Our wedding tattoo, part 1

Last Tuesday, Brian and I got up just like any other day…and finished the day changed a little bit forever…for Tuesday was the day we began our wedding tattoo.

Thrace and Anders on Battlestar Gallactica

Now, I know there’s a lot of mixed feelings out there about tattoos, and I would say there’s also a lot of misinformation. I don’t want to go into a long diatribe about tattooing and its history, modern regulation, and so forth. Suffice it to say, I never do anything without thinking, researching, and considering carefully, and tattoos are something I have loved for a long time. I also realized and accepted early on that I was not likely getting picked up by an agency to model on the covers of Vogue at any point really, so my skin was my own and I have a series of ‘cairns’ now that mark my adventures through life. Brian, too, is a tattoo lover, so it was very natural to explore this idea of getting one together. We came up with an inspiration, connected with my favourite artist, and the idea became a plan…

 

We’d seen the design the week before, and were really freakin’ excited. Sarah Rogers, our tattoo artist at Living Colour Tattoo here in Ottawa, had us in to see her sketch. She had been well briefed on our ideas and inspiration—namely, the tattoos on Kera Thrace and Anders in Battlestar Gallactica—and we were nervous but hopeful. The Battlestar design is cool but not quite right for what we wanted, and if redesigned in the wrong direction, could actually end up looking like the Golden Snitch from Harry Potter. And I am not a Harry Potter fan.

In any case, Sarah pulled out the design and gave us a very modest preamble about being willing and able to start from scratch if we didn’t like it. I’ll admit I was feeling really wary, as it’s rare that I leave a tattoo design completely up to the tattoo artist; also, because we really hadn’t planned out what the piece should look like at all, I was feeling a little disoriented…a bit like when you’re searching for a building where you’ve had an appointment before, and you know you’re in the right area, but until you see the building, you won’t know what it looks like. That’s basically where my head was at, until Sarah flipped the page over and showed us her incredible, awe-inspiring design.

The wing was just gorgeous, inspired (according to Sarah, and we could see it right away) by the Art Deco era, like the Hoover dam. We both loved it on first sight. My feelings of trepidation melted away; this was a tattoo that I would love because it went with Brian’s, and also just on its own. Brian was thrilled for the same reasons, and we approved the design. A deal was made: we're trading Sarah for her talent, and in exchange, she gets ours: we're going to be giving her intensive lessons and technical support for her technology, social media, and everything she needs to move beyond the rotary telephone, heeheehee.

We were so excited through the weekend, and Tuesday rolled around. I was nervous, Brian was excited…this is the natural order of things. We headed down to Living Colour after work, and began our adventure.

We had some visitors for our session together. Laura, of Laura Elizabeth Photography (one of our amazing photographers) came and snapped shots the whole evening like a trooper. And we are over-the-moon, through-the-roof amazed with her shots!!! All the photos here are her work. She ducked in, out, and around Sarah and Brian as I watched her apply Brian’s stencil. When we saw the design inked onto him, I was just blown away by how great it looked. By my side was Sir Tam, Matron of Honor extraordinaire, who I can trust to tell me if something is good or bad: she approved of the design wholeheartedly. As the gun buzzed and we began to get tattooed, another new friend and bride-to-be Sarah R stopped by and said hello. Later in the evening, Laura’s sweetie of a boyfriend stopped in, too, and we all had a grand chat about monkeys, Thailand, blood sugar, ketosis, flying squirrels, and about a hundred other things. There was a real sense of having lots of love and well-wishes in the room with us the whole time.

Sarah, trooper that she is, got through the first stretch of both our tattoos, leaving only some feather shading work to be done in a month’s time. We didn’t get to put our two wings together that night, as that would obviously be unsanitary, but the first thing we did in the morning was clean them up and put them together. Ya’ll won’t get to see that picture just yet…let’s wait a little bit, ‘til the work is done and the design can be truly appreciated. But they really are beautiful, and the slide together perfectly.

I did have some worry the following day. I’ve never really wanted to get a tattoo with someone before, and naturally, I had a moment of panic. I texted Sir Tam that I was worried I’d just marked myself as belonging to someone. Tam, amazing and levelheaded girl that she is, wrote back,

‘It’s not that you belong to each other: it’s that you belong with each other.’

Hugs to you, Tam, for silencing my inner critic.

It would be hard to feel anything but happy, in any case, when my sweet boy makes me take my sweater off every two minutes to show another person our cool combined tattoo. I love that he’s so proud, and I feel proud, too. This is a wonderful way to mark this wild and wonderful time in our lives. And what a great story to tell the neighbourhood kids when we’re old, in our rocking chairs on our porch.

Stay tuned for part 2 next month! Below: more photos of the session. All amazing work by Laura.

Engagement Shoot Photos Revealed!

 This past weekend, Brian and I joined Adam Pap at the Canadian Museum of Nature for our engagement photo shoot. I wore my new Vivien of Holloway dress, generously gifted to me through P:P, and Bri pulled off a James Dean look. I don't think a single thing I type here can fully express how thrilled we are with the photos, nor can I do any justice in trying to explain how beautiful they are. So, following the adage that a picture is worth a thousand words, here you are:

There's more on our facebook page, in the album there: check it out by clicking here.

A handful of offers with 91 days to go!

We’ve had a busy week and a busier one is yet to come. Expect potential multiple entries this week! Right now, though, we want to focus on some offers…First up is

FASHION

First off, a huge thank you goes out to The Comic BookShoppe on Bank Street. The Shoppe helped us out with finding Brian an official Mad Hatter’s hat for our upcoming shower; this was something I coordinated with the owner without Brian knowing, so when the hat arrived and we showed it to Brian, he was floored. Bri is a huge Johnny Depp fan and an even bigger Alice in Wonderland fan, so to have a hat this cool has made him very happy. He took it home, stuffed MY blanket into it to form the shape, and has been begging me to find him a full purple suit. Which I won’t do. But The Shoppe on Bank Street: thank you for the hat. :)

FOOD

Jen Winter owns Koko Chocolates, and we’ve had the utmost pleasure of connecting with her over the last few months. Koko Chocolates specializes in amazing truffles made with Belgian chocolate. Her creations are delicious and irresistible…and right now as I write this, I have almost two dozen of them in my fridge that I’m not allowed to touch. Jen has given us two batches of her chocolate truffles to use as prizes for games at our upcoming shower. This is wonderful for the game winners, and wonderful for our shower…it is currently torture for me here at home. Koko Chocolates, thank you for sharing your lovely goodies with us! Brian is eagerly anticipating the return of your bacon truffles in the fall. Best of all: Koko is offering Project: Priceless readers 10% off all online purchases of $25 or more ‘til the end of August. Just write ‘10% discount” in the ‘special instructions’ section. Head to the site now!

RANDOM COOLNESS

A big, big thank you to Fran (Brian’s mom) this week. We received our invites and they are just gorgeous! We hope to post a picture soon. The fact that Fran made all 106 invites by hand, painstakingly stamping, cutting, and gluing each layer, means that each and every one of these cards is a treasure. They are so perfect, too: not at all your typical invite, done in our crazy colours and incorporating wonderful random deer, owls, and sparrows. In addition, Fran donated the remaining stamps we needed for the invites. This is a huge stress off our plates and (as long as the postal workers don’t strike) will really help things along. Thank you, Fran, for your love and hard work. Everyone LOVES the invites. Well done!

We had a great opportunity to help out one of our peeps by connecting them with another one of our peeps this month. Aiden Wolf Photography was looking for a new logo design, so we connected Andrew from Aiden Wolf with Stephanie A. Fox, a talented (and sweet) graphic designer in Delaware. Stephanie helped me with another logo I’d done in the past, and we think she’s the bee’s knees. Check out Stephanie’s portfolio here. Stephanie, thank you for helping us, and Aiden Wolf, out! It’s so much fun when we’re able to help people with their own projects through our project.

We have also received an offer from Katerina Pek, a massage therapist who specializes in Orthokinesioloy, a fascinating specific form of pain therapy. You can read more about her practice here. Katerina has graciously offered to see Brian and myself: Brian, to see if she can help with his scoliosis, and me, to see if she can help with my ankle, which I damaged last year. Thank you, Katerina, for the offer. I have seen Katerina in the past and I’m hopeful that she can show us some techniques we can utilize at home to work on these sore spots. Then I’ll hopefully be more comfortable in my cowboy boots, and Brian won’t be hunched over at the altar.

We also had a really cool, really special, really amazing offer come through, but I’m hiding it from Brian. Go check out the No Brian Zone when you’re doing reading this entry. (Don’t you dare skip over there yet!)

Our blog was talked about on Offbeat Bride this week and it resulted in a huge amount of hits on our site…so first off, thank you, Offbeat Bride, for the shout-out! From those hits, we received an offer from a woman named Candace from Florida: Candace is sending us a whack of crayons for our placemats at the wedding. Candace, thank you so very much for your offer! Candace is getting married soon too, and we wish her and her fiancé all the best!

And last today, but certainly not least, a big thank you goes out to Westfest. Westfest is a cool three-day festival that takes place in Westboro village here in Ottawa. From June 10-12 this year, there will be concerts, street performers, sidewalk sales, and more, all down Richmond Road between Kirkwood and Golden Avenue. And the coup de grace: Bif Naked is performing on Saturday night. Well, our friend MJ is insanely into Bif Naked, and so we talked with Elaina, head of Westfest…and scored VIP passes to see the concert from the very best possible seating. We presented the passes to MJ on the weekend, and she is thrilled. Westfest, thank you for getting Bif into town, and thank you sooo much for making us the coolest people ever for being able to give our friend such an awesome birthday gift. I believe we`re going to find leather pants this week. (Westfest, by the way, is free. Check it out here and maybe we`ll see you there!)

That’s it for now, peeps. This week, we`ll be blogging about:

-our tattoo appointment

-our engagement photo shoot

-our shower

-and random other things that come up.

Stay tuned and be ready for multiple entries! 91 days to go, everyone…we are so excited and so nervous; and so close to the finish line! Just a couple more items we need to secure and we`re ready to take a long walk down a short aisle.

Good week/Bad week...and a really cool venue

How was our week?

It was a random lottery of meaningless tragedies, and a series of near escapes.

On Monday, we discovered that the wobble in the car is not an unbalanced tire (good thing), but a broken brake (bad thing).

On Tuesday, I met with a personal trainer (good thing) who pushed on my knee in a weird way, and then it couldn’t bear weight anymore (bad thing).

On Wednesday I rearranged my work schedule to help out with a special event (good thing) only to arrive on site and be told that the event was cancelled but I just hadn’t heard about it (bad thing). We also got word that our friend Anne is still sick (bad thing) and that planning to have the wedding shower at her place was probably unwise (bad thing). We began searching for a new venue immediately…more on this.

On Thursday, work seemed back to normal (good thing) until someone knocked a coffee onto my laptop (bad thing), and then another meeting got cancelled (bad thing) while a different meeting had been moved to today instead of next week, at a time I couldn’t be there (bad thing.) I went to pick up my engagement dress crinoline (good thing) only to find that it wasn’t quite ready yet (bad thing) because Linda wanted to fix it up for me (good thing); so I could have either not driven out to Kanata at all, or I could at least have picked up Tamara from work and had a companion (sigh). I made some time to work on the blog when I got home and discovered that Blogger had a giant glitch which wouldn’t allow us to access the site and had also temporarily erased all entries from the last seven days (bad thing).

Continuing with Thursday, I got home and opened my computer to find that we were unsuccessful at getting all the coffee out of my laptop (bad thing), as evidenced by the fact that whenever I pressed ‘y’, an 8 also appeared (bad, bad thing)…and soon discovered that other keys were also not working. I googled ‘how to fix coffee spill on laptop’ and found a tutorial (good thing), only to find that the first step was to turn off your laptop immediately…but then how would I read the rest of the steps? Brian came home (good thing) and began dismantling my computer (bad thing, turns out), and in the end, we managed to further mangle the keyboard…which BestBuy says will cost me $250.00 (so very, very bad).

Friday was the 13^th, and while I don’t typically care much about that date, I will admit I took some superstitious precautions this time ‘round. By the end of the day, things were looking up, and now, halfway through Saturday, I’m feeling good about things getting back on track. Swinging that black cat around my head three times really helped things out.

Okay, but seriously, we found a new venue for the shower, and we are the most excited about it! Actually, we had two offers (one from Waterfall BBQ & Catering to use Smithvale Stables, which we’re hoping to use instead for our stag & doe), which is just so great because, well, this week was pretty dismal and such kindness really reduced the amount of time I spent crying in the dark in the shower. (I’m kidding…mostly.) 

We went with Izabela’s offer to use her venue, From This Day Forward (http://www.fromthisdayforward.ca/ ) We connected with Izabela through twitter, via Lilac Lingerie who is providing my bridal underthings; we checked out her site, and went today to visit the venue, and we are thrilled.  FTDF is super chic, and just the right size for fifty-ish guests. Izabela has created a posh, bright atmosphere with stonework, vivid artwork, and a very, very cool acrylic swing chair. A large screen TV allows you to play a slideshow or video, and a great surround system means ample music for any sort of event. I personally love the ‘bride’s room’, where the wedding party could get ready before walking down the aisle. The little kitchenette means it’s easy to prepare some coffee, tea, and juice; and the venue can be set up for row seating or for a cocktail reception. If we were getting married with a smaller guestlist, I’d be all over this venue.

But what’s also great about FTDF is that it would be perfect for any number of classy fundraisers, meet & greets, and parties. I found myself thinking of other events where we could return to this venue.

Izabela herself is a highly experienced professional, having worked in the wedding industry at some major local wedding venues. She envisions her space as being perfect for young couples, vow renewals, and second trips down the aisle.

Sir Tamara and I just loved this place. I think we’re both looking forward to having the party in such a gorgeous setting, so intimate and put-together. This is definitely something that went very, very right this week; and that’s a (good thing). 

 

Follow Izabela's growing business on facebook and twitter...it's always fun to watch a new enterprise grow!



Photos: Anne-Marie Bouchard from AMB photo

April showers brought May offers!

It’s finally warming up here in Ottawa, which is nice but somehow feels like too little, too late. Last year, Brian had his bike out in February and was riding full-time by March; this year, we went to Walmart tonight on her and I’ve had a chill ever since. Anyway, with weather inclement and frigid, you’d think we’d have tons of time to be indoors and working on P:P…not so! The spring season seems to bring so many types of awakenings, and suddenly every project is coming to a head. Well, enough is enough; Brian is working on the dishes, we have a Kevin Smith movie playing in the background, and so allow me to present our latest round of offers…worth the wait.

FASHION

Linda from Hopes & Dreams Bridal in Kanata (where I got my dress: http://www.hopesanddreamsbridal.com/ ) has gotten creative to help me find a tea-length crinoline to go under my amazing Vivien of Holloway dress for the engagement photo shoot. Unable to find a supplier with short crinos, Linda improvised and has ordered in a children’s crinoline. We’re hoping this will work out, and I’ve got a good feeling about it! I’ll update you all soon, but regardless, Linda: thank you for trying so hard to help out. I can’t wait to come by this week and try out the crinoline!

Our bridesmaids are going to be beautifully dressed, thanks to Karen of So-Fine Designs. So-Fine is a Canadian-based company that focuses on being ‘fashionable, functional, comfortable, and fun’. This is exactly what I wanted for the bridesmaid dresses! Not something overpriced, awkward to wear, and never reusable. We happened upon So-Fine’s dresses when we happened into a boutique here in town called Workshop; I saw a flash of apple green on a rack, pulled out the dress, and realized it was pretty much perfect. An email chat with Karen resulted in four bridesmaid dresses being ordered, in our apple green and purple. The Scube dress that we went with is reversible and can be worn as two different skirts or a dress…this means that my girls will get tons of wear out of this dress/skirt and should even love the colours. Karen, thank you for helping us find dresses that met our wedding vision of avoiding the matrimonial industry hype and sticking to great items that aren’t marked up by the wedding retailers! Visit So-Fine at http://www.so-fine.ca/ .

We also have four necklaces for the bridesmaids, custom-made and awaiting pickup, designed by Isobel from Frash (aka Bel, her wedding collection). You can check out Isobel’s work at http://frashfemme.com/ . We haven’t seen these puppies yet, but I am very excited to see what she’s come up with. Frash, thanks for being a part of our special day and helping my girls feel gorgeous!

Wonder of wonders, and miracle of miracles: I finally found an apple green crinoline. Well actually, I found a woman who makes them, and is going to make me one. Ann of Swank Underpinnings (http://SwankUnderpinnings.Etsy.com) makes absolutely amazing crinolines and has the most amazing array of colours! I connected with Ann through her Etsy shop and I’m so very, very glad I did. She’s send me some samples to be sure we choose the right colour and type of fabric (again—we are learning about different kinds of fabric!) When Ann confirmed her offer, I felt a weight lift off my shoulders. Our long-term readers know that my outfit is one of the few things I have been pretty insistent on having ‘just right’; thanks to Ann at Swank Underpinnings, this can be a reality now!

STAMPS, STAMPS, STAMPS

Very special thanks go out to Crystal, who has sent us yet another bundle of stamps in the mail. Crystal, thank you so much for helping us out with this! Crystal sent us a bundle in the last round of offers, and we were touched to find another envelope in our mail box. Crystal, if you mail us anything else, consider including something that we can put on the In Spirit table (see the ‘In Spirit’ project in the tabs above) that will remind us of you…even just one special stamp, or a little drawing.

And thanks go to Fran, Brian’s mom, who has offered to help us out with the last of the stamps we’ll need to send invites and RSVP’s. Fran, the invites you’re crafting are looking amazing and we appreciate so much your effort…and now we also thank you for the help with the stamps!

TATTOOS

Another wonderful and miraculous thing happened to us recently: my tattoo artist, Sarah, and I finally connected. It’s been a while. Sarah is pretty notorious around Ottawa for her killer tattoo work, and she did a great job on my last one. Sarah works at Living Colour here in town (http://living-colour.com/wordpress/ ) and yes, she is the Sarah who was here, then moved to Calgary, then (like Brian) came back! Anyway, Sarah and I connected to have a consult on an old tattoo of mine that needs some sprucing at some point, and we ended up talking about the wedding tattoos…and Sarah offered to trade for them: we’re gonna tutor her in social media/marketing in exchange for them. Ah, such relief and joy! The offer from the other studio was very kind, of course, and we are still forever grateful; but I know Sarah, I love Sarah, and Brian has been dying to get some work done by her. If you want to see some of Sarah’s work, head on in to Living Colour and look through her portfolio; tell her that Brian and Jordan love her!

RANDOM GOODIES

First off, a special thanks to Jim, who answered our call-out for old, cool-looking liquor bottles on Freecycle. We will use them to make our table look amazing! And to the stranger who dropped a box of bottles off for us but left no note: thank you also for your contribution! We are getting closer to our goal.

A huge, warm thank you goes out to Penny, who also answered a Freecycle request for tea cups and saucers. Penny has given us oodles of both cups and saucers, and we will use these to craft lovely pretty things for the wedding shower, that we will reuse at the wedding. Penny, thank you; you’re amazing! Another kind person had donated a small box of cups and saucers to us, but I cannot find the name…lovely person, thank you as well, and if you read this feel free to remind us of your name!

A big thank you to Lte. Judy L, who cooks for our military, and is gathering cans for our candle holder crafting, for centrepieces. Judy, we look forward to connecting with you and are very grateful for your gathering of 40 cans and counting!

As well, a shout-out to Andrea of Signature Ceremonies in Omaha. Andrea has offered to help us plan out our ceremony. You can check out Signature here: http://signatureceremonies.net/ . We love that our project is so far-reaching…Omaha! Imagine! Andrea and Signature Ceremonies: thank you so very, very much!

DÉCOR

Another lovely offer towards our décor has also come through. Chris of CRL Construction (http://www.crlconstruction.ca ) has offered to build our wedding arch. This will be so beautiful and we’re so excited to have something just for us. We’ll chat more about this as we’re able to give him measurements for the ceremony spot, and then we can really start planning this lovely project with Chris!

That’s it for our offers today; we have quite a few more lined up, just waiting for final confirmation, so stay tuned! More should be up as early as next week.

We’re getting so close to the finish line now, and the next step will be revisiting offers and artisans as we wrap up all the logistics…just a couple more things to find! Check our wishlist posts for details on what we still need, if you’re curious.

It’s taken a global village to get us so close to our goal, and we’re certain you’ll all help us reach it. And what a wild ride as we go along.

Week in review: shoe fail, jacket fail, yoga fail, and more.

I hunted shoes last week and failed. I dragged my sweetheart across the city in rush hour traffic, paid a cover charge, and sat in a gymnasium full of 8^th-graders and their parents, all in the hopes of getting this one pair of shoes for the wedding. And then I missed them. It was that kind of week from start to finish, but the shoes…the shoes haunt my dreams.

Last Wednesday, Henry Munro Public School held an event called ‘The Gift of Thrift’. It was put on by the 8-6 class, and was a fundraiser for a local animal refuge. They were featured early that week on ‘A’ Morning here in Ottawa, where they showed off some of the fashions they had assembled from thrift stores, to show and sell at the event. While their girls strutted their stuff on TV, I noticed a pair of white round-toed kitten heels that were super cute…and potentially, just perfect for my dress. You may recall, an artist named Figgie Shoes is supposed to paint me a pair of shoes to wear for dancing; but I haven’t yet found a pair of light-coloured heels I liked for her to paint. That is, until I saw these ones.

I talked Brian into coming with me, which wasn’t hard because Bri loves any adventure. I made a picnic dinner to eat in the car after the show so we wouldn’t go hungry, and Brian drove us a half-hour across town (well, 45 minutes with the traffic). We arrived at the school, bought our admission, and went in. I waited eagerly for the fashion show to start, and was ready to show Brian the shoes when they came down the catwalk…but they never came. Or if they did, we completely missed them. I started to worry, because I’d actually taken the time to write to the organizers and confirm that the white shoes would be there and available for purchase. But we were hopeful as, after the show, we approached the sales area and began digging through the clothes brought out for us to buy.

I had my hands full of a cardigan and party dress that I was debating about trying on when I looked up and saw a young woman and her sweetheart holding the shoes I’d been coveting. I made a whimpering sound as they handed cash over to an organizer and walked away. I clutched at Brian’s shirt, swooning slightly, as I breathlessly asked him what size they’d been; he answered that he’d seen a 6 on the insole. Phew, I thought—I’m a 9, 9.5 on occasion—until I clarified with Brian which way up the ‘6’ had been facing. The argument over which way up would constitute a 9, versus a 6, went on well into the evening until finally, tucked into bed and turning off my light, I cursed under my breath and went to check out my own shoes. Sure enough, given the direction that 9’s are printed in my own shoes, those damnable shoes at the fashion show were, indeed, my size.

I sit here, a week after the show, and this story still pains me. Figgie needs me to find shoes, and because of our self-inflicted budget constraints, they have to be under ten dollars. This means thrift stores, and that means a needle in a haystack. To have such lovely little white shoes literally walk out from under my nose…ugh, the pain! I have been repeatedly chiding myself for not having the guts to go over and explain to the girl why I had to have those shoes. But surely that would have made me an official crazy person. And yes, I acknowledge that searching endlessly for a pair of white heels makes me a crazy bride anyway, but I’d actually label myself just a regular crazy female; because I’m always shoe-crazy and I will always beat myself up for missing out on perfect shoes.

They even had a stripe of piping around the…okay, I’ll stop.

So Brian and I were attempting to do a yoga podcast on Friday that he downloaded off iTunes for free. I have a fear of yoga after hurting my back about four years ago at a course that was touted as being ‘beginner’ but turned out to be ‘torture’. Six months of back pain later, I swore I’d never return to yoga. But last year I tried a yin yoga class and really loved it, so I’ve been letting Brian walk me through these twenty-minute podcasts by Yogamazing. Pretty cool. Anyway, we were just getting into a downward dog, I think, and the stress in my back and neck let go…and suddenly I just started crying. I lay on my yoga mat and wailed. I told him this wedding was too hard, too much work, and that I was probably effing it all up. I told him that I couldn’t do it anymore, and that for some reason we just didn’t seem to be able to get the last few elements taken care of. Brian asked what was worrying me the most, and I said the leather motorcycle jacket we want him to have instead of a suit jacket; Bri said he didn’t care if he was in jeans and a t-shirt, he was still marrying me. Through tears and raging anxiety, I told him that if I started walking down that aisle and he wasn’t dressed in a leather jacket, I would turn right back around and there’d be no wedding. I think he laughed a little, and I think my right eyebrow shot right up to my hairline, because he meekly reassured me he’d have the jacket, then.

The next day, I relayed this story to my bridesmaid (and cousin) Suzie, and we both laughed incredulously at what seems like a pretty genuine Monster Bride moment. I told her that, calmer now and out in the real world again, I was able to acknowledge just how crazy my jacket freakout was…but despite that, I was still pretty sure I meant it. She laughed again, not dismissively but more ruefully. And hey, I feel pretty okay with wanting this to happen so badly; Brian’s leather jacket was one of the half-handful of non-negotiables we’ve ever had for this wedding, and seeing as it was already a compromise on a fully custom-made suit that Brian had originally envisioned, I really want to make it happen. So this week we’ve started making a concerted effort to hit the thrift shops in the area, and are very much open to more ideas.

We’re both really happy to have Suzie in town, though. She just moved back to Ottawa from Calgary, Alberta (3000 kilometres away or so) and is here temporarily while she seeks a job and housing in Toronto. She joined me, my mom, and her mom/my aunt at the Ottawa Women’s Show this past weekend; I tend to get a little frustrated with the gender-stereotypical offerings at such events, but it turned out to be a lot of fun, and it was so nice to talk to Suzie in person about the wedding. She’s been such a help these past few months, and I can always rely on her to chase down the most random details (read: the details I most obsess about), like the price of little brass bells. It’s nice to have her in town and will be hard to have her leave again. Although Toronto is about a thousand times closer to here than Calgary!

Another happening this past week in terms of bridal party: Mo (aka Heather) and Tam exchanged jobs. Heather, having a rather full plate and big, fat, huge, totally reasonable reasons for being short on time, is passing her Maid of Honor crown to Tamara. Tamara is crazy, and sleeps twelve minutes a night, so despite having three children and working towards her PhD, is excited and happy to wear the title of Matron of Honor. Actually, the agreement was that she be knighted as well, given that ‘matron’ sounds so royal; so let me be the first to introduce Sir Tam, Matron of Honor of the House of Kent. (Kent: that’s me.) Tamara has stepped up to the plate, dealing with shower invite stresses and messed-up RSVP links (that I may or may not have been responsible for…my bad). I feel really good about this switch; I want to be sure all my ‘maids’ are having a good time and are in roles that suit their skills, time, and interest level in the duties. I think we’ve got things ironed out really well now, and I feel confident that Sir Tam will have no qualms about holding back my feathers while I puke before the ceremony.

We did have a really nice time on Sunday, though. Following the advice of our planner Amy, we spent some non-wedding time together and instead went down to the year's first Landsdowne Farmer's Market. We split a plate of food that modestly called itself the 'Farmers' Market Breakfast' but should have been called the 'Farmer's Market glutton-athon'. Three kinds of meat, scrambled eggs, chip-shaped homefries and beans formed a mountain of awesome on a paper plate. Brian was in heaven; I rarely encourage this type of eating, and as he munched away he kept trying to sing the virtues of the high-protein meal. I reminded him it wasn't so much the content as the quantity that was going to kill us, and he conceded defeat. So as a meal, it was a wellness fail; but as a treat, it made Brian happier than maybe anything I've ever seen. His satisfied mmmm's went on well into the afternoon. We followed up our trip to the Farmer's Market with a stop into VegFest, a vegan/vegetarian festival I'd really wanted to check out. I stressed upon Brian the fact that no one at this event was going to want to hear him brag about his 80%-meat-content breakfast and he laughed an evil laugh but was well-behaved. I definitely qualify this as a veg-fail, though: we were so full of sausage-bacon-ham-egg-fries-bean goodness that I couldn't even bring myself to sample most of the vegetarian goodies that I had been so excited to try. We settled for gathering business cards and waddled out, lovingly caressing our round bellies--food babies for certain.

Thus, a week of mostly failures, but not entirely. We’ve had some amazing offers this past week or two, and we really want to post them; give us a day or two to confirm a couple and make sure we give you the best details possible. Suffice it to hint, my ensemble should now be complete.

Ooh…except for shoes. Gah, I really wanted those shoes! Picture them, with the stripe around the edge, and…okay, maybe it’s time for some more yoga.

Namaste, Namaste, Namaste.