get married

Since I last wrote about my wedding planning, many things have happened.

• We have a location: The Old Mill in Toronto. The room we’ve got is gorgeous and if there’s snow, it’ll be even prettier.
• We spoke with the chef at The Old Mill to make sure that our vegetarian entries are excellent.
• We plan on using one of the officiants at The Old Mill, but off the hour and in the room we’re having the reception catered in later that evening.
• We have a DJ, but we haven’t picked songs that we must hear or don’t want to hear.
• We’re debating the use of a professional photographer. (Is it bad etiquette for the groom to take his own digital camera to take pictures of his reception-goers, or do you think that I’ll just be too busy?) This is a serious question because we’ve got AM’s cousin who can do nice photography, but we want her to just have fun during the evening, too. And even though I’ve got a lead on someone local who would give us a great deal, it’s still very expensive in the end.
• I received the printed invitations in the mail today. They are stunning. Props to Canadian Wedding Treasures for a great job.
• AM has her dress; I have chosen the style of suit that I will be wearing in general; I hope to be going to Tom’s Place of Kensington Market and Korry’s of Greektown in the next two or three weeks to pick out the suit, although I won’t order it until the end of October (either right before or right after RubyConf 2006).

All in all, we’re in great shape for this, and I couldn’t feel better about all of it if I tried.

We know when we want to get married, at least. Now we have to find a facility for the reception. The date will be on 25 November 2006.

So, I call our preferred location for our wedding reception. Owned by Anne-Marie’s cousin, it’s a cute little lakeside “resort” with eight motel rooms and three cottages. There are three dates available for September, our considered time. Two of them are short a cottage, but are otherwise wide open.

They want a minimum two-night booking. At $1,100 a night for all the rooms and cottages. And then we have to get a caterer (because we’re sure as fuck not going to have them do it, since the chef there deliberately screws up vegetarian dishes so that they’re not). There’s no way we can ask our guests to split a $150 – $350 hotel bill (once tax is figured in) and we can’t really afford to eat $1,100 of rental because we only really want one night.

I get that they would be booking everything they have and losing the opportunity to make any random money that weekend. What I know is that we go up there most Septembers and there’s no competition for the rooms we get. None.

Okay. So we’re probably going to look for a different venue…

Anne-Marie asked me to marry her in August. It is fitting that it was done originally over instant messenger, as we first met in IRC and on a newsgroup that we both visited.

I, of course, accepted. Now, we just need to get a few technicalities taken care of and plan it, but come next September, I will be a married man. I already knew that I wanted to grow old with her—I knew that from the day that I met her—but I am honored to be her husband as well as her life partner.