Wedding Shower

The circle of life is an interesting journey don't you think. After graduation, whether it be high school or any post secondary school many of your friends start to get married. At that point it's showers, maybe you're standing up for a friend at their wedding (think movie 28 Dresses) or even getting married yourself. It's all a whirlwind of activity, gifts and parties.

The following phase is usually the baby phase. Some may opt out of this phase. Then it's showers, gifts and a whirlwind of activity. Fast forward to the first day of school, the crying, the parents worrying about whether their child will ever adjust. We run around signing up for tee ball, gymnastics, swimming lessons, hockey to make sure our children have the best possible exposure to a variety of things. I call this phase the taxi phase and you're the taxi.

Graduations, sweet 16's, rights of passage, gifts and parties and proms and new drivers all scare the heck out of you. This phase is the car rental phase. You own the car but don't get to charge for the rental. You just get to pay unusually high insurance fees for your inexperienced driver. We won't even talk about the dings, scratches and accidents.

Now I'm in the recurring cycle of showers, weddings, gifts and parties. Unless it's your event, it's pretty stress free and I admit, it's fun watching these toddlers grow up are now getting married. This past weekend was one of the shower events. I must admit, I was pretty quiet and deep in thought about the journey of the beautiful young bride to be - beaming, really grown up and totally beautiful.

The Bride to Be

Her Chair

The Alcohol (my first stop after realizing how old I am)

The Food (logical next place to visit)

Spicy Shrimp

Roast Beef Appetizer

Mini Wraps

Skewers of Chicken with Mango, Caprese Combo

Crab Cakes

Cheese Cups

The Gifts

Everyone brought one of their favourite recipes to create a starter cookbook for Janis. Some even made the recipe and brought it for her to sample to make sure she likes it.

The Cake

Don't you love it when someone's taking a picture of you taking a picture of them

And... on the way out, lovely gifts for the partiers.

The moral of the story - no matter what stage you're at - ENJOY THE JOURNEY!!!

Wedding Reception #2

Oh oh... The gig is up. After nearly two years of going unnoticed, we've been caught. My dad found the blog. Go see for yourself, this is the comment he left

Anonymous said...

Accidently found this blog...
... clearly somebody's been holding out on me

I guess I'm just yesterday's chopped liver (sorry, no foody pics...)

And who am I?
... with a Giz and Grad in the family - I could only be known as:

Psycho-Giz-Grad's Dad

All along, we just let him (and other family members) believe that we were crazy people obsessed with taking pictures of food and now the truth is revealed: the obsession goes much deeper. Not only do we take pictures of food, we blog about food and participate in a community of food bloggers. Oh well -- my dad is a wierdo too, in his own right.

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Speaking of my dad...let me tell you about the reception he hosted for me and R...

Going to Winnipeg for a second reception is something R and I knew we had to do. R and I wanted a small ceremony and reception in Ottawa, so only closer family and friends were invited. I don't think anyone was too offended by it -- but a 2nd reception for extended family was probably the only way to prevent that.

The idea started out pretty basic...we would have a bbq at my dad's place. Then, this became unrealistic because a bbq would have to extend to both the house and backyard. This would, apparently, require a tent, catering, and a newly painted fence. (I don't know when we started trying to keep up with the Joneses)

Redoing the fence was the deal-breaker. So, the reception had to be held elsewhere. "Elsewhere" was pretty limited too because the meal had to be kosher. In Winnipeg, there are only a handful of places that serve kosher food.

So, what started out as a low-key bbq became a reception at the Hotel Fort Garry, one of the nicer hotels in the city.

From then on, I pretty much relinquished control and went where I was told.

Although the laws of kashrut created some limitations around food options, it was probably a mixed blessing. Any "bright ideas" Giz and I had about baking for the reception were impossible. So, that meant a repeat of the wedding cookie saga was out of the question.

Instead, we got some chocolate giveaways from Morden's, a family owned and operated chocolatier that is another one of those Winnipeg institutions.


Because the chocolate was not kosher, guests were asked to wait until they left to open up the giveaways. Our experience with Morden's was really positive -- they were able to complete our order with little notice and even accommodated a change to the order a day before pick up.



Sometimes kosher food has a reputation of being...so-so. I don't know why because when made well, the quality of kosher meat is often better that run of the mill grocery store meat.

I'd have to say that this meal didn't change my mind about kosher food. It was about par for the course. Not bad -- but no one dish would be something I'd add to my cooking repetoire (if I had made it at home).

The meal started with a mushroom and wild rice-type soup. It was pretty plain and could have used more mushrooms and wild rice within the broth.

On the way to the reception, I asked my dad and step-mom if there were any speeches planned (you may recall I had a "no speech" policy at my reception). My dad quickly said, "no" -- which was my first clue. Typically, when I ask my dad a question, I can expect a 5-10 second delay in getting a response (if he's paying attention). This time, there was less than a 2 second delay between the end of my question and his answer -- something was amiss.

Shortly after the evening started, I could see folders being passed around. There was one speech after the next and a "you must sing a song about love or tell a joke to get Psychgrad and R to kiss" rule. Turns out there was quite a bit of speech plotting without me knowing about it.

It was ok though...After consuming a couple of extra drinks than planned, all was good.

Back to the meal...

The salad had a sufficient amount of dressing, which was something the salad at the other reception lacked. But, it looked kind of sad on my plate.


The main course looked kind of sad too. The taste was ok, although the chicken was on the over-cooked side.

It did make me wonder when the last time this menu or plating was changed -- I'm guessing about 20 years ago.

The dessert was a cookie/scone (somewhere between the two) with sorbet. The sorbet was good, the scone wasn't great.

The decor my step-mom chose was nice -- tigerlilies.

It was nice to be able to spend time with more of my extended family. I think everything worked out well and no one has disowned me because of not being invited to a reception.

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One last note....

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GIZ!

Celebrations will be held this weekend.

Wedding Story: Part IV

I'm very impressed that I was not targetted in R's post about food addiction. Then again, he's stuck living with me and not Giz. So, it's probably a wise move.

R has now progressed to planning a mass intervention for Giz and everyone who commented in Giz's favour on the last post.

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This post is the post you've been waiting for. The wedding day post and pictures. I'm skipping over the Sunday events, another graduation ceremony and a brunch with all of the out of town guests. Sunday night was consumed with last minute preparations: cake and cupcake baking, flower arrangment and last minute knitting.

Despite Kat's warning, I was up half the night finishing my shawl. I had worked too hard and too long to not finish it. Sorry for the cut-off head, but I think this pictures shows the shawl well.

What a relief to finish it! But, the 6:00am hair appointment came way too quickly. With only 2.5 hours of sleep the night before, I was half asleep while getting my hair done.

I gave the hairdresser this picture as inspiration:


I was honest with the stylist and told him that I wasn't sure I liked it. Maybe I had an idea that it would look more like the picture. But, our hair colour and length is different and my face is not as long as hers.

Giz's hair is usually very curly. I'm not sure the stylist liked my "you look like Roy Orbison" comment part-way through the styling. In the end, it was quite nice.


We got married at City Hall. I can't say that I enjoyed the experience. R and I wanted a completely private ceremony, maybe on a beach somewhere. But I guess it's a compromise, somewhere in between a ceremony with all guests and an entirely private one, somewhere romantic.

After the ceremony, we rested for a bit and then finished up preparations for the ceremony. We had arranged for a professional photographer and had to go meet her a couple of hours before the wedding. Since the weather here had been so unpredictable and rainy (still is a month later), we started to panic about getting rained on. By some miracle, the sky cleared up -- maybe even too much (I really shouldn't complain though).

From the beginning of wedding planning, we knew that having professional photography was a must. If having quality photos of your wedding is important to you, get a professional photographer that takes the type of pictures you like. Meet with him/her/them ahead of time to talk about packages and the style of pictures you would like (we wanted more candid/natural shots). We went with Fleischer Photography and are quite happy with the final product. Kathy took our pictures. We went with the package to keep the digital images.

Here are some of the professional shots (we have over 500 of them to choose from):




The reception was held in the Courtyard Restaurant, a stone-brick heritage building that is a common wedding location in Ottawa. They set up the room to your specifications and are clearly very comfortable with overseeing the evening.






One of their features is a personalized menu that is given to each guest at the beginning of the night. Guests can order for a selection of dishes (here's the post about our tasting).

The soup was a carrot squash soup (no pictures because mine are blurry). I warned the restaurant about 5 times that it HAD to be hot. They probably thought we were crazy. In the end, it worked though because it was hot. I would have to say that the soup was good. It seems a bit strange to me to have a butternut squash soup at a June wedding.

The next course was the salad.

I was warned that the salad wasn't great. It tasted like they had dressed it about 15 minutes prior to serving. The dressing was practically non-existent with the exception of the softening effect it had on the lettuce. We requested more dressing.

Apparently the highlight of the evening was the steak:


I had the chicken, which wasn't bad. Not mind-blowing either.

For dessert, I had some maple pie. It was quite sweet, but good.

Toward the end of the evening, we had cake and cupcakes (Giz did a super job on these -- everyone was very complimentary and I did not miss have a professionally done cake).


We were also very happy with the maple syrup giveaways.

So - that's the wedding day. It was small (35 guests), pretty low-key. I felt that it was a good number in terms of the room size and in being able to actually talk to all of my guests but sit down and eat dinner too. I certainly would not have been able to get it all done without Giz's help. Next week we have another reception in my hometown for friends and family.

I must say, I'm relieved that it's done. I enjoyed most of the process, but am quite content to not be planning my wedding anymore.

On to the next...HOUSE SHOPPING! R and I almost put an offer in on a REALLY NICE place today. We decided to bail though. I'm sad about it, but know it was the right decision. The upstairs only had two bedrooms (another bedroom on the main floor and one in the basement). We hope to have a couple of kids -- so we felt that it was important to hold out for a place that had more than 2 bedrooms on one level. I'll get over it. But I really loved the kitchen. :(