Our Wedding Story

January 17, 2014January 17, 2014

Planning a DIY Destination Wedding – Our Wedding {Part 5}

It’s a little funny to be writing about our wedding day more than a year later (I can’t believe it’s been that long already!) but I like the idea of writing it down anyway and being able to reflect on it as the the years go by. I tried to finish this before we left for Iceland last June, but that just didn’t happen.

In this post I’m going to run through the story of our wedding day, and the previous posts on planning are here, here, here, and here.

Now that I’ve been a bit removed from the process, I’m astonished at how much planning went into it. I remember thinking that I didn’t want to stress about anything when it came to planning the wedding but I did stress about a few things, which was inevitable as I’ve come to learn. But, I always tried to keep the big picture in mind, which was getting married to M.

We arrived in France the week before our wedding day and spent a couple of days in Paris with my Mom. We had a few days in Provence before the wedding and planned activities with our families & friends along with final errands to run for the wedding. Table decor, flowers, hair/makeup trial for my MOH Jess and I, and buying wine! We spent late nights talking, hanging out, getting things done, doing a rehearsal of sorts the night before. We didn’t sleep all that much that week. That’s another thing, you will most likely be quite exhausted the day after your wedding.

On the morning of the wedding, M and I woke up early and he drove to Avignon to pick up my aunt & her family and two of our friends. I opted to get a manicure that morning with Jess, and of course half an hour later, I had already ruined two of them. No time to redo it and it ended up not being a big deal. We spent the rest of the morning setting things up: laying out the table settings, setting up for ceremony, putting lavender into the confetti cones we made the night before, putting up string lights for the evening, setting up the candy table etc. Everyone helped out and we were incredibly thankful for that.

In a perfect world, I would have written my vows & thank-you speech months in advance and worried about the other things later. But I left it until the morning of. The two months leading up to the wedding were so hectic that I didn’t have time to sit down and properly think about it (we also moved the month before the wedding). We had figured out the ceremony plan the week before and had a few readings for our friends to choose from. I had no idea how to write a ceremony, but got some great ideas from A Practical Wedding and ended up basing ours on the civil ceremony we had at Cityhall because we liked it so much. I locked myself in our room for over an hour and finally sat down to write my vows and my speech. And then cried for most of that hour as I wrote. I hadn’t realized how much emotion had been accumulating in me and it wasn’t until I sat down and reflected on the significance of the day, our marriage, all the things that had taken place in the past 8 years of our relationship that led us to that day, our families and friends. It was difficult but I made it through. Then I was glad that I had that “good cry”, because then maybe I’d be able to hold it together for the rest of the day (if you know me, you know I’m a really emotional person. I’m that person who cries at the movies…sometimes during scenes where I’m the only person who gets emotional). I wish I had written vows that were more meaningful or more profound, or funnier. But I’ve come to the conclusion that my vows were just one chapter in our marriage.

We picked up peonies and roses for my bouquet and Jess’ bouquet, as well as for the dinner table, the day before. I had assumed (quite incorrectly) that you should just be able to pick up flowers anywhere in Provence. There were lots of flowers, but they were all in people’s properties. And here comes a funny story. There is a beautiful house besides the main road between the villages. It has an incredible garden with beautiful garden roses. We visited a couple of flower stores but for some reason (I honestly don’t even know what it was now) I wanted to check out more. So I made the suggestion of stopping by the “flower house” and see if the owners would maybe consider selling some of them to us. Bad idea #1. We parked by the side of the road and walked up to the property gate, which was wide open. So we walked in. Bad idea #2. We didn’t see anyone, and looked around the main garden and pool area, still no one. So we rang the doorbell. Two minutes later, a lady in her 50’s and what appeared to be her mother came to the door and asked us very angrily in French what we wanted. Jess explained frantically what we wanted to ask and apologized for us. The lady insisted we should have rang the bell at the gate (we would have, had we seen it. We looked for it on the way out and it was hidden by the gate that was wide open). Jess apologized again and again and of course they weren’t interested in selling any of their flowers either. I think the fact that Jess spoke conversational French (she’s quite fluent actually) boded well for us. We were just thankful that they didn’t come to the door with shot guns. Back to the first flower store we went. It turned out they did have peonies even though we didn’t see any in the morning. 60 Euros later, we had over two dozen peonies and a dozen roses. I put the bouquet together on the morning of the wedding, thanks to a little research and a flower arranging class that I went to with Jess. In hindsight, that probably should have been done the night before, so my advice to other DIY-ers out there is to do as much as you can before the wedding day.

During the planning process, I had entertained the idea of doing my own hair & makeup. But then realized that a) I never do anything with my hair and I’m really quite clueless with that kind of stuff and b) I wear minimum makeup on a daily basis and really wouldn’t know what to do with that either. With those two realizations, came the third and final reason that made the decision for me to hire professionals, which was so that I wouldn’t need to worry about hair & make up the morning of the wedding. I loved my hair and was really glad that I still looked like myself after putting on more makeup than I’m accustomed to.

If you’ve ever been to a wedding before, you know that more often than not they run late. After what felt like forever with the makeup application (although it was nice to just sit in a chair and do nothing after a busy morning), I got in my dress, tied my bouquet together with ribbons and went outside for our First Look. I felt nervous, not nervous about the wedding, but just anxious from anticipation. I talked about our First Look and why I love the idea of it as a photographer, in a separate post here so I won’t mention too much here. I will say again though, that it was one of my favourite moments of the day, to spend with my husband. We had seen each other that morning here and there, but it was so special to spend those quiet moments alone with him after we both got ready. And that was the second time I got teary eyed that day. I remember saying to M that I didn’t really want to have our ceremony in front of everyone, even though they were our closest friends & family. I think the introvert in me just wanted to elope with just the two of us.

We left out a lot of traditions (the ones that didn’t really make sense to us) when it came to the wedding. One of the few we did keep was to have a Chinese tea ceremony with my mom and my aunt as a way of honouring my heritage. The funny thing about a wedding day is the emotions that sneak up on you at unexpected times.

After some family photos, it was time for the ceremony. As I stood linking arms with my mom, and watched Jess walk down the aisle ahead of us to the music of Desiree’s I’m Kissing You, I started to tear up again. And as we walked down towards my groom, I couldn’t help but smile as M beamed at me. No tears there, he was just too happy. My mom gave me the longest squeeze after we reached M…probably one of my favourite photos from the day. A lot of people say that the day goes by in a blur, especially the ceremony. But for me, the ceremony was one of the most memorable parts of the day. We didn’t want to rush it to get to the “party” or just gloss over it because it was only a gesture. For me, the ceremony is the “meat and potatoes” of the wedding, the reason why you are all gathered in one place. After all, you can throw a big party any time.

One of the readings we had was by Victor Hugo, from Les Miserables:

“You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving. The great acts of love are done by those who are habitually performing small acts of kindness. We pardon to the extent that we love. Love is knowing that even when you are alone, you will never be lonely again. And great happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved. Loved for ourselves. And even loved in spite of ourselves.”

The other one was this lovely story by Edward Monkton. :)

In all the small chaos of the morning, we forgot to tell everyone about the lavender cones. But that’s ok, they threw them at us anyway.

Then off we went for some portraits.

Not bad for a bouquet I put together right? in fairness, the peonies were nice & full and so easy to work with.

There were some lovely speeches throughout the evening…but I just loved sitting under the evening sky, with the setting sun behind us, enjoying a delicious meal with our friends and family, and listening to some live music.

The Nikonites :D

And of course, some sweet treats since I have a weakness for sweets.

At the end of the night, we said our thank you’s and danced under the stars.

So there you have it: our DIY destination wedding. It certainly wasn’t perfect but it was largely how we had envisioned our wedding day would be. I still can’t believe we pulled it off in the middle of planning a move, working full time jobs, running my own business, without killing each other. That’s gonna count for something right? Here are some closing thoughts on wedding planning:

– Do something that you will absolutely love, whatever it is. A wedding is largely planned for the enjoyment of your guests, but it is also first and foremost, for the two of you. So do what you love.

– It’s so easy to get lost in all the little things that go into a wedding. When you get frustrated by one of those little things, take a step back and ask yourself if you really need that flower that’s out of season, or that particular table linen. Remember why you are doing this in the first place; because the feelings of love and joy, that’s what you will most likely remember 5, 10, 20 years down the road.

– When in doubt, hire a planner! (a good one that is) Why? See part 1 of this series

– Hire vendors you can trust to execute your vision, and trust them to do it. As a photographer, I can’t stress this enough. Sometimes a leap of faith is required, but do your research and trust your gut instincts.

– Don’t be afraid to ask for help…we thought we could do everything for our tiny little wedding, but we still couldn’t. It both felt vulnerable and awesome to have help, especially on the day of. (Yes I definitely have issues when it comes to asking for help)

– Plan, and research and stress if you must, because even if you don’t want to, it will happen. But on the day of, let it all go and just enjoy the day. Pause often and take everything in, commit them to memory…and be thankful that you found a great photographer to help you remember it all afterwards too ;)

– Don’t stop working on your marriage after the wedding. The wedding is one day, but your marriage will be the rest of your life (at least, I hope so).

P.S. all the lovely photos are by the talented Chloé of Caught the Light.

P.P.S. please don’t mind the various grammatical errors..

P.P.P.S. thanks so much for reading! if you are planning a small destination wedding, I hope you’ve found this series helpful. If you are not, I hope you’ve found this entertaining.

May 17, 2013May 21, 2013

Planning a DIY Destination Wedding – Our Wedding {Part 4}

Alright so I’m a bit of a procrastinator when it comes to personal work. But I’m getting there. This is Part 4 in a little series documenting how we planned our destination wedding in Provence from an ocean away. Part 1, 2, and 3 is here, here, and here. In this post, I write about how we arranged the other big items for the wedding, after the venue, and the photographer.

Invitations

I won’t go too deep into this topic, because after all, the invitation is common to all weddings, not just destination weddings. I think like all things associated with a wedding, there seems to be a lot of traditions and what seems to be must-do’s when it comes to invitations. However, M and I firmly believed that you can make up the rules as you go and be adaptable when it comes to weddings…and many other things in life. Before I start, let me just put it out there that I love paper goods. It’s almost unnatural…I’ve loved paper goods and stationery items since I was little, from erasers and pencils to journals and special letter sheets (what are these called?! They are themed letter paper material often with illustrations and such…is this only an Asian thing?! You will see lots of these all over Asia). I also love a good hand-written note or letter, and I used to have pen pals when I was younger.

So that probably explains why I spent almost as much money on our invites as my dress. I say I because M couldn’t really understand why I’d spend so much money on paper items that we are only going to use once…He had a point to a certain extent but I just couldn’t help it and so I happily paid for them myself. I won’t talk about the normal etiquette behind wedding invitations, you can easily google these. We ended up making our own Save the Date cards since we were having a destination wedding – it was fun coming up with the idea. Then for the invitation, I hired a custom invitation designer based out of New York called Swiss Cottage Designs. I had stumbled upon her work online (the internet is a great place indeed) and then got in touch! We didn’t get everything that could come with a “normal” invitation suite (such as a RSVP card), which definitely helped with the cost (it can cost a lot more with all the bells and whistles). But then I splurged on having a custom illustrated map. Did I mention I also love maps? Especially vintage maps.

So that’s what we did with our invitations, but there are lots of other options available. You can use template designs if custom is out of your budget or is just not something you greatly care about. There are lots of template invitation design companies, and you can even find great designers on Etsy. P.S. instead of an RSVP or Reception detail card, you can put that info on your wedding website (if you are doing one) and include a link to that on your invitation. There are so many options to building your own site now; you can use Blogspot or WordPress. It’s super simple.

Here’s how everything looked all put together (photo by me). The invitations really wasn’t DIY since we hired a professional but nevertheless I felt we “hacked” the process since we didn’t get everything you are “supposed” to get, we also hand assembled everything together (thankfully our guest list was teeny tiny) and sat for an hour or so sorting through stamps. Oh yea I also used to collect stamps when I was younger, so I bought these fun vintage stamps from Send More Mail. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything nice for international mail so they just got a regular printed label from Canada Post :D And yes that is a heart shaped rock, there is a story behind that.

Catering

Alright, I think one of the pieces of advice I read about the most while planning our wedding was to prioritize what’s most important to you and spend your funds accordingly. Easy to say, but hard to do. Everything seemed important to us, as least the big things. We wanted a beautiful location that was quintessential Provence but not a castle or chateaux. We definitely wanted delicious local food, after all, you are in France. And then there is music, and of course, the photographer. I have to say that right off the bat, the photographer was the most important to both of us. I am a photographer after all ;) But honestly, after all that’s said and done, the photographs are the only things you will have to remember this special day by. It would have been nice to have a cinematographer, but that wasn’t in our budget. Luckily, my uncle recorded our ceremony for us and that was really special. Food, where were we going to find a catering company without the help of a wedding planner, from an ocean away? Luckily (we did get quite lucky), the property manager for the vacation house we rented has a colleague who works for her and cooks meals for guests upon request, as well as offering cooking lessons. It felt a little strange to hire someone whose work we couldn’t see, or rater, taste. It felt very strange. In the end, we decided to trust our guts once again. After all, Beverly was more than welcoming and accommodating with my numerous emails (she later admitted it drove her a little crazy, hahaha…) I didn’t think she would recommend someone unfit. Not to mention, it’s really more of a family & friends gathering, not a proper large wedding that requires 10 servers and so on and so forth. My final line of reasoning was, she’s French! Her cooking has to be good. :) I know, this could haven been a total load of crap. But I did say we went with our guts.

We ended up spending about the same amount as the average cost per plate of food for an average wedding in Canada. This also included dinnerware, glasses, utensils, linens etc. The house had enough outdoor furniture that we used for both the ceremony and the dinner afterwards, no rental necessary. I don’t have any photos of the food unfortunately, but we had Provençal Chicken/Provençal Beef for the main course and they were probably some of the best chicken and beef I’d ever had.

Music

I’m more of a live music type of gal, and I think M agreed with me on this. So we wanted to hire a live band for the evening. Most likely a little jazz quartet or something. Just live, mellow, lovely music. This, beyond all else, was the most challenging part of the planning. I almost gave up. At one point, we thought we would just come up with our own playlist, and sync one of our iPhones into a couple of wireless speakers. Beverly also recommended a band to us, but after a few emails, we realized he wasn’t what we were looking for (he insisted on playing Today’s Top 40 songs, which I didn’t care for too much – I hear them enough on the radio when I drive). Then I tried searching for “jazz quartet provence” in google.fr in French…I used Google Translate, ha! Seriously good luck finding anything if you don’t speak French (which I don’t, beyond bonjour, au revoir and how to buy 2 tickets…don’t ask) Of course, I did manage to find one by typing in that very phrase in English into google.fr and found these guys. I checked out the sample tunes on their site and fired an email off. Aurelien was really nice and we hit it off right away and settled on that. I felt really at ease just from emailing with him, it’s funny, but trust can be established through email too. And here I will say that it was through Aurelien that I finally felt at ease with the venue. Aurelien had asked about potentially visiting the house, so I put him in touch with Beverly and he went in late March and sent me a couple of photos. And voila! I should note that when we finally found them, it was early February, just 4 months before. They were the sweetest guys, and very talented. Everyone enjoyed the music that night. (Photos below by Chloé of Caught the Light)

These were the rest of the big items to be squared away. I felt considerably better after that. And then I would say I kind of obsessed over the smaller details for the next 3 months or so. Just a little. I knew all the wedding blogs, read all of them, and constantly saw new and creative ideas to do for our wedding. Oh, an outdoor movie screening complete with floor cushions and a projector? Sounds amazing! and I love movies! (Where in God’s name was I going to find a projector in the country side?! hmm) A welcome goodie bag for our guests stuffed with local goodies and other useful stuff complete with a hand screen printed canvas tote? Sounds like fun! (Ok, they are our guests, not children, they are probably more than capable of figuring out things on their own and really I didn’t have the time) It was just a cycle of blog surfing and more and more details. Finally I realized how overwhelmed I felt and worse, I was starting to feel like our wedding wasn’t going to be very pretty or blog worthy. And as soon as I thought that, I said to myself, what is wrong with you?! Who cares about these things? No one is probably even going to notice if you had mason jars or stripped paper straws, why am I driving myself crazy with these details? That wasn’t why we were getting married, didn’t you know that? The worst part was, I did know that, I just lost sight of that reason a little somewhere along the way. So I stopped visiting the blogs, and went to a blog I hadn’t visited in a while. One called A Practical Wedding. Their motto is “weddings. minus the insanity, plus the marriage” Just what I needed. Then I read The Mason Jar Manifesto by none other than one of my favourite photographers, Jonas Peterson. He hit the nail right on the head. So I stopped visiting the wedding blogs and concentrated on the reason why we were having this wedding at all – a commitment and manifestation of love, a celebration of family and friendship, and focused only on the details that were meaningful to us.

Looking back, the way our funds were allocated (we still have the spreadsheet of everything) reflected our values and what we considered to be most important to us. A beautiful but intimate venue and amazing photos took up about 50% of our budget. Followed by great food, terrific music, my dress, and invitations.

In the next instalment, I’ll do a run-through of the day and maybe recount some funny stories and fond memories.

April 26, 2013May 15, 2013

Planning a DIY Destination Wedding – Our Wedding {Part 3: The Dress}

Ah the wedding dress. So much romance and ideology and expectations on one single item. Growing up, I wasn’t one of the girls who dreamed about her wedding day or have always known what kind of dress she would wear. After we got engaged, I actually fretted about the impending wedding dress shopping. In my mind, wedding dress shopping was associated with going to boutique after bridal salon, trying on tons of different dresses and pushy sales people. The very thought of that made me cringe a little. I’m sure my opinion of this is a bit exaggerated but nevertheless I didn’t want to be in that situation.

So that was one of the reasons why I bought my dress online (gasp!) The second reason was that I couldn’t believe how expensive wedding gowns can be. Let me explain, I enjoy fashion and love a gorgeous dress as much as the next girl, but actually dropping thousands of dollars on one was another thing. I love the designs of Monique Lhuillier, Carolina Herrera, Vera Wang, Ralph Lauren (swoon!) but knew I wouldn’t be able to actually afford one. On the other hand, I didn’t want anything with bad quality either. All that is to say I believe in paying a little more for a quality product, there had to be middle ground somewhere right? I also didn’t want the typical bridal gown either…you know, strapless, A-line poufy ball gown with some sort of random beading or embroidery. Not that there’s anything wrong with them, they are just not my cup of tea and most bridal boutiques seem to have an abundance of them in slight variations. In the end, I bought a used wedding dress on Once Wed, a popular wedding blog that also has a dress boutique where past brides can sell their gently used wedding gowns. This is actually a great way to buy a designer dress if that’s what you really want. The dress I ended up buying was a number from Priscilla of Boston (the boutique was closed in 2011 by parent company David’s Bridal), a bridal boutique based out of, of course, Boston.

Now, I know what you are thinking, how could I have bought a dress without trying it on and no way of knowing how it would look on me?! And it’s not refundable; like buying things on Kijiji or Craigslist. This is definitely not for everyone and I did worry considerably about it. In the end, I decided to trust my gut! Plus, my close friend, and maid of honour said to me, well if you end up hating it for some reason, you can always re-sell it. True that! A note here about buying used wedding dresses on Once Wed, they highly recommend you use the service of companies like escrow.com to protect both the seller and the buyer. It’s even better than PayPal – the buyer sends the money to escrow.com, which is essentially a mutual third party who will hold the funds and notifies the seller, who will then ship the item. Once the item is received by the buyer, s/he will have to actually accept the item and notify escrow in case the item wasn’t what it was supposed to be and the seller was a scammer. Once the buyer officially accepts the item, then and only then is the funds released to the seller. There is of course a fee attached to the service, but it’s only $100 and can be split between the buyer/seller and in my opinion well worth the money when making this type of purchase. I spent $700 on the dress and after shipping, alterations and dry cleaning, came to just under $1,000.

When I got the dress (after considerable delay at the border and some fun times with FedEx), I was ecstatic! It was only about 1 size too big on me and I just loved it! I felt really giddy and I didn’t want to take it off. I didn’t cry though, and for someone as sentimental as me, I was a little surprised that I didn’t cry. But it didn’t bother me at all, I don’t think every bride-to-be cries when they’ve found “the dress”. I also don’t know if there really is a dress that’s “the dress” for you. I think you will find one that will be the best fit in all aspects: look and feel, material, quality, price etc but there isn’t necessarily one that is “perfect”. I got the dress in the mail in July, just 2 months after our engagement. In fact, this was the first big purchase I made for the wedding. A couple of friends were really surprised by that and asked what if I fell in love with other dresses afterwards? Well, I figured if that really happened, I will deal with it. In truth, I still enjoyed looking at wedding dresses online and liked lots of them, even loved a few perhaps, but I knew this going in and accepted that was probably going to happen. So it wasn’t a big deal even as I found myself liking other dresses, I knew I loved the one I bought. I think there were quite a few dresses that I liked as a dress or liked the idea of them, but they probably wouldn’t have worked out as a dress for me. Does that make sense? A few months after I bought the dress, Randy of Say Yes to the Dress fame released a book called It’s All About the Dress and I flipped through it out of curiosity. His book went beyond the ordinary advice and actually explained his philosophy when it comes to choosing the right wedding dress for every bride. This was a very interesting read indeed. In addition to taking into consideration what silhouettes are most flattering for you, the venue of your wedding, the season, the budget, and to keep in mind the question “what is the dress that makes you feel the most beautiful?”, I think the most important tip he offered was to figure out the story of you as a couple and as an individual, which will naturally also be the story you will tell for your wedding. This really resonated with me and it all made sense. We had determined what we wanted our wedding to be: relaxed, intimate, romantic with a sense of simplicity. I felt the dress I chose was just that: romantic, but without being overly girly or too sweet, and elegant but simple.

Then there was just one final consideration, since I had to take the dress onto a plane, not choosing a poufy ball gown was definitely the right choice for me. I can’t imagine trying to do that. I bought a travel garment bag for this specific purpose. It was $40 plus shipping and duties but was worth every penny. You can see it here. I was able to fold the bag in half after putting the dress in, and we also fit in M’s suit. There is a lock system at one end for the hangers so everything stays together! Genius. The best part was nothing was wrinkled after a transatlantic flight (even though I had to lay them flat on top of our bags in the overhead compartment).

Photos by Chloé of Caught the Light

So there you have it. Wedding dress shopping doesn’t have to be stressful. It doesn’t even have to be a “wedding” dress. It could be anything you want to wear in my opinion. And if you are having a destination wedding, consider how you will transport the dress before and after the wedding and invest in a good garment bag. Next up I will talk about how we found the other vendors we hired for the big day, such as catering, and music.

April 18, 2013April 18, 2013

Planning a DIY Destination Wedding – Our Wedding {Part 2: Finding the Right Photographer}

This is part 2 in my mini-series reflecting on planning a destination wedding on our own in Provence, France. I think the term “destination wedding” is most often associated with Mexico or somewhere in the Caribbean, with a ceremony on the beach and a travel agent who takes care of everything for you. It’s essentially a packaged tour but with a wedding. Don’t get me wrong, I think a ceremony on the beach is incredibly romantic! I believe that just like travel, it’s possible to plan it on your own and do it independently. It’s probably easier to have someone else take care of everything for you, but I think doing it on your own is half the fun. And, if something goes wrong, well at least you will have some funny memories ;) (And you’ll be the only ones who will know!) Part 1 of the series is here and I talked about how we booked a venue, which also served as a vacation house for a week where some of our family and friends stayed with us as well. In today’s installment I will cover our search for a photographer. I’ve decided to break the series into smaller, more sizeable chunks as I tend to write a lot.

Even though the venue was the first thing we booked, we were also searching for a photographer more or less at the same time. The question I got asked the most after we got engaged was who was going to photograph our wedding? I even wrote a blog post about how to choose the right wedding photographer. They are just my opinions of course and you might have a different idea about this altogether, which is cool.

When I first started reading blogs online, I stumbled upon this amazing wedding in Scotland and subsequently discovered that the couple was the husband & wife photography duo behind Lillian and Leonard. I fell in love with the soft and dreamy photos and the way they saw the world and a wedding through their lens. So when we realized we needed to get in touch with a photographer soon, they were on the top of my list. But we also thought it might be easier to find a photographer in Canada, someone we can meet before the wedding. This is how I met Alex of Young Hearts. There was something about Alex’s photos that drew me in, I wasn’t quite sure what it was, perhaps the sense of romance but in a subtle and fun way. Unfortunately Alex wasn’t available for our date. I should note here that our wedding was on a Thursday so for a destination wedding, if a photographer was already booked for that Saturday, it would be very challenging, if not impossible, for them to fit in a Thursday wedding in another country. So then I emailed Cara at Lillian & Leonard… And, they also weren’t available :( They already had a wedding booked in the Scottish Highlands for that Saturday. I must say that at this point I had a minor panic attack: eeeek! What if all the good photographers are already booked?! We would have booked a photographer first if we had the choice, but I also knew that we couldn’t narrow down on a date if we didn’t have a venue/location. Most good photographers get booked up 8 – 12 months in advance, if not more. There was another photographer that I had admired for a couple of years but she was based in the United States. Her name is Michéle Waite. I loved her photos from the first time I saw them: she captures all the emotions and those in-between-moments at a wedding. On top of that, she does it so well and so consistently no matter the kind of wedding: big or small, extravagant or intimate, traditional or contemporary. I didn’t think that she would be available for our date but somehow she was! We had a Skype chat and emailed back and forth a few times. In the end though, we realized we just didn’t have enough budget for wedding photography as well as to cover the travel expenses for 2 photographers from the US to France. And here is where the story got interesting. I mentioned to Michéle that we will perhaps look for a photographer based out of the UK as it would be a lot more economical from a travel perspective. Michéle then recommended Chloé of Caught the Light. At the same time, Cara had also offered a few recommendations for other UK photographers and Chloé was also one of them. What are the chances? We checked out Chloé’s website & blog and I looked through wedding after wedding. I loved Chloé’s fresh perspective and bright colours, and the candid photos that she catches without being obtrusive really told the story of a couple’s wedding day. So we got in touch and she was available! And the rest was history as they say :)

So that’s how we hired a photographer for our destination wedding. You can hire a photographer from your home country or you can hire someone at your destination or somewhere nearby. I know with destination weddings in the Caribbean and Mexico, a lot of the times the resorts have their designated photographers…but it is my honest opinion that most of them aren’t very good. But everyone is different! The most important thing is to do your research and know your options! And I truly believe the most important thing is that you love the photographer’s work and feel a connection not only to his/her photos but to the photographer as well.

Next up, finding a dress doesn’t have to be stressful!

March 29, 2013April 17, 2013

Planning a DIY Destination Wedding – Our Wedding {Part 1: The Epic Venue Search}

I can’t believe it’s been 10 months since our wedding. In a way, it felt like it was just yesterday. I kind of regret not documenting the whole planning process but figure I will share some of it now anyway. After all, planning a destination wedding on our own was definitely quite an adventure. They say hindsight is 20/20 so I will be sharing some of that and will try my best to remember how things were at the time of planning as well.

I’m breaking this into a 3-part mini blog series. Part 1 will include booking the venue from another country without the help of a wedding planner (fun, fun, fun!).

After M and I got engaged, we spent the first couple of months just enjoying the giddy feeling. Then gradually we realized we had to start planning this thing! I had already read some wedding blogs and being a photographer, knew a thing or two about the wedding industry and this wedding business. But I still wasn’t quite prepared for the complexity of planning an event like this. Looking back, I realize this was probably the biggest event we’d ever plan together. Anyway, we knew that first we needed to decide where we wanted to have the wedding. Growing up, I didn’t dream about my wedding day. I was always pretty sure I wanted to get married, and after I met M, my daydreams were about marrying M, but not the details of the wedding itself. We both agreed that we wanted a small and intimate wedding, nothing too traditional, and we wanted it to be beautiful but simple. I don’t remember who threw out the destination wedding idea now, but it was probably me. It just made sense, we like to travel and I’m a hopeless romantic. Ok, M agreed, that would be pretty cool, but where? My first thought was Provence, France. We fell in love with the Provence countryside like so many others before us, when we visited in 2009 and we’d love to share what we found with our family and friends. My second choice would have been Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. I love being close to the sea and have always wanted to visit Cape Breton. So two potential destinations, very different from each other, how do we decide? We started by asking a few close friends and our immediate family whether they would travel to France for our wedding and surprisingly got a “yes” pretty much all around. The Cape Breton idea was quickly eliminated because we thought it probably won’t be warm enough to get married on the East Coast right by the sea until July and we really didn’t want to travel afterwards in the high season of summer. So Provence it was!

planning-destination-wedding-provence-france-12 — lavender & cobblestone streets. photos by me.

Throughout our engagement, whenever people asked us where we were getting married and our answer was “south of France”, there was usually this look of surprise and awe. Secretly I think everyone must have thought we were renting a castle or a chateau and having a fancy pants wedding. In truth, that wasn’t the case. It would have been pretty cool to rent a castle or a chateau though! I mean who wouldn’t want to get married in an authentic, restored castle from the 11th century like this one?! Just wicked. But that didn’t happen for two reasons: 1) It wasn’t us; I’d never wanted to be a princess, and I didn’t want to be a princess for our wedding 2) we didn’t have 7,500 euros to spend on a castle even if we wanted the glamorous princess wedding. So we had to define some criteria for what we were looking for. Since we wanted a civil wedding ceremony, we didn’t need to find a church, and since we would need a place to stay anyway, we thought why not rent a vacation property for a week? We could have gone to a hotel or private property that caters to weddings, but we wanted to do it ourselves and it would also save some money. We knew it was the right decision because we felt not only would having the wedding at our own rental property allow us more control over how the day would unfold, but it also lent to the intimate and relaxed feeling we wanted. It would just be like a gathering of family and dear friends. A note here about getting married legally in France: since the French are famous for their bureaucracy, it’s pretty brutal for foreigners to legally get married in France. I don’t remember exactly now but I think one of the prerequisite was that you both had to have been in the country for 45 days consecutively prior to the wedding day. That clearly wasn’t going to happen, and plus we’d need to be legally married in Canada, which is where we live anyway, so we didn’t worry about legally getting married in France. Instead, M and I went to city hall two weeks before our French wedding, and got the legal part done.

This post is getting insanely long, and I haven’t even gone through the venue search yet. Sigh, but follow along if you are interested :) Next we had to find a little vacation property for a week. After settling on a time frame of end of May because the weather would already be nice and warm but not overly hot yet, the search for the perfect venue began! Of course, I know now that like many things in life, there is no such thing as a perfect venue. This part of the search probably took the longest for us. We didn’t book our venue until October, 2011. That was just 7 months before the wedding! Yikes, The Knot wedding planning book said we should book a venue at least 10 – 12 months out! Yup, I bought a book by The Knot. I felt most of the things in there were non sense but I wanted to find a basic guideline for what things “should” be done and when. Most of it didn’t really apply to us, and I’m glad they didn’t, so we took what we needed, threw the rest out the window and customized it to us. Back to the venue, this did cause some tension and at least one big fight. At the time, we were planning the wedding, organizing and getting ready to move, I was working two jobs and tons of other house related things on the go. We knew it was probably going to be stressful going in. I remember fighting about maybe delaying the wedding in the middle of looking at a bunch of vacation houses online. In the end, somehow we agreed we can do it if we work as a team. The initial search for the venue consisted of looking at various France vacation rental agency websites, and boy are there a lot of them out there. We stared at tons of amazing photos on purefrance.com, holiday-rentals.co.uk, homes-in-provence.com and made this huge spreadsheet of properties. Then once the romance of the idea dissipated a little, there was one little issue that presented itself to us: most of the vacation rental websites had no review system. Hmm, we weren’t really comfortable with the idea of booking a vacation rental for 1 week based just on pretty pictures. It was like having a crush on someone, then realizing you were only charmed by their looks. Ha! Note: this is where having a wedding planner would have really came in handy. He/she would already know the area and probably know some properties and would be able to visit them for you. It’s really about your comfort level with planning it all yourself and your budget. But we stubbornly pushed on. We realized just how expensive properties in Provence can be in comparison to some of the other regions in the south such as Languedoc, Dordogne or the Loire. Provence is the most well known and the most touristy, and the most expensive. After looking at the other areas as well, we decided to stick with Provence since we were already familiar with it. Another consideration as well was how remote the property was. Our guests would already have to take a flight to Paris or Marseille, and then probably a train ride, and/or a car rental. After almost a month of searching online, we finally narrowed down on 3 properties; 2 of which we found on vrbo.com (probably the world’s biggest vacation rental site, with a review functionality I might add) and one from theluberon.com.

1) Mas de Cabrieres was absolutely charming and felt so quintessentially French. The garden area was also beautiful. I corresponded with the owner back and forth via email and he was very helpful and even got two of the previous renters to get in touch with me to let me know how their experiences were.

2) Les Plaines was a country house located in the village of Murs with panoramic views of the country side. Take a look at the photos and you’ll see what I mean.

3) Mas de la Vallette was a farmhouse villa near the village of Joucas with amazing views of the country side as well and also quite charming.

It wasn’t an easy decision, but after numerous emails and questions with owners/property managers (both #2 and #3 are managed by the amazing Beverly), and some impromptu gmail chats with my maid of honour, we decided on #3. Initially Mas de Cabrieres was my favourite but despite the charm and the good feedback from previous renters, we also wanted a property with a garden area that overlooks the surrounding country side whereas Mas de Cabrieres was in the centre of the village. Mas de la Vallette was also able to accommodate 2 additional people compared to Les Plaines and that was important because we wanted to be able to accommodate as many family/friends as we can even though we didn’t have a confirmed number of guests yet at this point. The property was located right above the tiny village of Joucas and 10 minutes away from the more well known hilltop village of Gordes, and about 45 minutes away from Avignon, which is the gateway to Provence, with major train connections.

So with the venue and a date confirmed, we felt quite relieved! The day we drove onto the driveway of the property and got out of the car, I was like a kid in a candy store. It looked amazing! Just what I love about the Provençal country houses: stone exterior, wooden shutters, vines everywhere, and little garden with trees and plenty of flowers. I was charmed. Sometimes photos just don’t do justice to the particular place/person/moment you are trying to capture. But that’s also kind of cool I think, it’s not perfect, the photo is part of your memory but the rest is well, somewhere out there. Am I making sense? And now after reading through all this text, here are some photos of the lovely little place that was our home away from home for a week, and where we got married. It will forever hold a special place in my heart.

All of the above photos are from the lovely Chloé of Caught the Light. Below are some photos I took on our last day there.

Maid of honour & best man :)

Next up! Invitations and finding the right photographer. And maybe something about my dress.