Dressing the Mama: Part 1

My mom is totally obsessed with all things Indian. She loves Indian food, music, movies, culture, interior design, and most importantly for this post, clothes. My mom loves wearing Indian clothing and she can often be found dressed in Indian clothing at formal events.

Here's a few examples:

Dancing at a wedding with my sister:



With my adorable father at my sister's wedding:


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However, she's never actually worn a sari, which I happen to think are one of the most gorgeous and elegant types of formal wear. So, when we were starting to think about what she might wear to the wedding we decided on a sari pretty quickly.

Now we just had to figure out how to get her one. A lot of the Indian clothes my mom wears are actually gifts given to her by Indian women who love the fact that she loves Indian clothing so much.

For example, here's a picture of her trying on a sari one of her coworkers is lending her 9for a different event). You'll notice her Vice Principal's office is decorated with images of Indian brides:



However, we couldn't leave the fabulousness of what Mama Knitting would wear at the wedding up to the generousity of her friends and coworkers, and so last weekend we ventured out on a sari shopping expedition.

Stay tuned to find out how we did...

Are you involved in what your mother is wearing to the wedding, or did you have a more hands off approach?

We Be Jammin'

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No, not that kind. This kind:


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Originally I wasn't sure if I wanted to give out favours. As a bride on a budget I have to be pretty careful about how we spend money. I've been to a few weddings where they didn't give out favours and I didn't think it took away from the wedding at all. Similarly, I've been to weddings where I've received favours that I have no use for and aren't particularly creative or related to the couple in any way and it just seemed like a waste. I knew if I did decide to give out favours they would have to be something special (in my opinion anyway!).

However, after scouring the Internet for a while I realized pretty quickly that I really wanted to give our guests homemade jam for three reasons.

1) I think jars of jam are adorable.

2) My dad does all kinds of canning all the time and I thought jam would be a great homemade and very personal product to give our guests.

3) If we did the canning in the summer we would be able to use all local produce which really appealed to me.

Anyway, this past weekend the first jammin' (haha) session took place and like the dedicated and involved bride I am, I didn't help at all. Nope, I let my dad and 87 year old grandfather do all the work.

Here's how the first jammin' session went:

These are the most of supplies all lined up. My dad actually picked all the rhubarb himself at a relative's farm:



The yummy looking strawberries my grandfather picked in Woodstock, ON:



The aforementioned grandfather:



My dad mid jammin':



Jam!





and 5 hours later half the jam was done:



As you may have guessed this batch was strawberry rhubarb jam. Since then my dad has also made another 40 jars of rhubarb ginger jam, which is kind of the yummiest thing ever. And yes, my dad is totally awesome for doing this for me.

The thing I have to figure out now is how I want to decorate/label these jars. I've been searching the Internet, but I haven't figured it out yet.

What's your favourite way to decorate a jam jar?

Too Trendy?

One of my favourite vendor crushes, Beth Helmstetter, wrote a blog post a few months back that really resonated with me. It's called "It is NOT Out of Fashion If You Love It" and you can read the original post here.

As you can probably guess from the title of the post, Beth argues that when it comes to your wedding, you shouldn't worry about whether something you love is in fashion or not. She points out that for those of us obsessed with wedding blogs (which I suspect includes many Weddingbee readers) very creative and interesting ideas can seem really overdone and overused really quickly. However, Beth argues that this is not reason enough to exclude something if you really love it. Most wedding guests don't spend a couple of hours a day reading wedding blogs and most likely will not even be aware that more than one person has thought to use a typewriter as a guest book (for example).

This really resonated with me and I think it's so true. I'd definitely been a bit concerned about a few of my choices being a bit too trendy or overdone, but this calmed me right down. Of course these things are completely awesome and in fashion if Mr. Knitting and I love them. They certainly belong in our wedding anyway!

Here's a few of the "popular" things I plan to include:

Adorable jars of jam as favours (more about this soon):


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Cupcakes (although mine are DIY):


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The Paloma's Nest ringbearer dish:


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I don't know for sure that I'll be having one of these dishes, but before reading this post I had decided I wouldn't because I thought they were too popular. After reading the post, I don't care if they're popular or not. Whether I end up with one now will depend more on finances than anything else. They aren't expensive, but when you're a budget bride every little bit counts!

So those are the popular items I'll be embracing. I think ultimately as long as I'm true to myself and my style who cares if all my ideas aren't the most original things ever. All I want in the end is a wedding that really reflects Mr. Knitting and myself and I'm pretty sure the best way to do that is to include things that we love irregardless of how popular they are.

What's your favourite popular wedding trend?

Family Tie(s)

Family is really important to me and as I've mentioned, Mr. Knitting and I are trying to incorporate our families into the wedding whenever possible. One of my favourite ways we're doing this has to do with the tie Mr. Knitting will wear at the wedding.

Originally I had planned to find him a vintage tie here in Toronto, either at Cabaret on Queen St. W, Stella Luna, or one of the vintage stores on Ossington St. While the rest of his outfit will be pretty new, I liked the idea of a vintage tie to tie into our vintage theme (yes, I crack myself up!).

Then I realized that I had an even better option at my disposal. Before he passed away, my Scottish grandfather used to wear his mother’s family tartan tie to formal events. This tie is both vintage and directly related to family! I love the idea of Mr. Knitting getting married wearing something my grandfather was so proud of.

Here's a picture of my grandparents. I searched everywhere for a picture of him wearing the tie, but no luck. You'll have to settle for this awesome bright yellow one:

It's actually been a while since I last saw the tie, so I can't even definitively tell you what it looks like. It's the Anderson family tartan which the Internet tells me could look like any of these:


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To be honest though, I don't really care what it looks like. I could care less if it doesn't really coordinate with the other colours I'm leaning towards (pale pink, burgundy, silver, white, and gold). To me it's much more important that it's an object that meant a lot to my grandfather, who obviously meant a lot to myself and my family. Mr. Knitting and I are so excited for him to wear the tie.

In what ways have you incorporated family history into your wedding?

I Vow...To be Awkward

While in private Mr. Knitting and I are often embarrassingly lovely dovey with each other, in public not so much. We're pretty private about our relationship and our feelings for each other. I'm also pretty WASPy in that I'm not too interested in talking about deep emotional stuff with lots of people in public. Stiff upper lip and all that.

A nod to my WASP-iness in our bedroom:


As a result, the thought of standing up in front of 100 people and saying wedding vows is absolutely terrifying to me. Okay, terrifying is probably overkill, but it seems really awkward to me. I love Mr. Knitting more than anything and want to spend my life with him, but I don't want to say that aloud to a whole bunch of people.

I can see how, in theory and for other people, it's a really nice thing to do. My sister and her husband's vows were wonderful and definitely a highlight of the night. It's lovely to commit yourself to someone in front of all your favourite people and I'm really hoping that in the moment I'll just feel so loved and supported that I won't feel awkward.

We had a Toronto Weddingbee meet up in early June and one of the lovely ladies told us how she and her fiance (now husband) had decided to not do public vows and instead had chosen to exchange private letters. At first I thought this was a great solution for us, but then I realized that neither of us would take those letters seriously and they'd just be a big joke to us. Thus, we'll be sticking with the public vows and I will just have to swallow my feelings of awkwardness.

Do you have any feelings of awkwardness over wedding vows?

Keeping It In Perspective

I have decided that I actively need to calm down about wedding planning and learn to laugh. I care a lot about this wedding and as a result I think I'm in danger of taking everything too seriously. I really really want to be able to laugh at all the ridiculous things that are likely to happen. Seriously, Mrs. Perfume's ugly cake that tasted bad is one of the funniest things I've ever read, and clearly her wedding was still incredibly gorgeous and memorable even if she didn't like the cake.

The problem is that because I don't have a "go with the flow" type of personality, being able to take a step back from something I really care about is really hard for me. I also tend to take things pretty personally, which really doesn't help when you're planning a wedding. I know everyone says that the important thing is that in the end you'll be married and that's all that matters, but I don't find that advice very helpful. I'm more like, "Yes, I'll be married but everyone will think our wedding is awful because of (some ultimately unimportant thing that no one will notice but me).

That being said, I am now officially going to be making a huge effort to just calm down and laugh at all the ridiculous things that are going to happen. I suspect those are the things that make the best stories.

Anyone have any tips for keeping it all in perspective? Married ladies - did anyone have a wedding disaster that after the fact was hilarious?

Honeymoon Blues

Mr. K and I realized today that we can't afford a honeymoon and that sucks a lot. I'm not really sure how we didn't realize this before since our finances didn't magically change today, but I guess we didn't really think it through. The original plan was to go to Hawaii for two weeks after the wedding. Unfortunately, between my big Europe trip this past May, Mr. Knitting's grad school fees and conferences (neuroscience on a cruise ship anyone?), our upcoming short trip to visit my older sister and her husband in Vancouver, and, oh yeah, the wedding, a honeymoon is just not going to happen. Stupid being young and poor...

Mr. Knitting working hard at his neuroscience conference on a Caribbean boat cruise:



BM Melbourne and I in Antibes:



My excuse for visiting Vancouver:



However, after getting over my initial disappointment, I'm surprisingly okay with this. Clearly we've both had lots of fun and adventures this year and we'll have lots of exciting trips to look forward to in our future. It's okay that we can't do one of them right after the wedding. I still get to marry my favourite person and really what more can I ask for?

We're now trying to decide if we would like to still have a mini-moon and go away for a few days over Christmas or if we should stay in Toronto. I like the idea of going away because I suspect we'll be a bit familied out after the wedding and will want some alone time, but it will also be the first Christmas I won't be spending with my family and I'm not sure if I might find that a bit upsetting.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a great mini-moon that's a relatively short plane ride away from Toronto?