Pink Dreamy Wedding

Being the hopeless romantic I am I love to hear how couples first met. Ivy and Robbie definitely take the cake on their love story. For a short while, Ivy was taking the LRT to work from the Dalhousie station. Robbie was transferred to a specific worksite for a couple months and also took the LRT from the Dalhousie station. Robbie noticed Ivy right away and as the days went by, he knew he may not see her again once he was transferred to another job site and didn’t take the LRT from this station at this same time. One day, he finally made his move and introduced himself to Ivy. Hearing this story, my heart was melting. I asked Ivy what was her reaction when Robbie made the first move. Ivy said one word: “Creepy.” (I sat straight up after hearing this response.) Well, I guess Robbie wasn’t that creepy because they started dating and got engaged! (Robbie: I still think you are so brave!)

During our consultation, Ivy and I hit it off right away because we both love the color pink. Ivy even said she wanted the groomsmen to wear pink, but couldn’t ask them. I offered to tell the groomsmen for her! Robbie had to step in once in a while to scale back the amount of pink that their wedding and to put his foot down on the pink groomsmen idea. Ivy wanted a very dreamy wedding. She had over 100 pictures to show me what she liked. My job was to work these ideas into their venue. The wedding reception was at the Silver Dragon Restaurant. If not the first, this restaurant is one of the first restaurants opened in Calgary. I think almost every Chinese person in Calgary has attended a wedding at the Silver Dragon Restaurant at least once. Given it’s familiarity to everyone I knew I had to design something that was different, unexpected, and dreamy.

This wedding was the most challenging wedding I have done to date. There were so many factors that complicated the wedding design. Here were my main challenges:

1)The biggest challenge was the size of the venue. This of course, could not be negotiated. Ivy and Robbie had booked the entire venue for their wedding. They were told that the venue can accommodate 320 guests. However, with only 245 guests, the space was still very limited.

2)The second challenge was the amount of time allowed to decorate the venue. I was originally given two hours to decorate. I ended up using three hours and brought a crew of 15 people. I would have been able to do more decorating if given five hours. The reason for the lack of time is because it was a Saturday and the restaurant needed to stay open for a long as possible for dim sum time.

3)The third challenge was all unexpected the day of the wedding. There was a dispute between the rental company and the restaurant staff regarding how big the head table staging should be; how the dance floor should be placed; chair covers wouldn’t fit on arm chairs; the cake came early; and the booze could not be found. Nonetheless, I became Little Miss Bossy Pants and made a lot of executive decisions that day.

Here are some pictures of Ivy and Robbie’s wedding. I will highlight all the details of their wedding in another post as this one is getting way too long.