Will you be my ...

Spencer and I had different experiences choosing our bridal parties. I'm not going to speak for him, but, in my humble opinion, he had a definite easier time than I did.

After some discussion, we decided on four attendants on either side. He wanted three, but I have a thing about symmetry. Let me just paint you a picture - when I'm posing for pictures with my bridesmaids, I don't want there to be two bridesmaids on one side of me and one on the other. I want there to be an even number on either side. Call me crazy, because I know I am, but that's just what I want.

Let me be clear, I didn't just pick four ladies wily-nily to be symmetrical. In the end, I ended up with four ladies who are very, very important to me. 

But before I get to who I chose and how I chose them, let's back up for a second.

I'm the only girl in four kids. I have two older brothers and one younger brother. I love my brothers, and they have made me into the person I am today. They've given me strength and taught me how to laugh, love and of course, be patient. When I was thinking about who was most important to me and who I'd like to stand up next to me when I married Spencer, the first people I thought of were my brothers. Brosmaids. Of course, my fiance and my brothers are not as progressive as I am and very quickly shot my idea down. Sigh. Oh well. Just because I'm the bride doesn't mean I can have everything (WHAT!?).

Anyway, my oldest brother (Broseph A) is going to be our emcee, my middle brother (Broseph R) requested to just attend (which is absolutely fine by me!) and my little brother (Broseph B) is going to be a groomsman. 

So, the girls. Choosing these girls was not without it's drama - which I will address in a future post. I wanted to have fair representation of different parts of my life - family, friends, school, work. Without further ado - these are my ladies!

MOH Skydiver - My lovely friend from nursing school. We both work in pediatrics now and we've done some crazy things together ... She convinced me to go skydiving when we were in Hawaii a few years ago! Hence the name. So, it makes sense that she stands up next to me while I do another crazy thing in my life! She's really one of the nicest people I know. And she's super organized, so that helps too (haha - no, but, seriously ... It does). 

Bridesmaid Boobilicious - Another lovely friend from nursing school. We've been friends since our very first class in school, and have gone through a lot together. She would probably know me the best in my relationship (does that even make sense?). Anyway, she's so much fun and I have so many great memories with this girl, and I love her!

Bridesmaid Lady Luck - My cousin from my dad's side. My brothers and her and her brother used to be the "Canadian cousins" ... But now she's living across an ocean with the rest of the family! I love her lots and we've always had so much fun together. You just can't break the family bond, and since my dad's family is so much part of my identity, I couldn't imagine not having someone stand up with Spencer and I.

Bridesmaid Curls - My cousin from my mom's side. Although I don't have a sister, I'm lucky enough to have great cousins that are close to my age (both Lady Luck & Curls don't have sisters either - kismet). Curls lives in Edmonton with me, but I don't see her nearly as much as I should! Again, my family is so much a part of who I am, I couldn't imagine not having representation from either side with me!

And last but not least, my little Flowergirl J. My aunt's (who's always been like a big sister to me) daughter who I love to pieces! 

Like I said, on Spencer's side, my little brother is going to be one of his groomsmen. He's also going to have his two brothers and his childhood best friend. He chose not to have a ring bearer. His nephew will be just about four when we get married, but he didn't want to have to worry about who was going to watch him during pictures and such. So, his choice, whatever.

Another honourable mention will be one of our ushers, Flowergirl J's older brother A. He's too old to be a ring bearer ... Buuut he's one of the smartest and most out-going kids I know, so we thought handing out programs and such would be the perfect way to have him involved with the wedding!

Those are just a handful of our rockstars. 

Phew, that was a lot of typing. Sorry for the wordiness!

How did you choose your special people?

Who, what, when, where, why ...

Do you remember those writing exercises when you were in school when you had to answer those five important questions?

Well, Spencer and I are getting married, which answers the who, what and why!

As everyone knows, a wedding can't happen if there's no date set, or no place to hold the dang thing in! So, first things first, time to set the date.

Confession time: We pretty much had decided on a date a few months before we got engaged.

My family lives far away. Like, across a continent and ocean far. So, we wanted to make it as easy as possible time-wise for them to celebrate with us! Having a wedding in the summer would probably be easiest, but there were a few reasons why this didn't work. First, we wanted to keep our engagement as close to a year as possible. Six months would be too fast - I admit, I'm not the best with handling stress; and a year and a half to two years would be too long. Second, if we decided to wait a bit longer than a year, we would be in direct conflict with my cousin who's getting married in the summer of 2014. Third, my family has a week-long school break around Valentine's Day. Fourth, I'm a winter baby. I may hate the cold sometimes, but I love the beauty of a blanket of snow. And fifth, and the biggest influence on our decision - every year we can escape the cold and go to the beach for our anniversary!

In the end, we decided on February 2014. Please tell me someone else makes endless lists on why their date works for them? Or am I the only crazy one?

Now to choose the where. Spencer's brother got married at a beautiful church downtown - I believe it's the oldest Catholic church in Edmonton. Full of dark wood and candles and history ... Just gorgeous! They had our date open and we booked it easy-peasy.

Isn't it lovely? It's even better on the inside. Image taken from Google.

The reception venue was a tad harder. We sat down one day and made a "short" list of venues we were interested. This list had 10 venues on it. Mostly central - having (hopefully) a lot of out-of-town guests, we wanted to make transportation on the day as easy as possible - but we also had some outliers. And they were mostly hotels as that was one of my dad's requests - again, to make it easier for out-of-towners. I'm also a fan of one-stop-shops for this whole wedding planning process, and hotels definitely offer that option! Spencer and I narrowed down a few due to size or scheduling constraints, then went to view three venues.

The first venue we went to see was the Marriott Courtyard West Edmonton, a newer hotel on (obviously) the West side of Edmonton. We were very impressed by the hotel itself and the catering manager was so nice! However, the dominant colours of the hotel were gold and red - which wouldn't exactly going to go with our colour scheme (spoiler alert: it's navy blue and a green that lands sort of between emerald and lime - descriptive enough for ya?). There were also size issues ... Our lower limit guest list estimate was their upper limit occupancy. The location also had more to be desired. What if there was a blizzard on our wedding day? Driving would be horrible! So ... No. We crossed it off our list. But like I said, the hotel and staff were very nice, so I would definitely recommend a look to other couples who are looking for venues.

The second venue I didn't have the greatest experience with. For that reason, I won't name them - I don't want to make any enemies on the Internet nor colour anyone's opinions. The contact person to book site tours and such was great - prompt responses and she answered all of my questions. However, she was an assistant, and the woman who met us to give us the tour had absolutely no idea who we were and she kind of rushed us through it, which made us feel like we were a horrible inconvenience. Did I want to feel that way when I was considering dropping a bunch of cash on this place? Yeah, no ... The venue itself was okay - nice, but not what I was hoping for. It wasn't a one-stop shop either, with them, you just booked the venue and had to outsource everything else. Long story short (sorry, this was actually long story long), we didn't go with them.

The third (and final!) venue we went to see was the Westin downtown. I was very, very interested in this venue and let me say I was not disappointed! The catering manager is great and open to any question I may have. They take care of the tables, linens (except chair covers), food, beverage, etc. The hotel itself was recently renovated and it's modern with muted colours that will complement our colour scheme. Basically, I'm head-over-heels for our venue and very excited to work with them!

 

Again! Lovely ... Except, I don't forsee palm trees in our decor. 

Pictures taken from www.thewestinedmonton.com.

After we chose the venues, I felt so much better. I'm not a person that easily "rolls with the punches," so having a concrete idea about where our wedding was happening just took the world off of my shoulders. Now to focus on the fun, little details!

Engaged!

How's that for an inspired title?

"I asked him what kind of a wedding he wished for,

He said one that would make me his wife."

- Author Unknown

Honestly, there's not much to our engagement story. We've discussed marriage for a long time ... After the first year and a half of our relationship, it was just a given to both of us that this was where we were headed. We started looking at rings around the same time we moved in together, and just got engaged when the timing (and budget!) was right. 

On the night of our engagement, Spencer was acting so unbelievably weird. So, so, sooooo weird. It was a Friday and we had big plans to visit family - my mom because I'd been working a lot and hadn't had a chance to see her in a while and his brother because he and his wife had just had a baby. 

I had just gotten off a night shift, so I was sleeping when Spencer came home from work. He kissed me hello, asked me where the money I owed him (for the mortgage) was, and then told me he was going to go get gas. I said if he'd just wait five minutes, I'd wake up and go with him. He kept on telling me to sleep longer, he'd be right back, just keep sleeping, sleep in. So, I finally stopped fighting him and was lazy in bed for a while - not difficult for me, I love sleeping! 

Almost two hours later (!) he gets home and we go on with our business. After we were done visiting our people, he asked me if I wanted to go home or do something. As I had just finished a stretch of nights, I was itching to not sit at home, so we decided to go for a drive and see if the Christmas lights were up around the city yet. This was his idea, and I should've been suspicious - Spencer's not a big fan of Christmas. Anyway, three spots and no lights to be seen! He was getting weirder and weirder with each failed attempt at looking at lights. So, eventually he took me to a hill that overlooks the river valley and downtown skyline. We were sitting in the car, and I wasn't paying much attention to anything when he said "Hey." I turned around, and there was the ring in his hot little hand!

... And then I cried (tears of joy) and said yes!

Duh. If I didn't, we wouldn't be here.

Did your fiance act super weird before they proposed?

The History of Us

Playa Del Carmen, March 2012

Spencer and I "met" in high school. I was in Grade 10, he in Grade 11. We met doing the school play - West Side Story. I don't really remember talking to him at all - I have a vague memory of being around him at times. I definitely didn't know him and he didn't know me. We had mutual (distant) friends and I do remember thinking he was very cute and that was about it.

Fast forward to Halloween 2008. I was in Nursing school "enjoying" life (read: hating school), and my friend had invited me to go on this pub crawl with some of her friends. Long story short, Spencer and I wound up on the same pub crawl and, fueled by liquid courage (and possibly boredom, I was with a bunch of people I didn't know and we were at a bar I didn't like), I saw a guy I sorta knew and went up to talk to him! Of course, he didn't remember me - I soon learned that Spencer was a wiz with faces, but awful with names! Thankfully, we hit it off, and went on our first date a few weeks later.

Spencer and I the night we officially met, Halloween 2008.

We've seen each other through the most turbulent and rewarding times of our lives. Spencer received his journeyman ticket in Electrical in 2009, and I earned my Bachelor of Science in Nursing in 2010. Right around that time, Spencer herniated a disc and had to take a year off to recuperate. In that time, he decided on a complete career change and went back to school for Funeral Directing and Embalming. Finishing that, he decided that wasn't the best fit for him (loved the job, hated the hours) and went back to electrical. Throughout this all we've adopted a dog, travelled (both together and apart), decided to move in together (scary, but so worth it!) and experienced all the ups and downs that go along with life!

This all lead up to Spencer proposing on November 30, 2012. And now here we are!

And so it begins:

The blogging adventure of my wedding! 

Today marks one year until my fiance and I say "I do" in front of our family and friends. I want to start a record of what this planning is like - the good and the bad. I'd like to look back and remember this time of delightfully weird relationship limbo.

So, join me!

Love,

Jordanna