Just what will they think of next.?

Ok, this takes the cake for the
worst bridal show ever.http://www.hollyscoop.com/tv/bridalplasty/calling-all-psycho-brides-bridalplasty-is-coming-to-e_2573.aspx

A nice alternative to city hall.

Fun photo of the week.

Funny photo of the week.

Speaking of doves, careful. Its cold out there.

Ottawa Congress Centre/////HUH

So last week I tried to book one of our 2012 brides into the Congress Centre which opens next fall. Would you believe that they do not take reservations for 2012. Baffles the heck out of me.

Whats up, do they think they won't open up on time?

So far, no explanation from them despite two queries.

Last I heard, they hired the top Chef away from the Chateau and he is
set to start next summer. Very odd, but then again, the Centre always
had a strange stance on weddings. Ten years back both the Centre and
the Westin had a clause that allowed them to cancel you within a couple
of months if they booked a convention. Nice.

Ottawa wedding magazine, Issue 2

http://www.myvirtualpaper.com/doc/coylepublishing/ottawaweddings_winter2010_virtual/2010070601/

Here is a link to the second issue. Not as good as the first and frankly very little really good OTTAWA info. It is starting to seem just like all the other Ottawa rags, chock full of ads and very little cool new stuff. The articles are as fluffy as Wedding Bells with little by way of local features.

On top of all that, what about showing the ethnic mix of Ottawa. The two main features were white as milktoast and frankly, pretty boring.

Oh well. Here I was hoping for some good stuff to get my teeth into. Frankly, most of the best wedding info is right here online on blogs and forums and to tell the truth you can get a lot more
of a feel for most service providers on their Facebook pages.

Doves in Ottawa

http://pages.videotron.com/envolees/pictures.html

New Bridal Shop in Town

Hey ladies. You ve gotta check out http://www.luxebridal.ca/

There are a couple of local women who just opened a great looking spot on Dalhousie
featuring a range of wedding dress designs. Prices are mid to top range but some of
these gowns are so unique you will flip.

Only downside, not enough shots of the site to show the range. Get with it girls.

One great band.

This summer I had the chance to hear http://www.swayorchestra.com on two occasions and frankly, I think they are one of the best groups in the area.

I asked about their rates and to my surprise they are only a few times more expensive than a top DJ. What an impressive show and great sound. Check them out.

Deals,deals,deals.

Wow. A friend from Vancouver just tipped me to this site http://www.groupon.com/ottawa/

She actually bought her wedding flowers AND her makeup artist at over half price. Cool
They just started up in Ottawa today. Very neat idea.

The Wedding of the Year???

Okay, so its not about Ottawa, but some of these ideas are kind of cool.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/07/30/hot.wedding.trends/index.html?hpt=Mid

City Hall

Its a classic movie scene, a couple rush into City Hall for a wedding.

In Ottawa, however, nothing could be further from the truth. A friend took this route last week and boy, the paperwork and fooling around with bookings seemed worse than in Southminster United on a bad day.
To top it all off, the actual room where weddings take place looks like the kind of room Rev Canada uses to audit wrongdoers in. My suggestion, try the Unitarian Church on the Ottawa
River Parkway. A lot nicer folks and a beautiful spot to boot.

Etsey

Etsy is a great place to troll for wedding bargains. Whether it be hats, invites, or jewellery
the deals just keep on coming. Better yet, add the word Ottawa to your search and voila, some
cool local home businesses that you will surely get inspired by.


http://www.etsy.com/listing/43928010/girls-party-wedding-dress-textured-white?ref=sr_gallery_33&ga_search_query=ottawa&ga_search_type=handmade&ga_page=&order=&includes[]=tags&includes[]=title

National Gallery Weddings.

We are starting to get super busy this summer, but I squeezed in some time to talk about one of the most talked about venues, The National Gallery.

The good.................

Gorgeous locale. The space as well as the views are #1 in Ottawa
Great reasonably priced parking.
Super acoustics.

The bad, well perhaps it starts with the fact that its really a gallery and not a wedding venue.

First off, your venue will have gallery goers either ogling or wandering through your party, and perhaps even your ceremony unless you have lots of security. This of course adds to the cost. To boot, the place is pricey, probably the most expensive per setting in town. While the food was great, it was still not at the top of the list for myself and my date. Its a long way down from the Cordon Blue and 18.

I think that the worst part though is the list of strange rules that only a Government run facility
could come up with. First, the galleries all close down at 5PM meaning no pix in those cool locales or even a small tour for the out of town guests (hint hint, how bout it NAG.) I have no idea why the Gallery would not leave the place open for an extra hour for the guests given the profit they make on these events.

Finally, it seemed that all the staff, from security, to the servers to the wedding planner were really not very relaxed. Better them than me working for the Feds. Yikes.

If I was rating it by stars, I would call it a 3.5 on 5.

Canadiana---Fun photo of the week

I love the expression on their faces.
What could she have been thinking.?.

Why does this shot remind me of
the Shrek photo just below?

Ottawa Photo Booth

Here is a fun idea, and an Ottawa source for the hardware.

http://mmecanada.com/content/photobooth.html

Funny photo of the week.

Ok, I know they were big fans of Shrek, but maybe they saw it one too many times. LOL

Ottawa Wedding Costs

A quick bit of math on the poll at the side of this blog points out that roughly two thirds of Ottawa brides spend about 20K on their weddings. Interesting, but thats not the whole story.

What about that parking bill at the Westin all your guests paid. How about Granny's flight from
Halifax. Lets not forget all the costs of the honeymoon and the engagement parties. Travel by your pals, hey that's all part of the wedding. Clothing for the bridesmaids, add it on.

My guess is that you can pretty well double whatever you think you spent and then some.

The point of this post. Well perhaps it's worth rethinking how you allocate funds when you
realize you are planning a 50K event!

Invitations at a bargain.

Hey girls, the deals don't get better than this.
http://www.vistaprint.ca

Everything I hear says they provide a great product
at a killer price.



.

Destination Weddings

Here is another take on destination weddings. Enjoy.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/04/30/destination.weddings.dilemma/

Wedding Bells say that 7% of Canadian brides go the destination route, while Martha Stewart

mag says over 22% of US brides go that route. It's said that a destination wedding is less expensive, but I am certain that is only because they are a quarter the size as far as the guest list. I am fairly certain they do not count the money spent by all those friends and relatives getting there. Still, a nice idea for many.

Eventective/Huh?

We recently looked at joining a site called Eventective which lists a range of services. The price was right, but I looked at a number of feedback forums and decided against it.

Why the post. Well, I simply wanted to point out to couples that this is simply a bad way to shop. First, it seems that the site allows you to contact a vendor directly. In reality, it sends your info off to dozens of merchants you did not even ask to contact. One bride to be that I met received over 200 emails from local merchants.

Why bother? Just Google the services you want, compare away and get on with it.

Guess there is a site for everyone, even those who want to be spammed.

Never saw this before.

Its tough to find something original at a wedding. Here's my funny photo of the week
and an idea that combines a couple of cultures and a lot of fun.

The McCaffrey Saga/ Ottawa Wedding Dresses.

So now there is news that Justina McCaffrey is back in town operating just a couple of blocks south of her former husband and former store.

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/sports/2010wintergames/McCaffrey+sets+shop+blocks+from+partner/2733475/story.html


I don`t know about you, but I think both of them should be embarrased enough to get out of town. First, they bankrupted leaving their staff holding the bag for some wages and the banks (ie the taxpayers due to Fed funds they wangled) holding the bag for hundreds of thousands they wasted away. Then they spread their messy divorce all over the papers (pity their poor kids). Now they both think its just fine to prance around Ottawa like nothing happened.

A McCaffrey dress, Can U say bad karma.

Destination weddings.

As a person who is looking at wedding planning as a career, the concept of destination weddings

sounds like fun. I recently spoke with a couple of planners who specialize in this field and anyone

looking to plan a southern jaunt should certainly look at http://www.weddinginthetropics.com/

As well, brides should carefully scour TripAdvisor for wedding stories of which there are plenty

on both sides of the spectrum. Take a lot of the negative reviews with a grain of sand (pun) because some of the bridezillas are really laughable. One I can recount was from a bride in

a Mexican resort who complained of those little one inch lizards running around the patio.

Hey babe, they were there first.

Wedding Venues in Ottawa

Choosing a wedding venue is a mix of location, staff and food. What most people use as a guide
to whether a venue has good food is simply recommendations. BUT, and a really big BUT, just
because your Mom had her wedding at the Delta 20 years ago does not mean its still great. Chefs, for example move around every couple of years (they can be a tempramental lot) and
standards can slip rapidly.
Now you have a tool to help you out. Oh my god, our tax dollars finally being used for something helpful.
http://ottawa.ca/cgi-bin/search/inspections/q.pl?ss=home_en&qt=fsi_en

Its kinda shocking what you get to see behind the curtain. Many local caterers just don`t seem to understand food safety. Ok, a leaky faucet is no biggie, but check out Eggspectations, a spot that
has been touted recently in the Wedding Bells forum as the hottest caterers. Anyone with half a
brain in the kitchen knows that the easiest way to get food poisoning is with eggs, yet look at this.


http://ottawa.ca/cgi-bin/search/inspections/q.pl?ss=details_en&sq_fs_fdid=B837F7B5-936D-4400-B6BE-DCAF86CCEC9A

As for me, I`m checking out everone on this list before I put a single bite in my mouth I didn`t cook!!!!!

Shopping for your wedding on Kijiji

I buy and sell quite a lot of stuff on Kijiji. Someone paid me $100 dollars for my old G3 and we
both walked away happy.
Buying wedding services there, no way. Now every now and then you can find a used McCaffrey dress that's a steal. Services however, no deal. Every now and then someone posts a horror story of some part time florist or DJ they hired on Kijiji and to their surprise, it was a fail.

Gosh, what a surprise. C`mon ladies how can a video guy charge you a hundred dollars for a days
work? Stick with the pros, the more established the better.

Don`t make me say I told ya so.

Wacky snap of the week.

So you`re still trying to cut out second cousin Sarah to save a few dollars on the reception. How about these people in China who fed over 3000 people at a reception for 3 DAYS.

Got single friends.

Have em learn Chinese!!!!

(CNN) -- Some 24 million Chinese men of marrying age will find themselves lacking wives in 2020, partly because of the country's one-child policy, which has led to the abortion of female fetuses, state media said Monday.
Sex-specific abortions have led to a large male population born since the 1980s, the China Daily newspaper said, citing a study conducted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
The gender imbalance means that the next decade will see many intergenerational marriages: young men married to women much older than them, the study said.
China's Communist Party implemented the one-child rule three decades ago, amid fears that the country would not be able to feed a skyrocketing population. The policy has prevented about 400 million births, China Daily said.
Couples living in cities are barred from having more than one child, unless neither parent has siblings. In rural areas, the law allows for a second child under certain circumstances. And the guidelines are looser for ethnic minorities with small populations.
Enforcement varies, but usually takes the form of fines to discourage extra births.
The policy has curbed population growth, and has led to forced sterilization in some parts of the country, the U.S. State Department said. Because of a traditional preference for male heirs, many Chinese also have aborted female fetuses, according to human rights groups.
Even within the country, calls to overhaul the law have increased in recent years, China Daily said.
But China has said it will maintain its one-child policy for at least another decade.

Ottawa Wedding Magazine

For my first post of the New Year, here is something new for Ottawa, our own wedding magazine.

It seems that Wedding Bells has finally met its match in the local market. For years they have
ignored locals and charged rates that were outrageous. Who did you think was paying for those $8000 a page ads, but little ole YOU. I suppose it was fine for the big guys, but little merchants
who paid those rates eventually passed them on to clients and more than one I know went out of biz owing Wedding Bells big cash. Eventually a megacorp took over Wedding Bells and they jacked the rates even more.

Congrats to some locals for seeing the business opportunity and creating a mag that is well printed and features ONLY local content. The first issue is very strong visually, though the writing is a little weak and the ad content to editorial is way too high. Hopefully they will not
follow the Wedding Bells trail and turn into one big ad surrounded by a few wire story tips.

I hear you can pick it up at any of the major wedding merchants and that it will be available at
the Bridal Fair next week. In case you can`t find one, here is the online version.
http://www.myvirtualpaper.com/doc/coylepublishing/ott_weddings_virtual/2009120801/