Wedding day!

So, it's over and done with. We is hitched!

The weather was a bit more humid than we would have liked but over all it was perfect. Mostly sunny, nice breeze and the ground was dry and firm.

Groom, ring bearer and Best Man

The ceremony begins!

She gets her ring...

and I get mine!

First married kiss!

It was quiet and simple. 14 people involved. After the ceremony we went to Belleville for the photo shoot. My brother-in-law Steve is a semi-pro photographer and did our pictures as a wedding gift. Hopefully we'll see them soon.

Carries teacher, Marilyn Rankin, was able to make it. I think that was one of the big surprises for Carrie.

Marilyn and Carrie

Will "Slinkyaroo" Ludlow, one of the guys I know from the paintball forum, made it. A pleasant surprise for both Carrie and I. I was a bit concerned he would miss the wedding due to when he finished work and when we were going to start.

My biggest surprise was that my friend from WAAAAAY back in grade 4 made it. John and I met in Nova Scotia and now he lives in Ottawa. He had told me a few weeks before that he and his family should be back from vacation in time but may not be able to make it because of sitters and his wife getting ready to start teaching. The night before the wedding he calls and tells me he'll be there. 5 minutes before Carrie arrives I see him hop out of his truck.

John and I.



The married couple.


The wedding party.


Being a little silly


Groom and Best Man


My mother and the Bride goofing around.

Dinner was kind of a mixed blessing. Logan hadn't slept properly the night before and was starting to get very cranky. We all told him it was fine if he had a nap at the restaurant but he refused. Everyone did their best to be patient with the little guy but after a couple of hours it does grate on the nerves. Jim, my step dad, took Logan back to my parents place and put him to bed. It turns out Logan didn't want us to be upset with him for missing his special dance with his mom. What a little sweetheart. We also had a visit from an elderly lady. She and her husband were there celebrating their 65th anniversary! Supposedly that's a sign of good luck.

After dinner it was back to my parents for cake and a bit of dancing.

Yeah... I still have icing in my nose.

Sunday morning we left on our Honeymoon.

We made it!

On the Maid of the Mist.

Champagne toast in our heart shaped jacuzzi.

Smooch!

It LOOMS!

So. Here it it Thursday. The wedding is Saturday. That leaves me about 48 hours as a "bachelor". 2 days, 5 hours and a few minutes according to the countdown timer on facebook.

The weather looks good albeit a tad muggy for the wedding, no rain though. As far as I know there's only one guest, John and Andrea, that can't make it due to just having had a vacation and kids to settle. While it's a bit disappointing my oldest childhood friend can't make it, it's understandable. His kids are still fairly young and have been traveling for the last week, they won't be up for traveling here. So sometime in October we'll make plans for a day trip up here.

Carrie and I have both written our vows.

Hers:

Keith,
First, I want to say I love you more than life itself. Second, I am so glad that through all our hard times we are still standing here today, as happy as ever.

When I first met you, I was afraid of falling in love with you. I did not think that it was possible for anyone to give me all I wanted to give them. As time went by I realized how much we could truly share. Today I would like to join my life with yours.

I am proud to marry you on this day. I promise to wipe away your tears with my kiss, to ease your pain with my caring and compassion. I want to share your joy and successes with my smiles and laughter.

Today and every day from now on I promise to love you always.

Mine:

Carrie,
Over the years, I have seen my share of trouble and loss. For a long time I wondered if, I could feel any kind of emotion, let alone love someone. When I met you, you proved I could feel, could love and could be happy.

What we have between us makes us stronger than when we were alone. It has allowed us to share our successes and our failures and kept us together no matter what the problem, physical, emotional, financial and some days pure insanity. If I had to face these on my own, I would have shriveled up and blown away long ago.

There are only a few true gifts love can give, one of which is our son. The other I give you today.

You know I have never believed in marriage and I think you understand why. However, love makes us do strange things. We sacrifice our bodies and souls for the ones we love. Love alters our perceptions and beliefs. Because of this, I can give you another one of loves real gifts.

Today I give you my heart and soul, my willingness to be yours and yours alone. I do it in front of these people and I do it willingly.

I love you and will love you forever.

Mom sent an email today saying that all the decoration are up and her place is ready for a party. I hope it's ours. (Yeah a bit of sarcasm)

We still don't know what's happening for the honeymoon. We've been told we're staying in Ontario but need our passports for "accidental" border crossings and that there's lots of stuff both Carrie and I will enjoy doing. Other than that all we know is that mom and Jim will be out golfing in the area....

Logan seems to be doing ok. He's looking forward to being a ring bearer again, and to having a week off with out mom and dad telling him to clean his room. lol

Tonight we're having a little bachelor/bachelorette party. Just Carrie and I and a few friends going out for a couple of drinks. Don't know where but the one and only strip club is rumored to be a location.

Carrie's been busy running some "last minute" errands. She picked me up a new swimsuit (the old one is about 8 years old and a bit snug) and she found a tripod for the video camera. I'm sure there are other things she needed for the honeymoon, like whips, chains, candles, dog collar, leash.......

The Best man and some minor stress....

So... the best man got the same suit as I did but has a red tie to match the red dress of the maid (matron) of honor. It's not the best pic on the planet but it doesn't look too bad.


As for the stress.... Well the info is on my personal blog but the short version is that us moving into the new place on Friday doesn't look like it'll happen. Landlord said it might be a few days delay. But we're not really surprised.

On the plus side a few hints have been dropped about our honeymoon.... We're not sure if it's good or bad. I don't want to say anything more because it's supposed to be a surprise and I don't have all the details.

Suits? Check!

Picked up our suits today. Logan's was too small through the waist so we had to find something else. Mine fits great but the pants need some serious hemming.

Getting closer.....

So.... Wedding Officiant has been booked and paid in full.

Marriage license is paid and will be dropped off tomorrow.

The dress is paid up in full and Carrie goes in for alterations tomorrow at 1500.

Went and ordered my suit today and will have that around the 19th.

This weekend or next we have to get Logan measured for his suit.

The bouquets are bought as are the boutonnieres.

The only thing left to do is figure out where to have the reception or if we'll actually have one. With only 15 guests on one hand it seems silly but on the other it would be nice to have the dances and some food.

We're also still a bit in the air about the honeymoon. Right now were considering just going to Toronto for 4 days and spending to at Wonderland's water park, going to Medieval Times for dinner, and not sure what else.

New date...

Well Carrie's getting fed up with people who think their opinion means more than ours. She starting to agree that we should just say screw it and elope.

We contacted an officiant in Shannonville earlier this week to see her garden where she does weddings. Looking at it on line it seems really nice. It was at this point the new wedding date was selected: August 23, 2008.

In case you didn't get that: August 23, 2008. The time will be 1800 hrs(6pm). Sunset is two hours later.

The only guests will be immediate family. Afterward we'll be heading back to my mother's place for a small party.

We've been looking at flower.... Tons of fun for me, especially since I have allergies.

Carrie's going to have a bouquet of roses and dendro lilies with some English Ivy.

She's not going with a cascade like in the picture but at least you can see the types of flowers. She also wants to incorporate a tie clip of my grandfathers. He passed away a couple of years before Logan was born.

The brides maids will have white roses and the men will be wearing the lily in their lapels.

The closest florist can do it in live flowers for abut $450.00 for everything. Not a bad price really. Carrie would like to use silk so that her bouquet will still look good in 100 years but according to the florist that would double the price. Carrie would like to go with a teardrop cascade but again that doubles the cost. So we're still looking around for other options. A friend of ours knows of a place in Toronto that might be able to give a much better price on silk. If it's half the cost plus $100.00 for shipping it's still a good deal.

Looking through the Yellow Pages it seems Kingston is lacking in hat shops. There's a "vintage" store downtown that has some fedoras... for $9.00. They're the cheap costume hats, the kind with a stiff plastic liner. I'd rather pay $50.00 for a decent quality one that will last longer and look better. Once the weather warms up a bit and stabilizes I'll tromp around the stores downtown and see what I can find. If I absolutely have to I'll order online.

So we've been talking to my mother, who is now the maid(matron?) of honor...
40 guests is the limit. The ceremony will be held at her place, outside if the weather is good, inside if it rains.

Camo tux has been nixed and I'll be dressed a la Elwood Blues.

The dress is almost fully paid for.

Mom said she'd look into paying for the cake. We'd been tossing the idea of cupcakes around but the cake would be nicer.

Invitations are printed and ready to go. We just need a few addresses before we send them out in November.

Things left to do: Pick flowers for bouquets, buy my suit & fedora, buy suit/fedora for the ring bearer, decide what to do for the honeymoon.

Depending on who can actually show up at the wedding will play a part in it. My high school pals(Mark, Shaun and Kris) are going to be invited but if they can't make it then we may go to Halifax for the honeymoon. I don't have much of an issue with it but I'd like to head to Calgary for Stampede week. Maybe go to Edmonton for the West Edmonton Mall. Regardless we have to take her back problems into consideration.

Possible Changes....

Sometimes I think giving yourself 2 years to plan a wedding is too damned long. Others I think it's not nearly long enough. The logistics of our main idea seem so insanely daunting, especially when we have people tossing suggestions at us on how to do things.

My parents made a suggestion, again, to have the wedding/reception at their place and only have 20 to 30 guests and then we go paintballing on the honeymoon. My step-dad has offered to BBQ for the event. I don't think 30 cases of food poisoning would be a good thing, LOL! I'm not adverse to the idea but it's not the same, if you know what I mean.

Carrie likes the idea and made some comments about it. Things like moving the wedding to May so we can go to OK D-day or maybe to Special Ops Elite Weekend. After the paintballing we'd go some place else, maybe Las Vegas for a few days. It was even suggested we move the wedding to 2009 too but I doubt we'd have the finances ready that soon.

Add to the cost that it looks like Carrie will need to have her lower teeth removed and get dentures too. It looks like the Osteopenia in her spine is affecting other areas as well and causing bone loss in the jaw. We are looking into alternative measures though. Hopefully something good turns up.

We asked our son what he though about us changing the wedding. His thoughts, "A pirate wedding would be cool. So would a wrestling one." Got to love kids and their unique perspective on everything.

At the suggestion of a pirate wedding the only vows I could think of were, "Yarr! I promise to plunder yer booty every night!"

March Break

March Break has come and gone. We were hoping to go check out the paintball field even though it's kind of early in the year. Mother Nature basically told us to piss off by slamming us with a snow storm. We're going to have to wait a bit longer I guess.

Carrie had her post op exam yesterday. The OBGYN said she was healing better than expected. She was surprised Carrie was walking so well so soon. There's still some minor tenderness in that area and it'll be another month before the tiredness is done completely.

Other than that our son and I celebrated our birthdays on March 8 & 9. He had a lot of fun and we all pigged out on cake and ice cream.

Update:We got the rings!

So things are still slowly moving along. We're entering week 4 after Carrie's surgery and it's annoying for everyone.

She wants to be up and doing things but there are a lot of things she's not supposed to do, vacuum, dishes, sex..... But we're coping. She's just waiting for the 6 week recovery period to be over.

On the wedding front we've been trying to figure out what to do and where to go on the honeymoon. Some of the "to do" include golfing, hot air balloon ride, boat tour, water slides, a play maybe a museum.

We've also gotten our wedding rings. Those that have given gifts, thanks!

After Surgery.

Well, the surgery went fine. No complications of any kind, just a really long day.

We were up at 5:00am to be at he hospital for 6:00am and surgery was scheduled for 8:00am. This was fine since it made Carrie the first one on the table and virtually eliminated the chance of a delay or being rescheduled.

Afterwards we went to her "semi-private" room. In most places that means 2 people to a room, here it means 4. Guess that makes private a 2 seater?

She spent the day mildly stoned on paint killers and stuck in the bed. Mind you at 7pm a nurse finally said she could have been up and walking earlier...

I would have gone back on Wed to visit but since we didn't have a sitter for Logan lined up or for someone to pick him up at school I had to do that. At 2:15 my cell rings and Carrie tells me she's being discharged. Thankfully our friend Larry was able to be there to help her home.

Since then she's become more mobile but finds it too uncomfortable to sit on the couch so she spends most of her time in the bedroom.

We've also received a $50.00 gift from someone who prefers not to be named, but we'll thank her anyway! Thank you Chicky-poo! Like I'd use her name.

Surgery day is coming.

Yup. Tues January 22, Carrie goes in for a partial hysterectomy. She's had a messed up cycle since forever. She's been through all the different birth control options trying to regulate it. The longest lasting one was the patch and it made it a little over a year. She had her tubes tied last year hoping it might help but it didn't. This is a final solution. She understandably nervous about it but there shouldn't be any problems.

Mechanical CB gets a thank you for buying a pics and a story, $15.00 gift/donation/purchase. Call it what you will. That brings us to $77.00!

I sent out a few quote requests for the patches. So far the best one is if we buy 299 of them. We don't need that many for the wedding so I wonder if I could sell them on the forum?

Another gift!

A few days ago one of the forum members, SpudCrushr, offered to put gifts through Paypal for those that don't have it. Today we received a $20.00 donation through him from T-freak. Thanks guys! That brings the total to $62.06!

We've also been tossing some ideas around for decorations. We're thinking of using paintball pods as part of the table center pieces. We're just not sure how to do that yet.

Another thing we're considering is getting PodSteins, one for each of the reception guests. It's a handle that seats a 140 round paintball pod to use as a mug.

These would be coming fromFirst Endevor Paintball.


And lastly, because patches were given at big paintball events we're looking into getting some custom ones done up for the wedding. At the very least we want them for the wedding party, possibly for the reception guests, and possibly for anyone who comes to play. Cost will be a big factor in that though.

Clarifcations

I guess it just goes to show how poor the education system really is. The reading comprehension of people on the Canadianbride forum is quite low.

I honestly have no idea why I feel the need to clarify things for those people but here goes:

Their comment:

A $500-2500 cake topper?????? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

What was said in this blog:

Since it's a paintball themed event the cake topper will need to be paintball as well. I know we haven't been looking long but so far it doesn't look like anyone makes a paintball themed topper. We've found several sites that offer to make custom ones starting at $500USD up to $2500.00USD. That could very well take our meager budget of $2400CAD and blow it straight to hell. You can see why we're happy to have the monetary donations and why I'm going to be looking for sponsors.

As you can see we're not impressed with the price of a custom topper. It would be nice to have one that matched the wedding theme. It also explains why we'd prefer a cash gift versus a toaster.
I've also stated that there are a couple of folks on the paintball forum looking into making a paintball topper. We've offered to pay for it as long as it's not insanely expensive.

Their comment:

Is there a point to my rambling? Not sure. But if I had two years to plan a wedding, and already had $4000 in the bank, I would be way ahead of where I am now!

What was said in this blog:

Based on our earnings we will have about $4000.00 squirreled away for the wedding. It's not much but it's enough for a small simple wedding.

"Squirreled away". That doesn't mean we HAVE $4000.00 sitting in our account. I wish we did. It means that we should be able to SAVE that much for the wedding. But what do they care? Thy have their noses so up in the air their brains aren't getting enough oxygen for them to understand things.


Their comment:

If they're having money problems now they aren't going to make it

To this the only possible comment that wa made on this blog is that we've been together to nearly 9 years as it is. We've been through financial trouble before and we're still together. But I guess that doesn't count for anything in their eyes.

Their comment:

Maybe if they explained why they are taking donations/They better have a good reason for it

Based on what I've seen over there, why should we? So you can sit there and say we're lying, making things up to have people feel sorry for us? Not going to happen. Those that know us, know what what we've been through.

Their comment:

She was whiny in her post about her dress basically asking form someone to buy it for her

How is thinking you'll only have $2400.00 to do a wedding and knowing your dream dress alone is going to cost half your budget? That's just flat out disappointment. We tweaked our budget and, assuming there's no major problems between now and then, should be able to save up twice what we first thought. Again, they failed to actually READ and COMPREHEND. Nobody was asked to buy the dress, it's just someone spreading the good karma around.

The tuxes... I asked the head of Special Ops Paintball Softgoods Dept. about the fabric and cost to make them. Again, out of the blue, they offered to do it for free with the only stipulation being that I send them pics to use in their advertising. I can see the tag line now, "Special Ops: We make woodsball look good!" I don't think anyone has played paintball in a suit sine Dave Youngblood back in the 80's.

Now I think I addressed most of the bitching from the crabby ladies over on Canadianbride but Carrie said she wants to add something.

I would like to add: We really do not give a darn what anyone thinks of us. We HAVE never asked anyone for money and I never once said I wanted my dress bought for me, but the jerks (we know who you are) seem to think that we are not putting any money into this wedding. We are. We have been asked however to put a paypal account up so other people in the USA, who are our friends, would have a place to put money as a WEDDING GIFT to do with as we please. So if you do not know the facts then keep your damn mouth shut. Live your life the way you wish, and let others do the same. (Carrie the proud BRIDE to be)

At this point I think this ugly little chapter of crap is done and closed.

Yesterday Carrie and her friend & bridesmaid Sarah Withrow (Excellent author btw) went to look at the dress again and went for lunch. During the course of the day Sarah commented that she was going to look into becoming licensed to perform weddings so she could do ours. She has to do some research on how to become ordained on line what she has to do to be registered to perform it.

It would be awesome if that happened and we've offered to cover a portion of the cost for her to get licensed. Whether she can become ordained still remains to be seen.

Some people

It seems some people out there don't have a sense of humor. As if anyone would seriously want to use Dead Kennedy's as a wedding song. Well, maybe there's a couple of hard core punk rockers out there that might, but that's for them to decide.

It's amusing how anonymous people aren't so anonymous on the internet as they think. I like how they feel ever so safe in trying to leave an unpleasant comment here thinking I can't figure out who did it. The thing is that little box to the right that shows how many people have read this blog doesn't just count. It logs information too, IP address, where you viewed the page from, how you got to the blog and where you went afterwards.

It's not 100% proof that "you" did it, but I have a very good idea though. Not that I really care considering that persons family background and over all attitude.

I suppose I could waste my time on their Canadianbride forum trying to explain things to them but why? After reading the six pages of gossip I doubt anything said would make any impact on them. Especially since I have an idea who the loudmouth is behind it.

As for not appreciating the first donation? Who says we don't? The fact we spoke to the contributors privately and thanked wouldn't matter much to the group of biddies over there.

You can think what you want on your forum, but shut the hell up here. I'd ask you to stop dropping your comments but I'm sure that would be tacky.

Wedding music.

Last night Carrie and I were discussing what song we should have for our dance.

Now I'm about as country as a skyscraper and she likes country. I'd rather poke my eyes out than listen to country but I deal with it because she likes it. But we do need a song we both like.

I had suggested 3 or 4 totally inappropriate songs like Dead Kennedy's Too Drunk to Fuck and had them shut down. *sigh*.

Then I put my real thinking cap on tossed out a half dozen more songs. We settled on Belinda Carlisile's I Get Weak.

There are two more songs we need to pick out. Neither one is going to come easy.

Since Carrie's family will have nothing to do with the wedding she's going to ask my step father, Jim, to walk her down the isle. This means we need to find a good "father-daughter" dance song. We're looking for something on the country side seeing as they both like county music but it's not easy finding something appropriate.

Next is the Groom/Mother dance. Maybe we could go with the Chicken Dance? Do the Twist with Chubby Checkers?

If anyone has a suggestion, please let us know!!

I think I fried my noodle....

Carrie has been having a lot of fun trying to sell off photos of, including taking offers for NOT posting a pic of me in a speedo in my teens. lol She hasn't made a ton of money, but she did get the $10.00!

There's also a request for a pic of me in a thong, outside in the snow and an offer of $50.00. there are only a couple of problems with that though. First the only person to own a thong in this house is Carrie. Second we've been having warm temps (last night it was +9*C) and rain. This morning I look out the window, the grass is showing and looks lush and green. Some of the bigger snow banks are still there though. We are looking for something else to fill the request.

Now for the biggest news of the day:
One of the Special Ops Forum members, Maureen "Bond Chick" Armstrong,has offered to buy Carries dress, with the help of her team, The Valkyries.

This is directly from her post on the forum:

Since I have just found this thread I must offer my congratulations first thing.

How very exciting!

Congratulations to you both (three?) this is such wonderful news.

Recently married, myself, I was the recipient of the wedding of my dreams, over $50,000, at no cost to us.

My then-boyfriend got the call to go to Iraq. He proposed on the spot. I called the local radio station
to request a song for him, telling them of the wedding happening in two days and the outpouring of support
from the community, from total strangers was incredible.

Here is a link telling more about it:

http://www.tennessean.com/local/archives/0...ent_ID=63828407

I would like to return the favor. My female paintball team, The Valkyries, and I would like to purchase your wedding gown.

The gown of your dreams. The one that you say is too expensive. It's the least I can do to "pay it forward" if you will.

You have my phone number in your PM. I look forward to talking with you soon.

Kind regards,
Bond Chick

I'm totally blown away over this and Carrie is in tears. As I'm typing this Carrie's on the phone with Maureen.

Over the years I've always been pleased with the way the majority of paintballers will accept you into their fold. Yeah you've got a few that will act like idiots but there's black sheep in every family, right?

But this just blows me away. I expected the forum members to be behind this marriage no matter what and to help out with small donations if they could (or buying dirt on me, LOL). This is so far above and beyond anything I could have expected it's got me floored.

All I can say is, "Thank you Maureen."

Trying to make more money!

If you look below the Paypal button you'll see I've added Google AdSense. It'll display different ads and things. Come back offten and click ads once in a while. Anything Google sends us goes to the wedding too!

First Donation!

Yup. One of the guys on the forum just donated $5.00. It's not much, but it's a start and it's all Carries doing too.

She's on the forum selling secrets about me.

Thank you Jeremy Frew a.k.a: Mechanical CB


***EDIT: Shortly after posting this another member donated as well, Matt Hemm a.k.a: Matt

***EDIT #2: Our donations fund have reached $28.00 Kyle and Teddy (Digital Pirate and Teddy K) dropped $20.00 in for us.

TO top it off Carrie is auctioning off my signed Ban Hammer on the forum. Starting bis was $5.00. Last time I checked the bid was up to $20.00! The bidding will end Jan 31.

Dream Dress

I have tried on a dress, and feel in love with it. However I know I will never have the money to get it. And that is something that is bothering me. I know the wedding dress is only on for one day. But I LOVE THIS ONE. Keith told me that its ok, I might be able to get it ..... But I know I won't a lot of people say it is way to much money for a dress for one day so I would be silly to get that one. OH well we will see. Anyways here is the dress. The dress is $948.00 now I have seen dresses that cost over $2000.00 and I know that is silly, but MAN I LOVE THIS DRESS! This dress gave me the butterfly feeling, and I knew I should not have tried it on lol.

Will the Media be there?

I was talking to Dawn Allcot , well, more like I left a message in her thread on tha paintball forum....

Dawn is the editor for RECON magazine and has a thread on the forum asking members to offer up ideas on what should be in up coming issues. I asked if she'd be interested in covering the wedding. She sent me a private message to the affimitive.

I've also contact Action Pursuit Games magazine as well, but no response as of yet. I sent them an email yesterday so I wouldn't be surprised if it takes a few days to a few weeks to hear back from them

Since Special Ops is donating the tuxes and possibly some dress modification I'm calling it a sponsorship. I'm hoping to to contact some other paintball compaines to see if they might be interested in sponsoring us as well. Since media will be there and we have one already it may not be too hard to get tohers to jump on the band wagon. But I'm not hodling my breath.

Next:
You'll notice a couple of items on the right. There's a site meter to show how many peolpe have looked at this blog, there's a countdown clock showing the number of days to the wedding and there's a Paypal button.

Site meter is just for the heck of it. Who knows how popular this thing could be? It would be awesome to get a few thousand hits.

The countdown clock is also for fun but it also let's people know when the wedding is. Should the date/time change so will the clock.

Paypal. Over on the forum several members haev expressed interest in sending us something. As I've stated there "Cash is king". Anything we make in your donations to paypal will go towards paying for the wedding. And we'll need all the help we can get.

Since it's apaintball themed event the cake topper will need to be paintball as well. I know we haven't been looking long but so far it doesn't look like anyone makes a paintball themed topper. We've found several sites that offer to make custom ones starting at $500USD up to $2500.00USD. That could very well take our meger budget of $2400CAD and blow it straight to hell. You can see why we're happy to have the monetary donations and why I'm going to be looking for sponsors.

I've put up a thread on the forum asking if anyone could make a custom topper for us at a reasonable price (or even for free). If anyone reading this thinks they might be able to please let us know. I still need to discuss it with Carrie but I'd like to have a topper where the bride is diving over a bunker and shooting the groom. Think it can be done?

Lastly here are some pics of Carrie and her new ring. Like she said it's not much but I knew she'd like it.


I'm not sure what the smudges are on the side of the ring. I know she was doing the dishes before we tried to scan it. I'm thinking it's just soap scum. She cleaned the ring yesterday