My Wedding Journey - Wedding Planner

I know this blog is more towards food and travel, but since this is once in a lifetime, I think it would be nice for every girl to share their own experiences. After all, you can't go back and re-do it.

We were contemplating whether we should have a wedding planner because it is extra costs added to the wedding. After discussion, because of our busy schedules, it would be very helpful to have a wedding planner to bounce off ideas and help plan the whole thing. Also, everything just seems very overwhelming. I was browsing the Weddingful website, which I recommend bride-to-be should sign up, there were just too many vendors. I have no idea who is actually good and I don't have time to corresponds to each of them. So the wedding planner would be able to let me know from their experiences, which vendors are better and actually helps me narrow down my voices by a lot.

Because we are one of the first couples to get married amongst our friends, we couldn't ask our friends for recommendations. I depended on Weddingful and a friend's connection with two wedding planner potentials. I found Melanie Leung from Keepsake Event on Weddingful and Hasti from La Vista Events through a friend. We bother offered free consultation and to be honest they were both great. Both of them seemed very knowledgeable and very into the wedding industry. They both seemed very enthusiastic as well. At the end, I decided to go with Keepsake because of the cultural background and she has experience with the tea ceremony. Although Hasti hasn't had experience with the tea ceremony, I don't doubt her expertise to do her own research, at the end, I think I just feel more comfortable with someone who has done it just because both of our parents can be very demanding. I would recommend both of them to either of my friends actually.

From:  http://www.keepsakeevents.ca/

From: http://www.lavistaevents.com/

Since I started working with Mel, she has been very organized and quite on top of it. I know she has quite a few couples she is working on at the same time so I don't expect her to reply my email the same day. Her emails are very detailed and offered many suggestions in terms of the venue selection. She listened to what I want in the venue and been able to provided suggestions based on that. At this stage, we have a few venues in mind but we still have to set a time to visit the sites. Because of our messed up schedules, it's very hard to come up with a time where my fiance and I can go.

Just for your information, a wedding planner can range from $2000 - $4000+ depending on what you are looking for. The average I saw was around $2500 - $3000. That is the price for full planning. You can also choose partial planner if you already got some stuff done and need help with a few more things as well as the day of coordination. If not, you can also choose to have the month of wedding planning or the day of wedding coordination. Even if you are not planning to get a wedding planner for the whole planning process, I would highly recommend getting one for the day of to help to take care of inquiries and vendor payments. The last thing you want to do is to stress one of your friends or family member by putting them in charge of this role and they won't be able to enjoy the wedding as much unless they have experience doing stuff like this.

I will update more later on.

Sardine Can - Vancouver, BC

We walked by this place last time when we were waiting for a seat at another restaurant. It's a small unique restaurant. The seating capacity is about 20 people. The place is more for appetizers and drinks and not really meant to be for full meals. I am not sure if they take reservations. We got there at around 6:30pm or so and got seated right away at the bar. 

There was still lots of items to choose from on the menu. The decor is quite casual. The servers were super friendly. Because it was our first time there, we asked him what's popular or what is the best item on the menu and he said everything on the menu was good. That makes our decision even more difficult. We ended up ordering smoked ham wrapped prunes, the mushroom in sherry sauce and the fresh herb and garlic cheese toast. 

First came the wrapped prune. It wasn't how I imagined the dish would look but it was delicious. I didn't think the prune and smoked ham would go that well together. The sweetness of the prune balances the saltiness of the smoked ham. It was placed in the oven/broiler so the ham was quite crispy.

The fresh herb and garlic cheese toast was the dish at the back and it wasn't that unique. Everything was super fresh and tasted everything like it said. It wasn't too special. I feel like I could make something similar at home. 

This was the best dish for the night. We had no idea that sherry wine and mushroom were so well together. The mushroom was cooked to perfection. The mushroom was really soft but not too soggy. The sauce was well-balanced, very creamy. The sherry wine flavour was definitely there but it wasn't overpowering. We couldn't resist but have the sauce with all the bread we ordered. 

We really enjoyed ourselves at The Sardine Can. I don't think it will be a place for dinner but definitely a great place for drinks and small dishes.