Our Approach to Gifts

This was something we struggled with a lot and have only recently figured out something we're okay with. Before getting into details I want to make it clear up front that Mr. Knitting and I are ridiculously grateful for any wedding presents we might receive. I do want to talk about our somewhat complicated approach to wedding gifts, but I don't want that basic sentiment to get lost.

That being said, we knew since we got engaged that our ideal wedding gift is a financial contribution to our down payment fund (i.e. money). GASP! How rude of us. The back story is that no one in either of our (extended) families has ever registered for wedding gifts since the Polish and Ukrainian tradition is to give money. In addition, both my cousin and sister (the only two family members of our generation to get married) did not register and no one seemed offended or stumped for gift ideas.

Our big issue with registering is that we don't really want stuff. We, like many couples, have lived together for a long time and have almost all the kitchen and home items we need for now. Neither of us come from a family with fine china or silverware, so the idea of registering for 12 place settings is pretty foreign to us. It's also not very practical as we're probably going to have to move a lot for Mr. Knitting's job, so if we did get any nice china it would probably sit in my parent's basement for the next 10 years and by the time we'd look at it again, we'll have completely different taste.

All that being said, we've been getting a lot of questions about gifts recently, and felt really awkward saying, "Cold hard cash please." Okay, we'd never say it like that, but still...As a result we decided to come up with a bunch of options to give people if they ask. Be warned, these aren't your grandmother's options!

1) We put together a registry at Crate and Barrel. It has, um, 9 items. That's right, 9. We could not bring ourselves to register for anything that we didn't need. For example, while I would be thrilled to receive a gift of a cake stand, I don't actually need one, so I couldn't bring myself to put it on our registry. On the other hand, I've been dying for a new good quality food processor because I use our crappy one on a daily basis and am convinced every time I use it will be the last time, so that made it on. We realize that 9 items is ridiculously small and might go back to add a few more things, but really we're not going to be able to get it past 15.

2) Gift cards to our yoga studio or Lululemon. Not a traditional wedding present, but yoga is something both Mr. Knitting and I love and is one of our favourite ways to spend time together so this seemed fitting.

3) Vegan cookbooks. I love vegan cooking and baking, and Mr. Knitting loves eating the results so this seemed like a good idea. I also get all warm and fuzzy at the idea of me making meals for our future babies using our wedding present cookbooks.

Mmm carrot cake:



4) A financial contribution to our down payment fund. Yes, this is money, but it's money with a goal. I actually think of symbolism of our friends and family coming together to help us buy our first home is lovely.

So that's what we've come up with. A bit off beat, but very reflective of us.

Did you have any challenges when it came to registering for gifts?

How I Ended Up With Two Pairs of Wedding Shoes

Remember how I told you that I don't care about shoes? It's true. I still don't. However, my boss does and, as a result, I am now in possession of two pairs of wedding shoes.

Some back story: I'm very close to my boss and she is basically the pushy opinionated mom I never had (in a good way). I have a mom and she's awesome and the best mom ever, she's just not pushy or opinionated (For the most part. She does get really pushy if she wants me or one of my sisters to go to yoga with her and we don't feel like it).

My boss is pretty involved in my wedding and has been extremely generous with me. She's treating me to a facial, manicure, and pedicure before the wedding and is throwing Mr. Knitting and I a pre-wedding cocktail party. She's also the person who helped me get my vintage wedding dress altered.

Anyway, I brought my shoes to a dress fitting and my (very fashionable) boss took one look at them and decided they would not work. In case you need a reminder of the shoes I already bought here they are:



I still like them.

She then insisted on taking me shopping and treating me to a better pair. I initially resisted, since I am perfectly happy with the pair I already chose and would prefer to not have two of everything at my wedding. Eventually I realized this wasn't really about me, but was rather about her wanting to do another nice thing for me and agreed.

Last Friday we went shopping (after she treated me to lunch and my favourite drink, a kir royale), and we found another pair of shoes that met with her approval.

Here they are:



Side View:



While I still can't get all that excited about shoes, I definitely like them and they do actually go slightly better with my dress than the original pair (my boss is usually right about these kinds of things). So, while I'm not a two dress bride, I am now officially a two pairs of shoes bride.

I think I would have found this whole episode upsetting if I did care a lot about shoes, but since I don't it was easy to let her have control of my footwear. It was much more important to her than it was to me so I was happy to let her have her way since she definitely has my best interests at heart. I know this story sounds really odd since most people's bosses do not veto their wedding footwear choices, but again she's almost more like my pushy, opinionated, and extremely generous second mom than a boss. Ultimately, I'm just grateful to have someone in my life that cares so much about me and my wedding and ensuring I have the right footwear.

Out of curiosity which do you prefer? My new shoes or my first pair?

Jewellery Overload

I really love jewellery and own quite a few pieces I love quite a bit. This normally isn't a problem. It's normally a very good thing. The problem is that I feel like I need to wear my absolute favourite pieces on my wedding day and I'm having trouble determining what these are. It's really hard to narrow it down.

The 3 pieces that I will definitely be wearing are my ring, my wedding charm bracelet, and my back necklace. Everything else is up for discussion.

I wrote about my locket here and I'm 99% sure I'm still going to wear it. I love this locket and it absolutely can not be beat in terms of sentiment, but I am also ridiculously in love with this necklace:



I love cameos and am slowly collecting a number of them. This necklace is definitely my favourite of all the ones I own, although I do have a soft spot for the cameo ring I bought in Rome from some adorable old ladies having a fundraiser for their church.

Funny story about this necklace: I almost didn't buy it. I walked into this vintage store on Queen West in Toronto not planning to buy anything and was greated by this man sitting on a throne. That's right, a throne. He was very jovial and friendly, but was the pushiest salesperson I've ever met and basically bullied me into buying the necklace. Luckily, I absolutely love it and wear it often, so I'm very glad he was so pushy, as otherwise I definitely would have left the store empty handed.

My next problem has to do with bracelets. On one hand I'll be wearing my wedding charm bracelet and I'm torn as to what to wear on the other. I definitely don't need to wear anything else, but since I'm currently trying to think up a way to wear 3 bracelets on one hand, I think it might be a bit unrealistic to say I won't even wear one.

Here are the contenders:

This is the one I'm most leaning towards at the moment:



It was made by my mom's friend Amanda of Beadiful Designs, and I absolutely love it. I love wearing pearls, but I like to wear them in a slightly less traditional way. I also happen to love floaty bracelets and necklaces so you can see why I like this piece so much.

I'm normally not much of a cuff person because I think I'm more suited to delicate pieces, but I love this cuff and think it has a great Art Deco feel:





Here's the final bracelet contender:



It looks very yellow in this picture (I don't understand how as I'm such an amazing photographer!), but it's a lot more silvery/white in person. This piece is from the 1920s and I love it quite a bit. Too many decisions...

Finally we come to brooches. I originally had no plans to wear a brooch as clearly I already have way too many other things going on. Then I began reading Mrs. Avocado's recaps and loved the way she wore her grandmother's brooch.

In case you need a reminder:


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I love this look so much.

This reminded me of how much I love brooches and now I'm also trying to figure out if I can include a brooch in my wedding day outfit. Probably not, but here are two of my favourites:





A great solution for my brooch problem would be to put one on my bouquet, but it's looking like I'm probably going to be going with a non-floral alternative (more on that later) so that doesn't help.

So as you can see I have quite a problem and definitely need to make some cuts. The funny thing is I'm still on the hunt for a something borrowed and I'm pretty sure a piece of jewellery would be a great something borrowed...

Did you have a jewellery overload?

Do I Have to Wear it All Day?

I love my wedding dress. LOVE it (yes, I'm mean and haven't shown it to you). However, I'm a bit concerned about wearing it for a whole day. I like comfortable clothes. I almost never wear heels, I don't like things that are restrictive or corset like, and pretty much the second I come home I change into something pajama like. I may have even once hosted a brunch in my pjs. Okay, they were cute cupcake pjs that I'd never slept in and the brunch was for 3 of my closest friends, but still, they were pjs.

The pjs in question:



Don't get me wrong, I'm not a slob and do have the ability to dress myself appropriately, but I am concerned about my ability to stay in formal clothing for a whole day. While our wedding isn't until 5pm, we're starting to take pictures at 1:30 so I'm in for about 12 hours of dress time. Blarg. My dress is pretty simple and comfy, but it's not sweatpants comfy. Would it be totally weird to schedule time where I don't have to wear my dress? Okay, yeah, that's pretty weird. Maybe I'll just have to suck it up. I'm hoping in the excitment of the day that I won't even notice.

So am I a complete weirdo? Has anyone else had this problem? How did you deal with it?

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)

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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:


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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:


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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?