But being that today is Valentine's day, and that I was inspired by a post from The Green Hangar Shop Blog that I'm going to share a little bit about our wedding and the venue :)
Wayne and I married fairly young and right out of university so we weren't well off financially and were starting our married life with him returning to school to start his masters, so everything about our planning was budget conscious... I also knew that I wanted a memorable, somewhat traditional but definitely us wedding. We had found the location while on a date the year before - partly because we'd been commuting to see each other between Toronto, where I lived and St. Catherines where he was living at the time, to go to school at Brock University... and every time we drove along we'd see the sign for Balls Falls conservation area...and it just intrigued us...
We wandered around a small historical village setting and then hiked out to the main cataract (about 1/2 an hour walk away) and had a great time just wandering around the area. We were heading back to the parking lot and our car when we noticed all sorts of greenery and decorations being taken into the barn on the property ... being the nosy nelly that I am... I just had to go and peek... they were setting it for a wedding and I was hooked.
So when we decided to get married the following August, my first call was to Balls Falls to see what dates were available for the following summer... to my dismay, they said that it looked like they were fully booked :(, but two of the bookings were tentative :D and she would contact the people with tentative bookings to see if either of them were planning to cancel....
I waited as patiently as I could - for three days - to see if I would be getting married there on May 30th, July 4th or not at all....
It was going to be...
May 30th, 1998
And I had almost nine months to the day to plan...so I did what every girl did twelve years ago (before technology exploded everywhere)... went and bought out the bridal magazine section of the grocery store and took the week after I finished my summer job and before I started my last year of university and went to my grandparent's cottage to make lists...
Wayne had given me the guidelines that he wanted 'the guys' to be his groomsmen:
(Side note, Robyn was born 5 weeks early on April 29th, 1998 which gave mom and baby time to recover enough to make our wedding their first major pubic appearance:
Well, I was able to plan the minister, the flowers, the colours and more during that week at the cottage... we decided to go fairly traditional and have Wayne buy his tux and me buy a long gown... but to tell family and friends that they could bring casual clothes for after the church to take advantage of the walking trails and beautiful park while we took pictures... many of them did ...
The only downside was the heat... but even that made for a beautiful picture when I had my bridezilla moment and I sat down and told the photographer I wasn't moving until I got a bottle of water:
So we had a picnic style barbecue for our reception, complete with family style seating and all you could eat shish-kabobs right off the grill! We also had our caterer do potato salad, green salads and macaroni salad and everyone ate their fill and we kept country hours by starting the wedding at 1pm, the reception at 4pm and having the bride and groom leave the party by 9pm...
We set off for a nearby hotel for our first night of the honeymoon, but didn't tell anyone which one, because chivarees are part of a family tradition on my side and not one that I wanted to experience...
We then took off for a week at the cottage and arrived to find out that a terrible storm had gone through the area earlier in the day leaving us without power or phone ... but that's another story for another time...
