Ciara & Simon - A Wedding Planner’s Wedding
The wedding that started it all was our own. When Simon proposed to me we took a trip out to Banff (his first being that he grew up in England and Ontario) and he immediately said to me, “This is where we have to get married.” We quickly booked the Catholic Church in Banff and went to work planning our wedding (and our wedding planning business being that we were so heavily involved in event planning back in Ontario, it was a perfect fit as we moved back to my native Calgary).
A lot of our friends and family would be travelling for our wedding so we thought that since they’d all have to get a hotel anyways, they might as well get it in Banff. I saw a picture in an edgy bridal magazine of a bridesmaid in a hot pink and black dress and I knew that I wanted a hot pink and black wedding. At the time there were not a lot of bright colored weddings in the magazines, so when we stepped onto the scene in Banff with our pink posse we were the talk of the town.
It was during this time that I also made a lot of great friends in the wedding industry. One such vendor was Amanda Loewen of www.glimpz.ca who created all of our wedding day stationary (save the dates, wedding invitations, place cards, and programs). For me, consistency is key in every wedding so with the help of Amanda I was able to make sure that my guests were given a great first impression with our hot pink and black pocket fold invitation and that theme was carried throughout every other element of my wedding.
Our wedding took place over an entire week (this is a wedding planner’s wedding after all) and we made the most of the time that we had with our friends and family. We organized a river rafting trip and sight seeing tours along with a big Greek dinner complete with smashing plates and ouzo (even though we’re not the least bit Greek!). We also hosted all our guests to a big rehearsal BBQ along the banks of the river with outdoor karaoke, basketball and piñatas. Not to mention with an Irish and an English family coming together the local Irish pub was packed with our international visitors.
The wedding day came and we took the walk across the street from the Banff Park Lodge to the Catholic Church. As we both had strong music backgrounds (I am a classically trained singer and I worked at the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences helping to put together the Juno Awards and Simon worked for an independent music distributor and judged battles of the bands) music was a big deal for us so we had a classical guitarist play Counting Crows “Colorblind” as Simon and the bridal party entered, then I entered to the theme song from The Princess Bride.
We had a beautiful Catholic ceremony filled with lots of tears and laughter and we exited to “All You Need Is Love” by the Beatles (we’d given our guests the words to sing along!). Then our guests joined us at our funky hot pink and black reception but not before the classic bridesmaids throwing their flowers in the water picture could be shot (you have to meet with me for the story behind that).
We did things a little different at our wedding and wrapped our chairs in hot pink tulle and had centerpieces filled with hot pink gerbera daisies and jelly beans. We had a round head table with black feathers and a heart shaped wreath adorning the front. And we took great care in seating all our friends with new friends because we knew that everyone would be well acquainted after all our weekend activities.
Our wedding day was magical and amazing and working together to help other couples create moments like this that they can cherish is an amazing way to spend married life.
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