ottawa times

Most of you know that I have been in Ottawa for the past couple of weeks and will be here until Nov. 24th. I wanted to take the fall off to visit my family for Thanksgiving, go to the Gold Plate Challenge that my brother has been invited to compete in again for the second year (last year he got the Silver Medal) and to be close by for when Jen's twins are born in mid November, if they can hold out that long. Jen is in St. Catharine's now for good.

The Gold Plate Challenge was last night where Matt got Sheila (his wife) and me in. It was so much fun and I am so proud of my bro for getting the 2nd place again (should have been gold in my and many others opinions...but Silver is awesome). Here are some pics...



Below is a picture of the dish (the photo totally doesn't do it justice) - it was espresso coated ostrich and butter poached lobster with sour cherry. It was so perfectly cooked (amazing for feeding 400+ people) and it was so beautiful! Sheila and I could have had 2...maybe 3 plates!



Here is a picture of Matt is his very talented team.



Here is Matt accepting his very heavy Silver Medal.



Sheila, Matt and I.



Jim Cuddy performed as well and we of course got our pictures with him. Very cool guy!!!




Here is his guitar...thought David would appreciate that...

island weddings

i know erin has been posting all of her amazing weddings on here from this summer and i have been a slacker! it's been a whirlwind of a season and now all of the weddings are done. it's also been a crazy summer because my husband and i have decided to move to southern ontario. we packed up our entire house, i flew to ontario with our daughter delphine and brent stayed behind to drive the uhaul across this great country. it was time for a change to be closer to family and because we are expecting twin girls in december. i hope to start up fuego events in the niagara region but first i need to have some babies! in the meantime here are some photos from a few weddings with more to come.

Here are some shots from one of my favourite intimate events, the wedding of megan and trevor from chicago. there were some bumps along the way with venue changes and such but it worked out to be all for the best. union pacific coffee co. was the perfect reception spot for a coffee themed wedding, the little piggy did a fabulous job on the food and in bloom did an amazing job on the flowers.









and here are some pics from odile and patrick's wedding at the sooke harbour house. it was a perfect day for a garden wedding - the weather was gorgeous. it was so nice to see so many of their family travel from nunavut for the event. thanks to blue skies and daisies for the e-vites, seating chart and programs and to in bloom for the flowers.




and of course thanks to helene cyr for shooting some amazing shots of the day.

megan + shawn

Here are some pictures of my LAST wedding of the season - Megan & Shawn at the Brock House. Megan & Shawn hired me as their wedding coordinator for the day of and for flowers & decor. So yes, I did the flowers...Upright Decor did the decor. It was an amazing day and everything (I thought) looked so beautiful. I loved the colours that Megan picked for everything. Megan got tree seedlings for her guests to plant in memory of the day and of course to help the environment - loved that!

April Cakes did the lovely cake. Sherri Koop did the photography (haven't seen the work yet...but I loved working with her).

Speech time...I want to thank Albertine (of blue skies & daisies) for her help all year and for putting up with me all loopy and bossy on the many day of's. By the way...pretty much all of the awesome shots of weddings on this blog were taken by Albertine...thanks mama! Also, to Erica of White Dahlia Weddings for working pretty much all of my weddings with me this year and staying through to the bitter end - you rock girl! Good luck to you (like you need it!) for your own 2009 weddings.

And now...on to the pictures...

david + jhenifer

Here are some pictures from Jhenifer & David's wedding at the St. James Community Square and then onto the Theas Lounge at UBC (Student Graduate Hall). Jhenifer and David hired me just for their flowers and a wee bit of decor.

I am so lucky to work with so many different people with such unique styles. Makes my job fun and exciting!

butterfly gardens

On our last visit to Victoria we stopped in at the Butterfly Gardens. Chloe and Deli loved it - I was a little nervous with some of the butterflys the size of small birds. Yikes! It was pretty cool though. Chloe especially liked the ducks...not sure if they appreciated her though. Here are some pics.