Pure Magic

Hello from the other side!

On Saturday Mr. Narwhal and I got married and the day can only be described as magical. I woke up on our wedding day knowing that it was going to be the best day of my life, and really, I couldn't have imagined what that would have meant.

Our hearts have been so full, and there were numerous times yesterday that we broke down in tears reminiscing on how wonderful the day was. We were blown away by the love and support we received from our friends and family. Love and magic was in the air and everyone felt it.

It ended up raining all day and as I walked up to meet Mr. Narwhal for our first look the clouds parted and not a drop of rain came down after that.

So really, without this post turning into a total sap fest I will share with you a few of our sneak peaks from our photographer, and some guest photos.

All photos courtesy of Isos Photography unless otherwise noted

Guest photo 

Guest photo

Personal photo

To anyone nearing the end of their planning and doubting it all, just trust. It will all be worth it.

I can hardly wait to get these recaps started - I have a few posts planned while we wait for our professional photos, but we have a honeymoon to worry about first ;)

Much love,

MRS. Narwhal

The Final Timelines and Logistics

While in many ways I'm over planning and preparing for our wedding, this is far from the time to sit back and just stop caring about all of the details. We've put many many hours (and dollars) into making this day happen, and the things left to be done at the end will make or break how the day goes.

I'm talking about timelines and the logistics.

There are a lot of moving parts that go into making a wedding day happen, and when you're running the show on your own property, there are many more pieces of the puzzle you need to think about in order for the day to go smoothly.

Over the last couple of weeks I've been putting together some extensively detailed timelines in order for everyone to know when and where things are happening.

The Week of Schedule
There are a lot of things going down next week. Hair appointments, nail appointments, rental arrivals, invoice settling, flower picking, vendor visits, guests arrivals, set-up, final preparations. It's madness people. MADNESS. The schedule for next week helps me breathe knowing it's all doable. I'm so excited! It's going to be nutty but so much fun.

So many lists / Personal photo

The Wedding Party Day Of
There is a stark contrast between the boys and girls day. The boys have four hours of free time, and the girls jump right into appointments. I'm so excited for spending the day with my favourite people getting ready anticipating everything to come. Having a solid schedule in place helps everyone know when and where we need to be and helps me relax a little. I know things don't always go according to plan, but when things get off track we will know where we can speed up the process in other areas to make up for the timing.

Screen shot of part of Bridal Party schedule*

The Photographer Timeline
We sent our photographers a detailed timeline including the order of photos before the ceremony,  the ceremony details and wedding reception timelines. We also gave them a list of the photos that are important for us to capture during the day.

Screen shot of part of Photographer schedule 

The Wedding Timeline 
This is the same for the entire wedding party, a breakdown of the ceremony, speech order, dances and the remainder of the evening.

Wedding Timeline / Personal photo

Day of Coordination List
A good friend of MOH Cass accepted our offer for her to act as our day of coordinator. She has tons of experience in the wedding world, and I already know she is going to be our saving grace for the day. I have a detailed list of the things I'd like for her to take care of, timelines of when vendors arrive and other general logistics so she can become the keeper of all wedding knowledge.

What were the important details in your final week of logistics and day of scheduling? 

*Note: There will be plenty of snacks available between breakfast and their late lunch as well, it's a just a reminder for us to have a meal of sorts since the food doesn't come out until 7:30 in the evening. 

The Narwhal Ring Process - Part 1

We have somehow managed to be quite the procrastinators in several areas of wedding planning, and our ring design was one of them. You may recall that Mr. Narwhal went down the custom path with the design of my moissanite branch engagement ring last summer from Danielle Goulet Jewelry Design. There was no question that when it came time for a wedding band that my ring would be made by Dee again.

Personal Photo

The part that we were unsure about for awhile was whether or not Mr. Narwhal would have a ring. From the beginning he has voiced that he didn't want a ring, and particularly noted that he can't wear one at work. While the idea of him not wearing a ring bummed me out initially, once we decided to go down another route for our ceremony I was completely okay with his decision. My parents have been married for 35 years, and my dad has never worn his ring. With the whole "With this ring I thee wed..." business out of the way, I was open to Mr. Narwhal exploring whatever option he felt comfortable with. I did however sentimentally note that there is just something about a guy wearing a wedding ring that warms my heart. 

Well, I guess that comment pulled at Mr. Narwhal's heart strings because eventually he started talking about what he wanted his ring to look like, and fast forward to us being entrenched in the process of designing two rings! 

My Ring

My ring was sort of a no brainer. I wanted it to match and fit into my engagement ring. The only request I had was for the band to be slightly thicker (1.5 times) than my engagement ring.  I wanted to be able to see more of the branch design on the band, and I wanted the band to have a stand alone size for the times I chose to only wear my wedding band. 

Last week, we got photos of our wax molds, and this week the actual rings are being made! Dee made a few refinements to my band (the curve in the branch was going to be shaved down a bit). I was able to try on the mold when I picked up my ring* as well and I'm so excited to be able to wear them as a set! 

Image courtesy of Danielle Goulet Jewelry Design

Mr. Narwhal's Ring

We talked about a lot of design options for Mr. Narwhal, and from forest tree lines and a masculine version of my own and we landed on a happy medium. I love the design Dee came up with (as does Mr. Narwhal!). His ring will be a rough yellow gold with some black coming through in the bark elements. 

Oh how I can't wait to see this beauty on his hand. 

Image courtesy from Danielle Goulet Jewelry Design

Did you go the custom route with your wedding bands? 

*Dee needed to borrow it to ensure the mould matched my ring.

One Year of Planning

One year ago today Mr. Narwhal proposed. There is something about the full cycle of one year that always puts me into a state of reflection.


All photos personal, unless otherwise noted. 

Mr. Narwhal and I have never been the anniversary types.We always agreed to wait until it was a wedding anniversary. But, I can't help but feel all of the mushy sappy feelings today because it's been one full year of preparing for the important day of our relationship.

It's been a wonderful season of our lives. We've definitely hit that point of being over the planning and ready for the marrying.

I don't know what it is, but almost being there is causing a sudden influx of a full range of emotions, and yesterday it hit us both that this whole thing is actually almost past us, and we'll be on the other side of it all and finally married.

While Mr. Narwhal has been referring to me as his wife for well over a year now, the fact that I will actually be his wife is giving me all of the feelings.

So, one year into this planning thing. It's been one heck of a whirlwind!

We've done a whole lot of planning and preparations.

photo courtesy of isos photography

One engagement photo session. 
One full day of dress shopping. 
A couple of hours suit shopping. 
2309 decisions made (okay, I'm exaggerating, but I am seriously over decision-making!).
One Stag and Doe.
One bridal shower.
One crazy epic Bachelor party camping weekend*.
Five visits from a machine.

Twelve loads of sand and fill brought in.
Countless hours of planning.
42 photo wood blocks completed.
Six signs made (a few more to go there).
Hours and hours of help from friends and family.
A few hiccups and hurdles.
Endlessly full hearts.
Nine vendors secured.
Fourteen people invited to be part of our wedding party. 
87 invitations sent. 

Two rings being made.
One wedding license acquired.
One ceremony written and ready.
130 guests (and 15 children) coming to join us. 
One honeymoon waiting. 


and that's only part of the story! It's been a lot of work, but in a few short weeks, I get to marry my very best friend in the entire world. All of the love, sweat and tears put into this day has been worth it all.

We're ready**.

*My Bachelorette is this weekend!
** In the emotional sense, the list is still mighty long!

The Month Of

Holy hannah you guys. We're getting married this month.

This month.

Image via ReactionGIF

I move through waves of disbelief, excitement and panic over our painfully long to do list. Mr. Narwhal would tell you he is constantly worried over how much is left to be done.

Last weekend I decided to allow myself to have one weekend of the summer to escape and forget about the wedding at our annual family reunion. It was our 17th annual reunion and as one of the few members of the family with an impeccable record I prioritized making it happen. So worth it.

I mean...

All remaining images personal

BM Megs, BMan TLW and me / The glorious view 

Mr. Narwhal stayed home and worked on some of the final preps up at the wedding spot because he leaves tomorrow on his four day Bachelor party/camping trip. I'm so excited for him to get away and relax, because last weekend was so good for my soul. I feel recharged and ready to make it through this final stretch of preparations.

The last time I gave you all a list of all the things we were working on was four months ago! There was still snow! Disbelief. Utter disbelief.

So, what does the list look like now?

Signs and Photo Blocks
I'm working on finalizing a few signs and am in the final stretch of finishing our wood photo blocks. Let me tell you, procrastination is not your friend in wedding planning. Those wood photo blocks have become the bane of my existence. I just started another 20 photos, and I can't wait for those suckers to be done. Big thanks in advance to BM Mel for coming to help me finish them this weekend!

Signs / Endless paper peeling

Chairs and Benches

The front row (parents and grandparents) at our ceremony will be a collection of random chairs. I've found ten, and have one more left for the signing of our marriage license. For the remainder of our guests we've been working on building benches from old barn wood on our property. I'm not going to lie, I have visions of us sanding and putting together benches the week of the wedding.

Rings
I just dropped off my engagement ring with our jeweller, and she's just finishing up the design of Mr. Narwhal's ring and starting mine this week. I'm so excited to see how they turn out! This will have a post of it's own in the near future.

Jars Jars Jars
We have around 500 candles, and a massive collection of jars. People have been giving us jars for months and I've been putting them in the basement. For the last month or so, I pull up a box at a time to clean. I cannot describe the excitement I have over how the forest will look lit up with candles everywhere. Insert heart face.

Jars on jars on jars

Ceremony Finalization
We're meeting with our officiant this week and finalized our ceremony draft. I am so happy to have that task off of the list.

Random Projects
Before we left for the cottage last weekend, my aunt came over to help me with a little project restoring this old desk for our signing. I honestly cannot believe that it's the same piece of furniture.

Before / After

The Final Stretch of Outdoor Preparations
We're so close here, the ceremony spot is basically done, the reception area has a bit more work and we have some more bush clean up and tree pruning left to complete. This all should be done in the next week or so. While Mr. Narwhal is away I have lots of help coming. I can't wait to show him what we accomplished when he's back on Sunday night!

Momma Narwhal about a month ago working away on the clean-up*

Lists and More Lists
Working on finalizing lists and schedules is high on the priority list. Final week schedule, day of schedule, day of coordinator list, must have photo list, playlists and to do lists. There's a lot of organizing to be done in the final stretch, but we're getting there!

While we certainly have a lot left to do, it's all coming together. More than anything, at this point I'm just excited to get married and share our day with loved ones. Saying goodbye to my family on Monday morning and saying, "See you in a few weeks at the wedding!" just feels so so weird. I cannot believe the day is almost here!

What did you final month list look like? 

*She's wearing a leaf blower, just in case anyone was confused!

the narwhal numbers

We haven't really talked about our guest list before, and how we landed on the people that we ended up inviting to our wedding.

I think Mr. Narwhal and I had a pretty typical guest list compilation experience. We wanted to keep our numbers low, but at the end of the day have a lot of great people in our lives that we wanted to include and share our day with.

When it came to putting our list together we went by the following criteria:

Do they have an active role in our lives? If the answer here was yes, they definitely made the list.

When is the last time we saw them? Sometime friends trickle in and out of your life, this question was helpful for people that we were on the fence about.

Have we both met them? Joel isn't from Muskoka, so there is was a number of potential guests on his side that I haven't met. As a gage, we considered whether we both had met the potential guest. Sometimes we were still wishy washy about whether to invite them, which led to...

Did they play a significant role in our life before? We recognized that some guests may not be actively in our lives now, but played a huge role in our lives before. Some guests stayed on the list for this reason, even though they are not actively in our current lives.

At the end of the day we ended up inviting 158 people to our wedding. This number does not include us, children or vendors. Since we are having a cocktail style reception, we left it up to parents whether they wanted to bring their children, and we have about 15 children coming for a portion of the evening as a result. So, for the oh so fun (nerd alert) nitty gritty of our numbers, these numbers only include our adult guests.

The Overall RSVP Rate
Overall we generally stuck to the 80% rule. We have a total of 130 adults attending, with three guests that are still unknown*. At one point it really did seem like we were going to have about 90% attendance; however as I'm sure many experienced, once the deadline hit, many people were unable to make it for a variety of reasons.

I thought it would be interesting to note that the reasons guests are unable to make it include: conflicting weddings/events, budgetary reasons (guests that require a flight), having a baby, work, personal reasons and changes in relationship status.

The Guest List Anatomy

As you can see, Mr. Narwhal and I put a priority on our friendships for our guest list, with them making up the largest portion of our guests. 

I have a rather large family, which extends to second and third cousins that I'm close with, this is reflected in the skew between Mr. Narwhal and I's family. Mr. Narwhal has met every single person from my side of the family that is attending, and I personally will be meeting four of his family members at the wedding!  

How Location Plays a Factor

I find it interesting to note that when we consider location, we actually have about a 90% acceptance rate for most of our guests, but when you add flights into the mix (flying within Canada is very expensive), those guests only have a 53% acceptance rate. We certainly didn't expect any of our flying guests to make the journey; and while many of them tried to make it work, these were many of our last minute no responses. 

The Method of Response

I think that mail-in RSVPs are quickly becoming a method of the past. Most are choosing to have a website response since postage is getting so dang expensive. I thought it would be interesting to share how our guests chose to respond since we gave both a mail-in and online option. A very small portion of guests used our online option, with the majority choosing to mail in their RSVPs. That verbal response rate, closely followed (read: mostly bride and groom hunting down guests for responses). 

How did the numbers play out for your guest list? Did you fall into the 80% average? 

*The three guests are relatives that are not in the best health right now (including Mr. Narwhal's granddad) and will be making their decision closer to the date.

More Than a Day

While I have been feeling a general sense of being over our wedding, and just being ready for the next chapter of our life, one sense that has themed the last few months of our lives, is that this whole wedding planning thing is about so much more than one day.

The support we have received and the amount of help from our wedding party, friends and family along the way has just continued to fill my heart with love and gratitude throughout this season of our lives. From the Stag and Doe, my shower and to people showing up to help us work on the property, I'm continually amazed by how much has been done for us.

This past weekend BM Mel planned something incredible. With the help of GM Coach, GM D, GM T and her boyfriend GM JB they arranged a day with a tractor and six hockey players to take our wedding spot from a lot left to not much left. It was so great for some of kids GM Coach and Mr. Narwhal coached last year come and surprise Mr. Narwhal with their help.

All photos personal.

The end is finally in sight up there. What's left is one more load of sand,* a day with a machine and some prettying up.

So what's it looking like after Sunday afternoon?

Ceremony Spot
Looking out from the cabin, the ceremony spot is ready to be packed down and have benches set up (which we're still building).

The Trail
The trail is cleaned up, we have two fire pits created and a wood stack photo spot.

Walking towards the reception area with two fire pits on either side of the path.

Firepit #1 - thanks to GM JB and GM T

Firepit #2 - thanks to GM Coach

A wood stack photo spot - Note: This is morning light creating a shadow

Reception Area

The clearing for the reception area is nearly ready (with one more load of sand, packing down and a big big bonfire left). We're also planning (in the non-rain plan) to set our band up on the corner there outside of the tent.

The band spot and reception area

Looking up to the trail/band spot on the left and reception area. 

This whole thing is really coming together and happening very soon.

Did you take on a big landscape job in your wedding planning journey? No? Just us? 

*We have decided to have packed sand for a surface after months of landscaping. It suits the space, as grass wouldn't likely grow well in the area without access to water, and it leaves us a blank slate to work with after the wedding.