Author Archives: Iain Bennett

Getting to the Church on time… (Updated)

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Updated: August 22nd

Don’t forget the CNE is in full effect at the CNE grounds between Jameson and Spadina, so it my be worth taking the 401 to the DVP and get off a Bloor/Danforth then travel south on Broadview.  Be sure to check Google Maps traffic before leaving and while traveling.

MCC is located in the heart of a relatively densely populated residential area of Riverdale east of Broadview Av, west of Logan Av, and just north of Gerrard St. As such, admittedly, it does not have a lot of parking available.

The church is located at the corner of Simpson and Howland Avenues. This intersection is one block west of Logan and one block north of Gerrard.

Parking is strictly enforced in that area of Toronto as well.

Given Toronto has had questionable traffic on Saturdays – you may want to consider leaving home early.  North of the chuch is The Danforth and has a number of great restaurants for breakfast; and at Gerrard and Broadview is Chinatown East, great for Dim Sum/Yum Cha.

If you are driving:

From Hwy. 404 / Don Valley Parkway:

Riverdale is accessed by Hwy. 404/Don Valley Parkway at the Bayview Exit. Travel south on Bayview Avenue and exit at River Street. Follow River until you get to Gerrard Street. Turn left onto Gerrard and continue until you get to Howland Avenue. Howland is the first street on the left after Broadview Avenue. Go north on Howland to Simpson Avenue. MCC Toronto is on the left-hand side.

From The Gardiner Express Way:

Exit the Gardiner Express Way at the final off ramp (where the Gardiner ends and becomes Lakeshore Road.) Travel north on Carlaw Avenue (first set of traffic lights after leaving the Gardiner) to Gerrard Street. Turn left on Gerrard and travel westbound to Howland Avenue. Howland is the first street on the right after Logan Avenue. Go north on Howland to Simpson Avenue. MCC Toronto is on the left-hand side.

From Lakeshore Boulevard:

Continue on Lakeshore east to Carlaw Avenue. Turn left onto Carlaw and travel north to Gerrard Street. Turn left onto Gerrard and travel westbound to Howland. Howland is the first street on the right after Logan Avenue. Go north on Howland to Simpson Avenue. MCC Toronto is on the left-hand side.

Via TTC

From the Bloor-Danforth subway line:

  • Take the Broadview, King (504) or Dundas (505) streetcars south from Broadview Station.
  • Exit the streetcar at Don Jail Roadway (Simpson Avenue is directly across the street.)
  • Walk east on Simpson to the next block and you will find the church on the corner of Simpson and Howland.

From the Yonge-University-Spadina subway line:

  • Take the College/Carlton/Gerrard (506) streetcar eastbound from either Queen’s Park or College Stations or westbound from Main Station (on the Bloor-Danforth line).
  • Get off the streetcar at Howland Road on Sundays.
  • Simpson Avenue is one short block north.


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Mother-in-law & son-in-law bonding

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Scott’s Mum, Betty, and his aunt, Bev, arrived on Wednesday in Toronto, just in time to help Scott and I finish up preparations for the wedding.  We’re ensuring they’re having a great time – 9 hours of shopping yesterday, finishing up the bonboniere this weekend.

We took Betty and Bev to Canada’s Wonderland today.  This is a first time for both and it made for some great Mother-in-law/son-in-law bonding time with some help from some co-workers and friends, over the two largest roller coasters at the park – Leviathan and Behemoth, and also Vortex.

I just love the picture below from Behemoth.  You can totally see Mom saying, “What the hell has Iain gotten me into, again?”

I am so proud of Mom!

We’ve got another high flying surprise for them tomorrow.

Music – The Technical Side

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photoPlease allow me to have another geek moment, if you will.  This time it’s about music at the reception.

Music is a great part of my life having learned several instruments, composing over the past 10 years and it has been something that has helped to unite Scott and me right from the very beginning.

I have been spending some time figuring out the music for the reception and while I have all of the actual music figured out, I am now trying to figure out how to network the music for the reception.

What I currently have is :

  • an old Apple Airport Extreme router
  • my MacBook Pro hooked in directly to the router via CAT5
  • two iHome speakers (iW1 and iW2)
  • one iPhone to remotely control both speakers and music

The plan is to stream up to 4 hours of music using AirPlay – The reception is really only 2.5 hours but you never know how we may need to change music on the fly.

I’ve had some really good experiences routing the music from our laptops and Mac Mini to our Apple TVs in the condo, but I’ve had some challenges with these speakers cutting out when we had a party a few weeks ago.

I figured it was because we simply had too much data being pumped through the old Airport Extreme which, while it’s dual band, is not dual band simultaneously.  Everything in our condo is wireless which can really tax a network. We’ve since upgraded in the condo with a new Airport Extreme and and Airport Express for deadspots towards the bedrooms.  I figure, creating a dedicated network would address these dropouts.

Nope!

The iW1, despite being a better sounding speaker, seems to be contributing to the network troubles.  It’s constantly cutting out especially when playing with the second speaker on WiFi.  Running a port scan or connecting to this speaker through a web browser completely garbles up the connection.  The iW2 doesn’t have this issue.

Testing the iW2 by itself, it seems to play continuously, no problems with panning and scanning music while testing fades and such.  I can throw almost anything at that speaker and it takes it.

Thankfully, the iW2 has an ethernet port, sadly the iW1 does not.  So my solution is to wire up the more reliable speaker and hopefully the iW1 behaves on our day.  And having played a few tracks, this setup seems stable.

My approach to DJing this wedding, and it’s a tactic I’ve used before when DJing casual events, is to pretty much setup a long play list to play through and let iTunes do it’s magic fading in and out.  It’s neat sitting back and watching the music do it’s job to bring up and slow down the crowd.

Having the iPhone on the network is going to be a neat addition to this DJ experience.  I can be anywhere in the crowd, adjust volume on any speaker, and change any attribute of the playlist including changing the ordering of songs.

Yes, I fully admit to being a control freak on what music is played at the wedding after seeing the experiences of some other weddings.  That said, I have to admit, I do wish that Apple had kept the music request feature in their remote app.

Enough geekery – about the music?  Expect everything from the 80s to current with several genres but mostly EDM, Dance, Pop and a lot of British music.  If you want to let your inner diva out, go for it. There will be something for everyone in this playlist.

I promise that after the wedding, I’ll post our choices for each part of the ceremony and the full reception play list I planned.

T-minus 16 days

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This has been our life for the past few days.. and will be for the next two weeks…

  • Church walkthrough – check
  • Catering review – check
  • Reception hall review – check
  • First Videographer meeting – check
  • First Photographer meeting – check
  • Reserved seating confirmed – check
  • Confirm cake – check
  • Music for
    • Pre-Ceremony – in process
    • Processional – in process
    • Signing – check
    • Recessional – check
    • Reception – check
    • Confirm speaker system – in process
    • Burn CDs
  • Programme – in process
  • Bonboniere – in process
  • Put weaken schedule together – in process
  • PIck up mother-in-law, aunt-in-law without running out of gas in car – 6 days
  • Ensure groomsmen and family arrive safely – 14 to 15 days
  • Drop stuff off at church – 15 days
  • Actually get to church – 16 days
  • Make sure family gets to the church on time – 16 days
  • Last minute hiccups – bound to be something

Have we forgotten anything?

WedPics – Pictures before and after

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Scott and I have signed up with the cool folks at WedPics.   So, should you have a cool pic to share at our wedding, sign up and download the app!  Connect to us using our profile code: IainScott0824

WedPics is not just for the wedding day! Start sharing photos of Iain and Scott and add any photos from the engagement party, wedding shower, rehearsal dinner and more!

Let’s give Iain and Scott the ULTIMATE wedding gift: a photographic timeline of their lives all the way up to their special day!

If you haven’t already, download the app:

A tale of two toasting flutes

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Courtesy of Macy's

Courtesy of Macy’s

Scott and I were at The Bay yesterday picking up some stuff and I stumbled on two toasting flutes that I fell in love with from Ralph Lauren’s Watchband line.

That line is being discontinued and for whatever reason, the champagne flutes are hard to find.  You can find the martini shakers, bar sets, etc… No flutes.  They’re gorgeous, so I could understand why they may have gone so quickly.

Checking at Sherway – they reported 1 box left, but couldn’t find it, and they weren’t about to sell us the display model.  Queen St – 1 or 2 left; Bloor and Yonge – up to 7 boxes left.  Awesome!  And one was put aside for us.

So we drove from Sherway to Bloor-Yonge thinking we had enough time with a stop at Costco.  Toronto traffic being what it is, we didn’t get to the store until 6:55pm with Scott being told the store was closed – which happens at 7:00pm.  Oh well, the world won’t end.

Today I had a volunteer meeting from 2pm to 6pm so thought I’d go down to the store first.  Leaving at 11:15am I had more than enough time to get to the store.

Nope!  The Toronto Triathalon, some street fair at Lansdowne and Bloor, and a street fair at Yonge-Dundas Square -Traffic was completely snarled in the city.  Lesson learned – I should have taken public transit, which would have given me ample time for everything and less stress.

Two hours later, I got to the store…

To be told they couldn’t find the glasses, despite them being set aside for us supposedly.  They weren’t.

I also had some fun with them asking if I was the groom, to which my response was, “There are two grooms” and then being asked what the bride’s name was, to which my response was “Scott”.  As someone said, “At the gayest Hudson’s Bay in the country?”  Given it’s close proximity to Toronto’s Gay Village on Church St, one would expect them to be more up on alternative relationships.  We certainly had no issues at the Sherway Gardens store.

So I left, feeling disappointed, especially after three or so hours of driving if you count the two trips to the store.

I left and called up Darlene at Sherway Gardens (She’s AWESOME!) and she said that she’d do what she could to find us the flutes. After talking with Darlene, there was a message waiting for me saying, “Oh we found them!”  Great!  I can’t pick them up today…

But I did.  My meeting ended early and I was able to get to the store and…

  • Look at the flutes and determine they weren’t scratched or anything.
  • The first one looked prefect!
  • The second one looked prefect until… I heard a crack when putting the second one away.  &#@%!  Yes, I cracked the flute putting it away!
  • Never fear – the store found a replacement flute.  *PHEW*

Here’s the great thing.  We got a massive deal on these – that I didn’t know about until the flutes were rung in. Regularly $85 – taking 80% off for the last box in the store, plus 10% off for the registry – We got them for $16!

Sometimes life throws you some curve balls and challenges, but they’re rewarding.

So that said – if you’re in the market for crystal, stores like The Bay often have some amazing deals on last sets of glassware.  So keep an eye out.

Congrats to Dave and Mark!

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I totally lifted this from Facebook.

I totally lifted this from Facebook.

The end of June was huge for the United States with the Supreme Court of the United States ending the Defence of Marriage Act and putting a stop to the Proposition 8 challenge, for now.

With this, it opened up marriage again in California for many same-sex couples.

One of these couples includes our friends Dave and Mark.

As a result of these changes – July 20th, 2013 is their wedding day. Mark and Dave have been together for about the same amount of time as Scott and I have.

This is also huge for Dave and Mark as it reduces the worries about Mark staying in the United States.  With DOMA being thrown out, it means Mark, a Canadian citizen, can apply to stay in the United States permanently.  This is a couple that has one less worry about whether or not Mark will be allowed to stay in the US.  They still have the green card process to get through, but it should be considerably easier now that their relationship is recognised.

Couples, families, have less worries about being torn apart because their relationships are now recognized.  They’re no longer invisible.  And writing this has me tearing up. *GRIN*

I think Canadians have somewhat taken marriage equality for granted.  It’s almost like it was a shoe in – we’re Canada, good things happen here.  But witnessing the struggle that Americans have had, and what Dave and Mark have had to go through for years, it has really made me take stock of what we have up here in Canada and realize that it’s not something to be taken for granted.

Dave and Mark will be at our wedding in August.  Please be sure to congratulate them when you meet them.

 

UK Upgraded from Civil Union to Marriage!

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photo

 

The United Kingdom finally ushered in a new era of marriage equality this week with the House of Lords approving legislation.

I find the UK case interesting as the UK already had Civil Unions.  However, many people have called for actual marriage.  Why?

From the Q&A link above –

Civil partnership is a legal relationship exclusively for same-sex couples, distinct from marriage. It offers the same legal treatment as marriage across a range of matters, such as inheritance, pensions provision, life assurance, child maintenance, next of kin and immigration rights. Opposite-sex couples can opt for a religious or civil marriage ceremony, whereas a same-sex partnership is an exclusively civil procedure. Couples in civil partnerships will be able to convert their relationships into marriages if they wish – but they will be under no obligation to do so if they would rather retain their civil partnership.

So, in many respects it is the same thing – except why call it something different for something that is pretty much the same?

I’ve actually suggested that maybe “civil union” and “marriage” be two different parts of a wedding.  Civil union being the legal representation, the formality of all the government paperwork that’s got to be done; where marriage would be the church-side of things.  That way everyone has a “civil union”, and you can choose to have the “marriage ceremony”.

That is a loaded subject.

As a British citizen, I am very proud of the UK finally taking things to the next level for marriage equality.  It actually means it would be easier for Scott to become a British Citizen and easier for both of us to move to the UK if we wanted to.  We don’t have any plans to at this point, but it would be a fun experience.

An interesting thing to note – I’ve shifted my use of language from calling it “gay marriage” to “marriage equality”.  It’s a term I picked up, courtesy of Michelangelo Signorile, a well known activist and Sirius-XM Out Q personality.

There really is nothing gay about what Scott and I are going to do, really.  Ok, we happen to be two men who happen to be gay getting married.  But it’s about levelling the playing field and creating equality for same sex couples.  Thankfully, in Canada, we’ve had marriage equality for 10 years.

Ramping up

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Image 1Scott and I are slowly starting to ramp up on the wedding plans as we took some downtime from the kitchen renovation, a weekend in Ottawa, Toronto Pride and a freak thunderstorm.  Personally, I’m waiting for the zombies to appear.

And that said, I realize we are completely way behind on updating our blog!

Pride week is a big week and weekend for Scott and me.  We actually met on the Saturday of Toronto Pride 1997 as seen in the picture to the left.

Yes, that’s Scott with dyed blonde hair and a much younger version of myself – 26 (almost 27) and 23, respectively.  We chose to re-create the picture at Pride this year.  Much thanks to Paul Ciantar for taking the picture!

IMG_5296Pride Monday, though, is also a significant event for us.  When Scott was working at The Hospital for Sick Children and I was working at Nortel, we worked across the road from each other.  As such, we would attend the Pride Flag raising at Toronto City Hall each year – until 9 years ago when I started working in Mississauga and couldn’t attend, although I am contemplating making it a regular long weekend for Scott and me because…

…Monday was the day that we also picked up our marriage license!  Not only that, but it was also 60 days to the actual wedding day.

It was a painless process and we had a nice surprise in that our friend Michel was the person that registered our paperwork and everything.

So needless to say, we have the paperwork.

Our Premier, Kalthleen Wynne, looked fabulous in her white dress.  And yes, that is Dougie Ford with a pride flag in hand.  It’s interesting seeing how gregarious he is relative to his brother who couldn’t get back to City Hall quick enough after reading the Pride Week proclamation.

Of course, the big news that week was that the Supreme Court of the United States rejected DOMA (Defence of Marriage Act) and dismissed Proposition 8 in California.  While it doesn’t affect Scott and I directly, although I will feel considerably more comfortable and will with pride declare Scott as my husband when we go through US Customs, we do have a lot of affinity for marriage equality in the United States and feel for those fighting against all of the stupid and inane arguments that people come up with.  We’ve had marriage equality in Canada for 10 years now, and we’re still together as a nation, lightning hasn’t struck us, etc…

So congratulations to our friends in the US.  I already know of one wedding-related event Scott and I will be attending in the Bay Area this year.

Back to our planning:

  • We’ve figured out clothing for what we and our groomsmen are wearing.
  • We’ve figured out one reading and we’re looking at another.
  • Our food planning is coming along and I am hoping to meet this week or next week on the food plans.
  • We have one piece of clothing that is being made for us, for the reception, that we’re finalizing and should be done in about two weeks.
  • We’re figuring out the bonboniere, which will most definitely be representative of us and our community of friends, family and coworkers.  Like I said, this is going to be a different wedding.
  • We’re slowly figuring out flowers.
  • Tonight I spent time figuring out what music will be played and when during the ceremony.
  • Our colours are blue, yellow and white.

And there you go!  That’s out update.

A perfect day…

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As a friend of mine just said:  What people will do to show the world how devoted they are to each other, against all odds.

Here is a great article about two men, John Arthur and Jim Obergefell, who recently got married after over 20 years together.  Unfortunately they could not get married in Ohio, but went to Maryland.

The catch is, John lives with ALS, a terminal illness.  The hospice where John lives grants it’s patients with a “perfect day”.  Click on the article below to read about their perfect day including a video of their day.

Terminally-Ill OH Man Marries Husband at MD Airport