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That's right. CentREpieces. I'm Canadian!

So apparently people were really impressed with the decor at our wedding reception, especially the centrepieces. They were scooped up like hotcakes. They were nice looking but I didn't think they would be that popular. I had purchased them online and then decorated them with my sister (and technically Jack but after doing one lantern he gave up. >_>;;) with white flowers from Michaels Arts & Craft Store. The flowers were on a clearance sale too. We really lucked out on sales and reduced pricing due to the recession for our wedding, which is why we came under budget. =D

Since our reception was supposed to have a Chinese theme I thought lanterns would look good. But I found out that a lot of people use circular lanterns as reception decor and I didn't really want to fit the mainstream. So I had found these table lanterns on a website and ordered one to check it out. We liked them so we ordered 18 more. Here is a picture of us cutting the cake, but you can see the lantern in the shot.

The lantern comes in various colours but we chose red since it would look amazing on our black table cloths. You can order them here if you want one: Shoji Decor. They require three AAA batteries and their bulbs are LED lights, which is good for reception halls that usually don't allow open flame decorations. Their prices are in USD and they ship out of California. They only deliver to the States though. I had tried to convince them to ship it to Canada and even offered to pay extra for shipping and custom costs, but they didn't want to do it. So I had them shipped to my uncle and aunt's house in MI and my parents went to pick it up from them. Other than that, I loved them.

We have officially one month until the wedding day. Wow, does time fly or what? We have the majority of the things done and there are just a few tasks here and there to wrap up. It's mostly coordinating, but now that we have an official ceremony and reception schedule it shouldn't be too bad. My biggest worry at this point is forgetting to do something. The big things are easy and obvious to remember but the little things are easily overlooked. I just want things to go as smoothly as possible, and unfortunately most to-do lists online are very generic and only think about the larger items. For instance, nobody tells you to review your gift registries more closer to the wedding  day to make sure you didn't put something on that you would later not need. We have quite a few items on ours that we need to remove. When we had picked the items it was when we lived in our old apartment and hadn't any intentions of moving. Now that we're in the condo, a lot of those needs have already been met. The bad thing about the Sears registry is that they don't ask you for an e-mail address so if you forget your password (like I have), you have to call in. And if you're like me, you always remember to call in at 10:30 at night when they're already closed. >=/

In other news, I'm really glad we hired a co-ordinator. She's going to coordinate with all our vendors, hand out all the final payments for us and basically make sure that the schedule becomes reality. Totally worth the cost. If you are planning a wedding and wondering if it's worth hiring a wedding coordinator, decorator, and/or planner, do it! You will save yourself many, many stress lines and headaches.

And now...for me to go to bed and sleep off this stress headache. >_<;;

I just had to adjust our budget for an extra $1,000. Poo! =(

Okay I've been really bad at updating but I have a really good excuse! Well more like excuses. I've been busy with other things, namely working out, wedding stuff, and work. Now that I have officially moved divisions at work and I've gotten a permanent desk (yay!), I have to leave even earlier for work because I have to start right at 9am on the dot. So I have to leave home earlier than before because TTC tends to have issues in the morning and I need to give myself a 10-15 minute window for crap to happen and still being able to get to work on time. So basically this means going to bed earlier (10pm). That doesn't give me a lot of time after work to do much, and lately that time has been filled with moving issues (I'll elaborate soon), working out (started doing P90X with Jack...so worth it!), doing wedding planning stuff, and regular household duties (have to do laundry again today D;). So sorry for not updating even though there is A LOT to post about.

So for our new condo that we're moving into at the beginning of May...there were some stupid issues we had to deal with concerning booking the elevator. We had no trouble booking the elevator in our current apartment so we didn't think we would have a hard time at the condo. Wrong! Jack called up the condo and the guy (we'll call him Bob) said we had to give in a deposit. Okay, that's fine. We figured it would be like $20 that they would give back because the point was to make sure we showed up. So Jack shows up to give in the despoit and guess how much they wanted. They asked for a $500 refundable deposit to be paid by a money order or certified cheque. Plus a $25 non-defundable deposit by money order or certified cheque just to book the elevator. If we wanted to move in on a Sunday or stat holiday that would be an extra $75, which didn't apply to us but is still wtf. And we had to fill out a ridiculous form about all our moving details. We were not impressed and we talked to both the property manager for our unit as well as the management for the condo about the situation. They gave into four of the five modifications we asked for, so we can give personal cheques, not have to fill out most of the form, and a couple of other things. We do have to pay $25 to book the elevator though, so we're going to try make the $25 count for something and get at least four hours of booking time (as opposed to 2 hours max). I still think it's stupid to charge tenants for moving into their unit, but better that we don't piss them off before we even move in. =/