engagement shoot | A Vancouver Wedding Blog

Well, it’s been awhile since my last update… mainly because the whole wedding planning has slowed down quite a bit. Most of the real “urgent” things have been booked, the only things I really want to get on top of in the next month or two is the transportation and DJ. Otherwise, things are pretty relaxed at the moment… calm before the storm I expect!

I did manage to get all the pieces for my centrepieces though! Over the labour day long weekend Michaels had a 50% off coupon, so my parents printed off about 15 coupons and we drove to nearly every Michaels in the lower mainland, and between my parents, Jason, and myself we picked up enough oversized wine glasses to have one per table plus an extra “just in case”.

Then there was one small panic attack however… the lily pads I bought at Dollarama turned out to be a summer item and pretty much the day after I bought all the white and pinks ones at the Dollarama nearest to me, all the others in the lower mainland decided to pack their summer stuff away and bring out their fall items… My Dad called around to every store and none had the lilypads out for sale anymore, and none could be convinced to unpack them for us. Just when I was about to give up, Jason suggested we go to the Richmond Night Market because last year when we visited the night market he had bought me a lilypad just like as the ones I was looking for, but in a different colour. As luck would have it, we found a booth at the market that had the lilypads, although they didn’t have the same colour of pink I wanted, they did have plenty of white ones, so I bought extra white and I’ll see about scouting out Dollarama in the Spring to look for some pink ones. But the main point is, the panic is over 🙂

I had a little trouble with the diamond shaped gems as well, I bought all the clear gems that the Dollarama nearest to me had, but I had to visit about 3 or 4 other stores before I found one that had more.

So, we have the glasses, the gems, the lilypads, and a few weeks ago the submersible LEDs arrived in the mail followed shortly by the votive candles. Centrepieces… complete!

Stormy likes the LEDs too!

The submersible LEDs are better than I expected, they’re small, they sink regardless of carbonation, and the colours are beautiful. The votive candles ended up being even more expensive than expected due to custom fees… but still a pretty decent price in the end. I tested one out and it lasted more than 11 hours, so I’m pretty happy with them as well.

The next step was to figure out what liquid to use… we bought a bottle of non-generic brand club soda, a bottle of 7-Up, and we were going to buy a bottle of raspberry gingerale but they didn’t have any in stock. After testing and comparing, we were probably better off not buying the gingerale because it was pretty obvious from the 7-Up that regular soft drinks are heavier than the gems and/or too carbonated because the gems floated to the top and there was no way of getting them to sink. So, we’ll go with club soda… they do float at the top to start but then after maybe half an hour they begin to move, sink, float, and generally look epic.

Another item we checked off our list recently was to get our engagement photos done. My brother was amazing enough to do it as a wedding gift for us, and the photos turned out pretty great! Here are a few of my favourites…