Ottawa in August: Meeting our Officiant, Photographer and the Search for a Caterer

So an update is long overdue. In August, Brenden and I had a busy vacation in Ontario: Cambridge, Guelph, Elora, Grimsby, and Ottawa in about 10 days. I also headed to London for a night to reconnect with a dear friend I hadn't seen in a few years.

The Ceremony and our Officiant

When we were thinking of where to have our ceremony, I thought of the First Unitarian Congregation of Ottawa. When I lived in Ottawa, I was involved with the Ottawa Reconstructionist Havurah (ORH), which is now called Or Haneshamah. The ORH had rented the First Unitarian for High Holidays and I remembered the beautiful simplicity of the space. It also does not have any religious imagery, which works for our situation. With that in mind, I suggested the Unitarians to Brenden and we checked out their wedding services. It turns out that the Unitarians will marry pretty well anyone to anyone else.

Our first visit in Ottawa was with our officiant, Lay Chaplain Bob Armstrong. We met him at the Unitarian Worship Hall. This gave Brenden the opportunity to see the space for himself. Bob wanted a run down on our family tree and the wedding party. I thought I'd prepare him for the crowd and explained that our mothers are both lesbians and Bob was nonplussed, explaining that he married 2 women the previous week. So we are in good hands indeed! It was a comfortable meeting and Bob asked us good questions and was able to answer ours.


Our Photographer

I looked for a long time to find a wedding photographer, reviewing about a hundred portfolios. I narrowed down my search to a few contenders only to be surprised when some didn't even respond to my phone call or email. I made an appointment with Michel Gauthier. Michel is a gregarious bilingual man who lives on the extreme outskirts of Gatineau (as we found out busing back). We discussed our wedding and what we wanted: candid/photojournalistic style for most pictures and some traditional posted ones with our family. He has quite a mix in his portfolio and after a couple minutes, he could point out what we would hate and what we would love. I was also looking for someone who would include transfer of copyright for the photographs and this is standard for Michel's packages. We were thinking of having our wedding at 4pm. Due to the short days in March, Michel suggested that we take pictures before the ceremony or move up the ceremony. I wanted to take pictures beforehand but it turns out Brenden has gotten all traditional on me and will have none of it. So our ceremony will now be at 3pm.

Event Rental

Our reception venue provides the basic tables and chairs. The rest is up to us. Brenden and I had a couple of event rental companies that we wanted to check out. One company turned out to be quite sketchy considering that it didn't have a show room .After a bus ride to go the location of a mere post box for this rerenter (or mafia front, as the case may be), we eventually made it to the very real Party Time Rentals about as far away as geographically possible from the mail-box. Margie at Party Time Rentals was right on the money (that's wedding planning humour!) and we have a good idea of what we'll be ordering in March. I'm glad we visited because I would never have known that they're not open during weekends in March but we can just get early delivery without any trouble.

The Hunt for a Caterer

Considering that this seems to be becoming an Ottawa destination wedding, we wanted to go with Lebanese food. Ottawa is perhaps one of only three Canadian cities where you can order Lebanese food at 2am. We tried Garlic King. The food wasn't awful and one of their employees was a racist jerk, shouting at a Chinese patron that he was not ordering in English. Narrowly avoiding an antiracist meltdown, we slunk off, embittered. We also tried Shwarma King, one of Brenden's favourites. I like Shawarma King but I was concerned that the food might be a bit cold and they were clearly lacking some of my favourites (Baba Ganoush for example). We have another caterer in mind that has an extensive menu but we're waiting for an Ottawa taster response before we take the plunge.