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The long weekend is almost here, and if you are not sure what to do there are lots of fantastic things on! So grab your sunglasses and take full advantage of the last long weekend of summer. Make it a great one!
Things To Do In Toronto
1.Take A Day Trip To The Toronto Islands (click here to read more)
One of our favourite things to do is to go the the Toronto Islands.
2. Go To The Beach (click here to read more)
The Beach is also a favourite place to be this weekend. Take a stroll on the beach, play some volleyball, watch the seagulls, or enjoy a delicious brunch along Queen Street.
3. Visit The Harboufront Area (click here to read more)
There’s also lots of great things happening at the Harbourfront in general. Read on to find out what to do, where to go, and where the best patio is!
Things To Do Outside Of The City
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4. Take A Day Trip To Niagara On The Lake (click here to read more)
Niagara On the Lake is an absolute favourite. Here’s a short post on what do while you’re in Ontario’s favourite wine country.
5. Go To Cottage Country (click here to read more)
Cottage country is gorgeous, and there’s no better weekend to enjoy it than this one! Here’s a link to a last minute cottage rental site…so tempting!
Things To Do Anywhere
6. Host A Fabuous Dinner Party (click here to read more)
It’s going to be gorgeous, so host a fabulous outdoor dinner party with these amazing recipes.
7. Go On A Cheap, Fun & Active Date (click here to read more)
Great suggestions for cheap, active and super fun date activities. If you’re single don’t fret, grab one of your girlfriends and make it a girls date!
8. Go Hiking With Your Girlfriends (click here to read more)
The great outdoors, great girlfriends…well it all sounds pretty great. And it is. Do something totally different this weekend, and go hiking with your ladies. You’ll love it!
9. Day Dream What Your Fantasy Life (click here to read more)
In a relaxed environment, with no pressure or noise, or stress, or anything to disrupt you, let your mind wander…and create a picture of your dream life. It will be the start of great things for you!
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Earlier in the blog I wrote about our destination wedding (including some destination wedding do’s and dont’s for what we’d change if we could do it all again!). I was a tad worried about what our destination wedding pictures would look like since all the samples the photographer gave us were sooooo cheesy! Parrots, pirates, and poses, sums it up well. Nothing looked natural, or relaxed, or stylish. It all looked very posed, and silly, and not like us at all.
So, to make sure we had a least a few great shots we decided to do a photo shoot post-wedding in Toronto, with Stephen Sager, a recommended wedding photographer.
The photos turned out so great I can’t resist sharing – check out the full post on Stephen’s blog here
The other great part? It turns out our wedding photos from our destination wedding were quite nice, so now we have two full sets of fabulous photos!
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Today’s post is a guest post from Lily, our new divorcee who’s re-learning to date.
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Welcome to the era of online dating. For those of you who are not single and haven’t been for awhile, you will not be able to even slightly grasp how the world of dating has changed, for those single ladies (and gents) reading this you are probably already laughing.
Between facebook, plenty of fish and jdate I can barely keep up with all the accounts I need to check, forget about trying to remember who I spoke to when and about what. But that’s not even the issue, if my biggest problem was meeting too many great people, well this post would be as exciting as watching your friends wedding video! I can deal with the nice people, and the decent conversations that come up every once in awhile but wow are there some weirdo’s out there.
My first forage back into the dating world happened about 3 ½ months after my split. Nervous as anything, but figured I needed to get back in the game. Nice guy, not for me, but a nice intro back into the world of dating and a fabulous first introduction to the world of online dating. Should have stopped while I was ahead…spent about an hour chatting with the great guy one night, give him my email address, he sends a lovely email, I respond. That’s it, end of the story, nothing back (we’ll touch on why I think this happened in another post!). Then there is the complete stranger I was set up with, who decides (prior to ever meeting me) that I am too newly separated to be dating. I am so lucky to have strangers in my life who are capable of making decisions for me! Oh did I mention he chose to pass on this worldly advice via facebook? And then there is the influx of sweet messages, feel free to interpret
• hi:)Your is very nice beam,and I like to meet you…your lifestyle of the great.my name is “sam”… how are you? (please feel free to translate this one!)
• I really like your fantastic smile? (it’s a question?)
And my ultimate favourite:
him: 
me: well I don’t respond because is not words.
him: ?
me: well again I don’t respond because there are no words in front of the question mark.
him: indecisive or technical difficulties?
me: neither, a smiley face and a question mark do not constitute a conversation.
What ever happened to “hello”?
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Like this? Check out Lily’s other posts
Men Vs. Women: Who Should Bring The Condoms
What’s Better: Happiness Vs. Contentment?
Photo Credit: SugaryBlog
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Who doesn’t love a good boost? Here are some hilarious stories guaranteed to put a smile on your face!
Everyday Funny Things
Holy Vaginas! New Va-Jay-Jay Accessories Are All The Rage
That’s right, detailing your hoo-ha is now a fad. Read on to find out what some women are doing to their “precious ladies”
The Most Annoying Thing Boys Do
If you’ve ever had a dad, brother, boyfriend, or anyone male around you know what this is like!
Men vs. Women: Who Brings The Condoms
A hot topic, what does it say about the girl if she’s bringing the condoms?
Travel Tales
The Essential Guide To Travelling In Italy
Hope you have lots of air miles, because after reading this you are going to want to go to Italy
A Day in Siem Reap, Cambodia
Cambodia is a gorgeous country, and you’ll be surprised by the funny monkeys!
Inspiring Women: Fearless and Fabulous Female Entrepreneurs
Ali De Bold – cofounder of ChickAdvisor
Equipped with a great business idea and loads of hard work she and her husband and business partner, Alex De Bold, started www.ChickAdvisor.com – Canada’s first user generated reviews community for women to share advice on their favourite products and local places. Find out how she did it, and the one thing she would have done differently!
Lisa Ng – founder of HelloDJ
Lisa Ng is a woman that goes after what she wants. She’s never worked in a corporate office, she owns her own DJ company, Hello DJ, and she’s not afraid to take risks. But how did she do it and what’s it like?
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It’s wedding season, and that means Bachelorette parties! But they don’t have to be about lollipops taped to your shirt and penis tattoo all over you face! A new era of bachelorette parties is upon us, so now everyone can get involved in the silliness AND you don’t have to hit the clubs and get totally humiliated if it’s not your thing.
Themed Bachelorette Parties Instead of just making the party about getting married, add some other ingredients into the mix so all of your friends can celebrate with you. Some great ideas are Madonna themed “Like” A Virgin parties and Smurfette parties.
Get Ready With Your Girlfriends Most of the fun happens when you and your girlfriends are sipping cocktails, loading on eye makeup and getting really silly together. So start your party a bit earlier and enjoy all the giggles you and your girlfriends will have as you crimp your hair, mix up your lace outfits, and scream in delight over who has the most ridiculous outfit.
Have A Secret Santa Outfit Party Want to take your party to the next level? Set up a secret santa and assign everyone names for who they have to bring an outfit for. Make sure that everyone writes down the sizes, and you cap off the spending at around $25. Your friends will show up with their ridiculous outfits for each other and you will have an absolute blast revealing the clothes and making everyone dress up.
Skip The Club And Hit The Track If you are not the clubbing type there are loads of fun activities like horse racing (think of the gorgeous hats and outfits you get to wear!) and go karting, or even car racing that can make for a really memorable bachelorette. Don’t stick with the club tradition if it’s not something that works for you.
Keep in mind if you are planning a bachelorette party, or if you are the bachelorette the cheaper and easier your party is the more fun it’s likely to be. When everyone is spending a fortune to go to Vegas for your bachelorette the expectations are so high, that it can be really hard to hit it out of the park. If you do something fun, easy and accessible for all there will be less drama, fewer money worries, and more great memories.
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Today’s article is a guest post from a Lily, a recent divorcee who is re-learning the dating ropes.
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I literally could not believe what was coming out of her mouth “why would I keep condoms at my house? That’s his responsibility”. I almost fell over. Now I am sure most of you are thinking that I must have been having a conversation with a sure-to-be knocked up soon 16 year old, but sadly no. I was talking to a divorced 32 year old woman.
At this age I was shocked to discover that people are still taking this attitude. A strong enough woman to leave her husband when she was unhappy, become a successful lawyer, and yet somehow does not seem to be able to take control of her own sex life. I got curious, perhaps I was a little too in control of my sex life, maybe I was the odd ball out with a box of condoms in my night table drawer (which by the way still seems to be full, but that’s a whole other post!) so the polling of my friends became my newest past time. I literally asked everyone I knew who was single if they had condoms at their house.
Pure shock, you have no idea how many woman still think it’s the guys job to bring the condoms. Newsflash ladies, if you don’t have condoms at your place your choices become, 1) no sex (bad choice when you are already at the point of needing a condom) 2) uncovered sex (do I really need to explain the reason for this being a bad choice?!). I don’t know about you but neither of these two options seem like good ones for me. So ladies, it’s 2010 if you’re going to have sex, be prepared, take control of your sexual destiny, and splurge the $12 and stick a box in your night stand, they last for years!
Till Next Time, Lily!
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Tired of just doing Brazilian waxing…why not add some jewellery to your hoo – ha? Or perhaps wear a lovely pendant inspired by what’s down under? Or if that’s not for you, how about a spritz of perfume that is crafted to smell like your nether region?
It’s a new trend, it’s all the rage…but is it for you?
Apparently Jennifer Love Hewitt “vajazzled” herself by applying Swarovski crystals to her “precious lady” to get over a break-up. VULVA Original is a new scent from Germany designed for men to smell and play their internal porn reel in their heads, and you can buy vagina jewelry from www.VulvaLoveLovely.com
Just in case that’s not enough fun for you there’s also a special dye available so you can add some new colours to your “little kitten”.
But if you haven’t laughed hard enough you have to check out the Vulva Original website – when the page loads you are treated to a short video where a hot & sweaty lady finishes exercising only to have a horny guy go over and smell around the bike seat she just hopped off of!
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Destination weddings are supposed to be fun, easy and enjoyable. So why am I totally exhausted and broken after our week long wedding celebrations?
In hindsight there are some things that we did right, and some things that we did very wrong – combined that meant that our guests had a great time (which of course makes us happy) but that we were totally worn out, and in reality, didn’t have that much fun until the end.
If I could do things all over again there are many things I would have done totally differently – so I thought a Do and Don’t list would help other people that were considering a destination wedding.
DO
have one wedding If you have a destination wedding, or are from different cultures you don’t need to have multiple celebrations. I’m from Canada and my husband is from Argentina. I’m so happy we had a destination wedding in one location instead of having one wedding in Canada and one in Argentina. More of our friends would have been able to join us if we’d had two weddings, but it would have been a total nightmare to organize. One wedding is a ton of work, I can’t imagine planning two!
find a location that’s easy to get to and is central for most guests With people coming from all different locations it’s great if you can find a place that’s somewhere in the middle. Since we had people coming from South America, and the East and West Coast of Canada/ the US, Mexico was a good choice. It also meant that everything happened on neutral territory and neither of the families would feel like they were being favoured or disadvantaged.
try and spend quality time with each guest The reality is that people travel very far, and pay quite a lot to celebrate with you, so make sure that they know you appreciate it. Spending a bit of time with each person makes the whole affair seem more personal, and your guests will be happy that they got to have quality time with you at such a busy time.
make a wedding night party that is unique to you This is your chance to do something different – you don’t have to follow rules. Do what’s right for you! While we were away two other guests had birthdays, so we included a special shout out and birthday cakes for them at our reception. It isn’t the typical thing to do, but it made the event extra special for those guests.
make arrangements for all your guests to enjoy Each wedding has a special set of needs/wants and personalities. Keep those in mind when planning and anticipate your guests needs so that you can make arrangements and they can enjoy the whole party with you. For example, we had lots of young families at our wedding, so we made arrangements for kids meals (fries and chicken fingers) to be served before adult meals, high chairs to be at tables, and baby sitters to be on hand to either take the kids to their rooms, or watch over them in the seating area. That way the kids were happy, and the parents were free to relax and enjoy the party. Our plans worked out too, almost all of the parents stayed until 2am because all of the normal headache details were taken care of for them.
have your bachelor/bachelorette parties on the same night That way all the messy stuff will be taken are of in one night, and one of you won’t be left at home wondering what’s happening with the other.
have the wedding early on in the week The early you have the wedding, the earlier you relax. We decided to have the wedding on day five of our seven day stay. It was a mistake. If you get there on Sunday have the wedding on Wednesday. You will allow yourself a few days to take care of details and then you can relax with your friends after. We arrived on the Sunday and had the wedding on Friday – it meant we spent five days receiving guests, making plans for our wedding, spending time with everyone – it also meant we spent no time relaxing and enjoying the fruits of our labour. The only time we relaxed was for four hours on the day we left. Seriously.
stay after the wedding You and your forever mate will be exhausted after the wedding – so plan some downtime for after the wedding. My biggest regret is not spending time together alone after our wedding. We were both totally exhausted after our wedding – and we had not spent any time together alone for a whole week. It took a toll on us, and for a whole week I didn’t feel that close to my (now) husband, which is a real shame when you are getting married. With everyone around it’s understandable, so if you are planning a destination wedding make sure you set aside some “you time” after the wedding to relax, enjoy and reminisce about the wedding.
DON’T
expect the wedding coordinator to be a lifesaver They are coordinators…which means they coordinate, it doesn’t mean that they do everything. What we thought was going to be an easy event to organize because we had a coordinator on board was not so easy after all. The coordinator was the middle man, so saved us from negotiating directly with different suppliers, but it still meant that we had to make all the plans, come up with all the choices, provide all the direction, and solve all the problems. The only thing the coordinator did was show us a few rooms that we could get married in, show me a few flower samples, and call the suppliers to order stuff we asked for. We thought we’d be out sipping margaritas because we had a wedding coordinator…but we were sooo wrong!
over extend yourself Yes, you are a host, but set limits for yourselves. We spent so much of our energy worrying about our guests, and if they were having fun, that we drained ourselves. We had almost no downtime, and as a result we were both very testy, edgy, and we spent no time on the beach relaxing or enjoying the resort. The only things we saw were restaurants, the spa, our wedding coordinators office, and the banquet room for the party. We need to go back next year to see what we missed out this time!
put your guests requests above your own desires It’s hard when everyone is asking for things and wants something different, but you need to be able to brush it off and do what you want. Both my husband and I are very accommodating people, and my husband loves to host people. So that meant that we spent so much time trying to help people out, finding fun things for them to do, letting people interrupt us all day long. It’s great to wear the hostess party hat, but when it takes a toll on you, it’s time to put the hat away and let people figure some things out for themselves.
pay for friends and family to come if it’s outside of your comfort level When you have a destination wedding it means your guests will have to pay a lot to join you – and that means not everyone can afford it. Some couples will help their friends and family get there, others will not. Half our wedding budget was set aside for helping certain people come to our wedding. When the actual wedding came it was great to see our family together and some of our friends were sooo helpful and we were thrilled to be able to help. But others were a huge disappointment. One guest didn’t even thank us for helping, never made any effort to see us at the resort, and if anything did some things that took away from our wedding experience (i.e. totally inappropriate stag party). I felt like we bankrolled his family vacation. If I could do it again I would only pay for close family (maybe 3), and one close friend on either of our sides. Keep in mind that when you cover guests travel expenses your destination wedding will end up being just as expensive as a North American wedding (upward of $35,000), if not more.
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On March 5th I officially became a Mrs, and it was quite a celebration to mark this event!
In my mind I pictured this being a relaxing and pampered day…but it’s a lot of work to get pampered! In the morning I had my nails done, followed by hair and makeup in the afternoon.
I wanted to have pictures taken with my husband when we had our wedding outfits on, and while we had full sunlight, but I didn’t want to interrupt our event between the ceremony and the reception…so we did things a little differently. We had our pictures taken before our actual wedding! It’s a tad unconventional for the groom to see the bride in her dress before the ceremony, but we’re not really conventional people.
coming to pick up the bride
When the photographer arrived we spent an hour and a half having our pictures taken. We posed and chatted and kissed for the camera. So much kissing! I’m not much of a camera kisser, it seems kind of cheesy to me, but every second picture our photographer wanted a smooching pose, until I said “enough!”
so much kissing!
After our pictures I went back to our room where my aunt and uncle were waiting for me. Originally I was going to walk down the aisle by myself, just because I’m that independent kind of girl, but it didn’t seem right. My aunt and uncle are like my second parents, and they, more than anyone, have mentored me, and guided me to become the person I am today. If anybody deserves the honour of walking me down the aisle it’s them.
So with my aunt and uncle we went to the gazebo where our ceremony was going to take place. We practiced our walk in the room, but when we walked down the aisle we were all in a different step! But even funnier than that…I forgot to show my train! My dress stayed in the bustle while I was walking down the aisle and throughout the ceremony. Even in the pictures before the ceremony. Ooops!
When I got to the gazebo and was ready to exchange vows I felt really excited and a tad nervous. I just remember having a huge smile on my face. It was a nice environment and I totally forgot that there were a bunch of people watching us in what I think is a very intimate experience. The only funny, and cheesy thing, was that when we exchanged our vows the justice of the peace gave us a microphone to repeat after him. Is that normal in weddings? It seemed very strange to me, but if we didn’t have them no-one would have heard us.
After the ceremony we had a champagne toast with the guests, followed by an outdoor cocktail hour. The whole week the evenings had been really chilly, but luckily on this night we had a nice warm breeze that was perfect for our cocktail hour. We had chairs outside, great music, some snacks and an open bar – everything you need for a cocktail hour!
finally a chance to relax!
After an hour or so of cocktail hour we went into the reception room and got ready for dinner. Since some of our guests had birthdays on our actual wedding day we decided to incorporate that into our wedding party. First, we had a three year old Isabella’s birthday song and cake. It was very cute! We also had a birthday at midnight for my new sister in law.
When dinner came we arranged for the kids meals, chicken fingers and French fries, to come out first, followed by the four course adult meals. Our first course was tomato and mozzarella salad with a pesto drizzle, followed by a Mexican lemon and chicken soup, and our main course of beef tenderloin. The food was excellent! We had crème brulle for dessert, but I was too busy having fun to eat any.
When the dinner was over we started dancing and getting wild. For Argentininan’s weddings are not formal affairs where everyone is on their best behaviour – instead it’s a time to get silly, have fun, and act wild!
the groom being thrown by friends
taking the groom to the bar
When the cake came out we were too tipsy and wild to enjoy cutting it, so we let it sit on the table, and decided to cut it the next day with just our family around. It was the perfect way to do it, because really we wouldn’t have enjoyed it doing it on our wedding night. We had done our obligations all week long, and the last thing I was interested in was doing one more thing that was formal and planned and involved us passing out cake and making sure we included everyone.
So instead on our wedding night we kept on dancing, drinking, and letting loose all night long. It was a very fun event, and definitely memorable.
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EEEKS!
I’ll let you know all the juicy details after the big do!
