So many people had inquired me about where I got my bridal jewelry. I couldn’t recall where it is since I was tagging along with a bunch of friends. All i remembered is that my necklace and my earring was an awesome deal of $12.50!!
Finally, yesterday a friend of mine called me up because we have another 2 friends are getting married next year and want to go to the jewelry store again.
The jewelry store is actually a wholesaler. Not only they have all sorts of jewelry for cheap, but also all the jewelry parts including beads, Swarovaski crystals, silvers..you name it.
Gar Fung Trading co.
63 Silver Star Blvd., Unit c-15 (Intersection: Finch/Midland)
Scarborough, Ontario M1V5E5
tel: 416-297-6799
email: sales@garfungtrading.com
Gar Fung Trading Co.
Bridal Jewelry
Assorted jewelry in this Bridal Section
Everything here till be mostly under $30. Earrings are usually range from $1 to $5 dollar. Bridal jewelry range from $12 to $26 depends on the design.
Gar Fung trading co. membership pricing chart
There’s a policy of “No Trying of the Jewelry”, and also everything is Cash only!
Apparently you can get the wholesale price only if you are a member to this place. You can become a member by spending $100+. So gather couple girlfriends of yours and do a carpool to the place. It’s green and efficient!
There’s another place across street which is great for buying Swarovski’s beads
Fashion Tier
63 Silver Star Blvd, Unit D1
(Kennedy/Finch area)
Scarborough
Phone: 
416-754-1338
Pay by Cash only.
Otherwise, there is also jewelry and gem show in Toronto. It’s worth to check it out.
The Toronto Gem & Mineral Show & Sale
@ Leaside Gardens
1073 Millwood Rd.
East York, Toronto
Friday, July 28: 4pm - 9pm
Sat., July 29: 10a - 7p
Sun., July 30: 10a - 5p
Adults: $8.00 (ages 65 & older = $7.00)
Ages 12-18: $6.00
(under 12 Free with adult)
http://www.torontogemshow.com/
– if you click on the link to the “Chinese Page” - Leaside Garden, there’s a $2 off coupon that you can print off your printer).
22.Jun.09 
wedding 
Comments (0)
Couple of my friends are getting married this year and next year. I think everyone is going “green” by sending online RSVP. I think it’s definately a great idea!
Theknot.com ’s wedding website
Recently a friend send me her RSVP using Theknot.com ’s wedding website. I think it’s perfect for couples who wants something quick and yet don’t want to spend money or time for it. The good thing is that the templates that they have in their inventory was actually not too bad. It might be simple but it’s not tackky for sure. And online RSVP is all you need instead of paper invitation.
The knot's wedding site builder. It's simple but limited amount of existing template website. However, it will allow you to do online RSVP.
However, I think the Wedding Tracker.com would be a better deal for further detailed planning. I was just playing around the software. It was actually very detailed oriented. It’s more flexible and alot more feature than the free ones that theknow provided.
WeddingTracker.com
I like the fact that you can have your own domain. However, I would personally register it separately instead of through WeddingTracker.com. Why? because simply I want to keep my domain after the wedding and I can register the domain for fairly cheap price from 1and1.com.
However I think most of the people won’t have time to get technical. You can register Weddingtracker.com using theknot’s coupon KNOT50 to save 50% of the annual fee ($60) for hosting the site, domain name and the planning tool.
The only sux part about WeddingTracker is that you can only use their RSVP system along with their website. So you can’t build your website somewhere else and then use their RSVP system. It’s all integrated.
Also, there’s a little bit of learning curve when you first using the planning tool. So patience is the virtue. It will work.
Momentville.com
Another FREE wedding website that I came across is Momentville.com. I personally didn’t try it but it seems like it’s pretty easy to use.
momentville.com
eWedding.com
So far the best looking free theme I’ve seen for free wedding websites.
eWedding.com
Tags: Toronto Wedding & Bridal Resources, website, wedding resources
01.Jun.09 wedding Comments (0)
I think I’ve mentioned in my blog earlier. My condo had a flood. Well, it’s over a month ago, we have to end up removing all the existing carpet and sleep on a concrete floor for one month. What a disaster!
Moving all the furniture to suck up the water!
Piling all the furniture at one corner!
we live on concrete floor in our condo for one month!
We removed all the carpet in our condo and roll them up!
We have to dissamble our bed and sleep on the concrete floor!
During the Easter week, I took one month off to redo the floor. We hired hardwood floor guy to install Maple engineered hardwood. It was alot of work. But at the end it’s all worth it!!
And then it’s all done! Ta Da~~~
Our living room facing the kitchen
Our living room facing the main bedroom
Our living room facing the tv wall
Our living room facing the entrance!
Our kitchen
Our dining area!
Our lime green wall in the bedroom!
Bedroom facing the door to the living room
I actually used 4 different color at our place. Light Beige is Benjamin Moore’s Manchester Tan, The Brown is Benjamin Moore’s Clinton Brown, The Orange is Benjamin Moore’s Electric Orange, and the lime green is Banjamin Moore’s Tequila Lime.
Most of my furnitures are from IKEA. I wouldn’t say I love them but their price and function fits my need.
Tags: condo, home, home improvement
17.Apr.09 life Comments (0)
1. Choosing Your Wedding DJ
There’s no doubt that you need music for your venue!! No matter it’s ceremony or reception.
Fortunately I have my ceremony is at Toronto’s City Hall. It provides the essential music with their CD player. ha ha.
And for my reception, I hired Brian from High Five Entertainment as my music DJ of the night.
We had an initial meeting with Brian before the wedding to find out his style and music taste. He provides us a sheet of music recommendation, a professional contract and a spec for his equipment. Around one month before the wedding, I researched the songs and picked the ones I liked and forward Brian the list of the songs.
I also asked Brian to be my MC for my reception as well. He did a good job and remained professional till the end of the night. (You don’t want to get someone who’s drunk half way through the night!)
So here are few pointers when finding a good DJ:
- Ask for several references
- Ask what type of music they would recommend for certain age of audience. (My guests are all around late 20s)
- Does the equipments (e.g. Speakers), are they suitable for the size for the venue? And is all the equipment digital based?
- Will DJ provide wireless microphone and any special lighting?
- Will DJ also act as MC if requested?
Usually the rule of thumb is you want to find someone who is legit and easy to work with. Because if they ruin the music, they pretty much ruin the night too!
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2. Wedding Cakes
Our wedding cake!
Cutting wedding cake is one of the most important event for your wedding night. Wedding cake also acts as a centerpiece for headtable (or dessert table).
I did quite a few of research to find a cake artist that will make my cake happen. I am very specific on the design and the taste. I found Cindy from The Wedding Cake Shoppe to make my wedding cake.
There are few places that I looked up for wedding cakes. Except a lot of them are not available for my wedding date 
Cake Design
Not sure what you want your cake to look like? Well, again, either you get a white cake, or get a cake that the color that goes with your color theme.
Go to Flickr and type in “wedding cake” in the search box, it should show you what people have done for their cake.
When choosing the cakes, it’s better that you do a cake tasting first before you decide. And then show your cake artist the photos that you want your cake to be. You can customize it however you want. It’s your cake that you are paying for. My cake was mango flavour on the top tier and then mocha for the bottom tier.
I ordered 40 person cake because I am not having the cake as main dessert dish. (Our total guest count is 60 ppl) We have a dessert table after the dinner. Now I regret for what I did. I shoulda just make the cake as the dessert dish because no one can eat that much! There end up so much dessert leftover! argh.
My cake was 2 tier and for 40 ppl for $220. So look around and taste the cakes. And do this early because not all the cake artist are available for your wedding date!
3. Final Expense
Everything in wedding all comes down to money, just in case anyone is interested to see my final expense sheet. Please go to my fully disclosed wedding expense post here. Planning wedding is not that difficult, all you need is to take time to research and get the best bang of the buck. And if you have no time, then just hired a wedding planner. lol
related post:
Tags: Toronto Wedding & Bridal Resources, toronto wedding blog, wedding, wedding resources
24.Mar.09 wedding Comments (3)
Argh. Before I can write up the last “plan your wedding part III”, my condo got flooded 2 days ago.
It was caused by the waterline behind the fridge. It broke off and then water start spilling in the middle of the night. We woke up and first thing that i step on is our wet carpet!!! ARghhh~!
I had to quickly send a email to my work to ask for working from home that day. Alex went to Canadian tire and got a shopvac. Took us around 6 hours to get most of the water out. All we do is taking turns and vaccuming up all the water, dumping the water to the toliet, and that repeated around 7 or 8 time. We could be flushing down around 500 litres of water!
We had planned to change our carpet to hardwood in the beginning of April. I guess I should be glad that we haven’t install our hardwood floor yet!
Today I had to work from home again, our condo inspection guys scheduled to come in today to take care the rest of the details for the condo warranty. It’s such a shame for them to see this happened.
My floor installation contractor suppose to rip out the carpet during the week of renovation. Now we have rip it out a month early because we don’t want the sub floor to be wet when we are ready to install our hardwood.
Argh. Tired. Stressed. Argh.
06.Mar.09 life Comments (0)
1. Bride’s wedding outfit and groom’s tuxedo
The rule of thumb for getting wedding dress is at least 6 months ahead. And I think most of the girls would do the dress hunting right after the venue are done deal.
The dress usually takes around 4 months to arrive, and then you have to fit it couple times in case you need some sort of alteration. Again, see if you can bargain your way to include the alteration!
And how to pick a good dress? As long as the material is light and not heavy. My wedding dress was made of Taffeta, it’s light for me to wear it for the full day.
For guy’s tuxedo, it’s usually one month ahead. Some groom I know just use regular black suits. So just pick whatever works.
related post:
2. Choosing a wedding photographer
Choosing a wedding photographer is like choosing an artist that will document your biggest day of your life. If you have a bit of budget in hand, find the best wedding photographer you can for your money. I had two photographers, Jon from Union Photo for my engagement photos. And Kevin Lam for my wedding photos. Both are different type of styles. I would say Jon from Union Photos are more sleek and fashionable, and Kevin is very documentary style. I love both of their works!
So while searching for photographer, make sure you find out the pricing first and find out what service are included in the price. Most of photographers pricing can come in between 2000 to 5000. It depends on what type of service they provide. There’s a website called “WeddingWire.com“, it has people’s real review for their vendors. Perhaps it will be a good starting point to search photographers online.
So while you are looking for a wedding photographer, keep those in mind:
- What pricing package that the photographer offer?
- The price for 6 hours coverage? 8 hours coverage? What’s the overtime costs?
- Does photographer comes with an assistant?
- Does pricing include prints? and any extra print credit if you decide to enlarge one of the photo later?
- Does photographer also provide videography?
Usually I look for my photographers online, and my number 1 criteria is their website and then their portfolio. If their websites are ugly or hard to navigate or difficult to read, I doubt the artistic level of the photographer especially they can’t even fix up their own website! Other than the website, of course their portfolio next. You can get a pretty good vibe after seeing range of photos. Of course your photos will be created on the fly, so there’s nothing 100% guarenteed. Yet, a good photographer will make sure everything will turn out nicely on your big day.
I actually found Jon from Union Photo through Facebook Ad. lol. When I get to his website, I was like “wow”. He has a beautiful website! And then I saw his portfolio, they are amazing! That’s why I have no hesitation to book him. Someone else actually booked him for my same wedding day. That’s why I only had him for our engagement photos only.
And for my wedding photographer, Kevin Lam. I actually found him through one of my work function. He had taken few of my work events. I love his photos. So I contacted him to see if he’s available for wedding photography. At the time when I interviewed him, he didn’t have alot of wedding portfolio. However, with his other documentary work, I believe he will be an awesome photographer at my wedding. So I booked him and the photo did come out beautifully!
Both Jon and Kevin are great, the pricing difference is that with Jon, you can only get the digital high res file after you have purchase the photo. With Kevin, he gave you 200 prints and all the High res photos on DVD. We didn’t take the actual 200 prints, we end up just turning it into one canvas print.
related post:
3. Wedding Color
Choosing the wedding color, it’s all come down to your personal taste. So pick “one” color as your main theme, and then choose another color to either compliment with it or use it as contrast color.
Most of the wedding banquet hall or venue always have white as their table cloth, napkins, chair cover..etc. Unless you want to spend extra money to change the “default” theme that the venue provided, your wedding color basically adds the accent to the whole place.
The color applies to your wedding dress, your bridesmaids’ dress, groom’s tie, bouquets, centrepieces, cake and decorations.
So for example, if you love “red”, you can get your bridesmaid all wearing red dress, they can hold bouquet with a color that will compliment red (eg. white,yellow,orange..etc). And because most of the wedding dresses are either ivory or white, you can use the color in your bouquet. And the same concept goes to having the centre piece with red flower, or a cake with red flowers around..etc.
Check out TheKnot’s My Real Wedding section, there’s a “color” drop down box you can choose to see what other people had done with the color for their wedding.
I personally love the color Brown and Orange, so I had Linda (my bridesmaid) to wear a brown color dress, and we both have an yellow/orange colored bouquet. Choosing a color is never difficult, it only look scary when you try to put all different kind of color everywhere. The key is “consistency”, so just pick one, and then work your way from there.
There this site called Colorlovers.com it has colors, patterns..etc. You can look for color palette there as a start.
4. Wedding Flowers
After you have chosen your color theme for your wedding, you can then start working on your color of your flowers. Fresh flowers or artificial flowers, it doesn’t matter, as long as they are consistent for what you are trying to present for your wedding.
The best bang of the buck for the bouquets are in-season flower and local grown flowers. For ontario, there’s a site called OntarioFlowers.com, check out their flower library section , and there are also post online that you can find flower by season.
There are also some people decided to go for artificial flowers, There’s a company in Missauaga called Flora Seda International. They don’t have catalog online but it might worth to give them a call.
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5. Wedding Decoration (Centrepieces, wedding favors..etc)
Sometimes you don’t need fancy centre pieces, you can be very creative with it. For example you can probably get a cheap vase from IKEA and fill it water, put some fake flower or real flower in the water, and float with some votive candles. Or better yet, just a plate of fruits. lol.
I went to my friend’s Chinese wedding banquet hall, she has a plate of orange as centre piece and lucky bamboo in shot glass as wedding favors!
Sometime have the centrepiece double duty might be a good idea too. You probably can use the reception centrepieces as decoration for the ceremony. And if you have a lot of bridesmaid, you can probably use their flowers as centrepiece slater 
Do a search on Flickr, you will see what people had done for their centrepiece.
And for wedding favors, it’s also up to your budget. You don’t need something really fancy, probably a small box of chocolate does its job. My wedding favors consist of a mini tea can and tea strainer I got from DealExtreme.com. I didn’t want to give out anything that people won’t keep or won’t use.
I actually did a fair of wedding favor research, but then I soon realize that most of them might consider as “junk” later. So I kept it simple and low in budget. And once you add ribbon to your favors, it brings up the value of the gift
Here’s few places that you can hunt for your decorations and favors:
- Kijiji Free Classified
- Craigslist Classified - first select your city, and then you can search absolutely anything from there. Yes, it includes wedding favors and decorations
- IKEA - IKEA has cheap and good looking vases! It might boost your creative juice once you visit the store. There’s even a IkeaHacker site that are dedicated for people who loves playing with IKEA stuff!
- DealExtreme.com - I got my tea strainer there
- Dollar Store and local craft store
Then again, the key for your decorations is to make sure they are all on the same color theme. Consistency will bring everything together, and it will look better on the photographs or videos as well!
I am going to write up another post for the rest of the planning details. I have no idea I have wrote so much just for these few points!
Stay tuned!
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Tags: Toronto Wedding & Bridal Resources, toronto wedding blog, wedding decorations, wedding flowers, wedding photography, wedding resources
27.Feb.09 wedding Comments (0)
