Wedding Prep. and Planning

I was never one to have my wedding all planned out in my head. So after Jayson and I got engaged I had a lot of thinking to do. We had both agreed on getting married in the Salt Lake Temple, however I knew only to expect my family to take the trip to Utah. Especially because the wedding was so close to Christmas.

So I asked myself, how do I involve my friends from home in our wedding? Solution, have a celebration in Canada. Now this idea I don't regret, but it certainly overwhelmed my to-do list.

Now Lets take a peek at it and see where I'm at.

-Book the Temple for our Sealing: Jayson and I knew this needed to be done ASAP, because the Salt Lake Temple is very popular for weddings. We actually had to change our room size from 25 capacity to a 45 capacity, so now our family will be sitting comfortably!

 

-Book the Temple For my Endowment: Well first we needed to figure out when Jay could come up for it, which ended up being American Thanksgiving. This worked, because the wedding isn't to much longer after that. We also decided to Have our reception for up here at the same time. You know, Two birds, one Stone. Which we have since titled as a "Wedding Shower" trying to diminish any confusion, however I'm not sure how well that worked. Both man and Women are Welcome!

-Wedding Dress & Jayson's Tux: My dress, what can I say? I've never been one for a traditional wedding dress. I looked into getting one made, that was a nightmare! Long story short, I've decided to rent one when I get down to Utah. What am I suppose to do with the dress after the wedding anyway? 

Jayson's Tux, does he wear his suit and rent a vest and tie, or does he rent the whole thing? His call doesn't matter to me, but he wants my opinion anyway. I made him choose, I'm not wearing it. So he wanted to rent the whole thing. Of course I'll be there to decide on colors etc. This will get done when we're down there as well.

-Marriage License: In Canada you can go to any License and Registry place and get a marriage license. Apparently thats the the case in the States. I have not idea where to go, but Jayson seems to think it's some government building. I guess we'll find out when we get there! I'm sure we can ask someone as well. 

-The Rings: Well my rings good! We got the set before we left San Jose'. So unless he lost the wedding ban, everything is fine on that matter.

Getting Jay's ring was slightly harder for me. When he came up to visit in October, we got him sized. We talked about what he wanted, but I was left to find the perfect ring. As I continued to shop around I found out that the type of metal he wanted his ring to be made of can't be sized. In fact it can't be cut in case on an accident. It needed to be ordered in his size. The jewelry store wanted me to double check his size, because once it's made, it can't be changed. So I got him to get sized again, and I finally ordered the ring last week. I just hope it gets in on time! Cross your fingers.

-Get a list of who we wanted to invite to our wedding & receptions and get addresses: I have one thing to say... Thank goodness for facebook! Jayson had a lot on his plate. He sent out over one hundred wedding invitations himself. We ended up having two different invitations, one for the shower and one for the wedding. The shower invitations were sent out to people I knew, because it's in Canada.

-Book the churches for said receptions: This task was a love, hate relationship. Trying to figure out where we wanted to have the reception in December was one thing. What would be easiest and most cost efficient? My cousin Carie was wonderful enough to book her Chapel in Pleasant Grove, UT. Thanks for everything you've done Carie! Thinking now I wonder if booking a Banquet hall would have been better in the end? Luckily I live a life without regret!

The wedding shower was much easier to deal with. I was able to take things into my own hands! After calling to book a couple chapels, I ended up booking my church. It wasn't my first choice, but at least it's easy to find! I booked it for the same time Carie had booked hers for, from 3pm-10pm. A few days later I called back to extend the booking from 12pm-10pm, giving us more time set-up. However a week later I recieved a call from another ward asking if they could use the church from 9am-1pm. Because of my work schedule I had gotten this call right in the middle of my sleep. I agreed, but wasn't sure if it was a good idea. Thankfully it ended up working out.

-Figure out colors and decorations, center pieces etc.: I started out wanting colors, such as olive green and gold, it then changed to a more winter feel with silver and blues. Finally it was official! I chose to go with pink and silver. I secretly love the color pink, so it was kind of a no brainer. I kept the color silver, because we wanted to keep the winter feel. You'll see what I mean in just over a week now. Mom and I stressed big time over decorations. We made several trips to craft stores to get some ideas. Finally our prayers were answered, mom had called and made an appointment with a lady who owns a store and decorates weddings for a living. I ended up going through her books and picking everything I wanted. To top it off she'll set everything up and take it all down for a flat rate. So all the decorations, center pieces, table clothes etc. are all included. This means that I don't have to stress about anything the day of our shower.

-Food: Let me start with what I know. My friend Tasha, who is one of my very best friends makes the best cupcakes in the world. I knew I wanted her to make cupcakes from the very beginning! The only thing I was unsure was the type of cupcake. I eventually decided on Red Velvet cupcakes. I also found out that my aunt, Donna also makes wedding cakes. Not wanting to leave anyone out, we also asked her to do a wedding cake. I'm very excited for all of this, the cake is going to look great!

My mom had told me that my cousin Cinda made wedding cakes as well, which was perfect because we still needed a cake for the actual wedding. Not that I regret my decision of asking her, but she did inform me that she had only taken one cake making class. OOPS! Just a side note Cinda, there is no pressure, I know you'll do a great job! Oh and if you need a picture for an idea just let me know!

Before I get to the actual food, our shower is going to have a candy station as our favors. The candy we ended up buying for it ended up costing just under $200. YIKES!

Figuring out what we were going to serve for our shower was a difficult task. Finally through family brainstorming we came up with the idea of soup. I actually got very excited about this, and of course as the story goes something you want always ends up being the hardest thing to obtain. Caterer after cater, and contact after contact, we finally found someone who could make everything for us. So slowly everything started to come together, and the stress started to go away.

Jayson's grandma, Nana has been such a big help with everything thats going on down in Utah. She found a lady in her ward who does catering, and she has even looked into decorations for the reception. She has just been such an amazing help, I don't know how things would work without her. 

-Invitations: Jayson and I have had to send the past 4 months away from each other, so when we did get together, we needed to get everything done, that had to be done together. This was mainly our invitations. We were very efficient with these. We used my mom to take pictures, and for our shower invitations we just found some playgrounds around the Provo area as our setting. We then uploaded them onto my handy dandy Macbook, chose the template for the invitation and edited the pictures we wanted to use. Once I got back to Canada I sent them to a printer. Another stick in the spokes, the invitations were about half an inch too big for any envelopes out there so I had to trim off the edges of over 100 invitations. It didn't help that I had decided to hand out invitations to friends and family around here, running into people was a task in itself! Needless to say, their all out.

We wanted new pictures for our wedding invitations, so when Jay came to visit for Canadian Thanksgiving it was back to the grind. We went out on the Saturday and took more pictures. We then spent the rest of the weekend making an invitation and stuffing envelopes. Remember how I said Jayson had over 100 people to invite himself? Well we printed just over 200 Invitations, so what Jay didn't use I did.

Now I hope I haven't forgotten anything, because if I have, it's probably too late to fix now. There are still things that need to get done, but don't worry we have a list.

Jayson has been waiting for this blog for the last three days now, so I hope he appreciates how much info is in this! Oh and the last thing I have to say is, you can substitute "we" with "I" every time it comes up in this blog. I just said "we" so I don't sound like such a control freak!

Thanks for chewing! This one was like a Thanksgiving Dinner, very filling and now you probably feel like napping! I know I do.