The Groomsmen Outfits

Travis and I, a long time ago (ok, maybe not that long... but long enough for us), had known from the very beginning that he was not going to wear a suit or tux on his wedding day.

It's funny, I joke around saying that Travis has better style then me... but the thing is, HE DOES. He is the one that always encourages me to buy new pieces of clothing to add to my wardrobe and will take me shopping when he feels like I need a change (and I agree with him). When I picked my husband, I never thought that he would have such a talented eye for fashion, but I'm VERY thankful that he does! Just look how handsome he is along with his dashing men!

Again, these photos were taken by the amazing Sarah and Graeme Nickerson.

Finding these outfits was quite an interesting adventure. You would think you would be able to rent them from a tux shop or even get them from Moore's or Tip Top Tailors... but NO! No such luck. They did not sell vests!

Our journey in West Edmonton Mall FINALLY led us to Le Chateau. I never would have thought of going in, but we walked by and noticed that they carried vests. Travis started trying on vests right away but I noticed these vests, HERE, and the matching pants can be seen HERE.

I loved the colour, the style, the look... BUT, they were running out of this style at the West Edmonton mall location. So, we called all of the groomsmen and asked their sizes. Sure enough, the store carried their EXACT sizes while we stripped them dry of their inventory except for one pair of pants. We were blessed! And in the end, they all got to keep their sweet get up instead of returning a tux to a store if we rented.

Finally, to tie it all together... (haha, pun), the ties were from Le Chateau as well. The groomsmen wore a black skinny tie while Trav wore a charcoal skinny tie. AND, the lovely boutonnieres were created by my lovely Auntie Rita and Auntie Sherry with babies breath and leaves from my backyard. 

It all came together SO nicely, and the ladies dresses were GORGEOUS as well! The dresses complimented each other and my friends were comfortable throughout the day. I posted about the dresses earlier HERE if you don't know the history on how we picked them.

Everyone looked AMAZING! Walking down the aisle was one part of the wedding I was looking forward to the most... and it was one of my highlights that I still remember from our day.

Thank you, friends, for sharing in our day with us. It meant the world and you made it SO beautiful, I can't thank you enough!

Wedding Invitations DIY

It is pretty crazy how much work goes into creating wedding invitations yourself. Yes, I am still currently a student, and during our engagement, I was in my 3rd year of studies. For Travis and I, cutting costs anywhere possible was important.

When it comes to wedding invitations, there are so many different styles and ways of doing them. You can create them yourself and give them a personal flare, or you can order them online and spend up to $500.00 or MORE ordering them from an online company. Or, you can have a little help from the Wedding Chicks! These ladies, Amy and Joyce, have created an amazing blog for future brides to find inspiration, or like me, for past brides who are still obsessed with weddings. For those of you who have Pinterest, you can follow the Wedding Chicks HERE.

These ladies have collected different style of invitations for brides to use for their wedding prep. And the good news is, they are FREE! You pick a design, plug in the information and download your wedding invitation as a pdf. WONDERFUL! You can see their collection HERE.

I kind of became obsessed with bunting. All throughout the wedding planning, I would look at blogs at how they made bunting, where they would hang it, how it could be used in a dainty, classic and adorable way. 

The only issue I had with this invitation style was the font. However, this was an easy fix. I saw the font on the below wedding invite and fell in love. It was all a matter of easy copy and paste. Take the design and transfer it onto the wedding info.

So... away we went.  The first example is a draft... and the second is our actual invitation.

#1.

#2.

On my MacBook, we used the program Preview to do the editing. We would copy and paste extra lines in, make it line up all nicely till finally, it looked just right.

Finally, when we assembled them and put the invitations together with the R.S.V.P. cards, they looked like this...

We did add a few little extras like the jute bow around the middle and this corner stamp that we found at Michaels. We even had the copies done at Staples on a regular white card stock which only ended up being $60.00. 

One thing I did not realize however, the jute bow did create a problem for postage. The envelope was too thick, so the post office charged double for postage for each invitation. OWEE! However... I loved the look of them, so I decided to splurge a little extra. 

Another thing about DIY wedding invitations, have people check them over and over again before you print them. I had the Best Man, Maid of Honour, future Husband, Mom and Dad check over them for spelling mistakes... yet there were still mistakes. Even giving it to a total stranger would be a good idea just so that you have some fresh eyes. 

All I know is that I really love the people that helped assemble them. They are always such a help. 

Travis, my new Husband

Caleb (the Best Man) and Clara (the Maid of Honour), we were an unstoppable team.

Finally, we added another little personal touch to the envelopes...

We used our thumb prints to create a heart seal. 

Hope you enjoyed a little bit more of our wedding prep. Enjoy the last few weeks of summer (I can't believe I'm saying that already!)

Choosing the Location

Hello Everyone,

Yes, our wedding has come and gone ALREADY! Pretty insane. But now is the time to reflect on the wedding planning process and our actual wedding. Travis and I had so much fun on our honeymoon because we were able to reflect on our wedding day. It is such a blur when you go through it and one of the most exhausting days of my life, but it was SO special to us and the most amazing day of my life. I married my best friend, and now I get to live life with him... God is good!

But let's get down to the venues... shall we?

We were fortunate enough to have a pretty easy time picking the location for our wedding. I made a few long distance phone calls and many emails to different people to ask about their venues.

I had always wanted an outdoor wedding. One of my bridesmaids, Melissa, her brother got married outside and Travis and I had the honour of going. Their wedding and reception were under a tent and it was absolutely stunning. During their wedding, we kept on saying, "our wedding should look like this!" Their wedding was our inspiration and were seeking out a venue that would allow us to have a tent.

We were originally looking at a heritage home by Boundary Bay to have a tented reception. The only problem was that they could hold a max number of 125 people. Well, we were going to have well over 125 guests... so that was unfortunately a no go.

This automatically got me down because I loved the venue so much! JUST LOOK AT IT!

Photo Courtesy of:  http://www.savourychef.com/wedding-venue-event-venue/cammidge-house-boundary-bay-regional-park/

I was thinking of other places to have a wedding that would allow for an outdoor ceremony and reception. I then stumbled upon an entry on ruffled that took place in my hometown of Ladner!

I then saw this image and fell in LOVE!

Click HERE to see more!

This wedding took place at the Kirkland House... an old heritage home that was vandalized back in the early 1990's and fixed up by volunteers. I never would have thought to get married here, but the above picture sold me!

I got a hold of the main man who takes bookings and the only problem was that we couldn't have a dance because it disturbed the neighbors... so we had to give up a tented reception because we wanted to DANCE! However, the fact that we even GOT Kirkland House was AMAZING! It books up a year in advance now, 2013 is FULLY BOOKED ALREADY! It did help that we were going to have a Sunday wedding, but Sundays are getting even more difficult to book.

So... Mom and Dad MOVED quickly and thankfully found a hotel in Tsawwassen that was relatively priced and had a dance floor!

Our reception would be held at the Coast Tsawwassen Inn. The food choice we would serve our friends and family was wonderful. We could do buffet style or plated, and if we had over 100 guests coming to our event, they would ignore the fee of renting the venue so we only had to pay for food. PERFECT! They would do our linens, dress up the tables, set them up with place settings, take away our plates, serve punch, dessert... bada bing, bada boom, I WAS SOLD. And finally, we could have a dance. It worked out perfectly.

When it comes to planning a wedding in peak season in B.C. in just over 6 months, it is difficult. I never thought that I would have had my reception in a ballroom, however, there are somethings that you have to give up for your special day. Sometimes it doesn't work out. The advice that I would probably give to any bride that my Maid of Honour, Clara, gave to me would be... you can only control so much in your wedding. It will be beautiful regardless because it is YOUR wedding. The only person that is going to take notice of the things that are missing is YOU... who would know if you wanted a Candy Bar and it didn't work out (in this case, me), or wanted a tented reception outdoors and, again, it didn't work out? (and again, this would be me). Sometimes, you just need to sacrifice things here and there... ESPECIALLY if you want to have a budget friendly wedding.

However, we do have some photos now of us at each venue. Here is a little sneak peak of what's to come from The Nickersons. They are our AMAZING photographers whom I will be doing a post about soon.

 Our Ceremony at the Kirkland House

Our first dance at the Coast Tsawwassen Inn

A Quick Update...

Hey Everyone,

Yes, I know it has been a while, however, important things have come up and thus, I put the blog on hold for a while.

In the midst of finishing my online class, Travis's Grandfather passed away on Thursday June 14, 2012 after a short 1 month battle of bone cancer. It has been a hard time for us, but we have been comforted in knowing that Grandpa Baldwin is with our Heavenly Father, glorifying Him in his new body. He is dancing and singing his praises forever and we cannot stop picturing him up in Heaven worshiping Jesus. So praise God that Grandpa Baldwin accepted Christ into his heart 2 years ago (he was 89 when he passed).

They are celebrating his life tomorrow at Grandma Baldwin's house and I am in Seattle with my family so I cannot be there. However, we would still love prayers for comfort because we love and miss him so much.

Even though all of this has happened, I have been exceptionally blessed. 

My Maid of Honour (Clara) came out from Edmonton to help me do DIY decorations for the wedding and encourage me more in the wedding preparation department.

Kelsey (my bridesmaid), Jordan (another bridesmaid), and Clara, threw me a beautiful wedding shower where my friends spoiled me rotten and blessed me with love and gifts.

After all of the celebrating (and even before), we worked on DIY projects like decorating Mason Jars with burlap and lace for center pieces, signs that point in different directions for the ceremony grounds and cutting out bunting from thrifted fabric. One of my favorite projects that we worked on were slabs of wood from a fallen tree. We are using them for center pieces and I will do a blog post on those later.

As for now... I'm tired and I think it is time for bed.

Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers at this time. Travis and I are getting married in 1 more month and it just seems to be flying by. It's a very exciting time, however, there is still lots to do and more healing to occur. So thank you for all of your encouragement, our families really appreciate it.

The Beautiful Bridesmaids Dresses

Hello again everyone,

A lot has happened since we have been home in beautiful B.C. I started an online class which I am now half way through (my mid term is on Friday)... and I'm already excited to be done. I have also been working at Country Meadows restaurant and going thrifting for the wedding. And yes, thrifting has been quite successful, but I will talk about that another time when I start posting about the DIY projects that are in process and ones that I would like to undergo a little late when I have all of the materials.

However, tonight I wanted to share how the beautiful bridesmaids found their dresses for the wedding.

I saw the dusty rose colour before and I absolutely fell in love with it. I never thought that I would go for a pink colour because my Mom had pink bridesmaids dresses as well... but this is a little different. This is DUSTY ROSE!!!

So, my only guidelines really were that the girls could pick dresses with a matte material. I didn't like the shiny look. They also had to pick dresses about knee length because it is a summer wedding. And FINALLY, the dresses had to be along the lines of a dusty rose/pastel rose colour. The more the girls looked around, the more I realized the different shades we were going to have. I was VERY excited about it because the ombre effect is one that I love seeing in weddings. So I am stoked!

My Maid of Honour, Clara, picked out a beautiful lace dress (top left). The back is absolutely stunning and it is what sold us on the dress. I absolutely love it!

Kelsey, a gorgeous bridesmaid, picked out the lovely rosette shoulder dress (top right). It was light, classic and looked stunning and very much the Kelso I know.

Jordan, a friend I met at camp and a gal that I will be standing up for at her wedding 2 weeks later searched HIGH AND LOW for this stunning dress (bottom left). The search was worth the wait because her dress is absolutely adorable.

Finally, my friend, Melissa's dress (bottom right) was one that I thought I could see her in because she wanted strapless and the colour is just fantastic.

I wanted the girls to find dresses that were not only beautiful on them and a style that they liked, but dresses that were kind to their wallets. I'm so thankful that they were all able to find dresses that they loved under $65.00!

The 2 dresses on the left are from http://www.modcloth.com/ and the 2 on the right are from http://shopruche.com/. Check out BOTH of these websites for GREAT fashion and AFFORDABLE prices!

People keep asking me the one moment I'm most excited for during my wedding day. My answer is always the same... it is to see Travis for the first time as I walk down the aisle with our friends standing up for us and supporting us through our marriage. I can't stop thinking about that one moment because I know it will be one that I will never live out again and one that I have dreamed about since I was a little girl. Now that the gals have their outfits... It is becoming more and more real! 

I just wanted to thank my bridesmaids for supporting me so far and for being there for me already while we plan this amazing day. It is officially 2 months away today... and I can't wait!