Changes

http://blog.shopbop.com/wise-words-3

All over again.. exactly what Eat, Drink & Be Married Events is doing. We have had an amazing two years and I have grown this business into something that I never thought was possible. I've made some amazing friends, made a few mistakes and had the pleasure of helping many couples on the happiest day of their lives. I'm so thankful for everything that I have experienced but we are getting ready to re-brand and re-start. 2015 is going to introduce a new look and be the start of something wonderful. I really do hope you stay tuned to see what we have planned for you. Over the next 12 weeks, there will be a lot of changes and I can't wait to kick off another year with a fresh start. 

Eat, Drink & Be Married Events is starting our change this Saturday at the Brand Bash Workshop where I will mix & mingle with some fabulous like minded ladies and learn all about how to use branding to grow our business. Make sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter in 3 days to see what we are learning! I can't wait! 

http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/7c/fb/bd/7cfbbd48c3b353a6f105bc1550003059.jpg

SO excited for what the future holds! xo 

Wedding Updates!

Venue - check!
Church - check!
Wedding party - check!
Cake - check!
Wedding colours - CHECK!


Our Big Fat Sri Lankan/Canadian Wedding is really starting to take shape. I often wonder how I am going to make it another 13 months! September 4, 2015 can't come soon enough!

Deciding on wedding colours, wasn't an easy task. If it was up to Aravind, the wedding would be every bright colour imaginable and it would a DJ party all day long. If it was up to me, the wedding would probably be a simple colour scheme of black, white and blush with lots of gold and silver accents.  But this wedding is about us - Mikayla & Aravind. We both instantly agreed that we wanted our wedding to be full of love, family and to combine both our cultures. We wanted our wedding to be one giant celebration. After lots of debating and us me looking at my favourite wedding blogs and magazines to interrupt him while he studied, we finally agreed on colours. 

Together we came up with:

It makes my heart happy just looking at it! Tamil weddings are very bright and colourful so I think these will do nicely. What do you think? I plan on balancing out these colours with a few of my favourite neutrals (glitter is a neutral, right?) and throw in some DIY touches to help bring together our families. 

As for a theme, we don't really have one. Combining two cultures has definitely been tricky and we still have a lot of work to do so I think for now a specific theme will have to wait. 

I'm looking forward to being able to share more details about our wedding as we get closer to the wedding! 

Save The Dates

Our Save the Date cards arrived in the mail today! This is our first wedding related package to arrive and I was extremely excited when it showed up on my door step. I may or may not have squealed... 

Traditionally Save the Dates go out 6 months before the wedding (8 months for a destination wedding) but in our case, we are getting ready to send ours out in late September/early October due to the fact that we are having our wedding on the Friday of the 2015 Labour Day weekend. (see here for why we are having our wedding on a Friday and a bit about our venue.)  We are hoping this will help our guests when they are having to book time off work. Most of our guests will be traveling into Hamilton for the wedding so we want to make everything as easy as possible so that means have ample amount of time to book time off work. 

There was an amazing deal on Vistaprint (this girl's fiance loves a good deal and is extremely persuasive) that we couldn't pass up so I decided that I was okay with our Save the Dates not matching our invitations. Why did I order on Vistaprint? I haven't even remotely looked at invitations yet! I'll be honest and admit that most of my wedding is planned in my head but it comes certain things, I haven't even thought about it - invitations are one of them! I know it's not something you would expect to hear from a wedding planner - but hey, sometimes you just want to save a few dollars. This also means we can get these out to our guests as soon as possible! With Aravind's busy school schedule, things take a lot longer than normal to get things done so this was definitely the best option for us. 
We have recently decided on our colours and don't really have a theme so I will be on the hunt for the perfect set of invites shortly. Until then, these are our Save the Dates! 

Creating A Wedding Hashtag

"hash·tagˈhaSHtag/noun 

Hashtags(on social media sites such as Twitter) a word or phrase preceded by a hash or pound sign (#) and used to identify messages on a specific topic."

Are you doing or did you do a wedding hashtag for your special day? I personally think it is a wonderful way for you and your guests to group all your candid photos together but before you jump into it, here are some things to consider. 

• Come up with a unique name! Make sure you double check your hashtag on social media sites to see if it has been used by any other couples. When you want to relive the best day ever, you aren't going to want to filter through 10 other couples who have used the same hashtag for their special day. 

• Keep it simple! Try to limit the amount of characters you use - this is harder than it looks! You don't want your guests to misspell your hashtag and not be able to find the pictures and or phrases at a later time. 

• Start using your wedding hashtag early so your guests get used to seeing it! Having an engagement party? Use your hashtag when posting pictures on Instagram or Tweeting comments about the evening. Have some exciting wedding news that you want to share? Use that hashtag! Consider putting it on your Save the Dates. 

• Bonus: If your guests know it exists, they might start using it before the wedding which will save it in their phone for easy access on the day of! 

• Make sure to promote your hashtag on the day of the wedding. Make a sign to sit on a table or have personalized napkins made to pass around during cocktail hour. 

 Etsy Seller: MemorableWedding 

To hashtag or not to hashtag..that is the question! 

Clearly, I'm a big fan of them and will be using one for my own wedding next September! 

#amwedding15

Our hashtag took a little bit of trial and error. Trying to fit in Mikayla & Aravind or our new 16 letter last name definitely wouldn't work. I considered using the first 3 letters of my last name and the first 3 letters of his last name but I wasn't loving the way it looked. I stopped trying to make it clever and just went with the facts - A(ravind), M(ikayla) and it's a wedding happening in 2015! 

I'm looking forward to sharing bits and pieces of my wedding with all of you through my social posts!

What is your wedding hastag?

xo 

Oh Dear..

Well, it is safe to say that the new layout on the blog is not going to plan! I have run into a few troubles and am looking to get them fixed as soon as possible! Thanks for being so patient - you are truly wonderful! xo

Instead let's look at a favourite picture of mine from Amanda & Jamie's wedding! 

An Announcement!

April showers snow storms brings May make overs! The Eat, Drink & Be Married Events blog going through some changes. Please bear with us as we make all of our changes to better serve you. We look forward to showing off our new look xo

Information Session - May 1st

Oh my! I can't contain my excitement right now. In the middle of March, I received an email asking me if I would be interested in leading an information session at the Hamilton Public Library Ancaster Branch on wedding trends, DIY projects and budget tips on May 1st. How could I say no?!

I can't wait until next week when I am able to share some insight with fellow brides and spend my evening talking everything wedding related! Sounds like a wonderful night to me! I even have some fellow vendors joining me which I will be announcing over the next few days! Keep an eye my social media feeds for more information. 

RSVP at 905-648-6911 to reserve your spot! 

We Have A Venue!

If you follow me on Twitter then you may know that at the beginning of March we officially booked our wedding venue! So what direction did we go with in our search? I’ll be totally honest since we’re all friends here. I started to get extremely frustrated in our search for a venue. Everything that I came across has some form of restriction since Aravind and I are planning a Sri Lankan/Canadian fusion mix. The venues we did find that were able to accommodate our requests weren't very 'us'.  This was not a fun way to start our wedding planning.

Our venue requirements:

1. Lots of room to dance! 
2. Willing to do 50% traditional Canadian wedding food (ex - chicken, potatoes, vegetables, salad) and 50% Sri Lankan food (either in house or catering in)
3. Accommodating (A lot is happening to plan a perfectly balanced blend of cultures)
4. Not too far from our ceremony (The ceremony is happening at our church in Hamilton) 
5. Easy to get to since most of our guests are from out of town. 

Easy requirements right? We also thought so! 

After some few setbacks, we are so excited that we found the venue of our dreams. It has everything we could ask for and more! I couldn't be happier!

Curious yet? I am very happy to announce that we will be celebrating our marriage at The Atrium in Burlington. It has a glitter ceiling, people!! A glitter ceiling! The Atrium has lots of windows, an outdoor patio and incredible food. Even a hotel down the street which is perfect since most of our guests are from out of town. Dealing with them as been a dream. 

We are extremely relieved to have such a major decision out of the way, or at least I should say I am. With our location pinned down we can start planning some of the other major things.

Did anyone else have a difficult time deciding where to have your ceremony and/or reception?

Our Story

As I begin my journey to planning my wedding, I thought it would be a good idea to introduce you to the the Mr. and tell you a little bit about us. 

Aravind and I met in our first year at McMaster University sometime in September 2007. Unfortunately, it wasn't love at first sight or anything close to it. We were involved in the same group on campus and ended up having most of the same friends. Over the course of the year those friends started to hang out outside of school and eventually became our core university friends. During the 2008 school year, Aravind and I would spend lots of time talking on msn messenger (a little nostalgia right there) and slowly became better friends. This friendship would continue to grow in laughter, conversations about life, future plans and truly getting to know each other. Fast forward to March 2012 when our love lives were definitely not something to write about so we began going to the movies, having dinner and moving into the 'grey' zone. I remember telling myself that I couldn't possibly like Aravind in that way but before I knew what hit me, I had fallen for that loud and wild first year with long hair who wore XL sweaters and had an even larger personality. Somehow I had found the one I had been looking for this whole time and he was right in front of me. Aravind is still loud and wild but he is also extremely hard working, kind, sweet, and I'm sure I could just go on forever. He makes me laugh every single day and most importantly, my family adores him. We may not have the perfect love story but it is perfect to me. We have a relationship built on a strong friendship, trust and a copious amount of laughter. I get butterflies when I think about September 4, 2015 - the day when I get to marry my best friend. 

Exciting News

As I'm typing this blog post I've realized 2 things:
1.) I have not blogged in a long time! Opps. Sorry about that one!
2.) I'm a little sad to see February go. I love that February is still fresh in the new year. We can make changes and still work on making those resolutions come true. February gives us hope that spring is around the corner and during February, my favourite holiday takes place, Valentine's Day. I know, technically it isn't an actual holiday but I honestly love it! I love being able to buy or make treats and little cards for all those around you. To me Valentine's Day isn't strictly for romance, it's about showing everyone around you how much they mean to you! I like to send cards, texts and make phone calls to those that mean the world to me. I think it makes the world a nicer placer. What can I say? I love everything to do with love!

On February 4th, I received another reason to love February even more. As some of you may know, I got engaged to my best friend and love of my life. (insert happy dance!) Aravind and I are working on finalizing a date and a venue as well as getting ready to throw a colourful, loud and love filled Sri Lankan/Canadian wedding next September. I will be blogging about my experiences and some details about my wedding along the way! I hope you guys will stick around and follow my journey as a wedding planner to becoming a Mrs!

Next on the blog: The Story of Us!