wedding bells

so jason asked me, i said yes and now what?

a lot of planning that's what.

this just may end up being a bridezilla blog from here till next fall since I don't want to be "one of those" where my end of the conversation with friends is mostly about wedding stuff. so i guess this will be my arena to blah blah blah about w day topics.

Ceremony venue:
SO! today I got a reply back from St. Augustine's Church, and although the wedding coordinator is out of office till the end of the month, the Parish Secretary thinks that the dates we have in mind won't be a problem since we've requested 12 mos ahead. However, we still need to get the dates confirmed with the coordinator when she gets back. I also registered myself as an official member of the parish - who knew it would so easy as a click and send? I didn't. Why didn't my parents ever register our family at their parish? how weird. i didn't know till recently that the reason people get envelopes for their donation at Mass is because they are official members of the parish! what a dits. thanks mum & dad.
it would be my absolute dream to have our ceremony at St Augie's since I went to school there and i remember my time there being a blast. i loved all my classmates and the teachers and going to school was actually fun. so my memories of St Augustine's are very happy ones.

Reception venue:
i originally wanted our reception to be at the vancouver art gallery, but those dreams were crushed when i saw how much they charge. for the space. $4000 deposit for the space only. doesn't include any food or anything. plus they want 10% of the total spent to be given as a donation to the gallery. well fuck that.
so we checked out a few places. ones i like are:

• Cecil Green House at UBC (ubc alumni get dibs on booking) - it's a gorgeous heritage home by the museum of anthropology. the only problem is the capacity.
• Hotel Vancouver Fairmont - they have these fabulous wedding packages that seem affordable; however, how much to rent the ballroom space? I don't know! we will have to see
• Pan Pacific - if mum and dad will foot the bill hoo ha ha
• Sutton Place - nice hotel, i hear of great service from ppl who have had their wedding receptions there. but again, how much?
• Bayshore - coal harbour, nice view, need i say more?

and so far, those are the places we've thought of so far. since we're aiming for a fall wedding, we've eliminated venues with a nice garden etc because chances are it will rain and no one will care to look outside and appreciate the grounds. so long as it's nice inside (no plastic chairs, proper tabletops, cloths and chair covers) that's fine by me.

if we can at least get the venues down, we can relax and perhaps not worry about wedding stuff until the next year :o) i can only hope......