Wedding Mondays - Trash the Dress

Has anyone considered this? My anniversary is sneaking up. Is it bad that I still haven't taken my dress to the dry cleaners? Is it a lack of empathy? A lack of care? Or am I just lazy? I think it's lazy/forgetfullness.
Seriously, who remembers to take their dress to the dry cleaners.

 Alright, onto the topic of discussion. When does one trash the dress? Is one year too soon? Maybe it'd be fun to do with the puppies and the husband. Or maybe just the puppies. But puppies are so rotten! Someone reminded me about how cute wedding photos would have been if we had had our puppies. My puppies are so cute, as you see! I think I want to do it in the rain. If not, in the snow, riding tobaggons.... Or on our next tropical vacation.

I've now added a plethora of ideas to my pinterest board while I figure out when an acceptable time to do such a stunt will be, and find a Prince George photographer. :)

Just found this GREAT BLOG! Trash the dress while washing the dog! My dogs would look miserable afterwards but it would be so fricking cute!

I'm thinking now..... Caper, Daisy, maybe Eric @ Ginters in the Rain.... Or August, my backyard washing dogs.

Hm... what do you think

Wedding Mondays

It's been a while since I posted about my wedding! But today's post isn't really about my actually wedding, but a wedding related thing related to Christmas. You follow?

What I want to say is that I bought us an ornament to commemorate our wedding this year! yay! I love.

I love ornaments. I'm an ornament fend. I like to collect them from places and events. Provide they are classy and stylish and everything in between. I think I get this from my mother. So, I knew I needed an ornament that recognized our wedding this year.

I couldn't find any except at the card store. And I hated them all at first. But then I just decided if I didn't buy one now, then I'd never get one. So I bought one. And hung it up on my not decorated tree. I must say its not as ugly on the tree as it was in the store!

Wedding Mondays - DIY Bow Clutch

It's been a little puppy-overload here, and I haven't had a Wedding Monday in a long time, so here's an old post from my old wedding blog.

On Pinterest I found this great tutorial from Elm Street Life.
The clutch is super cute and super easy!

Anyways, I had this fabric that I bought with this in mind, because the fabric is the same colour (tone) as the boys ties. It's not identical, because I didn't have as many options as I wanted, but I had to buy like 2 metres for my sisters sash, so I made matching clutches! 

See, Moriah's sash, and the pocket square. Same shade pink, different type of fabric! 

It was so easy, only took me an afternoon and I made two of them! I used lots of interfacing because my fabric is a little flimsy, but it did the job! 

This is all the stuff I needed! I love my cutting board, one of the best things I've purchased for my sewing product. 

And this was the final product!!! 

Finished Product!

The process.... 

Love it? Check out the tutorial! 

Wedding Monday - Table "Numbers"

For our wedding, I stumbled across a few scrabble themed ideas on pinterest. 

One of the ideas was scrabble tiles for table numbers! 

We spelt out our name, so there was a "B-O-U-W-M-A-N" and the lead table was B & E (they got blank tiles) 

We used little scrabble tiles bought on ebay in bulk to add to the place cards to direct people to the correct table. 

The project itself was a bit hectic. 

Eric went out and bought a plank of maple. 

He was responsible of cutting it into little squares. He failed.

I got rectangles. I guess it worked.

I bought stencils from the hardware store, some tape and went ahead.

The first idea was to paint over the stencil.

Fail.

It smudged. 

This isn't the greatest look. 

So, with the assistance of some tape lines, we used our pencil to outline the stencil, and then to get the straight lines (that I failed to achieve with my hand painting) we used tape. 

The little numbers were the hardest since I don't have the steadiest hand.

I tried a permanent marker. 

It bled. 

We finished the project witha  coat of varnish.

There isn't any pictures of that.

But it really added to the letters. Made them look super good! 

Wedding Monday's

The Wonderful World of Etsy - Part 1 - The Women. 

My wedding was largely decorated thanks to my online shopping addiction on Etsy 

(come on, admit it, you love Etsy too)

Item #1

HANGERS!

I bought these from MyAmberColouredWorld.

I loved them. They were beautiful, and I mostly bought these because I wanted beautiful pictures. I don't actually know where mine is at the moment. 

I hope that my sister is using hers... I just loved the idea. 

The pinterest/etsy world tugged me, I couldn't resist.

One for Me. 

One for My sister

Item #2

My sister's necklace. 

This is one of my favorite goofy shots from a friend. 

The necklace is from AnnsCrafts.

I didn't want to buy her pearls. But I wanted something cute that would go with my pearls. 

Item #3

GARTERS!

This one freaked me out, because it was coming way too close to the wedding and they still hadn't come. I also hoped they'd come before my boudoir shoot, but alas, that failed! 

NanaRoseDesigns did an amazing job. 

Unfortunately, I did not wear them on the wedding, they kept sliding down, or just being all too uncomfortable. I think that's how garters work though. 

Item #4

Hair Flowers

I bought lots of hair flowers! And finally settled on this one. I wasn't sure on what way I would go with colours. I went with soft pink, and opted out of giving some to Moriah.

They are absolutely stunning. And I LOVED LOVED LOVED them. 

I should actually find them and wear them more often. 

These are from SunnyApril's Shop

The three styles I ordered

Mock Do of my hair with the flower I choose.

How have you caved to the world of Etsy?

Wedding Mondays - Bridal Flowers

There were a few things that I was willing to spend money on and that I am glad I did.
The first was photography (I scored a sweet deal)
The second was flowers.

I absolutely LOVE peonies. They are my favorite flower, and by every bone in my body I was going to have peonies at my wedding. For my April 30, 2012 wedding, peonies were out of season and thus cost me a pretty penny to have the bouquet of my dreams. In my opinion, they were worth every penny.


Floral Inspiration: The first is the peonie bouquet I wanted and fell in love with, the second is the idea for my sisters Bridesmaid bouquet --- simple white, and miscellaneous.


I brought these pictures and my ideas to a florist in town. I called around, and settled on Bella Roma Florist in Downtown Chilliwack. She did a wonderful job on my flowers! I absolutely love them. I kinda just gave her these pictures and let her do her magic. On my wedding day our flowers were delivered.

My Bridal Bouquet

The BridesMaid Bouquet

A mix of everything white, no peonies. 

A Toss Bouquet.

I wasn't going to toss my peonies. I needed them for pictures afterwards.

This little guy was for me to toss. 

And we can't forget the men...

Boutonnieres

One for my hubby, groomsmen, and one for my dad! 

Just orchids. 

Wedding Mondays - Grooms Accessories

I have dropped off my puppies at the boarders house. They are having a sleepover since I'll be gone all day tomorrow until 8 to go to my medical orientation in Vancouver. I miss them so much. I kinda want to cry. I'm never having kids, I don't think I could let go!

Anyways, today is Monday! So let's talk great things from my wedding! Today is all about my husband's amazing accessories! It's gonna be short.

Eric is a conductor for CN Rail who has a a love affair with watches and this has recently grown to include pocket watches. He'll spend hours on the Internet looking at watches. We don't have a good watch maker in town so he gets frustrated easily, but he manages.

The pocket watch at our wedding he ordered off of Ebay. He had to buy a chain for it. And one day it stopped working, apparently the springs just do that. So we took it to the jewellers to get repaired. They sent it to Vancouver and it came back. It arrived and the glass face broke. So they had to send it back to  Vancouver to get the face repaired. Finally arrived and all was good just in time for the wedding.

I bought Eric some cuff links for his shirt! I felt it was necessary. They ended up being a Valentines gift due to excitement and our inability to keep gifts from each other! Loved them. Bough them from Noble Studios LTD

Bridal Shower Blues

I worked my tail off planning my BFFFFFF (also my Assistant Manager at work) a Bridal Shower. I invited all the girls from work, and all the girls from her facebook friends. Only to be disappointed. No one showed. My fault,I didn't follow up with them. But still.

In the end, only the important people were there - Me and Dyan.

I was planning for like 15, so there was way lots of delicious food. Here are some of my ultimate favorites from pinterest (though, honestly, not a huge fan on the strawberries)


The Bride! With her gift! I bought her a basket and loaded it with a table cloth, dish towels, napkins, cups, and a pitcher! .

Every bride should get this opportunity! 

Wedding Monday - Scrabble

Some of those wonderful ideas found throughout
the vortex on the interwebs/pinterest

I planned my wedding with pinterest at my side. DH and I might not be the scrabble enthusiasts that others are, but we do enjoy a quiet game every now and then (I win, he looses, that's because my Grandma taught me well). We were having a mid day lunch wedding with the option of board games instead the traditional 'dancing' (DH does NOT dance).

So, with the following inspirations in mind, we went forward to create our own scrabble inspired wedding.

Table numbers were replaced with table letters and place cards received their own specialized scrabble letter magnet to find their sets.


For our tiles, I had my DH but out squares out of a plank of maple wood, then with stencils we carefully hand painted the letters. With 8 tables we had to choose a 8 letters --- naturally we choose our new last name - Bouwman, with table 8 being the blank tile, and we had the letters B & E.

As for our placecards you can bulk order scrabble tiles for an affordable price (I know have a massive quantity of scrabble letters. everything but b-o-u-w-m-a-n) and then glued magnets to them. The hardest part was matching up all the tiles to the place cards! Ah and then making them stay. I wonder what have been a better idea?

Wedding Greatness - Photographer

Before I get too into all the great details of my wedding, I should perhaps introduce one of my best spent money and most grateful elements --- MY PHOTOGRAPHER.

We had hummed and hawed about wedding photographers. They seemed out of our budget, we didn't want to spend more on a photographer than we did on our reception! That seemed a little ridiculous. We had a $10,000 budget (no idea what was actually spent) and for a great deal we scooped up Allison Suter! Relocating to the Vancouver area she offered a great deal for our April Wedding!

At the end of a long day!

Monday - Great Things from My Wedding!

I was married on a Monday. So unorthodox, but so right for us based on our schedules, the drive down to Vancouver, and everything. Somewhere out there is a blog totally dedicated to my wedding.

But today, as I drink my coffee and browse through pinterest, my mind stopped and reflected on my wedding. It was a great day, and I love everything we did.

So, with that all in mind, I've decided to set forth and dedicate Monday's to great things from my wedding, maybe, I'll even include some great flops as well.

Today, I wanted to draw attention to the greatest thing, the hit with all my guests ---- THE COFFEE BARISTA.

Eric and I had our first date at Starbucks. We met on Plenty of Fish, and met up there. We love Starbucks. We love Starbucks so much we went there on our wedding day.

Our love of Starbucks --- me my non fat caramel latte, and Eric, his white chocolate mocha, has earned us our beloved gold cards, as well as way too many free drinks. Our love of Starbucks has earned us that special place in the barista's hearts. If only they'd learn to spell my name right!