 marshalltaylor.ca |
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PLANNING
THE DETAILS THE STYLE According
to the Emily Post planner, the “How” of the The
ceremony type was civil for reasons outlined in The
Basics portion
of SAME-SEX
CEREMONIES.
As
for formality, we
chose a semi-formal approach as a perfect balance between treating the
occasion too casually for
its significance and too pretentiously for its size and
budget. This is where the Emily Post books
proved These decisions would impact every detail of the wedding. The invitations, for example, would have to simultaneously convey the autumn theme, formal tone and traditional style we had chosen. Armed with pages from magazines depicting similar styled weddings, we set out to implement the details of our own. (The above example was ironically held at the same venue we had chosen which gave us a boost of confidence right from the start!) See Printed Materials, Flowers & Decor and Attire headings in the section for specific planning details on these topics. - THE RESULTS - While the colour of the leaves outside might not have been absolutely perfect, the autumn look of the decor and printed materials were bang on - take a look at Printed Materials to see what we mean! The choice of a traditional style and civil type of ceremony was also a great success - check out THE WEDDING section to see why.
When we started out we knew exactly what we wanted - a wedding like the one shown in the second magazine collage above. What we didn't know was whether we could succeed without their elaborate budget (their reception was held at at a Cambridge art museum!). In the end, with a lot of hard work and attention to detail, we did manage to capture the look and feel of our favourite example on a much more modest budget. Overall,
the wedding was an understated, elegant example of the old axiom
"less is more"! BUDGET To further our commitment to quality we decided that, if necessary, the print material would all be custom made to allow us to create pieces that mirrored the wedding's theme perfectly. We would also rent whatever lights and sound system we needed to make the party feel like a real party and we would hire transportation for our downtown guests who did not own cars. But we were also frugal when we could be. In terms of decor, the rustic setting provided us with the perfect opportunity to use a "less is more" approach. Rather than swamp the place in decorations, we picked the most strategic locations for flowers then dressed them up using the best arrangements. We opted to have an amateur photographer friend take the pictures despite numerous warnings that couples shouldn't take chances with what would be the only memories of their special day. And we decided half way through preparations that we simply couldn't justify a $450 cake when we calculated that the cost per guest would be $9! Rather, we knew the money would be much better spent buying on more drinks for dinner and party guests. Wedding favours were also eventually removed from the budget for the same reason - a tough decision considering how perfectly our pumpkin flavoured Godiva truffles idea would have fit into the theme! - THE RESULTS - Although we did not set out to meet a certain cost, we did strive to stick to our budget once we had researched and confirmed all the various prices. Our diligence and Peter's career experience as a stickler with numbers paid off - we stayed on a budget that had been set nine months before the actual event! The trick is definitely to make a budget and stick to it. Avoid impulse buying - there is a multi-billion dollar industry out there that does nothing more than come up with ways for couples to spend their money when it's time to get married. Steering clear of the many little temptations along the way paid off handsomely by allowing us to indulge in one very special impulse expenditure - a 1954 stretch Cadillac we spotted just months before the wedding. It remains one of our best memories of the day! The details we in which decided to invest properly paid back handsomely. The decor which had exceeded any other individual cost (including meals!) was jaw dropping in its beauty - who would have guessed fall colours could have been so spectacular? And the custom print pieces are still getting complements months after the wedding was over. The areas where we chose to spend frugally were also successful thanks to the quality over quantity philosophy. The reception felt like a big family dinner and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves thoroughly - just as we had hoped. There was no feeling like we were skimping or scraping by. The gamble with the photographer paid off if only because he shot so many rolls of film (21!) that it was impossible not to have a decent amount of good shots. And it doesn't seem the cake was missed by anyone. In the end, the final cost of the event was somewhat higher that Brandon's initial estimate, but lower than the ROB average below, an excellent value in our opinion! (By the way, according to the June 2001 issue of Report on Business magazine, the average Canadian wedding costs $18,350. Anyone considering throwing their own is invited to e-mail us if they are wondering about the approximate cost of a specific item.)
GUESTS As for the "who" portion of the equation, when people asked how many guests we were having at our wedding, the answer was never a simple one! The restaurant we wanted could only hold about fifty-five people so we didn't have much choice there. The church, though, could hold about seventy-five but we initially chose not to invite extra ceremony-only guests for fear that they would feel awkward about not being included in dinner. However we underestimated how excited our friends were about the idea of attending a gay wedding and subsequently had no problem finding people who were more than happy to attend just the ceremony. The choice was made to invite family, long-time friends and out-of-town friends to both events and twenty-five other close friends and co-workers to the wedding. The after-party itself was purposefully designed to avoid the restrictions imposed by venue size and budget and we invited many more people to that event in addition to all the ceremony and dinner guests. Since our guests' enjoyment and comfort was one of our primary goals we went out of our way to make sure we provided as much information as they could possibly need. Our web site was a big part of letting everyone know what to expect from a gay wedding and we were sure to provide all sorts of helpful information for our many guests coming from out of town. (See GUEST INFO, GIFT REGISTRY and THE WEDDING sections.) We also sent much of the important information in printed form knowing that many people would likely never get around to checking out the site. It was actually quite exciting the day we mailed our invitations out to places like Michigan, Alberta, British Columbia, and even Japan. (It was also the day we knew there was no turning back!) Although we had no pressure to invite hordes of distant relatives and parents' friends, we still agonized over the guest list like every other engaged couple faced with budget limitations. We also reviewed the seating plan many times trying to make sure everyone would be comfortable. We deliberately mixed gay and straight guests at dinner to encourage mingling and at the same time took special care to have only one outspoken friend per group - we didn't want two queens fighting to hold court at the same time! - THE RESULTS - Right from the start we worried about ceremony-only guests erroneously assuming that they were invited for the dinner as well. We used the Etiquette guideline of including a reception card only in those invitations sent to dinner guests and even pointed out this protocol in the website. But sure enough, a few weeks before the ceremony we heard that it is common for people to assume that being asked to RSVP must mean they're being included in the head count for dinner. We then sent out an e-mail repeating the web site notice that the RSVP was to ensure that we didn't exceed the capacity of the church during the ceremony and did not refer to dinner unless a reception card had been included.
WEDDING CONSULTANT Peter’s
love of detail combined with his job staging corporate events made it
easy to decide which of the two of us would be the primary organizer for
the wedding. However, we
are both firm believers that if you want a job done right in a field
where you lack expertise, there is no substitute for consulting a
professional. So rather than hoping that intuition, tips and DIY books
would be adequate enough to avoid a mistake that would ruin months of
planning and waste thousands of dollars, we decided to meet with someone who knew the intricacies of weddings
inside and out.
Peter
subsequently began planning and budgeting using Kim’s knowledge in
addition to volumes of information taken from the books and magazines
which Brandon would bring home.
During the months that followed he was surprised to find that the
planning was quite manageable given the amount of time we had allowed
ourselves. We even began to
question whether a professional wedding planner was really just an
expensive luxury in light of the fact that all of her duties could be
assigned to various friends, family members attendants.
However, Peter soon recognized that Kim’s expertise and
penchant for details meant that she was the only person he could trust
enough for him to give up control on the
wedding day so that he could truly enjoy it. - THE RESULTS - In the end, Kim became invaluable when we unexpectedly bought a new apartment that had to be completely renovated in the month preceding the ceremony! Rather than being overwhelmed with arrangements, Peter just handed off any wedding tasks to Kim for which he didn’t have time, confident in the knowledge that they would get done. Overall though, we ended up using her not as an actual planner but more as a coordinator for fear of accumulating a massive bill. On occasion we felt like it wasn't worth her $30 per hour fee, but in retrospect there isn't much alternative for people that want things done right. Be sure to get an estimate on the number of hours that will be required for the planner and stick to the estimate! Relying on friends is not practical since, unless they are very experienced with weddings, they are pretty much guaranteed to slip up on at least one of the tasks you assign them. And just hiring a consultant for the actual day is also not an option because that person can only be proactive if they have been involved in - or at least kept up to date during - the planning stages. Possibly the only other solution would be the involvement of a mother as anal-retentive as the grooms (but that presents a whole new set of challenges!) the grooms | our story | planning | the wedding | guest info | same-sex ceremonies honeymoon | photo album | referrals | tips | guestbook | e-mail | marshalltaylor.ca © 2002 Page last updated December 31, 2008 |
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When
it came to "how much", we had no idea what kind of cost
would be involved - all we had to go on initially
was Brandon's recollection of a typical wedding costing $10,000.
The total cost was irrelevant to some extent - using a line of credit
meant none of the money was really ours anyway! However, after
spending years hearing complaints from people who had attended weddings
that concentrated on the bride and groom at the expense of the guests,
we were determined that guests' comfort and enjoyment would be our
priority. This led to our philosophy of quality over quantity
which was most prominent in our approach to the reception. We
would have loved to have had a hundred of our friends and relatives to
dinner but we did not want our guests to have to serve themselves or to
have to experience another run-of-the- mill reception hall.
Inspired by a recent birthday of Peter's where a small group of
family and friends had a wonderful home-cooked dinner at a private-seating pub kitchen, we chose to invite only the people dearest to us
and treat them all to a full sit-down meal in a relaxing, enjoyable
setting. 
