mysticjade

My FI and I decided right from the beginning that our wedding was going to be paid 50% me and 50% him, no outside help permitted (even though our budget is really tight). Firstly because his parents don’t have money to spare, secondly because I don’t want my well-off parents using their money to buy us off and sway our decisions. Personally, I don’t want either set of parents to spend any money on us, we’re grown adults and if we can’t pay for our own wedding all by ourselves maybe we shouldn’t get married! Don’t look at it as “they have money why won’t they treat us?”, focus on the generous gifts your parents gave and thank them for being so wonderful!

This past weekend me and the FI went to the National Bride Show downtown. It was a bit of letdown (I got it mixed up with the BIG bridal show that happens at the MTCC) but some good inspiration definitely came out of it. Anyway, at one point we were walking around the perimeter and passed a booth for a photography company and I was taking everything in without much interest, when one particular mounted photo caught my eye... bride and groom next to each other with their backs to the photographer, standing still in a grassy green field, holding hands under a stormy grey sky... she with a green lightsaber and he with a red lightsaber as AT-ATs bear down on them. Sort of like this: I might have squealed rather loudly and feverently asked my dude if we could do that for engagement photos. Of course, I knew what his reaction would be, big-time no! But I'm not the giving up type. "I want to do photos where I'm force-choking you!" "No." "How about photos where I have Princess Leia buns?" "No." I laughed and gave up after that. He likes his science fiction and fantasy as much as I do, but to him a wedding = classy, not off the wall. The next day, I was over at his house with his family. His sister makes cakes as a hobby and I always knew she'd make one for our wedding, so we hopped on Pinterest looking for inspiration. First we looked at classic wedding cakes, then Indian-inspired wedding cakes, then she decided that since the cake at our destination wedding was the "real" wedding cake, she would be making a "fun" cake for our at home reception. She thought to herself "hmm, what do my brother and mysticjade both like... GAME OF THRONES!" and she immediately found a blood-spattered cake with the Iron Throne at the top that we cracked up over. Of course we immediately showed it to my FI, got the classic reaction: no thanks. Is it normal for the bride to out-geek the groom? If it's wrong, I don't want to be right.

Hi Gigi! We have also decided that we'd like to do the Iberostar Rose Hall for our Apr 2015 wedding (great ratings, and we picked Jamaica so that we can hopefully do a Hindu ceremony), but we're just starting out too so I don't have much else to offer. But congrats to you and everyone else!

Just before Christmas, my boyfriend surprised me with an engagement ring and proposal. Since then, it’s been a whirlwind of holiday merriment, family celebration, and tentative wedding planning. With my 33rd birthday now passed and a firm decision on what kind of wedding we want, I find myself scouring the internet for information and advice, but nothing really seems to fit my needs. There are a lot of factors to consider. Here’s our plan as it stands. Our wedding is going to be budget-conscious, hopefully around $10K. We’re doing a destination wedding, preferably in an English-speaking Caribbean country. He’s Catholic and I’m Hindu, so the wedding needs to be interfaith as well. But I’m not the kind of woman who ever paid much thought to her potential future wedding, so I really don’t have any patience for planning out a host of complicated details! And finally, I’m a feminist so I find a lot of the traditions revolving around weddings (of any religion) give me the heebies. So there you have it, why I’m calling myself the Mish Mash Bride. Meshing all these things together is not going to be easy. This is just a place for me to talk through the madness.

From here, on discarding traditions and making your own, or picking traditions to carry on. I’ve had some surprising things to wrestle with now that my wedding is on the horizon. I tell others and I tell myself that my ideal wedding is a court wedding followed by a small, intimate, backyard BBQ party. I’m not an ostentatious person, I prefer not having the spotlight on myself, in my heart I know that a full day of putting myself on display will wear me down. But faced with the actual prospect of my real wedding, I find myself hankering for the type of wedding I’m familiar with, the type of wedding that has the most personal meaning for me: a Hindu wedding. The red dress and gold jewelry, incense and henna patterns, Sanskrit chanting and the olaga playing through the background. All this despite the fact that most Hindu priests annoy the heck out of me. Apparently I prefer my religion being personal and informal, not officiated or mandated by gatekeepers. And I’m far more traditional than I thought. This wedding is bringing out the Capricorn in me. ;P

Nothing written in stone yet, but the wedding will likely be April 2015 in Bahamas. Still trying to figure out venue and exact dates.

Another Canadian bride here! (still feels weird to say that haha) I didnt realize there was a diff between the way Americans and Canadians did DWs; I've gone to three DWs so far and all of them were full week festivities. The idea of going for 3-4 days seems wrong somehow.

We had been dating for just shy of 3 years when he proposed.

Congrats! I'm a 2015 bride too by the way, good to know there are others

Woohoo! Congrats

I dabble in web design/graphic design on the side, so I am sooooo tempted to make my own wedding website from scratch. But then I remember that I don't want to give myself more work than I have to. Wedding Window looks great though, will have to check it out!

Hi everyone! Just wanted to introduce myself and say how EXCITED I am to start with wedding planning Fiancé and I are looking to have our wedding spring 2015 in the Bahamas but even that is flexible at this point. No venue booked yet, we haven't even finalized our wedding party yet! We're hoping to keep things budget-friendly thought, that's our biggest concern at this point. My congrats to everyone here!