THE NEWEST WEDDING DESTINATION

Ok this one is strictly for the Game of Thrones fans

Westeros is a place of magic and beauty and gosh, they do enjoy their weddings ...

Currently Lord Tyrion is struggling, as Master of Purse, to balance the kingdom's budget.

Well, I was I have a degree in Advertising and I was in the wedding business for years so I came up with a way to help out the Imp and Westeros

So I came up with a little "pitch" video

UP NORTH 3: THE WEDDING

Here we are at the event that took Collette and I up north last weekend in the first place. The wedding of her nephew Tim to Kate. Tim is the youngest child of Donna, Collette's older sister.

The day turned out beautiful, but did not begin that way. The wedding was on the Sunday. The two previous days had been marked by rain, sometimes torrential downpours, and cool winds. Sunday morning started as the exception; sunny and warm with a pleasant breeze. The problem was, the ceremony was going to be late in the afternoon ... and outside ... with much potential for disaster. I always see potential for disaster. Collette calls that pessimism. I call it hedging my bets.

Sure enough, as the day progressed, the sky began to darken. The wedding ceremony was being held at the site of an old one room school house in Humphrey (just south of Parry Sound) that had been converted into a museum. Due to the layout of the site, there was very little parking and Tim and Kate had arranged for buses to pick people up, take them to the site, then drive them to the hall in Parry Sound where the reception would take place. One thing about rural weddings: There is an awful lot of driving.

Taking the bus did not work for me. I was doing the video for the kids and I had a good amount of gear to ferry. Plus, I always like to have my own vehicle on a shoot, for purposes of flexibility. And I like to sing when I drive. And no one wants to be subjected to that. My first task of the day was to locate the school house museum in Humprhey. I was beginning to think that this was some kind of secret; Donna, the groom's mother, seemed unclear about the location. Was this a clandestine wedding? A black ops ceremony? I finally got directions from Dave, Tim's dad. They seemed clear ... but "clear" to a guy whose memory pretty much resembles said in a sieve, is a very suspect term.

So yeh, I got loss. Went down one long country road that looked like all the other long country roads and realized, when I hit a dead end defined by some gigantic earth moving equipment, that this was not the wedding site. Though I edited a wedding in Thunder Bay where the bridal party arrived at the church on a bunch of back hoes. But Kate has way too much class for that.

So back I go towards Highway 400, trying to figure out where I made the wrong turn. And turn I did. Three point turns on provincial highway, several times. I was once again south bound on the 400 when a car came blazing up beside me, lights flashing, horn blaring. It was Curtis, Tim's brother in law, with Collette's father in the car. He had seen me and swooped up at 170 kph to catch up with me. After declaring I was just returning to Toronto where we had real streets, Curtis led me to the school house. Ah, our saviour.

So I arrive at the ceremony location and feel the rain the moment I get out of the car. I find John, one of Kate's brothers, who is the man in charge. I say to him "Where is the tent? I heard there was a tent?" John informed me that, yes, there had been a tent but twenty minutes ago it had been cancelled ... by Kate. Cancelled. I was sheltering my camcorder from the rain. We were not allowed inside the schoolhouse museum and really, maybe ten people could have fit in there. They were a tiny people, the Canadian shield pioneers. But the powers of a bride on her wedding day are not to be questioned. By the time Kate arrived, the sun was shining.

The ceremony went on without any major issues. Some of the older people (no, not me, be nice) wondered about the lack of chairs .. and bathrooms. The one thing old people are always worry about .. bathrooms.

The day got nicer and nicer as time went on and we all went down to the Stockley Centre in Parry Sound to take some images. This is a lovely location, right on the water, though in true Parry Sound fashion it also houses the Bobby Orr museum. To see some exteriors of this location you can take a peek here, the shots of the hall at towards the end of the video.

The rest of the night went off very well. I took video, Collette took stills, people ate, family members made speeches, lots of really smart people danced really goofily and Tim and Kate looked genuinely happy. And the hall served my brand of my beer. And we all know how I feel about beer.

Hey, who let that hairy old guy into the wedding? Oh well, he has a cool camera, maybe he filmed something nice ...

Kate & Tim's Wedding Video Trailer from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

A-WEDDING WE SHALL GO

This is the second version of this post. The first one was a two parter. The first part was a political rant aimed at David Miller, the mayor of my city, and his apparent lack of knowledge around something as trivial as the national gun laws in this country and his insistence that closing legal gun ranges would stop the gun violence here ... But I find political rants boring and mine was no exception.

So I am going to the second part of the original post. This weekend Collette, Miss Hayley and myself are heading up north for a wedding. When we say "up north" we mean the Parry Sound area where Collette's family lives. The wedding is for her nephew Tim and his fiancee Kate. Besides being the aunt and uncle Collette and I will be serving as the A/V tag team; I'm taking the pro video cam and she is bringing her new boyfriend, often referred to as the Nikon D-80. So, there will be a fabulous wedding DVD and some exquisite wedding still pictures ... and we will get to celebrate the marriage of these two and get to hang out with Collette's family.

The wedding is on Sunday but we are sneaking up tomorrow (Friday). Collette is finished teaching for the year and since she is now not teaching summer school (don't ask, it entails a different kind of political rant) we decided to go up early. The wedding is in Parry Sound itself, the town where Collette's dad lives, the place we normally stay. But tomorrow we are heading straight up past Parry Sound to Pointe au Baril and Springhaven Lodge, the business owned and operated by Collette's family. We plan on staying overnight then going to Parry Sound on Saturday.

It has been a while since we've been to lodge, pretty much since Collette's parents moved "into town" (Parry Sound). We love the lodge. Miss Hayley loves the lodge. Springhaven is located on Nares Inlet which, in turn, opens up onto the Georgian Bay, a body of water attached to Lake Huron but in itself, almost as big as Lake Ontario. We are talking around 15,000 square kilometers here. Deep deep, water, wind shaped pine trees, ancient moss coated rocks .... this is a party in Vic and Collette's world.

The lodge features a gentle sand beach leading into some of the cleanest water you will find anywhere; I don't suspect that Miss Hayley will be dry for any long period of time. And I strongly suspect that the next blog I post will have some gorgeous photos compliments of Collette and her new auto focusing boyfriend. And sure, probably some video as well.

So it's a win win kind of weekend; a wedding for people for whom we have a great deal of affection, a gathering of the family, and a day or two at one of our favorite places on the planet. There will be still pics, there will be video and ..oh yeah .. there's gonna be beer. And everything goes better with beer.