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.

We have so much more freedom than before, so many more opportunities and so much more access to pretty much everything.

So what are you going to do about it?

GIRLS, GO OUT THERE AND GET THE LIFE YOU WANT!!!!!!

sit back, relax, and plan your dream life

Today is a day to dream large. Always wanted to open a spa, climb Everest, set up a date night with your husband every two weeks? Whatever it is that will help you achieve your dream life go out there and get it! Don’t make excuses, and stop thinking about all the reasons why you can’t do it, or it won’t work out.

Everyone has a chance at a dream life. Do you have the courage to live yours?

I’ll let you know all the juicy details after the big do!

These are not your get on the big tourbus with the guy making bad jokes selling you expensive and crappy beer kind of tours.

These are the kind of tours where you hire all your own things, like bus, driver, food, drinks etc…and get them to take you where you want to go and completely on your schedule.

I’m thrilled we were still able to tour, and see all the great things the Mayan Riviera has to offer, but we don’t have to get herded here and there, have people trying to sell us time shares, and spend a set amount of time at every place with zero flexibility.

Hello freedom, this is a great and different kind of touring.

So we all checked in and got ourselves sorted and just kind of “made do”. But when I woke up the next day I was not a happy camper. Because we are having a wedding in the resort we’ve helped to bring in more than 20 room reservations for our guests, and we have a hefty tab to cover for our reception…so why were we in this dark little room.

I woke up at 730 the next day enraged at the situtation…and quickly tried to figure out all our upgrade options and where we could move to and how much extra it would be. When I talked to the reception desk folks they were totally indifferent to my requests to get upgraded without paying since I’d help to bring in so much business.

So, our option was to upgrade our room, pay the difference and cut back the amount extra we had to pay on our room from our reception tab. It doesn’t make sense to give a resort more money when they don’t consider how much business we’re bringing in.

Happy with our solution to keep on budget, but just move up to a bigger and more expensive master suite, we packed once again and moved on. And when we got to our new suite it was wonderful!

For me it was really important to have a nice big place where people would want to come visit us, and also a place where family can gather and relax where young parents don’t have to be so on guard with their children wondering off, and in case you just want to have a relaxing time with friends and family and gather and relax together, without the million other distractions an all inclusive offers.

It really is true, room upgrades are always worth it!

But when you are planning a wedding that happens in a few days that’s not quite how it works. You get off the bus, check in, and look at every single thing from cocktail glasses, to roofs, to bathrooms to figure out where your wedding should be, where the cleanest bathrooms are, and which drinking glasses you want to serve cocktails in. Not exactly relaxing!

It was so easy to make and tasted restaurant delicious, and best of all it was ready in about 20 minutes! This is a great family meal, or could also make a wonderful at home date meal.

Wonderful baked chicken with lime and dijon sauce

Here’s how you do it.

Ingredients:
2 large skinless boneless chicken breasts
3 Tbs Dijon Mustard
1 Tbs Mayo
1 Garlic Clove, minced
Finely grated zest and freshly squeezed juice of 1/2 Lime
3/4 Tsp pepper
Salt to taste
Chopped parsley to garnish

Directions
Preheat the oven to 400. Rinse the chicken and pat dry. In a bowl, whisk together the mustard, mayo, garlic, lime zest and juice and pepper. Season the chicken generously with salt. Place the chicken in the baking dish and pour the mustard-mayo mixture over the chicken, covering it evenly. Bake until it is cooked through (approx 15 minutes) and then serve with steamed asparagus and mini roasted potatoes. You can also finish the chicken off with parsely if you’d like.

Now that Spring is here it’s time to put away the dark clothes, the extra layers, and the salty boots and embrace colour and fun prints for Spring.

This gorgeous dress has colours but offers enough coverage so that you can wear it to the office too! For $158 it’s a decent price for a well made dress that can go from work to cocktails sooo easily.

A fun and sassy dress that's office appropriate

This super fun printed dress definitely makes a statement, but the conservative cut tones it down perfectly! At $128 and a body hugging pattern this looks like a great choice for a party, night out with the girls, or a third date!

Colour and a conservative cut make a perfect match!

This tiered one shouldered dress is romantic and sexy at the same time, making it a perfect date dress! It’s $296, so definitely more pricey, but with this style you can get tonnes of use out of it!

A sexy and romatinc dress all in one!

After weeks and weeks of non stop action it was starting to take a bit of a toll.

So we took a step back, set up a date night and finally we had a proper date…and it was wonderful!

We went to Lucien Restaurant in Toronto. Thankfully for us (not for the restaurant) it was an Olympic hockey game yesterday, so the restaurant was empty. It was us and one other table.

We could hear the music, talk quietly, and really enjoy a great date night in peace. The restaurant doesn’t have that many tables, so it feels like a nice intimate dining experience. The decor is gorgeous, the lighting is dimmed, and the music and nice and calm…all the elements are set for you to have a nice, relaxing time with unbelievable food and wine!

For dinner I had a heirloom beet and carrot salad appetizer and roasted chicken main dish. The salad was great but the roasted chicken was outstanding. Almost every time I go out with my fiancé I taste his dinner and always secretly wish I’d chosen his dish. But not last night! I was thrilled with my choice and I think it was better choice than my honey’s beef bourguignon. His was good, but I think the chicken had so much more depth of flavours and the dark meat was presented like a warm terrine which was wonderful.

Of course we had some wine too….a gorgeous Amarone that was one of the best wines we’ve had in a long time!

It was so nice to sit down, spend some quality time, laugh together and forget about all the craziness for a few hours.

Of course, it really helped that we agreed not to talk about work at all, so we could focus on the sweet things in life instead of thinking about mounting to do lists!

In just under two weeks we’re getting married in Mexico. Eeeeks! Two Weeks!

We’ve got some solid plans laid out, but it’s true, destination weddings are not really for control freaks.

We had to book the wedding package we were interested in at the resort, and select a few other things like the menu and time of our reception…but otherwise it’s a total game time decision!

- We won’t know which restaurant or hotel area we’ll have our reception in until we get to tour the resort.
- We won’t know what the food is going to taste like, or even if we made good choices until we have our party…or if we are extremely lucky we will be allowed to sample some food a few days earlier.
- We aren’t sure if the dj can play our songs or accomodate our requests until we meet him on our wedding night.

But the funny thing out of all of this is that my fiance and I really like to have control of pretty much everything. Or at least he does. I tend to go from one extreme or the other…make me the captain or the servant, but god forbid I have to discuss every detail with many different people to get their approval and spend forever going back and forth. That makes me bananas! Either tell me what to do, and exactly how to do it…or let me do it my way.

So, some funny things have happened because of this. I have spent most of my wedding planning time labouring over things like colour combinations, or how I would like the print work to look like, while my fiance has spent his time emailing friends and family and reconnecting with all the guests, and continously colour coding the rsvp list.

I guess we’ve just transferred our desire to know exactly what is going on and how we want everything to work into other things…and so far it’s been okay! I guess if our guests have cold soup and terrible music we can feel some sort of satisfaction knowing that the colour pallette is pretty and we are up to date on eveyone’s business!