I have a handful of addresses to find, print and label…

I need to head to the States and pick up some US postage…

I need to confirm the last few guests with Nick…

And after all that, the invitations should be in the mail!

I work with two girls who recently got married and since I spend 40 hours a week with them, they are my resource for all things wedding related.

But when I heard the outlandish prices they spent on flowers, I was a bit ashamed to admit that their budgets were triple, even quadruple the amount of mine.

Flowers have always seemed like a frivolous expense. Depending on what you get and where you buy from you can expect to drop a ton of cash. And for what? Flowers that brown, wilt and die in 3 days? Which is why I went to Zehrs.

Yes, Zehrs. As in the grocery store.

I was able purchase my bouquet, all my boutonnieres, flower girl bouquets, coursages, boutonnieres and cake accents for a whopping total of $281. But what I love most is that all the flowers are from Leamington, and will be cut, shipped and arranged the day of the wedding. I love being able to support the local economy.

No pictures – sorry! All I can say is that it’s a mish-mash of Asiatic and Calla lilies, and white orchids.

While this blog is geared more towards wedding plans, I do keep a personal one at the following address:

http://jasminelily.wordpress.com

Feel free to peruse the material on that end…if you wish!

Sorry for the lack of posts! I am beginning to freak out a little (just a little) because I can’t get over the sensation that I am missing something…or that I NEED to be freaking out about our upcoming wedding. For the most part I am relaxed, calm, collected  – completely sure that things will go as planned. I have confirmed everything I really need to at this point…but I just can’t but feel…like I’m missing something!?!

I just sent an email to Adriana at Allegra and gave her the go-ahead to send our invitations to print. On Saturday I will be meeting up with the florist to figure out exactly what I need and get arrangements ordered. I also need to meet up with the lady who will be decorating the church and stuff…

Nick managed to put the $500 deposit down on our honeymoon package and he notified me yesterday that he received the confirmation in the mail about it. The entire payment is due in May, but we’re planning on dropping into Valente and making small deposits towards the amount every few weeks or so and hopefully have it paid off by then. We both have been pretty good at paying off everything entirely up until this point – we’re trying really hard to keep charges off the credit card, and so far, so good!

Today was a pretty busy day for Nick and I. We both work full time throughout the week so we’ve been having to do the majority of our planning on Saturdays – not an easy task!

This morning we met with Lisa at Valente travel to book our honeymoon accommodations. As I previously mentioned, my Uncle Pan and Aunt Julie graciously gave us their timeshare in Kauai to use for a week. After discussing options, Nick and I decided to stay for an extra week in Hawaii and visit a couple more cities.

Lisa was great – she found us decently priced flights and we booked the entire honeymoon. Nick will put the $500 deposit down on Monday. As it stands we will be flying out of the Detroit the day after our wedding, arriving in Kauai and staying for 7 days. We’re then booked to fly to Maui where we’ll spend 4 nights at the Lahaina Resort. After that we’ll be flying off to Oahu and staying at the Ohana Beachcomber for the last 3 nights. We’ve got our rental car all set for Kauai and Maui. The total package came out to approximately $3300 – almost $2000 less than we had budgeted out. Super excited!

After that we met up with Pastor Dan for a little meet and greet. Overall he was pretty friendly and committed to doing our wedding on July 3rd. He will be meeting with us again at the end of May/early June to go over specifics about the ceremony and such.

We then head over the States to pick up our flower girl dresses at David’s Bridal, did some shopping and head back. It was a pretty exhausting day, but I’m happy with everything we accomplished.

This week I will be meeting with Pena at La Zingara to confirm our menu choices, maybe make a few changes, check out their sound system and hopefully have enough information to get our menus set to print.

We are definitely on our way!

Music…hmmm…

It was the one thing I have been pondering long and hard about. Not necessarily what music to play at the reception, but rather what music to play for the ceremony. Filipino weddings typically are saturated with special performances, i.e. your cousin who thinks she can sing wants to sing 3-4 songs at the ceremony, then sing them again at the reception. I am not for that; as a guest I find it uncomfortable and cannot help but judge whatever attention-mongering singer is up there.

I have contacted a young brother/sister violinist and cellist to play. It is uncertain whether they can commit, but as a backup I have decided on two different songs by a relatively unknown artist (at least, in North America!) whose lyrics speak volumes. The melodies are charming, simple, heartfelt…hardly pretentious or oozing of the superficial “I love you/I cannot live without you” type themes that most wedding songs are.

And as much as my father wants our Father/Daughter dance to be to “Butterfly Kisses”, there will be none of that. My father and I have hardly had a relationship like the one portrayed in the song, and it would be wrong to portray that in front of friends and family who know better.

My apologies for the lack of posts lately! I have been bombarded with work from my actual job that wedding planning has taken a back seat for the time being. The tail end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 have been pretty rough; I suffered through a bad sinus/head cold during the holidays and just this past week I was fighting off a chest infection that had me bed-ridden and feverish for a few days. Not exactly the condition to be out and about…

A few people have been asking me if I’ve attended any of the wedding shows around the city, and I’m almost ashamed to say I haven’t. Almost, hah. In fact, I’ve hardly looked at any bridal magazines (the only one being the local one, and strictly to find vendors!), visited any bridal websites, or purchased any planning organizer thingies. Is that silly? Stupid? Downright dangerous? You might say so. It is supposedly the biggest day of our lives, and to think I’m leaving it totally up to a gut feeling? Gasp!

To be perfectly honest, I’m comfortable with where I’m at. I’ve witnessed my best gals get married the past few years and was expecting this event to be a logistical monstrosity, but I knew what I wanted. Nick and I are not showy, public people. It frightens us to think we will be the center of attention for an entire day! I wanted this event to reflect what we are. We incorporated the people who mean the most. We paid good money for things that we deemed important and spent less on things we knew we could do without. I had an idea of what I wanted this wedding to be from the very start.  I consciously chose not to go to wedding expos or buy magazines because I didn’t want to be influenced or pressured to feel like my idea of our wedding was lacking in any way. We are keeping it simple, traditional, elegant and intimate. We can do without all the extra.

I am hoping that once my work’s gala is over and done with (February 13th!) I will have more time to direct attention to this wedding.

And a big congratulations to Jessie and Nikola – I am going to have the coolest in-laws ever!

First of all, Happy New Year and I hope everyone had a great holiday season!

It’s been a while since I’ve updated, and frankly, not much has been accomplished wedding-wise since the onset of December. People said I went a “little crazy” at the beginning of our engagement, booking things and making arrangements, signing contracts – but I am breathing a huge sigh of relief. Many of our big-ticket items have been taken care of.

A couple of new changes…

++ I ended up signing a contract with Deborah Thomson of Figgie Photography for the wedding. Originally we had planned to have my cousin Remus do our shots, but we will be having him as a second photographer instead. If you haven’t already checked out Deborah’s work, you can view her portfolio here: (http://www.figgiephotography.com). She gave us a great deal and is pretty much ours for the taking from noon until whenever we need her! She’ll be doing three photoshoots for us: our enagement pictures on May 9th, our wedding on July 3rd, and then my “Trash the Dress” shoot later in the summer. I am so excited to get to work with her.

++ Adriana at Allegra has completed the first set of proofs for our invitations. I hope to have them set to print by March and in the mail by then (for our out-of-towners) and May for our local guest.

++ The past couple of weeks I’ve really been unsure of what to do for wedding favors. I know that I really don’t care for the little trinkets and rinky-dink items you get at weddings; they all seem good for taking up space and collecting dust. Originally I had wanted to stick with my “garden-esque” theme (I will be “Jasmine Lily Plante”, after all!), but it seemed like a lot of work for something only a handful of guests would appreciate. Both Nick and I sponsor children through Compassion Canada – a Christian organization that clothes, feeds, educates and provides medical care for the poorest children in the world. I’ve been on board with them and sponsoring Laura for over 5 years, and Nick for just over 2. I love the idea of “in lieu of” donations, so instead of a tangible gift, we are making a donation to one of their funds and will provide place-cards at the table, letting our guests know where our money has gone and how they can get involved in the organization. Hopefully our wedding can help more children get sponsored!

This month I really hope to get my flowers ordered, meet with my minister (he’s already promised us the date – it’s just a matter of booking our sit-down meeting with him!) and my musicians confirmed (a cellist and violinist from the Canadian Youth Symphony, both amazingly talented and in their teens!).

Nick and I have decided to forgo a DJ for a couple of reasons: 1) we already have an emcee of sorts in Sundeep, my MOH, and having someone else try and steal the show would be a little much, 2) soundboards, mics, wires and speakers might ruin the ambiance of the restaurant and 3) we both have such distinct tastes in music I doubt a DJ would play anything we really enjoyed. As Stefanie put it, “Music is such a personal thing” – we’ve decided to have a friend of ours, Brandon, work the iTunes for the night.

Despite all the already-made arrangements, I do realize I need to get my @ss into gear. Lately I find myself preoccupied with my guitar, which I have seriously begun to pick up again. In the span of 2 weeks a good majority of the fingerprints on my left hand are gone – a good sign! And as if I needed any more callouses I also taught myself how to knit! Work has been crazy – our fundraising fashion show is less than a month away so I have been busy designing advertisements for print, getting silent auction items stocked, etc.

I am pretty confident all will work out in the end!

I haven’t updated much; frankly, there hasn’t been any wedding-related planning going on at all. November has been crazy for both of us and with the holidays coming up, well…our lives don’t seem like they’ll be slowing down….so…

I’ve made a conscious decision to put off any planning until the New Year. We are are still comfortably ahead.

I’ve made some travel plans for 2009 and will be flying out to Los Angeles in May to meet up with my maid of honor for some down time. My one last hurrah as a single woman, hee.

Until 2009!

Hard to believe that 6 years have rolled on by already. It’s bittersweet: we will be celebrating our last anniversary as a dating couple come November 30th and enter into life as husband and wife on July 3rd. It is hard to imagine what life was like before Nick…

A big thanks goes out to Janet and Ken Ouellette for hosting an engagement dinner tonight. In the six years we’ve been together I have always felt so welcomed when visiting with Nick’s family. The homecooked meal was nothing short of absolute delicious-ness, the flower arrangements that Aunt Nancy so painstakingly put together were beautiful. It was nice to talk about the plans and have my parents get to know the very large Plante side! They were overwhelmed by the number of aunts and uncles, but I keep telling them that even after 6 years I still need help naming all 11 of them…

I feel so fortunate to be welcomed into such a large, wonderful family. And I can’t wait to get cooking lessons!!!