five days

Yes, only fives days left till the big event!

Marcus and Chloe and I squished into the car on Saturday morning and drove over the big mountains to Calgary. The roads were better than we had anticipated. Hit some bad fog and a little snow, but that's all. Arrived in Calgary just after 8pm on Saturday.

We went to good ol' Our Lady of the Assumption church for mass yesterday with my mom. And then I had lunch with my oldest and dearest friend Lucia, whom I have not been in touch with for quite some time. And I got to see both Blake and Aaron. A lovely day all around!

Today, Marcus and I are to do running around:
-obtaining a marriage license (fairly important when wanting to get married)
-dropping off supplies at the florist
-buying soap from our fav shop in Kensington, The Beehive
-getting our wedding rings freshly cleaned
-picking up Marcus' comic books that have been accumulating at Comic-kazi

Tonight we having dinner with Aaron and Meghan somewhere fancy, the Tribune Restaurant. Looking forward to that and visiting with them!

Tomorrow, I'm meeting with fellow Veer keyworders for breakfast. It will be nice to finely put faces to names of people I have worked with for two and half years! Yes, that's what happens when you work remotely. In the afternoon, Marcus and I will meet with his brother Tony, our MC for the wedding, to discuss "the plan". The evening will be spent at an After Thought Art Society crit night. Fun!

Wednesday, I'm excited to get a manicure! My first one ever! Mom is getting a manicure too, so it can be a full girly experience!

I'll keep you posted on the rest of the week.

16 days

So we've managed to check off a few more things from the list:

- Tina has finished making the little button flourishes for the table centre pieces. Yay, Teens! I bet your fingers are sore...

- I think I've determined the seating arrangements for the reception. I doubt we'll change it much from here. We need to get the table numbers and seating cards printed now.

- Blake picked up some San Pellegrino bottled water and Jones Soda to have served from the bar, since there weren't too many exciting choices for non-alcoholic drinks.

- I've been working on our wedding guest book slash photo album. We couldn't find any albums that left much room to write beside the photo space, so Marcus bought a couple sketchbooks. Progress is slow on that because I have to measure out each page and then place the photo corners. After the wedding is over, we're going to rebind the pages into one nice book. Hope this plan all works out.

- Also, related to the guest book... Marcus was encouraging me to buy some fancy fluffy (and quirky) pens for the guestbook signing. Anyone that has worked with me knows I have a bit of a crazy pen collection. It keeps people from walking away with them. Anyway, I haven't been able to find anything I like lately, so I started making our own last night (while watching Criminal Minds). Carried over the button element and added some squiggly wire. You'll just have to be surprised come the big day! I wish I had a hot glue gun, then I could have gone all out "sarah crazy" and added feathers :)

- Blake purchased a couple of boxes from Ikea for gift envelopes, which we might end up decorating a bit. I don't think we've mentioned on the website, but if you're wondering, we did not register for gifts anywhere. I suppose you could say it's terribly untraditional, but we're asking, that if guests would like to give a gift, what we would appreciate most, is a gift of money. That way we can a new bed, which we desperately need, and put the rest towards a down payment in the future.

The list of to-dos is still fairly long. And poor Marcus has gone and gotten really sick with a cold. So he's been benched from wedding planning for several days. I might end up having to dump more things on the family... and meanwhile, I'm really trying not to end up sick myself.

20 days

Got my wedding dress picked up on Tuesday. Then I dealt with a flat tire. Fun. Well, actually it wasn't bad because I hung out at Ikea while the car was being worked on at Canadian Tire.

Tina got the dress I made her for the wedding. Apparently it fits good and she has no complaints about the ruffles that I snuck in :) Now I can sleep a little more easily. I was pretty anxious about whether the dress was going to fit good, and more importantly, look good on her. So yay!

We've asked several people to assist with the wedding. Tony, Marcus' older brother, is going to be our MC at the reception. Troy and Travis, Marcus' nephews, will be Ushers. Rob, a longtime friend of mine, will be taking photos for our guestbook. And Adam and Janine, Marcus' nephew and niece will be assisting with the guestbook as well. We're still going over everything that will need to be done the day of the wedding and figuring out who can help with what.

I spent this past going back and forth with our venue representative, determining times, menu choices, bar set-up, etc. I think most of this has been taken care of now. A few details are still left to figure out.

The next two weeks are going to be crazy, but I promise to blog as we carry on with the planning.