WATER'S EDGE WATER'S EDGE - Holly Matrimony Weddings

WATER’S EDGE
Weddings Weddings
2013
Winter wonderland celebrations • Muskoka-made jewelry • Professional planners ease stress

Muskoka Weddings 2013
CONTENTS
7 HISTORIC ISLAND WEDDING
By Scott Turnbull
Crawford Island was transformed into a magical setting.
12 WINTER WEDDINGS IN MUSKOKA
By Emily MacDuff
Pairing winter sports and winter weddings results in fun for all.
18 CELEBRATING THE BIG DAY
MUSKOKA-STYLE
By Allan Cook
Former editor Melissa Kosowan hosts a truly Muskoka wedding.
22 WED AT THE WATER’S EDGE
By Allan Cook
Muskoka’s lakes play a major role in many Muskoka wedding.
29 WEEKEND EVENT BLENDS CULTURAL
WEDDING TRADITIONS
By Dawn Huddlestone
When a wedding in Kenya wasn’t possible, Muskoka was chosen.
32 LAKE JOSEPH IS A SENTIMENTAL
FAMILY SPOT
By Yvonne Stiver-Macleod
Amy McDonald and Ross Bates invited many young guests.
36 PLANNING THE BIG DAY
By Karen Wehrstein
Wedding planners and event decorators can remove some stress.
42 MUSKOKA JEWELRY – A TREASURED
KEEPSAKE
By Bill Farnsworth
Many artists create unique made-in-Muskoka jewelry.
46 WE DID IT
Newlyweds share their favourite Muskoka wedding memories.
COVER PHOTO: SCOTT TURNBULL
Bride Stephanie Sher and groom Jason Stephenson slip away for a
sunset photo at the water’s edge on Silver Lake, near Port Carling.
7
12
18
32
Muskoka Weddings 2013 5

When Laura Cook married Jeremy Kiehl at her Gravenhurst wedding last fall, Holly Matrimony assisted in the planning of the event.
Planning the big day
Mode Function put hundreds of hours into this event at JW Marriott The Rosseau Resort &
Spa. The event decorators provide the mood and feeling for the event.
36 Muskoka Weddings 2013
Photograph: Mode Function
BY KAREN WEHRSTEIN
Hiring a wedding planner or decorator
can give the bridal couple,
and their family and friends, more
freedom to enjoy their special day.
“It’s fair to say that anyone can plan an
event,” says Bryn Allison, owner of An
Artistic Affair, based in Bracebridge. “But
how well and efficiently they do this will
vary. Hiring an event specialist is putting this
responsibility into the hands of a professional
with a wealth of knowledge, connections
in the community and trade secrets for
executing a seamless event.”
Tina Hamer, owner of Plan4Me, based in
Gravenhurst explains. “The brides hire a
wedding planner because they don’t want to
worry about it, or their moms or the maid
of honour. They want one person, not in
Photograph: Owen Cherry

Photograph: Owen Cherry
For the Kiehl/Cook wedding, family members installed hundreds of twinkling lights in the barn, says planner Holly Carney (above). An Artistic
Affair planner Bryn Allison ensures all the details, from the wedding flowers to table décor and favours, are exactly as anticipated (below).
Muskoka Weddings 2013 37
Photograph: Scott Turnbull

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the wedding party, making everything go.
There are weddings that go perfectly and
there are others where there’s a hiccup.” She
works to make sure things happen as they
should.
It takes about 250 hours to plan a wedding.
So says, Holly Carney, owner at Holly
Matrimony Weddings. She bases her business
in Mississauga but grew up in Gravenhurst
so does a lot of work in Muskoka. She
says today’s dual income couples don’t
always have the time to plan all the little
details for their wedding. “Say they want a
horse and buggy for their wedding. I go out
and find them three options,” she says
explaining it saves the couple’s time.
“A lot of people think wedding planners
will take over, and there are some people
who give us a bad name,” says Carney. “But
I’m there to make things easier and more
efficient for the client.” Making sure the
nuptials stay on schedule can save you
money when, say, live entertainers will
charge for additional time, Carney adds.
Most wedding planners and co-ordinators
offer different packages, from the all-inclusive,
starting at the engagement to being
there just on the big day, and everything in
between. Just to be clear on the terminology:
a wedding planner sources the service
vendors (venue, food, flowers, etc.) for you,
whereas a wedding co-ordinator works with
vendors you’ve already contracted with. Carney
strongly recommends hiring an independent
planner, i.e. one with no particular
ties to any vendors, so she’s working strictly
for the client.
The planner’s job, explains Allison, is to
help the couple find a venue, find them vendors
based on venue and/or budget, track
the budget, plan design and décor that suit
the couple’s vision, and finally – “I’m there
the day of the wedding to make sure everything
goes off without a hitch. To see the
bride and groom being able to enjoy the
night with their guests and not worry about
the details is what makes it satisfying for
me.”
A planner can also rescue a wedding
when there’s a major crisis.
Often it involves using her contacts, as
when Carney was planning a wedding with a
singularly unco-operative caterer. “They
were having major food safety concerns,”
she recalls. “I had to come in and a week
before the wedding and we had to make a
decision. The bride opted to forfeit her initial
payment and change caterers.” With the
bride in tears, Carney stepped in. “I called
two people I’ve worked with who could do
something on the fly and with the budget
she had.” Through this last-minute aid, the
wedding feast went off well after all.
Hamer recalls a wedding for which the

An Artistic Affair planner Bryn Allison worked with clients to set up a tasty and attractive Muskoka-themed cake and cupcake table.
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Photograph: Visual Roots

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40 Muskoka Weddings 2013
Setting up for a wedding at The Rosseau, the Mode Function team uses birch branches,
lanterns and white chair covers, to capture a wintery Muskoka theme with warm elements.
cake was delivered by a bumpy route she
had specifically warned against. “When they
arrived, the whole cake had tipped over, so
there was no wedding cake,” she recounts.
“But there is always a back-up. I called other
people I know. They always have something
in case something happens.”
Admittedly, some wedding crises are
beyond the abilities of even the most capable
pro to solve. Hamer remembers one
wedding for which the groom didn’t show,
standing up his bride and close to 400
guests. “He had cold feet. The bride had a
total meltdown,” Hamer recalls. Since everything
had been paid for, the decision was
made just to make a party out of it, and
amazingly, the couple is back together. “But
she’s not planning a wedding.”
Most people tying the knot in Muskoka
are coming from Toronto or even further
afield. The Muskoka outdoor wedding, says
Hamer, is very trendy and couples make a
weekend of it. “A lot of people don’t want
to do a typical hall wedding. They want to
be outdoors in a nice area, that has a lake.”
A Friday-night dinner tends to be followed
by a late Saturday-afternoon ceremony with
reception from six until the wee hours, then
a late Sunday breakfast. “It also works great
for long weekends,” she says.
Getting hitched outdoors adds planning
challenges, though. “You have to rent chairs,
tables, tent, cutlery, everything,” Hamer says.
“You have to have a generator for back-up
if the power goes off. It’s very different than
a hall wedding in Toronto, where your perperson
price includes everything.”
A wedding at an island cottage can be
spectacular, says Allison, but adds, “When
the only access is water the logistics are
about tenfold.”
For one 170-guest wedding she arranged
on Bigwin Island, the guests were staying in
various places on and off the island and she
says, “The shuttle organizing was pretty
crazy.” But it was worth it, for a ceremony in
the resort’s marine dining room overlooking
the water.
Other Muskoka elements included a
birchbark-inspired cake, guest tables named
after historical Muskoka boats or steamships
and locally-made jams for favours. Allison
and other planners like to use local suppliers
and service providers. “It’s really important
for me and other people to utilize the amazing
talent base that is available in the Muskoka
region,” she says.
Cottage weddings are popular, says Tina
Hamer, most of whose clients are Torontonians
with cottages in Muskoka. Aside from
the most popular season of May to August,
she says, “October is pretty much booked
because of the colours, and in December
people do the winter wonderland thing.”
For one simple and elegant autumn wedding
at Trillium Resort in Port Sydney, the
bride didn’t want rose petals scattered along
the aisle, but something different. “I said,
‘Why don’t we collect leaves?’,” Hamer
recalls. “She loved that. We just lined the
aisle on the grass with all-different-coloured
leaves.”
For another wedding Hamer planned, at
Port Cunnington, all the guests were handed
a sparkler for the night-time walk from the
reception area to the barn where the dance
would take place. Then they formed a spectacularly-shining
double line for the newlyweds
to walk through.
When Laura Cook, daughter of Graven-
Photograph: Hasahn Fisher

hurst KOA owner Paul Cook, married Jeremy
Kiehl this past September, the reception
took place at the campground’s barn. “The
week before the wedding, the moms and
aunts lined all the beams with twinkle
lights,” Carney recalls. “The night before,
they gathered a ton of wildflowers. They put
mason-jar centrepieces everywhere.”
Despite on and off rain all day, a leaky barn
and “lots of logistical issues,” a grand time
was had by all.
Carney notes a pro can help with the
aftermath of a wedding, too. “They should
never see garbage on the floor and centerpieces
all over the place, or have drunk
guests doing tear-down,” she says. “They
might have had a wonderful night but their
memory is of how hard the clean-up was.”
For wedding design and décor, you might
want to hire a pro, too – especially if you
want top-of-the-line work such as that
offered by Mode Function Event Design of
Gravenhurst. Fully-equipped with a climatecontrolled
flower department, this business
offers flower arrangements as pricey as
$1,000 for a centrepiece, drapery, chair and
table rentals, custom-built wedding furniture,
life-size ice sculptures of key people,
gazebos, live interactive displays and probably
anything else you or they could think of.
And it all goes together.
The key is capturing the right mood and
feeling, says Jeffery Crawford, of Mode
Function. “Each piece has to relate to the
others for a cohesive look – not necessarily
match, but complement. Sometimes matching
is not great, because you can lose depth
and definition.”
For instance, a Muskoka wedding needn’t
be Muskoka-themed. “Sometimes working
in a metropolitan feel works well,” says
Tina Hamer ensured guests held
sparklers to light the path at Craig and
Andrea Hanley’s wedding.
Photograph: Renaissance Studios Photography
Crawford. “We did one at The Rosseau
where we draped every single wall in the
ballroom sheer white to give us the blank
canvas, then used crystal, flush pink roses,
and gold-embroidered overlay on the tables.
It was a pretty wedding.”
For another wedding at the same venue,
says Crawford, “the client gave us a loose
vision of a wintery Muskoka feeling with
warm elements. She let us run wild with it.”
The result was a mix of custom harveststyle
tables mixed with traditional round
tables in a pattern, and two different styles
of centrepiece – one featuring a lampshade
crafted of moss on a birch column rising
over a giant flower arrangement.
“What’s kind of new and trendy right
now is using the rustic elements of Muskoka,
but kind of sanctifying it with pretty
chandeliers, and using other elements to
soften the rustic elements of a barn or old
boathouse . . . using lighter colours, using
drapery,” says Allison. “It’s using the rustic
backdrop, but making it really chic and soft
and elegant.”
There are some tips for working with
wedding pros: Book way in advance. Some
have already filled up many 2013 dates.
Check for compatibility. “There’s a wellknown
designer in Toronto who told one
bride her ideas were terrible,” Carney warns.
“Make sure they’re open to your ideas.”
Factor custom-made anything into your
budget in a big way. “As soon as you start
adding custom, it requires a great deal of
labour,” Crawford cautions. Seven hundred
hours went into one of his weddings at The
Rosseau before set-up was even begun, he
says.
There are little known facts the experts
can share. As an example, for brides who are
doing winter weddings, keep in mind that
flower petals are very delicate.
“Anything below zero, and they’ll freeze
in three seconds,” warns Crawford, noting
that his arrangements are delivered to the
wedding carefully wrapped. “We caution
brides doing photos outside not to take the
bouquet with them,” he says. “When you
bring them back inside, they instantly turn
to mush.”
So – to hire a pro or not? Really, it’s partly
whether you want to let someone else
stress over the organization, and partly how
adept you are at planning and organizing
yourself. “It’s very hard to hand off control,
but you can’t clone yourself,” Carney says.
“There have been brides whose husband
hires me because he knows she’ll have the
itinerary under her napkin.”
The goal is to have the bride and groom
enjoying their big day. For many, a wedding
planner and decorator can help make
that happen.
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Muskoka Weddings 2013 41