honeymooning - norwegian gem

The Norwegian Gem is so huge we could see it for miles before we got to it. As we walked over a long bridge to get to it we got more and more excited that this fabulous playground is where we'd be living for the next week. We got a sweet room with our own balcony and spent hours exploring all there is to do on-board. Lots of time was spent at the pool, eating delicious food, watching entertainment, lounging in the sun, reading (check out "The Art of Racing in the Rain" by Garth Stein - a great one for dog owners) and eating more delicious food.

honeymooning - barcelona

The Monday following our wedding B and I took a very early morning flight to Toronto to catch our flight to Barcelona via Paris. All of our traveling went well and we slept lots, arriving in Barcelona at 11:00am the next day. Getting to our first hotel was insanely easy - just jumped on an AirBus and it dropped us right at the Plaza Espanya where the B Hotel is located. This was our home base for 3 days and we greatly enjoyed our suite upgrade and the rooftop pool.

The location was great and we spent a day exploring Monjuic, a cool park complex on a mountain overlooking the city. The next day we got on a Hop-on/Hop-off tour bus which took us to Gaudi's Parc Guell. I've always adored the genius of Antonio Gaudi, which is a large reason why our honeymoon brought us to his hometown. We were walking up a street and to my surprise happened upon 2 more of Gaudi's buildings, it was amazing! The next day we spent a huge chunk of time at Familia Sagrada then wandered down to Parc de la Cuitadella.

Our last 2 days were spent at Hotel Jazz and we again enjoyed our suite upgrade and roof-top pool! Our second location put us in the heart of the action, just steps from La Ramblas. This is the short version of all we experienced in Barcelona, it was so great. On Sunday morning made our way down to the Port and said goodbye to Barcelona for a week, more on that in my next post.

greenhouse love

We absolutely loved our venue. The greenhouse at Belluz Farms is very high-tech and cool. The sides and roof open and close and this allowed for an amazing breeze to keep the temperature just right. The light was phenomenal - the photos taken by guests at the reception were fantastic. It's also huge and easily accommodated out 130 guests with a huge dance floor (and we only used 2 of the 3 bays). And the cement floor was wonderful for dancing in my cute chartreuse heels!

(Image by Melanie Godecki)

they will see us waving from such great heights

Our first dance as husband and wife was "Such Great Heights" by Iron & Wine. Quite possibly the first movie we watched together was Garden State and its one of our all-time favs so the song was perfect for us. A couple other wonderful slow songs have special meaning to us so we included them later in the evening - "Nothing Like You and I" by the Perishers and "Transatlanticism" by Death Cab for Cutie.

(Image by Melanie Godecki)

our "ring bear"

Emery is the cutest little dude. He rocked his "ring bear" duties, carrying the ring pillow my Gram made. He is my new sister's little guy (a.k.a. our nephew) and he's growing up so fast! Two years ago he was born on my 25th birthday and I couldn't imagine sharing a birthday with anyone more awesome. I love this pic, just too funny!

(Image by Melanie Godecki)

they may say i'm a dreamer...

The song we chose as a father/daughter and mother/son dance was "Imagine" by John Lennon. It's such a beautiful and powerful song and it was nice for the 4 of us to be on the dance floor together. My Dad and I sang the words while we danced, it was fun.

(Image by Melanie Godecki)

a man and his guitar

Dave is another of our wonderful friends who played a huge part in our wedding. A week before the wedding Dave saved the day (we forgot about ceremony music) and agreed to play guitar during the ceremony. Songs included "Hey there Delilah" by Plain White Tee's and "Today" by the Smashing Pumpkins plus some other improvised tunes. You rock Dave.

(Image by Melanie Godecki)

more tid bits

Melanie is a wonderful friend of ours and amazing photographer. She took tons of fantastic shots and ever so kindly gave them to us a wedding gift which we received this weekend. Thank you so much Mel, they're beautiful! More of Mel's shots to come this week.

(Image by Melanie Godecki)

the ladies

My fabulous bridesmaids looked smokin' HOT at the wedding! Finding their dresses was a bit of a challenge with them all spread across the world (Southern Ontario, Northern Ontario, Calgary and Australia) but we managed to make it work. I was pretty set on finding dresses that wouldn't break the bank and weren't your typical never-to-be-worn-again bridesmaid dresses. That lead us to the Gap, where I ordered the dresses online and scored an such unfathomable deal that I was able to give them to the ladies as gifts.

These photos aren't of my girls, they're from a fashion shoot that was featured on a blog. I can't remember which blog they came from though, please let me know if you know.

etsy love - part 7

Little known fact: B and I love to play Scrabble. We don't play all that often but when we do we love it... B makes up crazy words, I call him out and he usually lets me win. So, for our wedding we made magnets out of tiles that spelled our names and displayed them with our guest's magnet favours. The 20 scrabble tiles came from etsy seller timepassages and the magnets we glued to the back were from Michaels. They're now on display in our kitchen!

(Image via timepassages)