Brian and Melissa

It is now January 22. One full month and one week have gone by since I proposed to Melissa, and we have yet to find a venue and rabbi!

Not that we haven’t been looking, but as we look around at different venues, we learn more about what to look for, and what not to look for. There really are no good deals on places–different places just have different price structures. But here is what we’re learning so far:

You have 5 basic venue types: Synagogues, banquet halls, country clubs, hotels, and miscellaneous (this includes restaurants, parks, and city sites you can rent out, like Steam Whistle).

Synagogues are the most convenient. They come with a rabbi, ceremony area (temple), reception area, and and area for cocktails in between. They almost always have a free parking lot, have in-house kosher catering, staff, tables, chairs, etc. They are really by far the best-equipped for a wedding. Everything is also wrapped into one convenient price per person, but that price is very high. With the exception of one synagogue we’ve seen so far, the price will be way over $100 per person. Also the “house” rabbi at a synagogue will normally either be Orthodox or Conservative, both of which don’t fall within our beliefs. We will have to do traditional ceremonial stuff which has no meaning to us, with little room for customization. Also, the reception halls at synagogues often aren’t visually appealing. Sometimes the decor is quite old, including run-down chairs, old-looking lighting, etc.

Banquet halls are also convenient, since they usually have a ceremony area, reception area, cocktail area, and are always well-equipped for the job. They usually offer more modern facilities than synagogues, since events is what they do. They also offer free parking, and are easily accessible. And their pricing structure is convenient like a synagogue, and they do offer kosher catering (again, at a price). Unfortunately, a lot of them are in really bizzare areas of the city, like Woodbridge, with nothing around you but warehouses and factory showrooms. Banquet halls tend to pay homage to their surroundings by offering enclosed rooms, with no windows, and cheesy-looking European designs. But the biggest problem with banquet halls is that they often have multiple rooms that they rent out to different parties at once. Sometimes only a thin wall separates you from the next event, and there is a very real possibility that next door’s DJ will be blasting techno music right around the time your parents are making an emotional speech in your honour. Also, other parties might try and mooch off your host bar.

Country clubs look a lot like banquet halls, but much more well-presented, and with much more beautiful facilities, and are often places where you will want to take your photos as well. The reception room will naturally have nicer chairs, better lighting, and usually has windows overlooking the golf course or the ravine on which the club is situated. The disadvantage of country clubs is that they don’t cater specifically to weddings, so there is usually no in-house caterer. This isn’t much of a problem, because catered events at a country club are very common, but it is one more contact you have to deal with on your own. Country clubs also feel a little awkward to us, since some of them feel snobby, and we’ve never belonged to one, nor even played golf at one.

Recently, we started looking into hotels as an option. Naturally, hotels shine in the area of accomodation. We have only look at two so far, but both of them included a free suite for Melissa and I for the night. This room will serve as a natural bridal room for before the ceremony, and it can be a comfortable place to go back to if you need a quick break from everything. Packages at hotels are very clearly organized and well-thought-out, since they cater to businesses very often, where things need to be quick and professional. The problem with hotels is that the ones we’ve seen so far have not-so-nice facilities. The reception rooms have very low ceilings, and are better-suited to business conferences than weddings. But again, we’ve only look at 2 hotels so far.

Everything else we’ve look at, including Steam Whistle, as nice as the venues are, everything is separate. The individual costs sound appealing at first, but once you add them all up, they end up being the exact same as something that is all-inclusive like a synagogue or banquet hall. Things like parking, catering, table and chair rentals, alcohol, venue fees, are all extra, so they require a lot more thinking on our part. In each of these venues, except for synagogues, we have to bring in our own rabbi as well, which is somewhat of an advantage, if we can only find the right one we like!

So as it stands right now, there are a few places we still have appointments to see, and I’m sure we’ll be calling around a few more. But by now we’re pretty knowledgable now about what’s out there, and approximately how much things will cost.

And it’s not cheap!

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Well it looks like Steam Whistle is out.  It’s the absolute perfect place, and even when there are issues with things, we ignore them or try to work through them. But Steam Whistle had two huge issues. It actually had a lot of issues, but we were dealing with them.  Then we found out that there is a convention and Jays game the same night as our wedding,  so they can’t guarantee us parking… and then we found out that the room for the ceremony only holds 125 people, so everyone else will have to stand… or we have it on the patio, which is nice, but what if it rains?

We really just want to get married and we’re having fun again with all this planning! So we’re looking at The Intercontinental this afternoon, then the Pantages on Monday, then the Eglinton Grand on Wednesday. All are exactly the same price, except the Intercontinental gives you a room for the night, and breakfast, and chocolate covered strawberries. Which we like…we like that we have a room to go to beforehand, so we can just hang out and not be all running around to a thousand places with nowhere to go. And we like that afterwards we can just go upstairs and crash, ’cause i’m sure we’ll be ridiculously tired. Plus it’ll be nice to go somewhere afterwards and not just home as if nothing happened. hahahha.

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Well.. we were supposed to book Steam Whistle last night. But we didn’t…. i’m tired. So not in wedding planning fun mode. The month has been crazy, and now I think we’re both just really tired and don’t really care anymore. Well, we care… i mean, we just dont care to spend tons of time on it. PLUS we just got Rock Band so that’s consuming most of our time… that and me falling asleep on the couch at like 9pm.

At this point, I know Steam Whistle is going to be beautiful. I know Vegas Steam Whistle will be the wedding we’ve envisioned for the past 5 years (or however long we wanted to get married for. ;-))… but there is a lot of planning that has to go into a place like that, and I dunno… i’m demotivated and tired, so i’m in crappy crap banquet hall mode right now. But that may be because I’ve had 2 hours of sleep and i’d like for this week to be over and it’s only Tuesday and bleh.

We realize that after we book this venue it’s going to be a big rush to get everything done in time, because we’re 3 months behind. So i’d have to pick out my dress really soon, which i’m not looking forward too. Although, I have found a nice dress that i want, and it’s getting positive feedback from people I show it to. So i’m hoping that dress shopping will take an hour. And I think i’ll stop eating for the next 9 months… so the dress looks good. I’m already on the best diet, Americano’s in the morning, and then dinner. hahahha it’s great. I feel like crap! :D

-It’s like dinosaurs.

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We went to The Wedding Show yesterday, at The Carlu. It was very intimate and small… maybe 50-75 different kiosks, all of which were very helpful and informative. I loved this show, we spent money to get in and only stayed for an hour, but I still say it’s worth it. 20 bucks for one hour was more worth it than 20 bucks for a full day at a huge trade-show-like-show at Convention Centre or whatever. Where they’re displaying Dyson’s, Juicers, and fake grass. So this one was nice. We found a new caterer, ate tons of cake, saw lots of photographers. It was the first time we really got any information that wasn’t on the Internet. And it made it very more real, and much more helpful.

We’re so close to booking Steam Whistle, it’s crazy. The thing with Steam Whistle is, it’s more money than a banquet hall, but we don’t want go get married in a banquet hall/hotel/restaurant. Anyways, it’s not really that ‘much’ more than any other place we’ve seen, banquet halls included. We assumed it’d be way too much… but the food is cheaper, so once you include the tables, chairs, etc… it all works out to be exactly the same. The only extra cost you incur is the rental of Steam Whistle itself, which we’re willing to pay… which is like maybe one or two paycheques and frankly, we spend that much on going to restaurants every night, buying video games, cameras, and any other digital crap we see at Best Buy every Saturday. So I say we lay off Best Buy for a week (OH WEIRD! A Best Buy commercial just came on as i typed that! dammit!) and instead of buying Rock Band we’ll put that money towards the Steam Whistle fund. So we think it’ll all work out. Not to mention we can just scam playing Rock Band with Guin & Allen.

So hopefully *so far* you will all join us at Steam Whistle in September!!

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So we’re a bit frustrated, but feeling a bit better nonetheless. Our ‘real’ wedding date was supposed to be October 5th, but that got shot down real quick because it was Jewish holidays. Turns out October 5th is fine… but too late now. I had a total freak out a few days ago, I just got really sad… it’s been so long and we’ve just been talking about the same stuff over and over and over again, and it’s so difficult because we just wanna book something, anything and get started and then it can kinda die down for a bit.

It’s so hard, because really all we want to do is get married and be together… we don’t care about the wedding, we never did. So it’s just making me really sad that we can’t even get married, at least that’s what we both feel like. And like, this is supposed to be one of the best times in our lives, and so far it’s been one of the worst. I’m so on edge, and angry and sad and frustrated all at once.

Neither of us can stand anything. But, I think we’ve made some progress and hopefully Steam Whistle will get back to us today so we can book it.Booking a venue like Steam Whistle, or anything for that matter, is really going to cheer us up and make us happy that we got engaged all over again.

Everyone keeps saying ‘This is when you start fighting, you aren’t going to agree on anything and the fighting will start. Just try and stay strong together.” Which I think is hillarious, because Brian and I are not fighting at all, we never have and we sure aren’t going to start now. But we’re both sad, at least we’re sad together. haha.

So last night we met with this Rabbi, who’s kinda cool but not as cool as Eva. We have to get some blood test because Jewish people decided to inbreed and now we can be carriers for some crazy Jewish disease when we have kids. Whoa.. Whoa “when we have kids”??? I know… I was so weirded out when I heard it too. We never ever ever talked about kids or any “grown up” stuff. hahah. We’re Brian and Melissa! We just mess around, play video games, spend too much money on crap, and go to Vegas. Who said anything about kids?? Whatev, I know we’ll have kids… but no one ever mentioned it before, and if they have then it was just like whatever, a random statement. But it sounded so for real and totally possible now that we’re getting married, which totally weirded us out. At least it weirded me out… I dunno about Brian, i’ll find out.

Ok I was wrong, it didn’t weird him out.

Melissa: Did it weird you out that that guy was talking about us having kids for real?
Your Orange Prince: it doesn’t weird me out too much
Melissa: why?
Your Orange Prince: I think about us having kids all the time
Melissa: Not for real though
Melissa: really?
Your Orange Prince: well I picture situations in my mindYour Orange Prince: like me reading stories and setting up a train set…
Melissa: Awwwwwwwwwww!!!!

Ok, now I feel like a jerk.

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