Category Archives: Our Story

I know it’s been a little while since I posted the last chapter, but I hardly have time to breathe these days, let alone sit down and write. But, I promised a friend last week that I would post the next one before the week was out, so here I am. :)

I last told you about choosing our wedding invitations and the “joy” of drafting our guest list. Once the invitations were chosen, there was really only one big task left–the dress hunt.

Now you may be wondering–what?!?! Only one big task left? What about the photographer? Cake? Flowers? DJ? YES. And I promise I didn’t leave anything out… but I’ll explain that later.

Now I am not really a fussy “girly-girl”. I hadn’t been planning my dream wedding since age 6–to be honest, I hadn’t ever thought much about it until it started happening. I knew that I needed a dress, but it certainly wasn’t really high up on my priority list. Weird, right? I have a confession: I did not try on a single wedding dress in a shop. Ever.

Well, when June hit, I knew I needed to find something. I was on a tight budget, and wasn’t terribly interested in paying $1000 for a dress that I was only going to wear for a few hours then stuff in my closet for the next 50 years. So, I started looking at styles on the internet and decided that I wanted something simple and fun, but elegant at the same time. And then I found it–it was BEAUTIFUL. A floor length, white satin, Oriental-inspired dress. No frills, no bigness–it was just simple and pretty. Just what I wanted, right?

And here was the best part: I could order it right then off the store’s site! It was an American store, so it was really the best option, right?

Tip: Never, ever buy your wedding dress off the internet.

I showed my mom who also loved the dress, so she helped me take my measurements and we put in the order. I was SO excited…I couldn’t believe how EASY it had been!! I knew friends of mine had taken MONTHS to find their dress, and I had found mine in half an hour. I was a wedding superstar.

We ordered it by some express shipping option that guaranteed that I’d have it, well, expressly. haha! And so, I waited, and waited… and sure enough, after a few days we got the notice that a parcel needed to be picked up. I was SO excited. My wedding dress! My mom and I ripped through the packaging and then there it was… my beautiful white satin Oriental-inspired dress.

Let’s pause for a second here: anyone who has seen my wedding pictures knows that I was not married in a white satin Oriental-inspired dress. Here is why:

As I gingerly picked up the dress out of the box and held it up to the light, my mom got a funny expression on her face. I was concentrating more on her than on the dress, so I said,

Me: “Mom! What is it? Don’t you like it?”

Mom: “Oh, of course I do! Just… doesn’t it look a little, well, big, to you?”

Me: “What are you talking abou…”

I turned to get a better look at the dress… which was more like a tent. I held it against my body and saw that it was not just big, it was huge. I was able to put it on over top of my clothes, and my mom probably could have fit in there too! haha! My mom immediately retrieved the confirmation sheet which confirmed that we had input all the sizes correctly. I immediately de-tented and got on the phone with the company who assured me that they had indeed sent me the size I had asked for.

As my mom and I looked at the dress-tent in the box I had no idea what to do. I briefly considered altering it, but the alterations would have probably cost more than the dress itself. I also thought about returning the dress and trying to guess at another size, but that seemed too iffy and the company wasn’t terribly helpful. So, in the end, we decided to repackage it and send it back which left me at square one, once again.

By now it was the end of June and I had less than 2 months until the wedding and I had no dress. But, as with most things to do with our wedding, a solution practically fell into my lap. Shortly after the wedding dress-tent fiasco, a friend of my mom’s asked her how the planning was coming along. I’m sure my mother shared with her my wedding dress-tent woes, and this saint of a woman brightly offered an amazing solution: I could borrow her daughter’s dress.

Never in my life had I ever even thought about this option–in fact, I didn’t even know it existed. But it worked out PERFECTLY. My mom came rushing home and tentatively suggested this option to me, and I was more than willing to at least look at the dress. So, she set up a time with her friend, and off we went to see the dress.

It was not at all what I had originally thought of–it was big, had beading, and a train, but it looked pretty on the hanger. So I thought, it couldn’t hurt to try it on, right? Well, after I squeezed myself in (her daughter was a little smaller than I was, which sent me on the “wedding dress diet” haha) and looked in the mirror I knew that this was my dress. It was not at all what I imagined, but it was perfect. :) And, to be honest, in the end I liked it SO much more than my original wedding tent-dress.

My mom’s friend (and her daughter) were more than happy to loan me the dress, and it was absolutely 100% free. We cleaned it, and touched it up a bit, but other than that it was a HUGE cost-savor, and now I don’t have to store a big box in my closet for the rest of my life. YAY! haha! (I am aware that there are other options for old wedding dresses available… but you know.)

I’ve included photos below this that shows you the back of the dress–no closeups until I actually get to the wedding day post, so you’ll have to wait! And would you like to know the coolest part about the dress? It was SO “Shop Girl friendly”…see all those detailed buttons? It was actually a ZIPPER. SERIOUSLY! But that’s not even the best part… my dress had a decent sized train, as you can see in the second picture. Are you ready for this?? …it was VELCRO. I kid you not. As in you could remove it without all the hassle and take SO much weight off your dress (wedding dresses are often quite heavy, in case you didn’t know!).

And so, although I didn’t get to wear my beautiful white satin, Oriental-inspired dress-tent, I was oh, so happy with this one. :)

Shop Girl*

I last told you about our “Almost Fight“. I was happy to put those big discussions behind us and start working on something a little more fun–our invitations!!

I was a little apprehensive about this task for two reasons: first, invitations can be REALLY expensive. Second, my family is HUGE. The “Guest List” was not a task I wanted to undertake! haha! After shopping around a little online we decided to do them ourselves to cust costs. I ended being REALLY glad that we did this as we had complete control over style, text, font, detail, spelling, and best of all–PRICE. I’ll tell you how much they cost a little later.

So, I started shopping. This wasn’t exactly the Hubster’s department so I took mom along. We went to all the artsy-type shops but I wasn’t thrilled with anything I saw. I am not one for anything frilly, I like things to be simple and elegant. I was really surprised when I found invitations I loved at the place I least expected to: Staples! There were actually two styles I liked, so I called the Hubster and got him to go out and look at them. I knew we were meant to be when he picked out the same ones I had loved… I mean, if that’s not love, what is? haha

The next task was to decide how many we needed, which meant drafting a guest list. This was quite possibly my LEAST favourite activity of my wedding planning. Seriously. I wish someone could have just handed me a list and said, “Ok. Here are all the people that are coming.” It was SO stressful–you always feel like you are leaving people out, or have people pressuring you to invite people because it’s just the right thing to do, etc etc etc.

We spent an entire weekend hammering out the first draft of the list. We knew we could have no more than 185 people as that was the fire code of the building we were using for our reception. I was immediately limited because my immediate family is HUGE. If the Hubs and I split the list evenly (ex: we each get to invite 92.5 people) my family took up about 70 spots on my list. Then there are your family friends, parent’s friends, people from work, from church, from the community, which leaves, oh, 2 spaces for your other friends. *sigh* Luckily the Hubster’s family isn’t nearly as massive as mine, so we were able to balance it out a bit… but in the end I still wasn’t able to invite half the people I wanted to which was really really hard for me.

But, that’s getting ahead a bit. Once we had our “final” number I started shopping. When I looked at having our invitations made the prices I looked at were at least $500 at a minimum price. We bought our invitations, printed them, included photos AND mailed them for less than $250.

We decided that our “mail date” was going to be June 15th in order to allow plenty of time for people to respond and book it off work. It took us a few days of hard work, but I was so so happy with our finished product. We wrote the invite ourselves, and it said:

I’ll post a picture next time.

Shop Girl*

Up until this point everything I have written about in Our Story* has all be lovely and rosy. I’ll bet that at some point you probably wondered if I’m exaggerating, or if after three years my memory has chosen to eliminate any rougher parts of our relationship. Well, let me reassure you that I have recounted the first four months of our relationship (yes, to this point we had only been together for FOUR months…) as accurately as I possibly can. I’m really proud of the fact that in nearly 3.5 years we have never had a real “fight”–you know, the disagreement/argument that usually leads to raised voices, saying things you later regret, and often tears. While we’ve never had a “fight”, tonight I’m going to tell you about the closest we’ve ever come to it.

While getting engaged to the man of my dreams after only seven weeks is / was wonderfully romantic, it did have its problems as well. As we prepared for our upcoming marriage we were both often asked the question: “How well can you really know someone in so short a time?” And you know, it really is a valid question… but I don’t really think time has anything to do with it. You could think you know someone for 10 years before you really learn who they are, and at the same time I believe that you could meet someone and know who they are as a person in a few short days. It really depends on the type of relationship / friendship you develop and the level of openness you share with each other.

The Hubster is my best friend in the entire world and I now feel like we know each other better than anyone… but during May of 2005 we were still learning a lot about each other. As the words “time and all eternity” loomed ever closer we both felt there were some big issues we needed to discuss before we got married. It was through these discussions that we learned that we don’t always agree on everything… in fact, we often have very different opinions. But first let me explain…

The first of these big talks happened one afternoon as we were sitting on the grass in the middle of my favourite parks. It was a beautiful day, and for the life of me I can’t remember how it came up, but we began discussing children. It was our first real talk about kids and our future. After a few minutes we quickly realized that we both had predetermined ideas about children, families, etc etc, and when we should have children. And we also learned that our predetermined ideas were different.

At first I didn’t know what to do about that.

To that point in our relationship we hadn’t really ever disagreed about anything. This wasn’t deciding where to eat for dinner though, this was something we had both put some thought into on our own but hadn’t discussed with each other until then. The idea that we had really different ideas and opinions really set me back at first. It shocked me… I hadn’t even thought about the possibility of it, as stupid as that sounds. Was this ok? Were married people allowed to have different opinions?

Without going into too much detail, the “issue” of children was actually one we talked about and sorted through for several weeks. But even though we disagreed on some things and agreed on others, that talk was nothing compared to our first discussion on our finances.

To all my readers, unmarried or not, talk about your finances with your spouse, partner or significant other. Together. It’s important that you are both aware of your financial situation and that you make decisions together.

The first time we talked about our financial future together was late one night after I had worked both jobs and was lying in bed half asleep.

Problem #1: It was over the phone.
Problem #2: I was exhausted.
Problem #3: He was tired.
Problem #4: I can be a stubborn beast. haha

The Hubs proposed a thought about banking, and (I’ll blame it on being so tired…) I reacted badly. For whatever reason that I can’t even recall anymore, I absolutely abhorred the idea he proposed before even thinking it through. He reacted to my reaction and we quickly realized that we had very different opinions about what should happen.

Before it could escalate into an argument we both might regret, we decided to stop talking about it until we would see each other that weekend. I was heated over the issue, and I could tell he was bothered by it as well. Despite being upset, we made sure to tell each other that we loved each other and let it go. It was the type of disagreement that could have easily blown up into a major fight… and in all honesty, if the Hubs hadn’t put things on hold my stubborn streak might have let things escalate. But by giving each other a couple of days to think about it, explain our standpoints well and discuss it when we were cooled down we avoided a major blowup. And I’m so glad… because now I realize that it was such a minor thing. Really. It just seemed big at the time.

We really learned a lot about each other through those “almost fights”… and best of all I learned that I was marrying a really really incredible man who, despite his many different ideas from my own, actually listened to mine and wanted to work together to decide what our best options were / are. I really love that we have different ideas, because hey–guess what? I don’t always come up with magical solutions on my own.

So, even though we were presented with two opportunities where a “fight” could have easily been occurred, we learned to talk about things and accept that we won’t always agree on everything. And that’s okay. :)

Three and half years later we still have never had what we’d call a “fight”. We talk about everything… and while, sure, we both get upset about things or with each other (hey, we’re human) we walk away to cool off and think it through before talking it over. And once we’ve done that, it’s done. Gone. There are no grudges or holding things over the other person’s head.

After these big talks I knew without a doubt that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with the Hubster (well, I guess back then he was the Fiancee). And while I’m not naive enough to say that we’ll never ever have a real fight, I think we’re off to a pretty good start so far. :)

Shop Girl*

I ended the last post describing what was going on in my life as I attempted to focus on my last month of school while simultaneously planning our wedding. As you can imagine, it didn’t work out so well. After we booked the temple and the church for the reception, I put everything else on hold while I waded through my first batch of university exams. Once those were out of the way I poured my heart into my application to transfer universities. Even though my marks were okay, I was terrified that I wouldn’t get in and the Hubster and I would have to make some major changes in our plans.

The Hubster was going through a difficult time as well. He spent two years in Oregon, USA serving a mission for my church and got home only shortly before we met. He applied to university immediately upon returning home, but it meant that he would be applying as a mature student as he had been out of school for nearly 4 years. He applied into business programs at a variety of universities across southern Ontario, and all required OAC Calculus as a prerequisite to the program–except Hippie U. Unfortunately the Hubs was missing this course and started taking it in a night school course shortly after we started dating. I don’t know how many of you out there have actually taken calculus, but it’s pretty insane. Unless you are a “math person” and it clicks right away for you, it’s something you really need to devote your time to.

My loving Hubs didn’t want to limit our options (as at this point I wasn’t terribly keen on moving to Senior’s City…) and nearly burnt himself out trying to get through the course. However, because we got engaged so quickly and I was still in school, he began working like a madman to put money away for our wedding. For a while he tried to balance working full time hours + extra hours + seeing me + going to class + maintaining the course work… but honestly, it was crazy… and in the end we decided it was more important to have some money set aside as he had already been accepted into Hippie U. So, he dropped the course and we made plans to move to Senior’s City… and that was that. Even though it wasn’t my first choice, I just wanted to be with him, wherever that was… be it Senior’s City, South Porcupine or Mars, I would have gone. I just wanted to be his wife, where we were really didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. :)

So, I spent most of April finishing exams and completing my transfer application and spent the next two months waiting. I finished my last exam somewhere around the 20th but even then I couldn’t devote myself to planning our wedding just yet as one big thing stood in the way–I had to move home and needed a job. Badly.

I don’t know if I’ve ever written about just how poor I was in my first year of school… it’s really another story in itself. But just to give you a little snapshot, by the end of March I was eating expired rice with red onion and salad dressing because it’s all I had / could afford. haha! I didn’t tell the Hubs about it because I didn’t want him to worry and I knew I’d be moving home shortly… I even did a focus group in the City once just to make $60 so I could buy some groceries! Anyway, I ended up leaving first year owing the Ghetto U $500 that I needed to pay off as soon as possible.

So, Mom and Big Dad came and packed me up and brought me back to Btown to live at home for the next 4 months. That’s right, at this point we had only FOUR months to plan our wedding. Before the vanimal was even unpacked I was out the door looking for a job. Luckily both my amazing boss at Payless and my fabulous boss at the office offered to take me back for the summer. So I began working 8 – 4 at the office and 5 – 9 at Payless almost every day, and then I would come home, phone the Hubster and sit down with my Mom and wedding plan. It was madness!

However, once I was living at home again my Mom really helped me get things underway, but I was devastated to be so far from the Hubster. We felt like we were oceans apart… in reality, it was just an hour and a half. haha! We had to make some big decisions really quickly: what sort of reception did we want? Did we even want a reception? Did we want a dinner? A buffet? What were we doing about invitations? Flowers? Cake? Photographer?

Amidst all these questions I began a quest of my own…

…the dress hunt. :)

Shop Girl*

As I begin school tomorrow, I thought it was a good time to pick up where I left off in Our Story*… I always need a good reason to procrastinate homework. :) I know it’s been a while–I’m sorry–but for those of you who have been patiently waiting I promise I’ll take you all the way to our wedding day in a few posts.

If you’re just visiting my blog for the first time, for the past few months I’ve been slowly telling the story of how the Hubster and I met, fell in love and were married within 8 months from the day we met. You can catch up on all the previous chapters HERE to find out about how we met or how the Hubs proposed to me (just shy of two months after our first date).

I last told you about the reactions to our engagement from our family and friends. After some initial shock and surprise people were genuinely happy and excited for us–especially as we began to plan. As we had only 5 months and 5 days to plan our wedding we needed to begin planning immediately. We had already talked about a potential date, and once we decided that we liked the sound of August 20th, we began to make it happen.

Where we wanted to get married was an easy decision. We both wanted to be married in the Toronto Ontario Temple, so the first thing on the agenda was booking our date. As it’s usually pretty busy during the summer months we were on the phone only a couple of days after we got engaged. We first decided we wanted to be married at 3pm to allow time for getting ready, driving, and all those odds and ends that pop up on your wedding day. We called and booked it. It was official.

…then we realized that by the time we finished and took pictures and drove back to Btown it would be late in the afternoon. So, we decided to push it back to 1pm. We called back and they changed our time for us.

…then we spoke with those oh, so experienced already married people who suggested we might want to be married earlier to be able to rest in the afternoon before the reception. SO, we called back (again) and again the kind people who work there booked our time for 12pm, August 20th 2005 and we promised we wouldn’t change it again. haha!

We didn’t need to go through the hassle of viewing and booking a hall for the reception as our church is equipped with a full-sized gym which was just the right size for what we wanted. Done deal.

After those two things were out of the way I thought I’d be good for a while. As it turned out, I had nooooooooo idea how much work planning a wedding would be or what the heck I was supposed to do next. So, we took the next big step–and went to Chapters. Did you know that they have a whole section on wedding planning?! Who knew? So we bought a little “What You Should Know When Planning a Wedding” book and planned, planned, planned.

One of the biggest decisions we had to make after getting engaged in March was where to live. I spent my first year of university at Ghetto U in the City and absolutely loved everything about it. I had amazing friends, I loved my program and I loved loved LOVED being in the city after growing up in a tiny town. However, as much as I loved my school, we both felt that it was important to be somewhere on our own to start our marriage. We wanted to go off on our own and unfortunately for me, that meant leaving my happy city and Ghetto U. So, in the midst of my studying and wedding planning I began last-minute transfer applications to Hippie U…

I soon discovered that it’s impossible to focus on exams and wedding plan at the same time (as wedding plans always, always take precedence haha). We got engaged in late March, which meant that in less than two weeks I had my first end-of-the-year university exams that I was finding it rather impossible to concentrate on. So, after the temple and church was booked for our date I was ordered to put everything on hold until they were finished…

Shop Girl*