wedding date.

I love this idea because I think it's such a cool and really personal way of commemorating our wedding. It's something I can wear forever, and then can hopefully pass it down to a child or grandchild.

How are you commemorating your wedding in a unique way?

Our Version of a Rehearsal Dinner

As you may have gathered, Mr. Knitting and I aren't exactly "traditional". Anything that's incorporated into our wedding is there because it's something we love and something that makes a lot of sense to us. Keeping that in mind, you probably won't be too surprised with what we've decided to do for our rehearsal "dinner".

Here's a hint:

Source

That's right, we're having a private yoga class. I can't think of a better way to kick off our wedding weekend. Mr. Knitting and I love yoga, as do many of our family and friends. We like to joke that my family's hobbies are yoga and vegan food as those are the two interests we all share. Even my BIL who is very dedicated to eating steak and not doing vigorous exercise, eats vegan for at least 1/3 of his meals and often joins my sister at Kundalini yoga!

I'm so excited for this class. I think it's going to be so much fun and, not to sound too kooky, but I think it will be a great way to get a lot of positive energy flowing to start the weekend off on the right note. We've booked it at 889 Yonge which is our current favourite yoga studio. Mr. Knitting and I are there at least 4 times a week, so it's nice to include a place we love so much into our wedding plans.

What are your plans for the night before your wedding?

The Knitting Invites: The Real Deal

So now that we had those gorgeous Christmas postcards we had to decide how to turn them into our invitations. We decided to keep it simple and to redesign the back of a postcard complete with all of our invitation information.

Here's a look at what we designed (this is not the finished invite):



We found the postcard template on Martha, the flourish is from Project Wedding (it's the same one we used in our guestposter), and the silhouettes are from The Wedding Chicks. We didn't have the silhouettes of ourselves at the time when we printed these, but even if we had I would have still gone with these more old fashioned ones as I feel they suit the look of our invites a lot better.

What I really love about the template we found on Martha is that some of the vintage postcards we bought actually have this exact same design.

For example, here's a close up of the template:


Source

and here's a few of our postcards:


If you read the message in the above postcard you'll notice that it makes reference to a future visit in the spring of 1922. This makes me really happy.



We then took what we designed and glued these onto the backs of the postcards. Here's a picture of Mr. Knitting hard at work gluing. We watched a lot of Lost and made a huge mess of our living room while we put these together. A few weeks later that mess may or may not still be there...



We made use of some essential tools:



I was worried about the glue not holding well enough so we brought out the biggest art history and science textbooks we could find and stored the invites in those while they were drying. Every so often we come across one we missed still hidden in a book...Oops!

We then decided to add a couple extra touches to make them even more postcard like. I began by Googling "Christmas stamps" and found these beauties:


Source

I love them because the Santa is adorable and also because they're vintage British stamps featuring a silhouette of Queen Elizabeth. The stamps tie together our Christmas theme and my love of silhouettes. We printed out those and glued them to the invites (and yes, that stamp is purposely glued slightly not straight!).



I then went and bought a postage cancelling stamp from Bizzy B in Toronto. This is a fantastic store packed to the brim with stamps. I highly recommend it to any GTA ladies looking for a great stamp selection.

Here's a look at the stamp:



And here it is in action:



Here's a little secret: I realized that if I used the stamp straight it would extend too far down our invite and block the date of our wedding, so instead I rotated it and used it sideways. I don't think anyone has noticed!

So here's the completed product. Everyone has just received one postcard, I've just placed a front and back side by side so it's easier to see.




So those are the Knitting invites. While there are a few duplicates, almost every single one of our guests has received a completely unique invite which makes me really happy. You'll also notice that they consist of exactly one piece. We've asked people to RSVP by phone or email because that suits us and any additional info they need is on a blog we put together. I got this idea from Martha. Instead of putting together a wedding website that costs money we sent up a Blogger account and put together our "blog", which has something like 5 entries about things like parking, directions, hotels...etc.

True Story: one of Mr. K's friends was very confused as to why we sent invites in stamped envelopes since we had already included a stamp on the postcard. I chose to take that as a compliment to the realism of the postcard. I'm not sure where he thought the address would go as we've clearly taken up that part of the postcard with wedding info...

Oh, and in case you're considering postcards for your for your invites, STDs, thank you cards, or any other wedding project, here's a few more templates for you from Martha, Ruffled, The Graphics Fairy, and the Wedding Chicks.

The Knitting Invites: The Impetus

When I began to think about our invites I had no firm ideas about what I wanted, but I did know that I wanted them to be in keeping with our cozy, vintage Chrismas theme. One of my earliest ideas was to stock up on Christmas cards on sale after Christmas 2009 and send each guest a handwritten and personalized Christmas card inviting them to our wedding. This didn't seem like the most practical approach, but it was very intimate, personal, and Christmasy.

Then, on one of my routine visits to the St. Lawrence Market Antique Market I came across these:






I knew instantly that these would work as our invites. I love vintage postcards and I especially love these because they're so Christmasy and definitely perfect for our theme.

Here's a few close ups:







I also find the backs of the postcards really interesting. I loved looking to see what people wrote (I'm very nosy), but I also like to see the different postcard designs.

Here's a few of my favourites:





Up next: how we turned these into our invites.

What was the impetus (or inspiration) for your invites?

Really Boring Post That is in No Way Interesting to My Bridal Party

If you look like this:



or like this:



You must go away now please. DO NOT READ THIS POST!!!! That especially means you sisters. I know you have problems.

Okay, now that they're gone I can tell you about my gifts for the bridal party. Since we're having a cozy Christmas wedding I wanted to continue that theme in my gift to my favourite ladies. I considered a few options, but ultimately decided to give them gifts that would allow them to recreate this experience:



Oh hello, what a completely unstaged photo-op:



Essentially, I wanted to give them a cozy night in. I began by buying them flannel pajamas during the post-Christmas sales last year. Yay for long engagements and thinking ahead! I love flannel pajamas and don't think it's possible to own too many pairs.

Here's a few examples of the ones I bought:






No cozy night in is complete without a yummy hot drink so I then went to Second Cup and bought each of them an exciting type of hot chocolate. For my vegan baby sis I picked out some apple cider.

If you've never had white hot chocolate before I highly recommend it:



Then to top it off, I added gift cards to Chapters/Indigo (think Barnes and Noble, American readers) so they can pick out a book for their cozy evening:



I still need to figure out something extra for my MOH, but other than that I'm all done. These gifts need to be wrapped nicely, but I think I'm going to keep it simple and wrap them in Christmas paper. We bought quite a bit last year on sale, so it will be good to make use of it. By that I mean that Mr. Knitting will wrap the gifts nicely as I could probably win an award for worst wrapper ever. Seriously, it's bad.

What are you gifting your bridal party? Did you have a theme?