You are currently browsing the monthly archive for October, 2007.
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October 28 to November 3, 2007 • Ultra-contemporary décor • Creative menus and hands-on planning help • Stationary & web sites • Plan & brand your wedding • What the ‘buzz’ is about • Wedding menus for all budgets • Capturing spontaneity |
• Fresh, new florals • Shooting from the heart • Bridal Q&A: Ask Lori • Wedding SOS casting call: A free Fairy Godmother for brides in need… • Overstock Bridals launches Make-A-Wish Sale |
The weekend before Halloween is one of my most favourite weekends of the year. Brian and I pile the kids into the van and make the trek out to Kim-Glo, our favourite country ‘haunt’ & pumpkin patch.
My four year old, Liam, gets all big-eyed and adorable, dying of excitement over the mazes and hayrides. After playing in every single childhood attraction the farm has got that year, Liam, Des and Callie run through the pumpkin patch to choose their favourites. Because they can never decide (and because they’re always competing), the kids pile more pumpkins than any one family should ever need into those red plastic sleds, drag them to the hut where we pay a whopping $10 or $20 (crazy cheap) for the lot, and then load them into the van and head home to decorate.
Halloween is one of those holidays, where if you are willing to put on some cat whiskers and trick or treat with the best of them, you can’t help but feel young again.
That said, you couldn’t pay me enough to clean out a pumpkin.
- Jenn @ The Ring
A couple of times per year, the very hot topic of free speech on the internet comes up in The Ring, thanks to our local Bridal Chat forums. The debate - usually spurred on by the deletion or editing of negative posts regarding local companies - takes about ten seconds to go from a luke-warm status to an on-fire status.
- Brides don’t want their posts to be moderated.
- We don’t want them (or us) to be sued.
- Reputable vendors don’t want to be trashed without just cause.
- The few actually horrible vendors that exist don’t want to be trashed either (who have lawyers ready & waiting because they’ve likely been through this before).
Chat forums give a false sense of privacy. Brides in The Ring form lasting friendships so it’s only natural for them to feel safe venting to their peers. But, the internet isn’t anonymous anymore, and it hasn’t been for a long time. When you post something controversial, you may as well be standing in the middle of the street, shouting your complaints because the result is the same. Your message has the power to make (or break) a business.
We’ve gone to bat (legally) in the past on behalf of brides in The Ring, simply because we felt a responsibility to brides to do so, thinking they couldn’t afford a lawsuit on top of a wedding. We learned a unjust but true lesson from that experience, Slander is only slander if it’s not true. And if it’s not slander, you better be prepared to prove that it isn’t.
So the bottom line here is that an online wedding forum offers the opportunity to use a huge source of bridal girl power for good. The right to freedom of speech on the internet will be argued for years to come. Unfortunately brides (or vendors or The Ring for that matter) aren’t likely to win the argument today.
- Jenn @ The Ring
This past weekend was the Bingemans Wedding Dreams show. As always, it was big. There were a number of vendor displays, the fashion show was pretty good, and we got to see a ton of brides from The Ring.
Becky, Ryann and Linda came out to run TheWeddingRing.ca booth (decorated by Custom Elements) Saturday and Sunday allowing Anne and I to scope out some of the newest trends in flowers, photography, videography, fashion and decorating… As usual, Jirina was giving out tasty cake across the walkway from us, testing our will power all weekend. The show also marked K-W’s first chance to check out Bridal News Magazine, which was definitely exciting.
If you didn’t make it to the show, the next one on the calendar is ‘A Bridal Extravaganza’ at the Paris Grand Country Club, November 17th and 19th, 2007, from 11 to 4pm.
We recently ran into Tamara of Classique Decor and learned that she is moving out of the country. Her husband’s company has an office in the U.S. where he will be working from. Even though Tamara sounds excited about the new direction their family’s life is taking, she admitted that she’ll miss decorating for local weddings. Tamara has decorated plenty of weddings for brides in The Ring over the years. “Hopefully I’ll be able to keep in touch with my brides… I’ll definitely miss them!”
As for Classique Decor’s scheduled upcoming weddings, the company has been sold to a new owner who will be taking care of the wedding days to come – though Tamara is still helping with the transition at this point. The company web site http://www.classiquedecor.ca/ shows the old phone number and email address, but Tamara wants to be sure everyone knows that inquiries, questions and feedback are forwarded toTamara & the new owner.
After over seven years, two new businesses and four children between us… it’s official - Brian and I are engaged!
He popped the question at home, in front of our kids, extended family & friends after Thanksgiving Dinner. True to our inside joke (which you’d only understand if you had four kids and a mountain of bills), he did it with a dollar store ring. It was sweet. You’d think I wouldn’t be surprised but I really, really was.
I can see the headlines now. Editor turns bride-to-be, loses all objectivity, and proves that some girls really do deserve the title of bridezilla.
- Jenn @ The Ring, Editor & Bride-to-be
Okay, so I recently made the decision to join the BlackBerry generation.
My membership – made obvious to the world by a series of beeps (emails), honks (facebook messages) and Calypso jingles (actual phone calls) – is just two weeks old, and life-altering nonetheless.
I now have handheld access to email at all times (the biggest selling point for me). I can officially be supermom, superwife (Brian, stop laughing) and wedding guru (brides, stop laughing) at the same time, thanks to this little wonder of technology. And I’ll be the first to admit that the minute I answered my first email message sans-laptop - on what has to be the world’s smallest keyboard - I was hooked.
Okay… Not just hooked. Obsessed.
Whereas I used to find the volume of email I receive to be overwhelming, I now get annoyed if more than two minutes passes without one. My husband is already convinced he has to email me to have a conversation with me and I’m quickly getting dragged into the art of ‘Pinning parties’. If you don’t know what a Pinning Party is, get a BlackBerry. You will.
So anyways, I finally get it. The obsession and addiction that people experience with the purchase of a device that gives total email & live messaging connection at all times. I also ‘get’ the implications that come with it AND I completely understand every bb-related argument a bb-user has had with their spouse. So while I now have the ability to address last minute problems and concerns at the click of a button, I also have an entirely new bad habit to break.
Wish me luck!
Oh, and if you want to know more, you’ll probably have to Pin me.
- Jenn @ The Ring
This Friday, October 5th from 6pm to 9pm, Ultimate Affairs Wedding and Event Planning and Boulevard Photography and Fine Things are going all out to celebrate the opening of their brand new studio in the Shops at Waterloo Town Square.
This is a fun, short outing that gives you a chance to meet the experts, take a tour, participate in the ribbon cutting and opening ceremony, and of course browse photography and fine things. The doors of the mall close at 8pm, so before to get in before then to make sure you get in.
More details: http://www.kwweddingring.ca/vendors/bridalshows/index.html or http://www.cambridgeweddings.ca/vendors/bridalshows/
