A Cozy Christmas Wedding: Outdoor Fun with Friends

After we'd finished with photos of the two of us, it was time to take some photos with our wedding party and families.

First I went for a casual walk with my BMs and MOH:



These are the lanterns they will be holding instead of flowers during the ceremony:



Aren't they lovely? (and in perfect height order!):



Then I sent my lovely grown up Flower Girls for a frolic (No, neither of them thought boots were a necessity, and yes those are bare legs on my sister!):







I, of course, figured out how to include matryoshkas in these photos:





I took a quick photo with my parents:



and then ran inside because my feet were getting numb!

Mr. Knitting proceeded to take a few photos with his groomsmen and groomswoman:



Mr. Knitting wanted us to have a snowball fight but I vetoed this idea, as I suspected it would end with me having a soaking wet dress. I was happy to pass this request on to a groomsman:





Huddle (probably for warmth!):



Mr. Knitting the model:



These photos were so much fun to take! I had sort of been dreading this hour for a few weeks beforehand because of the cold, but when it came down to it, I had a really wonderful time. That being said, logistically these photos were a bit tricky to take because we were luckily able to have people wait inside, which meant the people we needed for a photo weren't always right there. It also means that we weren't able to get any shots of the wedding party all together because we ran out of time/body heat. Oh well, I think that's just something that comes with wanting to do an outdoor photo shoot in Toronto in December! All in all I'm so glad we did this.

After we were done at Spadina Museum we all piled back into unglamourous cars and headed to the Faculty Club where a rather unpleasant surprise awaited us...

All photos by the amazing 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 and I turned into a bride
We had our first look and spent some time in the snow

A Cozy Christmas Wedding: Then We Frolicked and Froze

Despite all my brainstorming of ways to keep warm during our outdoor shoot, ultimately I just told people to dress as warmly as they could and left it at that. Not going to lie, it was cold and painful, BUT it was also so much fun and I absolutely love the photos we have from it.

With a backless dress with cap sleeves, there wasn't much chance of me being able to keep warm, but I made an effort by wearing my trusty Lululemon Groove Pants under my dress. I also kept my feet dry and warm-ish by wearing my wellies.

Glamour shot of the wellies:



After our first look we started by taking some more pictures of Mr. Knitting and I around the gardens.

I love how you would never know we're in the middle of downtown Toronto in these photos:





The property has a few huge pine trees that we decided to take advantage of. Here we are peeking out:





We of course had to work the fact that we are patriotic Canadians into our photos:



My hand is on the left and Mr. Knitting's hand is on the right. I'm sure no explanation is needed for any Canadian readers, but for everyone else these are really popular mittens that are sold by the Hudson's Bay Company in support of Canadian Olympic athletes. Our original plan was to buy these for our whole wedding party for the photos, but we ended up scaling back to just include the two of us. I love how they look in our photos and we've had the bonus of wearing them for the rest of the winter! Yes, we're now one of those hilarious couples that have a matching clothing item. Maybe we should get matching yoga clothes next...

I found these blocks at Winners a few weeks before our wedding thought they would work well since they pretty accurately described what we were feeling and because I think red looks amazing in the snow:



You'll see that by this point functioning with out a coat was not an option. It was actually really hard to put on this coat because it has quite a few buttons and I'd lost pretty much all manual dexterity by this point!

We then headed over to the gorgeous house to use it as a back drop. We started off with some snuggles:





and then moved on to a back bend:



Finally, we went on a fake walk in the orchard:



and headed off to be married:



Just kidding. We then stuck around for another half hour to take more freezing outdoor photos!

All photos by the amazing 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
I turned into a bride
We had our first look

I'd Rather Be a Guest

As I slowly am starting my recaps and am going through my pictures, I'm really struck with a lot of affection for our little wedding. I had an amazing time planning it, I really enjoyed the day, and I get a lot of joy thinking about it now. However, I've come to the conclusion that I much prefer being a guest at a wedding than being the bride.

I prefer this experience:




to this:


Photo by Josh Levinson

Although I definitely prefer the short hair on Mr. Knitting!

This realization seems really obvious to me now based on what I know about myself, but I was actually surprised to discover this. I attended 5 weddings in the year and a half before my wedding and each time, while I was really excited for the bride, I also couldn't wait for it to be my turn. Being a bride seemed like one of the most fun things ever.

However, now that I'm on the other side, I can definitely say I prefer being a guest.

Don't get me wrong, there are definitely benefits to being the bride. The room is filled with all your favourite people, everyone is incredibly nice to you, the food, music, and decor are all to your taste, you get to marry your most favourite person ever...etc.

Those parts of being a bride were lovely. However, there were some other parts that were not quite as lovely. I felt really rushed the whole day and I felt a lot of personal responsibility for my guests' happiness. Due to my introverted nature I also found it a bit tiring to be the centre of attention all day. My wedding also really stressed out one of my most favourite people and that also definitely affected my experience as a bride.

It also took me quite a while to recover after our wedding. I'm not entirely sure what it was I needed to recover from since our wedding was wonderful and really everything I wanted, but my mind and body were both really exhausted for a couple of months after our wedding. I suspect I just needed some time to process such a huge event, but this was not a quick process for me.

In contrast, as a guest I love just showing up at a wedding and feeling like my only goals are to make the bride and groom feel amazing about the super awesome wedding they planned and to chase down waiters to make sure I'm able to eat the maximum number of appetizers (no, I'm not kidding). Then, after the wedding I'm able to move on to real life immediately.

I think the huge difference for me is that at other people's weddings I don't feel responsible for the happiness of others.

So while I absolutely loved our wedding and am having such an amazing time writing about it for all of you, I have to say that I'm glad it's over and I can just go back to being a guest.

Where do you stand on this? Would you rather be a bride or a guest?

Did you need a significant amount of recovery time after your wedding?

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?