Hope everyone is having an awesome 2013 so far! I’m so close to finishing off our wedding posts… it’s going to feel great! For this series, it’s all about the fun activities and plans we had for our guests… and how our wedding weekend went down! Here’s a timeline from start to finish on how we did it!

All of our amazing guests during our wedding ceremony. Love this photo!

On the Friday before our wedding, we had a rehearsal dinner with our wedding party and close family in the wine cellar room at Black Rock Resort. We served a BBQ buffet with delicious local BBQ salmon, chicken, sausages, and lots of side dishes. We also rehearsed the ceremony and shed a few tears! Allan and I also wrote and prepared our speeches.

And then all of a sudden it was the morning of… the bridesmaids started by getting ready, while the groomsmen prepared a very healthy breakfast.

Family, friends, Allan, and our groomsmen helped us immensely (thank you!) by setting up our chairs, wedding arch, and more for our ceremony in the morning.

And then it was time for the ceremony! My little brother Byron arranged and played the music for our ceremony. Our mothers and the wedding party walked out to Byron playing “Lucky” by Jason Mraz.

I walked out to my favourite song of all time, a very romantic piano piece… the “Theme from Sabrina” composed by John Williams.

At the end of the ceremony after Allan and I kissed, Byron played an awesome acoustic version of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” — haha — while we all left the ceremony and walked back down the aisle. It was pretty hilarious, a few guests even broke out in song! Guests blew bubbles.

Afterwards Allan and I made sure to reserve some time to privately celebrate with close friends and family…

… and did a few wedding photos and family portraits while other guests celebrated at our champagne reception down in the wine cellar.

And then it was a big rush to get to the reception hall! Allan and I shared a private moment in the reception space before it filled up with people. I really cherish those few minutes we had to enjoy just being newlyweds all by ourselves. The day goes by so fast… I highly recommend to people to save some private time just for you at your wedding if you can.

Guests started flowing into the reception hall, and were greeted by cold drinks and could take a look at some of our family photos outside of the dining room.

We also had our guestbook available for signing… which was… a surfboard!…

… which guests wrote on in acrylic pen. Allan and I had this custom wedding board made out of fibreglass and then once all the signatures were there, we had it glassed with the final coat so they were preserved forever. We designed the board together… and it has our “tree” logo on the front of the board, with a cool design on the back and “A&A” in the nose of the board. It’s really special and we use it to surf everytime we’re in Tofino! We treasure this dearly — it reminds us of our special day everytime we get in the water.

And then it was time for the reception to begin. Allan and I made a little video to show to our guests before we entered the room. You can watch it below on Vimeo!

Right after the video played, our wedding party entered the room to a custom looped beginning of “Party Rock Anthem” and we said funny quotes and memories about each of them as they entered.

Finally, the main chorus of the song played and then Allan and I entered!

Guests flooded onto a dance floor and we had a huge dance party going within 10 minutes of our reception beginning! (photo by guest)

I loved how it got guests mingling and up on their feet so that energy was high going into the dinner reception and people were having fun! One of my favourite memories is the high I felt dancing around with all my friends during that entrance.

Then, everyone went back to their seats and during the first bit of the reception guests were encouraged to participate in our Photo Scavenger Hunt. Basically, there were alcoholic prizes given out (we also had an open bar, but you can never have too much booze!) for tables that completed the photos on the list.

It resulted in some pretty hilarious photos…

And a wide range of all our guests participating…

And got tables mingling together and getting to know each other…

And other awesome things happening… (photo by guest)

Here’s us reviewing the photos and judging the winners!

Then it was time to settle down and eat… my parents said grace to start off the night and the round of speeches. My parents, Allan’s mom, Allan’s best man, my brother, and my maid of honour all gave speeches. They were touching, thoughtful, hilarious, and very special… while still being concise! I will be forever grateful and always remember the special and loving words that were said that day.

We also did a father-daughter dance, and then the rest of the family joined us on the dance floor.

Allan and I gave a speech and thanked our guests…

… and then it was time to PARTY!

Instead of doing the typical champagne toast with each table, Allan and I went around and did tequila shots with every table and every guest at our wedding!

This was such a fun part of the night, and it was awesome to do shots with all our friends.

Yes, we were feeling pretty tipsy by the end of it.

Then it was time to cut the cake…

… and then play the “shoe game”… a game where the newlyweds are asked questions about each other and can’t see each other’s answers. It was pretty hilarious.

Then off to the bouquet toss…

… and the garter toss. Which we used a Canucks garter for!

And during the garter toss was a crazy moment where Allan’s friends and I came up with a last minute plan to “ice” Allan. For those of you who don’t know, “icing” someone is when you surprise someone with a Smirnoff Ice and they have to chug it while on one knee immediately. This has become a funny ritual with Allan’s friends where we have elaborate setups to “ice” someone (for example hanging one down from the rafters, hiding them in toilets or back of cards, setting them outside of doors and ringing the bell, etc)… so when I hid one under my dress and Allan found it when we was retrieving the garter… it was a very funny moment.

Then our amazing DJ Austin Beaver started the dance floor off with some great tunes….

… and guests took photos and hung out…

We also had a custom backdrop made on foam (Allan and I made the vector illustration ourselves together in Adobe Illustrator and then got it printed on foam, cut it out, and mounted it with my dad in some stands he made) that we used as our photo background and background for our flipbooks! We kept with the Tofino surf theme

Vancouver Flipbook graciously came all the way out to Tofino for us and setup a flipbook station.

Basically, your guests have a few seconds to make some movement or motion…

… or do something silly…

… and then it’s printed out…

… and compiled into a moving picture book, a flipbook! Way too much fun was had with this…

… as evidenced by the video! If you watch carefully you can see one of our friends getting “iced” near the end.

We also provided flip flops for girls and guys to let loose and be comfortable.

And we all danced the night away!

… and Allan too (photo by guest)

Then it was time to pack up and clean up the hall the next morning and have brunch with all our friends… (photo by guest)

…. and then Allan and I drove away in our giant moving truck back to Vancouver to return all our decorations and rentals. What a weekend!

All photos copyright by the best Vancouver wedding photographers JONETSU Studios unless otherwise noted… thank you guys!

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It’s that time of year again… hard to believe it’s come by so quickly. Happy Holidays!

I’ve been so busy at work this year in a new role and getting through the wedding posts that I haven’t had much time to post any of my usual travel, food, snowboarding, surfing and photography posts.

So much has happened I can’t wait to update you guys on — all sorts of different trips, the new job, the new car we purchased, etc. Bear with me — I’m just two posts away from being BACK!

We’re off to Vegas for Christmas in two days! Can’t wait.

Time to eat, drink, and be merry!

What are your plans for the holidays?