Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Bankrupting a New Relationship with an Expensive Wedding

After spending a very enjoyable evening at my brother-in-law’s reception on Saturday night I looked back on my wedding and where we had the right idea, and where we might have gone wrong (financially speaking, I’ll leave the critique on relationships to Mrs. C8j):

• We had our reception as a brunch which was much cheaper and because we only needed the reception room until 3:00 PM, we actually got it for free, as we had booked lots of rooms and we were paying for the meal.
• Because this was brunch very little liquor was served as well.
• The real reception was at my wife’s parents house, so we and her parents bought most of the booze “retail” from the OLC, which was cheaper.
• We didn’t spend too much on a honeymoon (which I view as a regret, but we just couldn’t afford it).
• Both sets of parents gave generously to the blessed event as well (in case they are reading and thinking I am trying to portray this as something I solely paid for).

I am not a believer in blowing huge amounts of cash for a wedding (as you can tell).

Cognos Sold to IBM

IBM has bought local Ottawa Software house Cognos for $4.9B which is interesting. This will make the local software folk in Ottawa nervous, because a BIG hiring point is now changing hands, so what will happen? The fact that IBM can effectively pay cash for this company, shows the relative strength of IBM.

Government Offices Closed for Remembrance Day

Thanks to that my “new to me” car remains on my mechanic’s lot. The car is effectively mine, but not in the eyes of the Provincial Government yet.