When Marrying A Clown...

Hey! I know what you first thought and that's not very nice! I was talking about Dan's balloon twisting when he's dressed as a clown for parades and stuff.
With his unique talent/hobby comes many unique wedding possibilities. Such as balloon flower bouquets for myself and my bridesmaids. A gorgeous balloon ceiling even maybe. Balloon whatever. Still looking for ideas on how all to use balloons. Dan is busy learning new flower styles, so I am surely to have one of a kind bouquets.

To DJ or Not To DJ, That Is The Question

One where the answer keeps becoming more and more apparent. It is very difficult to find a DJ around here. One that has his/her own equiptment and who is willing to get the important songs I have picked that they don't already have is even harder. I think it is time to give up and look into renting a sound system and enlisting a friend to spin tunes for the evening. Must call Long & McQuade in Regina tomorrow when they are open and get some prices.

Capturing the Moments

We have a photographer! He is amazing and I am soo pumped! In the beginning of October, he's coming to do our engagement photos for our wedding announcement in the paper. He's also a friend of Dan's so we know he will treat us fantastic. He's affordable and does phenomenal work, so much better than some photographers I spoke to that charge much more for much less. Check him out at http://www.chrisgrahamphoto.com.
I spoke so so many photographers and I knew from the first moment that Chris was the man for the job. If you're looking for photographers in the Estevan area and need more information, leave a comment. I have a list of photographers, contact information, and pricings. But check out Chris' site for Saskatchewan weddings. Trust me, he's the best. Just remember, he's booked for June 12th, 2010 already.

Midnight Lunch? How About Midnight Bonfire?

Yes, that's right. A bonfire. At a wedding. No, I'm not joking.
I think the idea is great. Why feed people a bunch of lousy cold cuts when we can eat hot food cooked fresh? Weather permitting of course. If the weather turns miserable on us, then we will fire up the BBQ for our hot dogs and smokies. Good times to be had. Don't forget about the marshmallows, it's not a bonfire without marshmallows. :)

Not Much Has Changed

I haven't been able to complete much lately. And it's not for lack of trying. Dan is still trying to contact his work friend that DJs. I'm waiting on confirmation from the photographer still. I have been looking into renting tables and chairs, which is proving to be fairly difficult in our small city. I'll keep making calls and even if I have to use a few different places, I'll find enough. I can't wait to get into more entertaining stuff. I will have to start looking at invitation styles really quick here so that we can order everything we need and have plenty of time to put them all together.

Moving Along & Coming Together

We now have an officiant for the wedding. A woman that Dan has known for many years is a marriage commissioner in our city and she has agreed to marry us. I think she is just as excited about it as we are. When she returned my call, she sounded very happy and stated just how "pumped" she was about it. I am so, so happy! It's going to be fantastic to be married by someone we know, and it feels amazing knowing how happy she is too.
She is also friends with my first choice photographer and is going to help us talk her into taking our booking. :)
I started calling D.J.s and that is proving to be a bit of a downer. Talk about expensive. But a work friend of Dan's used to do it, so hopefully we hear from him sometime. Rumor says he still has all his equiptment.

Preliminary Guest List: Check

We have the first run of the guest list and we are pleasantly surprised with it. We went from the 400 + guests that made us stop our wedding planning last time, down to 223 (before Dan's work list). We now have a number and have capped it off at 250 maximum, 200 preferably. So we will now start looking into our budget, we will budget for 250, and hopefully round it down to 200.
I have already begun contact with our preferred officiant and am just waiting to hear back from them. I have also contacted 2 photographers, waiting on their quotes, and looking into who else to get quotes from. This is starting to look up for us. Maybe it was the key to it all along. If at first you don't succeed, threaten to run away lol. Just kidding. But I'm feeling good about everything and things seem to be progressing quite well. Starting to think about flowers, looking into invitation designs, figuring out attendants, dreaming of decor, my mind is going miles a minute!

Not Much To Report

Happy Birthday Mom! I love you! I hope you had a fantastic day!

It's been a slow week in the wedding planning department, mainly due to an extremely busy week in the work department, but month end is now done and my brain is slowly starting to feel less like Jello. In this slow/busy week, my parents were at the oil show in Weyburn and ran into my to be brother-in-law/generous wedding host. I hear reports back that he is extremely happy to be having our wedding at his acreage and has plenty of ideas that he would like to run by us. It's a pretty good feeling knowing how much he cares.

On a side note, I would like to say how proud I am of Dan. He started a new workout program not too long ago, P90X. He wanted to get a little more active, get into better shape, build some more muscle, and just feel better about himself all around. Well I am very happy to shamelessly sing his praises, as we have to go shopping for new jeans for him. He is so happy about it, and I'm proud of him because he's so happy.

Houston, We Have Liftoff!

Or rather, we have a date. Either way it's liftoff for wedding planning. Which is probably less predictable and more stressful than a NASA space flight. But in many (very much different) ways, just as wondrous. We have confirmed our preferred date with our very generous wedding host, and it's set to go off on June 12th, 2010. I have a year and just a handful of days to pull this off. I don't envision a terribly extravagant event, so I have plenty of confidence that it will go over pretty easily. So here marks the beginning of the journey and we're onward to the preliminary guest list.

In the same sense, I think I already have colors and a "theme" picked out. We are believing that we are going to go with light and bright blues and bright limey greens, centered in the theme, "Under The Stars". It should work well for us seeing as we're having the wedding at my to-be-brother-in-law's acreage... outside... in the evening/night (and possibly wee hours of the morning)... Under The Stars. It also gives me a perfect reason to do a balloon ceiling with streamers and hanging stars like in one of my older posts... :) Win-Win for me!

Picking a Date... Again

Ok, so I have two potential dates picked, June 12th, 2010 or September 11th, 2010. Just have to run it by a few key people. I'm leaning towards June 12th, hopefully it works with our wedding host and the V.I.P.s. We're going to have the entire wedding out at Dan's brother's acreage, so either month should bring us decent weather (typically). Plus those dates will definitely not interfere with football season. I have my parents' guest list, waiting on the list from Dan's family, and we're still plugging through the friends lists. Everything is starting to come together again, much more quickly and a lot easier than the first attempts. I guess we just have a better idea now of what we want and need to do.

Welcome Back

After over a year hiatus, I am back. Some very busy and stressful times lead us to thinking we were going to run away to get married, but after some long discussions, a few small arguments, and a lot of thought, we're back to having a wedding at home with the ones we love. I couldn't be happier. So along with that, here goes the blog again. A place where I can collaborate my thoughts, ideas, and things that interest me along the way, and maybe help out some fellow brides in the meantime.