A Day, A Week, Hemant, A Year

This past weekend Michelle and I tied the knot. As my regular readers know we got engaged last year, and got to planning the event almost right away. Before we knew it the weekend of September 26th, 2009 arrived and the festivities were underway.

Friday night Michelle and I held a welcome event at our home. Since we had so many friends and family travelling from all over the world we thought it would be a good idea to have as many of them over as possible the night before just to catch up. We ended up having a very full house (and backyard) with over 100 people showing up. My mother and relatives were gracious enough to cook dinner for everyone, and I’m pretty sure no one left hungry. We wrapped things up at 11pm and I headed over to Curtis’s place to spend the night.

Saturday morning I woke up with a strange feeling in my gut. The funny thing was that I wasn’t sure if I was nervous or hungry. At around 11am I took my groomsmen out for breakfast. When we finished I deduced that I was in fact nervous since I was full, and still had the strange feeling in my gut. We headed back to Curtis’s condo to chill before the wedding ceremony.

We threw in the Goonies to help settle my nerves and at 2pm our photographer Kira Nelson showed up to take some shots of us getting ready. She didn’t spend too much time with us before heading back to our house to shoot the bridal party getting ready. Before we knew it, it was time to head over to the Broadway Theatre for the ceremony.

We ended up getting their a little early so the boys and I crossed the street for a drink at the Yard & Flagon. We figured it was a good way to kill some time, and to help take the edge off. After we finished up the time had arrived to get married. And married I got. The ceremony went perfectly.

Michelle and I decided a while ago that we didn’t want to take a big chunk of time to do photos. The plan was for the wedding party and Kira to walk from the Broadway Theatre to the Hilton and do photos along the way. Since the ceremony ended at around 4:30 and cocktails wrapped up 6:30, we would have plenty of time to get some great shots.

We arrived at the Hilton at around 6:15 to catch the tail end of cocktails. Dinner was served followed by the program. We kept it short with toasts to the groom and bride, as well as ‘welcome to the families’. I also prepared a slideshow (watch it below) which played just before Michelle and I addressed our guests.  The rest of the evening was spent dancing to a variety of great music.  I’ve always said that you can judge how good a wedding is based on how many people are dancing.  I’m happy to say that the dance floor was more-or-less full for the entire night.

It was great that the wedding went exactly as Michelle and I had envisioned. It meant a lot to have so many family and friends at our wedding. Some traveled from afar, and some from near, but one thing was for certain - the wedding would not have been the same without any of them.  Thank you to all.  Michelle and I will cherish this day for the rest of our lives.

Michelle and I had our wedding engagement shoot with Kira Nelson on July 28th at various locations in Saskatoon. We spent some time at the River Landing, and a few other unique downtown locations, and had a glass of wine in the downtown lounge Flint.

Kira recently made a short blog post talking about our shoot showcasing some of the great shots she took during the evening. You can read her post here and see a slideshow of all of our pictures here. I hope you enjoy them as much as we had getting them taken.

I never made another post following the wedding announcement back in September so I thought I would give a quick update. Michelle and I have gotten the major things sorted out including the venue for the reception, the photographer, and the DJ. The bridal party are ready to go with Michelle having found hers and the bridesmaid dresses. As far as I know they are all fitted and ordered. I too have found what the men will be wearing, but I’m pretty sure they have not went and got fitted yet.  I may have to give them a deadline. Michelle being the crafty person she is has been spending a lot of her time creating our invitations and ’save the dates’. We are going to have a lot of people needing to travel a reasonable distance for the wedding, so we figured ’save the dates’ would be a good idea. Michelle finished those up last night and will be mailing them out in the next couple days. Only expect one of these fabulous creations in the mail if you’re a traveler.  If you live close by, consider this your official ’save the date’.

I guess the last major thing Michelle and I keep ignoring is where the actual wedding ceremony will take place. We’ve found that when you’re not getting married in a church, your options become quite limited in Saskatoon - especially when weather could become a factor at the tail end of September. If you have any suggestions, we’d love to hear from you.

Usually I am pretty expedient when it comes to processing photos after an event. I’m not sure why I have gotten lazy lately, but Sharon and Derrick’s wedding was back on October 25, 2008. This morning I woke up with a little extra energy and decided to work on my photo backlog.

Michelle was in the wedding and the bridal party got ready for the day at our place the morning of the wedding. This gave me a good opportunity to get some insider shots as the girls got prepared.

I didn’t get many other shots during the wedding or at the reception, but I was sure to catch of few of the cake and the first dance - something Sharon wanted me to do since her photographer was only available for the ceremony. I spent the remainder of the evening ‘getting jiggy with it’, and playing Bananagrams.

You can check out some more photos from the day by following the links below:

• Thumbnails on Flickr
• Slideshow on Flickr

During a deep philosophical debate on the subject of whether or not fire is a living organism, this exchange was overheard.

Fire is Not an Organism Girl: Well I know for sure that prions are not living organisms.
Fire is an Organism Guy: What’s a prion?
Fire is Not an Organism Girl: They’re those things that live in your brain.

Debate over.

This past Tuesday night was very exciting for me.  I asked Michelle to marry me, and she accepted (like there was any doubt).  I’m sure most of you who are reading this have already heard the news, so I’ll just give you the details of the events leading up to the big moment.

A few weeks ago Michelle and her mom spent a few days in Edmonton at a lingerie trade show.  I saw this as my chance to go ring shopping.  I went to GMG Jewellers and explained to a salesperson what I wanted in my ring - a hybrid of my vision and what Michelle had hinted to me over the last few months. After looking at a few different designs, I made my decision and told them to go ahead and build it. I would return in a few weeks to pick it up.

The next day I told Ryan that I had just bought an engagement ring. Since Michelle’s birthday was coming up I thought that I would propose on that day. I wasn’t sure if this was a cheesy idea so I ran it by Ryan. He didn’t think it was, so the plan was set - I would propose on Wednesday, October 8th.

I was told the ring would be ready on September 17th. The day came and went without me picking it up. I didn’t want to get it too early fearing that I wouldn’t be able to stick to the plan. Another week passed, and September was coming to an end. I couldn’t take it anymore. I was too excited and picked up the ring on Tuesday, September 30th at lunch time, with the intention of doing it that night.

This was a busy week for us so it didn’t leave me many options. Tuesday nights we have ballroom dancing class and always go out for dinner afterward. We had previously agreed to go to a new Indian restaurant on 8th Street that night. However I had decided that I wanted to propose downtown along the river, and since 8th Street is nowhere near downtown I cleverly said that I was craving sushi and suggested the Samurai (which is right on the river). She agreed and my plan was underway.

While we were eating our sushi I kept mentioning how nice an evening it was and that we should go for a walk along the river, especially since we rarely do this. This is where my plan fell apart. Michelle was completely against a walk, stating that we needed to get home because she had a bunch of tests to mark. I tried to change her mind but was unsuccessful. I didn’t want to be too persistent because that would have been fishy (no pun intended).

As the conversation changed to Michelle’s trek up Mount Fuji while in Japan my mind was racing, desperately trying to concoct a contingency plan. Needless to say I still don’t know anything about her climb. I must have been pretty convincing since she didn’t suspect that I wasn’t listening to her.

After leaving the Samurai, and failing one more time to convince her to go for a walk, we made our way back home. The easy thing to do would have been to postpone the proposal. However I started the day telling myself that I would be engaged by the end of the night, and damn it, I was going to make it happen.

While Michelle was catching up on her email in the kitchen, I placed the ring in the middle of the bed, and dimmed the lights. I went to the kitchen and said that we should practice the dance we learned that evening. As we danced, I led her to the bedroom where her ring awaited her. The rest is now history.

See everyone next October.

My good friends Kipp and Steph got married this past Saturday in Saskatoon. This was a wedding that I had been looking forward to for some time, and I am pleased to say that it lived up to my expectations. The wedding was at the United Church on 3rd Avenue and was short and sweet. I think the ceremony was under thirty minutes, and since it was pretty hot outside with no air conditioning, this worked out well.

We had a fairly large chunk of time between the ceremony and the reception so a bunch of us went for drinks at the the Freehouse to kill some time. I’m pretty sure I’ve had Caesars here before, but I don’t remember them being so delicious. These were the greatest Caesars of all time. Five-thirty quickly approached so we headed over to the Victorian where we had dinner reservations for twelve.

This is a fairly upscale establishment and I was looking forward to eating here for some time. The twelve of us made quick work of some huge appetizer platter, which made it difficult for me to finish my steak dinner. I managed to clear my plate except for a quarter of a new potato. I just couldn’t fit anymore food into my gut.

Even though cocktails weren’t scheduled for another thirty minutes, we figured we had better make our way to the reception at Louis’. For some reason Louis’ misquoted how many people they could seat for the reception. Kipp and Steph advised us that we be there early if we wanted to ensure we got a seat. We were the first guests outside of the wedding party and immediate family to arrive, so we had our pick of seats.

We spent our time mingling with the guests during cocktail hour.  I wasn’t sure what to expect with the reception in Louis’ (not Upper Mub) since I had never seen one held here before.  I am happy to say that it looked really good, and was a nice location for a wedding reception.  It’s pretty convenient to have the full bar and DJ booth at your disposal.

The program started at nine o’clock and was emceed by Kipp’s sister Regena.  The program, like the wedding was quite short, with a toast to the groom and bride, as well as the welcoming of Kipp and Steph into their new families.  The program ended with the bride and groom addressing their many guests.  It was all nicely done.

The rest of the evening was a great time filled with lots of visiting, spirits, and dancing. The DJ was kind of funny, and was having a little trouble keeping the dance floor full. When I went to request a song I mentioned that I used to DJ at Louis’ back in the day. He quickly called me into the DJ booth and said something like this:

Dude. You have to help me. This is only my second time DJing and I don’t want to screw this up for the bride.

I gave him a few suggestions and a list of songs that I figured would work out well. It seemed it helped him out a bit and people started to make their way to the floor. I’d like to think it was my song list, but there’s a pretty good chance it was just because people started to fill up on drink.

Michelle and I were there until the end of the night, which ended shortly after two o’clock AM.  There wasn’t many left at this time, but it was pretty cool to see Kipp and Steph there right until the end as well.  I don’t think you see the bride and groom stick around this long very often.  After saying our good-byes and thank-yous, we called it a night and grabbed a cab home.   What a great wedding.  Thanks Kipp and Steph!

You can see more pictures from the day by following the links below:

• Kipp & Steph in Black & White (Thumbnails)
• Kipp & Steph in Black & White (Slideshow)
• Kipp & Steph from the Community Camera (Thumbnails)
• Kipp & Steph from the Community Camera (Slideshow)

If you’re interested in a nice character home built in 1928, and are looking for a nice quiet, rural lifestyle, this house may be for you. No, I don’t own a house by this description, but my parents do. They have decided to put their home in Wilkie up for sale in hopes of moving to Saskatoon. The house is listed privately right now and can be viewed here on saskhouses.com.

I have to admit that if the house does end up selling, I will miss my trips back to Wilkie. But I do welcome the idea of my parents moving to Saskatoon. The amount of cooking my mom sends back with me when visiting Wilkie is out of control. I can only imagine the limitless amounts of food I will get if we live in the same city.

Be sure to check out the listing here. You can also see more pictures of the house here.

As many of you know, Travis and I share the same birthday - April 13. We generally don’t do anything to celebrate this historic date, but this year we decided to round up a group of friends and go out for a nice evening filled with food and spirits. The plan was to go to the Freehouse, but I had trouble booking a table for 20 since they already had a couple of large groups reserved. The Barking Fish was our contingency plan, and I was eager to go since I had not yet been there.

Dinner was great, and the atmosphere was exactly what we were looking for. We spent the majority of the evening at the lounge, and due to a majority ruling, we ended up at Whiskey Jacks - a place I am not a fan of. Being good sports, we followed the crowd to the bar, but could only take it for a few minutes before Michelle and I decided to call it a night. The evening was great and I’d like to thank everyone who came out to celebrate my birthday. You can check out some photos from the night by following the links below.

• Thumbnails on Flickr
• Slideshow on Flickr
• Thumbnails on Picasa
• Slideshow on Flickr

Michelle and I were at Persephone Theatre tonight seeing At the End of Her Rope, and we couldn’t help but listen to the coversation of the people behind us.

Kid’s Aunt: Pretty soon they’re going to be able to medically create earthquakes.
Kid’s Mother: You should never try to play God.

I fear the day of medically induced earthquakes. Just another scientific discovery that will be used for destruction.

Just over a month ago I posted about my dire housing situation. My landlord had sold the condo I was living in and I needed to be out by the end of March. Well I thought I would give a quick update on that whole situation. Two days after finding out about my place, Michelle and I looked at a house in Erindale in Saskatoon (actually about a five minute walk from Curtis’ new condo - yeah, the imaginary one). A day after that we made an offer on that house and it was accepted. Michelle wasn’t even in Saskatoon at the time - she was out winter camping (yeah, winter camping) with her school so I was sending text messages to her with updates such as:

• We’re putting in an offer on that house we looked at.
• They rejected our offer. We countered, and they accepted.

I believe the response I got was something like:

• OMG

We got all of our financing in order the following week, got Michelle’s condo on the market, and that was that. Her condo sold in no time and our possession date was set for March 18th. So in less than a week I went from being fairly content in my rental condo to being a proud new homeowner. Here’s a picture of Michelle entering our house for the first time. As you can see, she was very excited.

We hired movers for March 28th as to give us enough time to pack. As usual, packing sucked, but it did give us a chance to toss out some of our stuff. I managed to go through my clothing and fill five giant garbage bags to donate to Community Living. I also was able to get all of my recycling sorted out, and man, do I have a lot! I’m gonna be a millionaire when I take that stuff in for refund. Well maybe not a millionaire, but I’d be surprised if I can’t pay off our mortgage.

The movers did an awesome job and nothing got damaged. I cannot stress how well worth it is to hire pros. If you got a move coming up I highly suggest you go this route - it’ll be worth every penny. Unpacking started immediately and went on for days. The kitchen proved to be the real dilemma due to limited cupboard space, and our ridiculous amount of kitchen stuff. We had to go and buy a pantry to ease some of the pain.

I was able to put up with the mess for a couple days, but I finally hit my threshold and went on an unpacking rampage. Everything is more-or-less in order now except for the basement where Michelle’s dad and uncle are fixing some drywall. They are scheduled to finish up in the next couple days so Michelle and I plan to paint down there this weekend, and look forward to finally getting everything organized. Thankfully my brain is able to dimiss the chaotic state of the basement because it is in a “renovation” state. We also plan on installing hardwood on the main level in the very short term, but once that is all done, we’re good to go. None of this work was actually needed, but it was something both of us wanted to do.

So somehow Michelle and I have become one of those couples that have home projects on the go. I’m not sure how that happened, and I’m equally unsure how much I am actually going to be involved in these projects beyond the planning stage. My renovation skills are limited and I’d prefer to have things done properly. Why just the other day I screwed up the installation of a toilet paper holder (it actually wasn’t my fault - the wall was being childish). Luckily Michelle’s dad was there to save the day. I redeemed myself by installing the towel holder without incident.

I haven’t taken many photos of the house yet so stay tuned for those in the upcoming days. And let me take this moment to officially invite you over for a visit. Now that things are less chaotic here I’ll be a much better host.

Yeah, that’s right. I’m soon to be homeless. As in, without a home. On the streets. In a van, down by the river. I was informed a couple days ago that my landlord is moving out of the city (I’m not sure where), so he is selling his rental properties in Saskatoon. The property has been listed as of today, and apparently there is already a couple of people going through to look at it tonight. It’s not going to take long to sell.

So what does this mean to me? Well I have a minimum of thirty days from the selling date to vacate, so at least that gives me a little time to figure something out. I guess not all is bad since this will be the kick in the ass I needed to buy something. I did in fact officially enter the buyers market yesterday after going to view a house in the city. I have my realtor uncle on alert to find me a good deal in this ridiculous market. It’s just going to be really annoying while realtors show my current place. I’m allowed at least 24 hours notice prior to a viewing, but that doesn’t really help much when the viewing is in the evening. I would have appreciated a little more notice that it was going up for sale. At least then I could have gotten out before it actually hit the market. Well I guess if I’m laying on the couch in my underwear everytime they show up they’ll try and schedule during office hours.

I was in the networking section of Future Shop the other day, standing by a couple of guys looking at routers.

Younger Dude: So wireless-N is the fastest right now?
Older Dude: That’s right.
Younger Dude: Yeah, but is it going to be too fast?

We all know how annoying fast internet connections can be.

It wasn’t long ago that I blogged about attending Noodle’s stag. Before we knew it December 31st had arrived, and we found ourselves at his and his lovely bride Krista’s wedding. Having the wedding on New Years Eve sounded like a great idea, and it proved to be an awesome time.

The wedding was at 4:30pm at St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Saskatoon. Luckily I was still on vacation so I didn’t have to worry about checking out of the office early. Travis was Adam’s best man and from what I hear, Krista kept him quite busy with wedding duties. As far as I can tell, he did a pretty good job. Gordo, Todd, Kipp, Steph, Jason, Cheryl, Michelle, and I had the privilege of attending the nice ceremony (play slideshow below).

We were in and out of the church in just over thirty minutes, and then headed straight to the Radisson for the rest of the festivities. Since we’ve had previous experience of being unable to find a taxi on New Years Eve in Saskatoon, most of us decided to just stay at the hotel. We checked in and made our way to cocktail hour.

The room was done up incredibly well, and was quite beautiful. I was impressed. All eight of us were seated at the same table where we enjoyed each other’s company, and the program prepared by the wedding party. Roast beef was the main course of the meal, and it was delicious. I ate too much for dessert, but I figured I was allowed since I was on holidays.

The rest of the night we spent dancing and performing other shenanigans. I gave everyone a little taste of my mad break-dancing skills that I mastered over twenty years ago. As with most weddings our crew attends, we danced until the DJ shut it down. Since we used so much energy over the evening, we ordered some delicious pizza in Kipp’s room and completely devoured it.

This was definitely a New Years Eve I will remember forever, and would like to thank Adam and Krista for letting me share the day with them. I wish them all the luck in their future together, and wish everyone else the best in 2008.

• Thumbnails on Flickr
• Slideshow on Flickr
• Thumbnails on Picasa
• Slideshow on Picasa

This past Friday was the stag for my buddy Adam, also known as Noodle. His wedding is New Year’s Eve so a group of his friends decided to go and tear up the town for his one last hoorah. The evening started with fifteen of us having a nice dinner at Earls Restaurant. As much as I enjoy the atmosphere and food at this joint, the service was terrible. It was difficult to understand why a table of fifteen guys would have trouble ordering drinks at a stag. By the time we finished our meal we didn’t have much time to get out of the restaurant and to our next destination at TCU place for the Just For Laughs show. After our waitress had to ask three different times what each of us had, we finally got our bills and hit the road. The service made me feel like I was in Alberta. Luckily the company at Earls was great, and overshadowed the poor service.

We ended up being late for the show, but only missed a little bit of the host’s opening stint. The theme of the show was Relationships : Looking for Love in all the Wrong Places, and it was hilarious. Including the host, there were six acts and all were really strong. The comedians performing were Greg Behrendt, John Wing, Fiona O’Loughlin, Louis Ramey, Kevin Brennan, and Tom Papa. The easily enjoyed the final three acts the most.

Once we finished up at the show, we made our way to Winston’s Pub where we would unwind and finish off the night. After the guest of honour and most of the crew headed home, the remaining five of us tried to find a cab, but no one would take us because we had one too many to fit. In all of our wisdom we decided that it was a better idea just to get a hotel room while we were downtown. We were denied rooms at The Besborough, The Ramada, and The Sheraton - even after Todd tried explaining to them that we were a famous rock band from Los Angeles.

We finally managed to find a cabbie that would take the five of us in his car after a little coaxing and bribery. The evening wound down at my place as we ate pizza and reflected on the evening. If the stag is going to be any indication of the Adam and Krista’s wedding, it’s going to be a great time. I also want to throw out a big “thanks” to Travis for organizing the evening’s events. You can get to photos from the evening below.

• Thumbnails
• Slideshow