A Cozy Christmas Honeymoon

I loved our honeymoon. A lot. More than I expected to actually. Normally, my ideal vacation is to go somewhere in Europe that I have meticulously read about in advance and spend my days wandering the streets...blah blah blah. However, for our honeymoon Mr. Knitting and I decided we should go a much more relaxed route and I have to say I'm so happy we did.

Our honeymoon began with a very luxurious chauffeured drive to Montreal. Here's a look at us luxuriating:



Haha, yeah, we drove to Montreal with my sister and her husband with our suitcases piled up in between us. While it could not be described as romantic, it was a lot of fun. My BIL's parents live in Montreal so we stayed the night with them so we'd be fresh and rested when we got to Hovey Manor the next day.

The first official day of our honeymoon began with some delicious brunch:



Then since we had a bit of time before we needed to leave we wandered around old Montreal. Being a proper Canadian I'm in love with all things maple and was excited to find a store selling maple taffy. Here's how it works.

Maple syrup (the real stuff, no Aunt Jemima garbage) is poured on freshly packed snow:





You are then given a popsicle stick to roll it up into a lolly-pop and enjoy:



It's highly delicious!

After our walk we packed up and drove to Hovey Manor which is located in the Eastern Townships, about an hour and a half from Montreal. In it's previous life Hovey Manor was the summer home of a rich South Carolinian. Apparently, after the Civil War a lot of wealthy southerners could not stomach the idea of summering in an area full of Yankees and instead continued further north to Quebec and began developing the area known today as the Eastern Townships. Needless to say this man's home was gorgeous.

Here's a look at our room:



There's the creepy/cute elf on our bed:



I'm going to do a few separate posts to show you what we did and, more importantly, what we ate on our honeymoon, but I thought I'd post a bit here about our first Christmas together as a married couple.

Like many of you, we were finding it difficult to decide how to change our family holiday traditions to suit us as a married couple. We do have it easier than most because since we met in high school our parents live in the same city, but there are definitely still a few things we need to figure out. In the end we decided not to worry about it this year and to purposely schedule our honeymoon over Christmas. We liked this plan because we figured our families might be a tiny bit sick of us and this way we didn't have to make any big decisions about where to spend the holidays. Yay for avoidance!

I was a bit worried I might get sad being away from home for the first time over Christmas, but I'm happy to report we had a wonderful day and I think we definitely made the right choice. Here's a little recap of our day:

The activities for the day:



Around 11am we met the other guests in the library for some brandy eggnog. We were our usual social selves and spent most of the time reading and not socializing with others!:



When we got back to our room there was a Christmas present waiting for us from the innkeepers:





I was particularly excited about the tea because I am obsessed with chai tea and this was a type I hadn't tried:



We spent some time outside as well. Here's the only picture we took of our sleigh ride (the snowflakes in Toronto are not this pretty and we were excited):



We also spent lots of time walking and exploring the area:







Our first married Christmas ended with an incredibly delicious lobster dinner:





It was obviously a pretty simple Christmas, but it was really nice and just what we wanted! Now we have a whole year to figure out what to do next Christmas...

What was your first married Christmas like? Did you have trouble figuring out how to spend it?

A Bee's Life: Knitting Edition

How I Found Wedding Bee

I actually don't really remember. Shortly after we got engaged I became a little obsessed with wedding blogs and I think I found Wedding Bee from a link from another blog (maybe Martha?). I read it for a bit, but I lost interest around the holidays (what's wrong with me?). However, in January 2010 I became a WB fanatic and pretty much read every single post every day.

My Application

I didn't know anything about blogging when I decided I wanted to apply, but I figured that was no reason to stop me! I'm definitely one of the Bees who only started a wedding blog so that I could be a Bee. I also didn't tell anyone I was applying for Wedding Bee, except for Mr. Knitting.

I'm really glad that I didn't know that some Bees put together really fancy high tech applications because mine was definitely a very straight forward 7 page Word document without a single colour, illustration, or picture to be found. My blog had lots of pictures, but my application was very boring looking. I sent my application in a week before I technically should of (after reading that Mrs. Cupcake sent hers in way before!). About 4 weeks later, while I was in Amsterdam on an amazing trip with a friend, I got an email from Mrs. Penguin offering me a place as a Bee. I was so excited, but also a bit sad that I would have to wait a whole month until I got back to Canada before actually starting to blog!

Frolicking in Siena as a brand new Bee:



Picking a Bee name was tricky for me because I really wanted to be Miss Hermit Crab. I thought it would be a really fitting (and hilarious!) name for Mr. Knitting and myself since since we're both such total homebodies. Unfortunately for me, that name had been scooped up the week before! For me it came down to either Miss Thimble or Miss Knitting and I went with Knitting because it seemed more cozy. Now I love my name and my icon and can't imagine being anyone else!

Icon thief (I'm kidding of course. Love you HC!):


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What It's Like Blogging for Wedding Bee

I love it! It's really fun and I love that blogging about my wedding has forced me to think about it more deeply and to spend time thinking about why certain wedding related things are important to myself and Mr. Knitting.

I absolutely love getting feedback and help from the readers and, like pretty much all the Bees, your ideas and suggestions have had a huge influence on our wedding. Stay tuned for my recaps to see what exactly!

There were also definitely a few times I felt a bit like, "What else is there for me to write about my wedding?" but for me it was really important to honour the commitment to post 3-4 times a week, so I always found something! That's what gave birth to my "Yum...That is All" series. I'm always up for looking at pictures of delicious food!

I don't really feel like I'm all that qualified to give blogging advice, but for me, I just write about the things I'm interested in and I always try to include pictures. I also try to be as honest as possible about my experiences (without crossing a line) because it's the really honest posts that I read as an engaged woman that made me realize that planning a wedding is not sunshine and roses all the time, and that's okay because it's like that for everyone. I think this sense of community, support, and shared experience is one of WB's biggest strengths and I hope I have contributed to that in some way.

Continuing with this sense of community, I also love the people I've met both on line and in person. While I'm yet to meet another Bee in real life, I've met a fantastic group of ladies from the Toronto area who I love to meet up with (and harass on Facebook!). That's one of my favourite things about being part of the WB community.

What's your favourite thing about Wedding Bee?

Reviving a Family Tradition

I've written before about my mom's (and consequently my family's) obsession with all things Indian. One of the coolest ways this obsession has manifested is that for 20 years my parents hosted an Indian feast at our house on Christmas Eve for a group of our family and friends.

Sadly, about 5 years ago, my parents decided that the feast was too much work to continue and they stopped hosting it and we instead began spending Christmas Eve at Indian restaurants with immediate family only. While I'm perfectly happy with this arrangement, I was beyond thrilled when I received an invitation to a Christmas Indian feast held in our honour.

That's right my sister/MOH decided to bring back our old tradition as a pre-wedding celebration for Mr. Knitting and myself. Think wedding shower, minus pretty much everything that says shower. It was perfect.

Here's the fam:



The only way you'd know there was anything wedding related about the event was by looking at the hilarious little accessories my MOH bought for our drinks.



We had lots of amazing Indian food:





And some perogies:



And lots of wonderful guests:

My BMs and their studmuffins (that's what they call them, I swear!):



My gorgeous grandmother (ignore my goofy looking uncle):



Mama Knitting with Mr. K's parents:



Me and my amazing godmother:



I also used this opportunity to give my gifts to my MOH, BMs, and FGs. here's everything all wrapped under my parent's tree:





Here's an action shot of my lovely ladies opening their gifts:



Originally I had planned to get my MOH that same gift as my other ladies and then add on something extra, but after being completely overwhelmed by all the amazing things she did for my wedding I decided on a new gift. Here it is:



Once Long Ago is a fairy tale book my mother had as a little girl and she used to read stories from it to me and my sisters when we were kids. Her copy is really damaged now, but I managed to track down a copy of the book (NOT an easy thing to do). I was really happy with this gift because it's really sentimental and special, but also has a purpose!

All in all in was the perfect pre-wedding celebration that really made me so excited for the wedding. It was really wonderful to bring back a family tradition. It was really special because many of the people at the party were people that had attended the Indian dinners in the past, but there were also a few new guests like Mr. Knitting's family, some of who had never even tried Indian food.

Did you have a non-traditional pre-wedding celebration?

My Night to Remember

Back in early December, my bridal party, led by my MOH, threw me a wonderful bachelorette party.

We started the night at BM rachel's apartment with um, some booze:



My maids and I:



The Flower Girls/slaves were hard at work in the kitchen preparing yummy munchies:



The food at my bachelorette was amazing. They thoughtfully made it all vegan (although my little sis/head chef is vegan herself, so I don't think this was a huge hardship for her!). Some of the yummys we had included bean cakes with salsa, amazing burritos, and 2 types of hummus including my all time favourite Two Bean Lime Chipotle Hummus (seriously, you need to try this).

It was then time for the drink making contest. This was a really fun activity and I highly recommend it for any bachelorette you might be planning in the future. My MOH had bought all kinds of fun booze and mixers and we got into teams of 2 or 3 to come up with the best tasting drink. I instantly got hyper competitive and claimed one of my more gastronomically talented friends, Emily, as my partner. I then proceeded to make her do all the drink making for our team, while I danced. Seriously.

Dancing in action:



We then all had to try each other's drinks in our super cute mini plastic wine glasses and rank them.



Despite the fact that I managed to bully (What? I said I was competitive!) half the party into voting for our (admittedly) not so tasty drink, Emily and I did not win.

I was a good sport about it:



Luckily to make up for my lack of winning a prize it was time to give me my gag gifts which were hilarious enough to make me forget about my defeat. I won't go into all of them, but here's my favourite. My MOH and I had been joking for weeks beforehand about some advice she had found on the internet of things to do at a bachelorette. One of then included giving the bride a shirt saying "Bride With No Pride" and a mini skirt to unleash the bride's wild side, or something like that. Being sort of reserved and conservative, I thought that was the funniest thing ever and was thrilled when I pulled this out of the bag:



Don't worry, even though it's now my most favourite shirt, I didn't actually wear it in public. I did prance around the apartment with it for a while though!

Then it was time for my cake, which I think is one of the most thoughtful things anyone did for me for the wedding.



It's a charm bracelet cake and each little "charm" has a symbol on it representing each of the guests at my bachelorette. If you've read this post, then you know why it meant so much to me.

Me and the cake:



And with that it was time to leave and go salsa dancing:







All in all, it was a really fun night and I'm so glad I have such wonderful people in my life to plan me such a wonderful event.

How did your bachelorette go?

Our Worst Wedding Gift

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I know, I know, you're all thinking I'm terribly rude and ungrateful for writing a post with this title, but read on, and I think you'll understand why I feel comfortable publicly calling this our worst wedding gift.

Mr. Knitting's dad added his friend Edward to his portion of our guest list. Even though our invitations said 5pm, Edward and his random male friend arrived at around 5:40pm and awkwardly stood in the hallway for our entire ceremony. Kind of annoying and rude, but not the end of the world.

Then during our cocktail hour he had between 4 and 6 drinks before the bartenders told him nicely that he would have to come back later. Edward did not like this and was very rude to the (extremely nice) bartenders.

During dinner we have decided to serve wine and keep the bar closed until after dinner. When offered wine, Edward told the server to, "Get out of here," (imagine it being said in a gruff drunk older Polish voice). He then proceeded to go up to the bar and harass the bartenders for not serving him. I had to send my dad (who has had lots of experience with cranky Eastern Europeans) up to resolve the situation.


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We think Edward left shortly after dinner, but we're not sure because obviously he did not see it fit to say goodbye to us.

Anyway, as a gift he gave us $300, which I thought was a very generous gift, especially since he doesn't know us. However, when we got back from our honeymoon we discovered that one of the cheques from the wedding had bounced. When the cheque was returned in the mail we learned the truth. The cheque hadn't bounced, he had cancelled the cheque, and as a result we were charged with bank fees.

That's right, this jerk felt he hadn't gotten his money's worth of alcohal at our wedding so he cancelled the cheque. The mean spiritedness behind this action is why I feel comfortable calling this our worst present. It wasn't that he couldn't afford a gift (we confirmed this and would have had no problem had this been the case), it was that he felt our wedding was a commercial transaction. He felt he didn't get his money's worth and therefore was entitled to a refund. In addition, while the bank fees were minimal, the idea of saddling extra fees on a young and broke couple is pretty nasty.

We were somewhat shocked at first, but there's not much to do other than laugh and be glad that we aren't related to Edward and never have to see him again. However, on the advice of Mama Knitting we decided to send him a lovely, yet very passive aggressive thank you note. Here's the text:

Dear Edward,

Thank you so much for attending our wedding. It was so wonderful to have had your warm and joyful presence there. We were honoured to have you share in our special day. Please don't worry at all about replacing the bounced cheque [this is us pretending we don't know he cancelled it because we figure it will infuriate him that we didn't understand that he was punishing us]. It was incredibly kind of you to think of us, but we understand that these are difficult economic times and that not everyone is as fortunate as us. We were just glad to have you there and wish you nothing but the best.

Love,

The Knittings

Ultimately I just feel sorry for him, although he has provided us with one of our more amusing wedding stories! Anyway, we're now officially forgetting him and are instead focusing on all the lovely and amazing people in our lives!

Has anyone else had someone rescind a gift because they felt your wedding didn't deliver?