Married? Check. House? Check. Enjoying life? Check :)

Thought is was going to be something else, huh? ;)

Ladies!!! Can you believe how long it's been?! I was just reading through some old posts and couldn't believe that all of that wedding craziness (Did I say craziness? I meant joy...) happened a year and half ago! And man, how things have changed since then...

Shortly after our return from Italy, the Office Hubs and I got the house hunt fever. It was innocent at first, but we soon found ourselves in overdrive, checking out open houses every other weekend. Thank goodness, at some point our good friend Claire stepped in as our realtor and helped us narrow down the search.

Ok - I'm gonna say it. House hunting can be SUPER STRESSFUL. Fun, in the sense that we got to check out homes and play pretend, but stressful in every other way! It also didn't help that we dealt with a few crazy homeowners along the way (eg. One guy kept delaying the closing and finally decided not to sell with us. We later found out that he pulled out so that he could put his house back on the market for a higher price. ARGH!).

But all of that work, sweat, and tears paid off because we ended up finding a wonderful home in the west end of Toronto. We got the keys on my birthday last June and moved in a month later!

Since then we've done a lot of updating on the house (Home Depot is our second home), hosted a lot of parties (we can have more than 5 people over now, wooo!), and lots of chilling out in our new digs (a dishwasher can free up so much time, who knew?)

In typical fashion, I have decided to start blogging about life in the west end of the city, and hopefully I can bring a few of you over to the new blog: Toronto West Enders



A blog that have everything and anything to do with our beloved side of the city. And with writing contributions from Office Hubs (figured he should have a say now, ha!). Are we completely biased because we live in the west end?

Absolutely.

Hope you enjoy the new read. And as always, I look forward to hearing from you and what adventures you've taken since the big day!

Jamaica Fun!

A while back, the Office Husband and I had seriously considered Jamaica as our honeymoon destination. We ended up going to Tuscany instead (amazing, will have to post about that soon), but we managed to get a taste of the Caribbean a few months later, just a couple of weeks ago! Yup, what was suppose to be a December weekend in NY with my brothers, their ladies, and us, ended up being a weekend in Jamaica, lol! And it was AWESOME! Although I had the most amazing experience in Tuscany, I can see why so many others would choose a place like Jamaica as their honeymoon destination. The weather, the people, the landscape - all so beautiful! We actually met another Canadian couple who was on their honeymoon, and they were having the best time of their lives.

Check out the lip dub video we made while we were there (You'll see that I get my sense of humour from my bros). If this doesn't make you want to buy tickets to go asap, I don't know what will!

Our Beautiful Flowers

Thanks to our wedding, I now have a new appreciation and love for flowers. Gone are the days when I could name about 4 different types of flowers :) With the help of Vince from Bliss Events, our floral decoration and accessories were amazingly beautiful and affordable. And apart from our initial meeting with Vince along with a few e-mail to confirm details, Bliss took care of absolutely everything on the big day, from delivering the bouquets to my parents' place, delivering and setting up the flowers at the church, and then taking them down to transport and decorate the reception hall.

Here are a couple photos of their beautiful work...


My gorgeous bouquet
Consisting of: Lysianthus, Vendella roses, Escimo spray roses and ivory Hydrangea subtle use of blush pink blooms of Titanic roses, Valerie spray roses and pink Lysianthus with a touch of Magnolia tips around the base of the bouquet. Diamond and silver rhinestone silver jewellery were hidden into the blooms as to just pick up a bit of sparkle. And then it was finished in a braided ivory satin ribbon wrap. The rosary was from my MOH - it belonged to her grandmother.



The Altar Flowers / Head Table Centerpiece
One of the few requests our priest had was to not waste flowers, and that whatever was used in the ceremony should be used at the reception. That was fine by us, since that also meant saving moola! Bliss created two of these beauties which were put on the altar. At the reception hall, one was placed at the head table and one at the signing table.



Photos by Shannon Lepere.

A Book Themed Wedding

The Office Husband and I are huge book nerds. My dad was a printer by trade in his earlier years, and that's where I grew to love and appreciate a well made book. And the Office Groom always has a new book or magazine in his hand, which he probably got after one of our many visits to Indigo.

We hadn't initially thought of having any theme at all, and it sort of happened naturally after we fell in love with an invite design found online that tells the story of how the couple met and got engaged. And that's when we came up with the saying "A lifetime full of wonderful stories," and a book theme was born.

We didn't want to go over the top and end up with a library for a reception, so we tried to incorporate the theme in little ways. Here are a few photos of how it turned out!

Guests could find out where they were sitting by referring to the seating chart, which was designed to look like a library reference list. I also added a few loose book pages to frame it.


Library cards were used as table numbers. You can find them on Etsy easily!


In lieu of the traditional flower arrangement, we decided to use books as the guest table centerpieces. Each table had a group of books which were specifically picked out with the guests in mind. It took a a lot of visits to the bookstore to do this, but luckily time was on our side. And we got some great deals just by looking throught the bargain bins and with the help of a friend whose dad works at a publishing house!


We made a donation to ABC Life Literacy Canada on behalf of our guests, and as a token of their appreciate the organization provided a small Robert Munsch book for each guest.


This was my favourite detail. To add a personal touch, we handmade these bookmarks for all the guests. But we went one step further and wrote a personal story for each guest. That took a few nights of sitting on the couch with some wine and recollecting our most favourite memories, but it was worth it! It blew the minds of so many people!


After a delicious dinner, the cupcake table opened up. I found this gem of a book at Indigo!


Photographs by Shannon Lepere and our family & friends.

The Bridesmaids Dresses

When I watched the first Sex & The City movie, I knew that I wanted something similar to Carrie's wedding. That each Bridesmaid should wear their own unique dress; colour, style and fabric. But when our own wedding became a reality, OG told me that he wanted his guys to wear kilts, and I had to reconsider my vision for worry that it would look too busy.

Thus, the idea of Same But Different came to be. Each Bridesmaid could still pick their own dress, as long as it was the same colour and fabric. It was a great combination of both visions as it allowed each woman to express their own personal style, and still look uniform. And might I say, I had the best damn looking ladies to back me up on my big day :)

All of these dresses are from the Dessy line which includes designers such as Alfred Sung, After Six, and Dessy. The fabric was matte satin (not too clingy and enough movement to make the dress flow) and the colour was midnight blue (a great colour for all types of skin tones!)

The colours of the dresses tied in with the dark blue in the kilts. Don't we look like royalty?! Prince William, take notes.


Tyra would be proud.


Here's a closer look. They're so pretty!


S.B.D.? Success!

Photos by Shannon Lepere and friends.

Oh-So-Delicious-Cupcakes

It has been a while...I know.

But would you believe that it has also been one of the busiest months EVER at work? I returned to Toronto completely rejuvenated and relaxed from a wonderful honeymoon, and was welcomed back with loads of assignments, late hours at the office, and work-related headaches.

Lovely.

It appears as though that storm has calmed, and some normalcy has returned to my life. And with it, I can finally get back to writing here with some more recaps of the big day. Can you believe it's already been two months since then?

Today it's all about the cupcakes. Mainly because for the next two weeks I've promised myself not to have any junk food (I've gained weight since the wedding...seriously?! And the OG and I are going away in just a couple of weeks down south, yikes!). So if I can't eat it, I should at least be able to talk about it LOL

My co-worker Julie was the mastermind behind these delicious beauties, and they were a HUGE hit at the wedding!

The cupcakes had a table all to their own. We saved a few of the hard covers books we bought over the last year for this table. Notice the geek reference on the top book? :)



A little touch of pink, of course! And the cupcake book was such a great find! (Indigo Bookstore)



How's this for detail? Julie actually recreated the pattern on the mens' kilts! AMAZING!



We had so many guests tell us how yummy they were. Sadly I had all of one bite out of one, but I'm glad everyone enjoyed them so much. And I can't really complain because I had my share of taste tests before the wedding :)

Photos by Shannon Lepere.

The Dress!!!

This was probably the HARDEST topic not to blog about the months leading up to the wedding. But with the Office Groom dropping by the site every once and a while, I just coudln't risk him finding out! So with begrudgingly tight lips, I've kept it a secret but now I can finally do the reveal!

I found my gem of a dress at Ferre Sposa, a small boutique located on Bloor Street West. After trying one too many dresses at other stores, I was about ready to give up until I discovered Ferre Sposa while on a walk. The dresses displayed on the window front immediately gave me the confidence that this store would not disappoint, and once I had a look inside I knew that I was right.

The dress caught my eye almost instantly, with his bedazzled sweetheart neckline and gorgeous ivory satin fabric. And when I put it on - WOW! I felt like a movie star (coincidentally, when I looked it up online after trying it on, the description included the words "old HOllywood").

Like most images online, the photos I found didn't really do it justice. Although one shot managed to capture the amazing train.


Source



Source

I loved how simple yet elegant it was. Personally I'm not one for too much beading and lace on a dress, but the Swarovski crystal detailing along the neckline was just perfect! Guests told me later that when I walked down the aisle of the church I was sparkling (literally and figuratively!).

Ok, ok... enough babbling! Here are a few photos of ME in the dress :)


Source


Source

I'll have more photos soon of the detailing once I get them from our photographer!!