For some reason I didn’t get to post this last year. LOL.

This is all the photos from friends and family of my wedding last year. I started a Flickr Pool so everyone can upload the photos there. It’s quite neat.

Finally, yesterday a friend of mine called me up because we have another 2 friends are getting married next year and want to go to the jewelry store again.

The jewelry store is actually a wholesaler. Not only they have all sorts of jewelry for cheap, but also all the jewelry parts including beads, Swarovaski crystals, silvers..you name it.

Gar Fung Trading co.
63 Silver Star Blvd., Unit c-15 (Intersection: Finch/Midland)
Scarborough, Ontario M1V5E5
tel: 416-297-6799
email: sales@garfungtrading.com

Gar Fung Trading Co.

Bridal Jewelry

Assorted jewelry in this Bridal Section

Everything here till be mostly under $30. Earrings are usually range from $1 to $5 dollar. Bridal jewelry range from $12 to $26 depends on the design.

Gar Fung trading co. membership pricing chart

There’s a policy of “No Trying of the Jewelry”, and also everything is Cash only!

Apparently you can get the wholesale price only if you are a member to this place. You can become a member by spending $100+. So gather couple girlfriends of yours and do a carpool to the place. It’s green and efficient!

There’s another place across street which is great for buying Swarovski’s beads

Fashion Tier
63 Silver Star Blvd, Unit D1
(Kennedy/Finch area)
Scarborough
Phone: 416-754-1338
Pay by Cash only.

Otherwise, there is also jewelry and gem show in Toronto. It’s worth to check it out.

The Toronto Gem & Mineral Show & Sale
@ Leaside Gardens
1073 Millwood Rd.
East York, Toronto
Friday, July 28: 4pm – 9pm
Sat., July 29: 10a – 7p
Sun., July 30: 10a – 5p
Adults: $8.00 (ages 65 & older = $7.00)
Ages 12-18: $6.00
(under 12 Free with adult)

http://www.torontogemshow.com/
– if you click on the link to the “Chinese Page” – Leaside Garden, there’s a $2 off coupon that you can print off your printer).

Theknot.com ’s wedding website

Recently a friend send me her RSVP using Theknot.com ’s wedding website.  I think it’s perfect for couples who wants something quick and yet don’t want to spend money or time for it. The good thing is that the templates that they have in their inventory was actually not too bad. It might be simple but it’s not tackky for sure. And online RSVP is all you need instead of paper invitation.

The knot's wedding site builder. It's simple but limited amount of existing template website. However, it will allow you to do online RSVP.

However, I think the Wedding Tracker.com would be a better deal for further detailed planning. I was just playing around the software. It was actually very detailed oriented. It’s more flexible and alot more feature than the free ones that theknow provided.

WeddingTracker.com

I like the fact that you can have your own domain. However, I would personally register it separately instead of through WeddingTracker.com. Why? because simply I want to keep my domain after the wedding and I can register the domain for fairly cheap price from 1and1.com.

However I think most of the people won’t have time to get technical. You can register Weddingtracker.com using theknot’s coupon KNOT50 to save 50% of the annual fee ($60) for hosting the site, domain name and the planning tool.

The only sux part about WeddingTracker is that you can only use their RSVP system along with their website. So you can’t build your website somewhere else and then use their RSVP system. It’s all integrated.

Also, there’s a little bit of learning curve when you first using the planning tool. So patience is the virtue. It will work.

Momentville.com

Another FREE wedding website that I came across is Momentville.com. I personally didn’t try it but it seems like it’s pretty easy to use.

momentville.com

eWedding.com

So far the best looking free theme I’ve seen for free wedding websites.

eWedding.com

Moving all the furniture to suck up the water!

Piling all the furniture at one corner!

we live on concrete floor in our condo for one month!

We removed all the carpet in our condo and roll them up!

We have to dissamble our bed and sleep on the concrete floor!

During the Easter week, I took one month off to redo the floor. We hired hardwood floor guy to install Maple engineered hardwood. It was alot of work. But at the end it’s all worth it!!

And then it’s all done! Ta Da~~~

Our living room facing the kitchen

Our living room facing the main bedroom

Our living room facing the tv wall

Our living room facing the entrance!

Our kitchen

Our dining area!

Our lime green wall in the bedroom!

Bedroom facing the door to the living room

I actually used 4 different color at our place. Light Beige is Benjamin Moore’s Manchester Tan, The Brown is Benjamin Moore’s Clinton Brown, The Orange is Benjamin Moore’s Electric Orange, and the lime green is Banjamin Moore’s Tequila Lime.

Most of my furnitures are from IKEA. I wouldn’t say I love them but their price and function fits my need.

There’s no doubt that you need music for your venue!! No matter it’s ceremony or reception.

Fortunately I have my ceremony is at Toronto’s City Hall. It provides the essential music with their CD player. ha ha.

And for my reception, I hired Brian from High Five Entertainment as my music DJ of the night.
We had an initial meeting with Brian before the wedding to find out his style and music taste. He provides us a sheet of music recommendation,  a professional contract and a spec for his equipment. Around one month before the wedding, I researched the songs and picked the ones I liked and forward Brian the list of the songs.

I also asked Brian to be my MC for my reception as well. He did a good job and remained professional till the end of the night. (You don’t want to get someone who’s drunk half way through the night!)

So here are few pointers when finding a good DJ:

• Ask for several references
• Ask what type of music they would recommend for certain age of audience. (My guests are all around late 20s)
• Does the equipments (e.g. Speakers), are they suitable for the size for the venue? And is all the equipment digital based?
• Will DJ provide wireless microphone and any special lighting?
• Will DJ also act as MC if requested?

Usually the rule of thumb is you want to find someone who is legit and easy to work with. Because if they ruin the music, they pretty much ruin the night too!

related post:

• Wedding DJ

2. Wedding Cakes

Our wedding cake!

Cutting wedding cake is one of the most important event for your wedding night. Wedding cake also acts as a centerpiece for headtable (or dessert table).

I did quite a few of research to find a cake artist that will make my cake happen. I am very specific on the design and the taste. I found Cindy from The Wedding Cake Shoppe to make my wedding cake.

There are few places that I looked up for wedding cakes. Except a lot of them are not available for my wedding date

Cake Design

Not sure what you want your cake to look like? Well, again, either you get a white cake, or get a cake that the color that goes with your color theme.

Go to Flickr and type in “wedding cake” in the search box, it should show you what people have done for their cake.

When choosing the cakes, it’s better that you do a cake tasting first before you decide. And then show your cake artist the photos that you want your cake to be. You can customize it however you want. It’s your cake that you are paying for. My cake was mango flavour on the top tier and then mocha for the bottom tier.

I ordered 40 person cake because I am not having the cake as main dessert dish. (Our total guest count is 60 ppl) We have a dessert table after the dinner. Now I regret for what I did. I shoulda just make the cake as the dessert dish because no one can eat that much! There end up so much dessert leftover! argh.

My cake was 2 tier and for 40 ppl for $220. So look around and taste the cakes. And do this early because not all the cake artist are available for your wedding date!

3. Final Expense

Everything in wedding all comes down to money, just in case anyone is interested to see my final expense sheet. Please go to my fully disclosed wedding expense post here. Planning wedding is not that difficult, all you need is to take time to research and get the best bang of the buck. And if you have no time, then just hired a wedding planner. lol

related post:

• Plan Your Wedding 101 – Part 1
• Plan Your Wedding 101 – Part 2

It was caused by the waterline behind the fridge. It broke off and then water start spilling in the middle of the night. We woke up and first thing that i step on is our wet carpet!!! ARghhh~!

I had to quickly send a email to my work to ask for working from home that day. Alex went to Canadian tire and got a shopvac. Took us around 6 hours to get most of the water out. All we do is taking turns and vaccuming up all the water, dumping the water to the toliet, and that repeated around 7 or 8 time. We could be flushing down around 500 litres of water!

We had planned to change our carpet to hardwood in the beginning of April. I guess I should be glad that we haven’t install  our hardwood floor yet!

Today I had to work from home again, our condo inspection guys scheduled to come in today to take care the rest of the details for the condo warranty. It’s such a shame for them to see this happened.

My floor installation contractor suppose to rip out the carpet during the week of renovation. Now we have rip it out a month early because we don’t want the sub floor to be wet when we are ready to install our hardwood.

Argh.  Tired.  Stressed.  Argh.