Wedding - A Serbian Ceremony

Here is one of a few promised wedding posts. I will put them in categories of how the day went. As some of you know, I married and was baptized as a Serbian Orthodox.  My husbands family is from Serbia and I made the choice of having our wedding ceremony in Serbian tradition. Our ceremony mostly wasn't in English, minus the parts in which the Priest spoke to me and I needed to respond. It was quite traditional and also very different from some more common wedding ceremonies. I had to make a large program for my guests with information on all the parts, as it is quite different.

 My husband waiting for me.

My Dad and myself :)

The Candles
Symbolizing the perpetual light of Christ, and remind the couple that from now on they must shine in virtue and purity with good deeds.

The Rings
The rings are first blessed by the priest, who holds them in his right hand and makes the sign of the cross over the couple’s heads.  The rings are then placed on the 4th finger of the right hands of the couple. The rings are then exchanged between the couple three times.

The priest places our rings on our pinkie fingers, then we place them on each-others right hand ring finger. After the ceremony, we both put our wedding bands on our left finger. This was our choice. 

The Joining of the Right Hands
The right hand of the bride and groom are joined when the priest reads the prayer that beseeches God to "join these servants, unite them in one mind and one flesh." The hands are kept joined throughout the service to symbolize the "oneness" of the couple.

The Crowning
The crowns are said to represent the martyrdom, sacrifice and unwavering devotion. The priest takes the stefana and makes the Sign of The Cross three times over the couple. The crown is then kissed by the groom before it is placed, then the same with his bride. Then the crowns are exchanged between the heads of the couple three times.

The Cup
The couple will drink wine from a chalice to symbolize that they will be sharing the happiness and sorrows of life together. They do this three times.

I was soo nervous the red wine would land on my dress

The Walk
The priest will then lead the bride and groom three times around the alter on their first steps as a married couple.

The two people that are walking behind us our the Kume and Kuma. This means Godfather and Godmother. Just like when you are baptized and have godparents, the same happens for a wedding. Usually they are also our bestman and maid of honour, but neither of our closest friends are Orthodox, so we had to ask a family member and our Kume was my husbands Kume from when he was born.

The Blessing
The couple return to their places and the priest, blessing the groom, says, "Be thou magnified, O bridegroom, as Abraham, and blessed as Isaac, and increased as Jacob, walking in peace and working in righteousness the commandments of God." And blessing the bride he says, "And thou, O bride, be thou magnified as Sarah, and glad as Rebecca, and do thou increase like unto Rachael, rejoicing in thine own husband, fulfilling the conditions of the law; for so it is well pleasing unto God."

Tying the Knot
Before leading the couple on their first walk together as husband and wife, following in the footsteps of Christ, the priest ties the right hands of the couple together while praying for their marriage, the act signifying their    “Oneness” from now on.

It can be a lot for someone who isn't accustomed to this type of ceremony. But it was very very special. If you are interested in more things regarding this type of ceremony, you could find it here.

__________________________
And something totally unrelated that makes me smile on a whole different level.

Question: Have you ever been to a Orthodox wedding before? What did you think about it? What is your favorite part of a wedding ceremony?

Honeymoon

My husband and I had a lot of discussions on what we wanted to do after the wedding. A lot of our friends and family suggested we go somewhere, however we weren't totally sold, as we just had a long year of wedding planning and my husband being in school. We felt spending the cash to go on a trip may or may not be worth it. And if we did go somewhere we wanted it to be hot and thought it would be nice to have our friends join us.

With much talk, we ended up going to my husband's aunt and uncles cabin. This was the best idea. A week of just us, the beautiful weather (yeah end of September and we had +30c!!! How lucky did we get?) and this amazing cabin. It was perfect.

Sorry about some of the quality of photos, some were taking with the ol'iPhone :)

How could we not be in aw of this?

We spent 3 days in the sun all day with glasses of wine and beer and just did this!

And watched this happen each night feeling more blessed! 

Sun kissed!

Several AMAZING dinners, all that the husband made....this NEVER happens! 

Breakfast in bed! How spoiled am I?

Some cribbage while the sun sets. 

YAY We are Married!!!

Question: Did you go on a honeymoon when you got married? If so where? If not why?

P.S I just got a Pinterest account! Add me if you are also on it! I have just started, but can already see I will be addicted :) Thx Lindsay for sending the asap invite, my obsession has begun.

PP.SS Thursdays will be followup posts to my wedding. I am hoping to receive my photos soon, that way I can break up the posts and share them once a week.

Saturday Madness

My husband is currently on call for his work and has this pager, well yesterday we had a crazy wind storm and this will strongly affect my husbands work. So of course the pager started going off at 6am and continued several + times after that, so this was an early morning for me.  I am still adjusting to a "non-wedding stress free mode" so my anxiety is still not at bay. But it is getting better, but I still panic a little when I wake up without as much sleep as required.

My husband who knows me sooooo well suggested we go out for brunch. I jumped on this right away! We went to a local destination in Winnipeg called The Forks, it has a little of everything of Winnipeg culture. We chose a restaurant called The Beachcombers, it was fab!

The Lounge (where we were) at Beachcombers

I had a salmon sandwich and the hubby had some pickerel sandwich. I tried his...it was way better then mine. But I wont tell him that!!

This evening we scarfed down some sushi(I didn't take any photos, we ate it too fast) and then I started my baking project!

It was big!

Because I am soo tired and have had one or two glasses of wine... I will just show you some photos.

Brownie Pumpkin Pecan Pie

Banana Loaf

 I also made a pumpkin loaf..... This thing wouldn't solid up. Hopefully it will taste good tomorrow. I hope any Canadians celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow have a FANTASTIC day. I know I am thankful for having the most amazing person in my life, my best friend, my soul partner and my husband. I hope everyone can experience what I have.

Photography by Jennifer Lee

Have a great weekend!! I have some new news tomorrow about the changes that will be happening with my blog, but this will wait till then.

Post Wedding - The Dress

Hey Everyone! Looking forward to the weekend? I know I am as it's a long weekend for us Canadians!!

Now that the wedding is over, I wanted to focus on some key parts of it. I have gotten a lot of questions, so I decided I will do a few posts regarding some of the major topics.

Today's post we will talk about THE DRESS. I have briefly talked about it before. But haven't gone into much detail.

Photographer Jennifer Lee Photography

I first saw my dress driving past it after work. I called the bridal salon and requested the number and designer. Shortly after this, my maid of honour and I went browsing. It was the first dress I tried on. And I always knew it was the one. I was pretty determined to have a dress with straps and pleating. And I got both. Being very pale skinned and a redhead, I am not able to wear white (I'd look like a ghost). So I chose a dark ivory.

Photographer Jennifer Lee Photography

It's really funny how many times my husband or guests stepped on my dress. Halfway through the photos I bustled it up because I wanted shots with both the train down and up. What is depressing is the bottom of my dress is just DIRTY.

Photographer Jennifer Lee Photography

 I haven't yet decided what I will do with it, if I will keep it and store it for ions. Or if I will dry clean it and sell it. I know many people I tell that to cringe at the thought of me selling it. But let’s be serious....I will never wear it again and it could very well make another bride VERY happy.


In other news I spent the evening last night researching the next required steps for my wedding invitation business. It's depressing when you see the required amount of money needed to keep me aligned with local competition. But I know it will pay off. I offer already pretty beautiful invites. In fact our wedding invitations were amazing, but I want to give that little extra that people will notice right away.

So things will be done in the next few weeks. I want some new tech toys and need to generate some other income for them (husband says we need to save for a house).

Note: Some of my fellow Canadian Bloggers have come up with the greatest idea!

 

So go check out all the info and if your a Canadian blogger lets get this started!

Lost in wedding planning

The title says it all! I love to blog, and have had so much happen in the past two months that I feel horrible for not sharing it. As most of you know I was planning my wedding.....and IT HAPPENED!

It was one of the most amazing days of my life! I hope to continue to have more and more of these days with my husband (I still giggle like a school girl when I say that) in the years to come.

Photographer Jennifer Lee Photography

So now what? After the whole wedding was finished, it was so anticlimactic, what do I do now? Am I really done planning weddings? 

The answer is, I still really don't know. The idea of possibly getting into event planning has floated around in my brain, but handling myself is a lot different than handling another bride. A lot of my wedding vendors kept telling me over and over again that I was the most relaxed bride they have ever seen. My response "I am just very organized".

So back to my above question, now what? 

• Well because of the wedding I reverted to the very basic needs for food. Not junk, but whatever was easy, non creative, unexciting and just pure nourishment for my tossing tummy. With the wedding now done, I feel ready to get my creative food genius going (not that I am a food genius by any means, but it sounds cooler when I say it like that) and start making some awesome meals again.

• I am a graphic designer; I design wedding stationary and always have loved this. I will dig a little more into this aspect as it allows me to stay up to date with weddings, but not being as involved in them as planning someone else’s.

• Getting back on my healthy track, I had a little bit of a separation with the gym these past few weeks. It's not that I didn't want to be there sweating my butt off, I just had a hard time working it into my conscious with everything else going on.

I think that is what I am going with right now. Another thing that is plaguing me is the blog name.  The original purpose was to record my journey to the Aisle. Well been there, done that. But I am not ready to stop blogging; in fact I want this to become second nature to me. However I am stuck with "Running to the Aisle". I am thinking the best course in action is to finish blogging here with my wedding stuff, then have a redirection to my new blog. A pain? Yes! But I feel that would be the most beneficial way to do it. I still have some wedding things I would like to share....SUCH AS PHOTOS! So I will continue to post those here till the new one is up and going.

I have been given just a sneak peak of some photos from the photographer, so over the next little while I'll share more with you all.

Thanks for sticking around; I know I have neglected you all.

Momentary Disaster

At the end of next month my fiance's mother will be throwing me a bridal shower. My original plan for a shower was a smaller, more intimate gathering of some of my very close ladies in which I receive some lingerie(note: I actually don't OWN a single pair of lingerie..Jennifer thinks this is very strange). It appears some more traditional bridal showers are much larger, and include all the females invited to the wedding.  So with much consideration I will be having a larger shower................and a intimate shower(yeah that means 2 showers!).

One thing I have learned is the 6 months before your wedding, getting much breathing time is very limited. I took a week off after the social, and now I am RIGHT back into the planning. This time even more so it seems.  One thing that needed to be hashed out right away was my guest list. As this Bridal Shower isn't getting any farther, this needed to be done. I am happy that I had already previously designed my shower invites. This made the rush of everything a little easier.....however when I went to send my invites to get printed at my regular print shop...THEY JUST CLOSED!!!

So in a rush of panic and sweat I searched and called local print shops. Now sure we have lots. But I also needed one to replace my regular print jobs I do for my design clients. This couldn't be a temporary thing.

I have indeed now found one, I ran and I mean I RAN to the bus stop on my lunch break to pick out some stock paper. Good thing I wore flats to work as I didn't have much time. I pick them up tomorrow. Here is the design :)

I love love love it! Can't wait till I pick it up tomorrow!!!

This past Saturday we celebrated my brothers 21st birthday!!

I cant believe he is already 21!

Baptism and Pizza

Well the time came.....I was baptized. It was very simple and painless.....minus the missing hair (it really wasn't that much). I have mentioned before that my fiancé is Serbian Orthodox and we are getting married in a Serbian Orthodox church. So having never been baptized....I needed to be before the wedding.

I wanted to have it out of the way before the social. Because I know after it....things will get intense. It was short and sweet. Afterwards, I was rewarded with pizza and wine....honestly I'll get baptized every weekend if I get that, though it may not very good for me.

Sorry about the quality of the photos. They are from a cell phone.

Not sure what my facial expression here is

And the water...notice my fiance laughing in the back

For a walk we go

Some oil

See no bathing suit and kiddy pool!!!

Six months from today...where I am at!

Six months from today I will be waking up probably tired, nervous and excited. I will be almost ready to walk down an aisle that will most likely feel like it never ends towards the most amazing person! Yep if you haven't guessed it is the six month mark to my WEDDING!!!

So where am I at? Emotionally I am not too nervous. I feel comfortable with how much I have done thus far. I know we have a bunch more to go....but I am content with that.

I used a similar list like Heather @ Hangry Pants. She is getting married a day before me! So check her out!

To Do:

• Set Date
• Find Venu
• Church
• Photographer
• Engagement Photos
• Baptized
• Caterer
• Cake/Cupcakes
• Guest List (this should be done, and it almost is)
• My dress
• My shoes
• My veil(it will look like this, but best friend is making it for me, have to order fabric)
• My jewelry
• Tuxes
• Bridesmaid dress(they will be black with a ivory sash)
• Flower Girls dresses
• Invitations(DIY, they are designed, just working on mock-up)
• Music for Ceremony
• Music for Reception
• Transportation for day of
• Centerpieces(DIY and in mid process of deciding....help me pick!)
• Runners for tables
• Wedding Bands
• Bridal Party/Groomsmen Presents
• Wedding Programs(DIY)
• Hair appointment
• Make up appointments
• Hair trial
• Dress Fittings
• Hotel booked for the night of the wedding
• Table Seating chart (DIY)
• Table Cards(DIY)
• Menu
• Menu Cards(DIY) 
• Decide if the venue will provide alcohol or us
• Candy Buffet(Possible DIY)
• Wedding Rehearsal
• Honeymoon (the big debate)

I know it look's like I have a lot left. But most I already know what I want or where I am getting it. SO it isn't too bad. How do you feel I am doing?

Did my leg workout today! Most of these are all 3 sets of 12 reps

• Squats on smith machine
• Squats, jump, squat and kick....some ridiculous exercise Kim made up JK (Love you Kim)
• Push backs on a leg press....I know right?
• Hamstring curl on machine
• Calf raises on machine(this will be to failure)

At the end of that my legs are pretty mush mush, for cardio I will only walk on a incline of 6 with a speed of 3.5 on the treadmill.

What better way to finish my workout then with a GREEN MONSTER! I have talked about these before. Today's was like last time, minus the blueberries. These things are like a meal. SO good!

YUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM...*drool*

Also I am super excited and proud to say that my trainer Kim placed 2nd in the short bikini category at MABBA's this year!!!!!!!