I'm married!!!

Check out my other blog for all the details and for photos!

Thanks for sticking with me!

final hurrah

The girls and I are finally heading to my bachelorette weekend in Scottsdale. I'm ridiculously excited because by the time I get back, Hunny Bunny and I will only have a month until our big day!

Can you believe how quickly the year has gone by?

It seems like only yesterday when he proposed in the parking lot. But that's neither here nor there...

My bestest besties got it all planned. We're staying at the W Hotel. How fitting since I'll be getting married at the W too! A few years back, when another one of our friends got married we were at a different desert locale! But these days, we're old and would rather avoid the party scene.

Seriously.Party.An.i.mal.

That would be just a couple months after my snowboarding accident. Yes, I'm in Vegas. And yes, I'm in a wheelchair.

Here's to good times.

But that was a lifetime ago! No more wheelchairs. And no more dancing on stage - well, maybe - but definitely no dancing on stage with a leg brace.

Instead, we'll be getting pampered at the Bliss Spa where my MOH managed to score a 20% discount for all of us!

I cannot wait to get my herbie which combines every step of their fabulous basic facial and fruit acid wash, with a simultaneous full-body rub-on and wrap-up in lavender, bergamot, lemon, thyme, peppermint, and eucalyptus bliss-blend in slimming essential oils. Complete complexion perfection. A head-to-toe 'whoa'.

Here's to even gooder times.

something ain't right

How is it that Hunny Bunny's wedding shoes cost more than my wedding shoes ?? There must be some sort of unspoken rule that's been broken.

It ain't right, if you ask me. There must be some recourse. I should be able to make up the difference and buy another pair of shoes, right? Make up the difference.

Anyway, HB is kinda mixing casual and formal with his wedding outfit so we thought that these Prada sneaks were the perfect combination. At first he was looking at dressier ones but in the end, decided that he would get more wear out of these ones after the wedding.

Neither of us wanted to buy shoes that could only work for one occassion.

Now, gotta shop for my makeup shoes..

it's getting closer

Hunny Bunny really didn't want to do it but he took one for the team and indulged my need for engagement photos. Besides, it was included in our deal! We couldn't let it go to waste right?

I had a really hard time deciding what to wear. Most people told me that I should wear basic, solid colors - no bold prints or crazy colors.

I tried on several outfits and modeled them for HB and also one of my bridesmaids. Both liked the dress that I had originally chosen, which was this floral number by Sweetees. I didn't want to buy a new dress for the photo shoot and I just really like this dress!

I didn't think it was too busy or too colorful, just enough. What do you think? I hope I made the right decision!

The photo shoot itself was so goofy! HB and I are not the kind of couple you see snuggling on a bench at the park. In fact, if you didn't know we were together, you probably wouldn't ever know! So to have us fake-kissing and whispering sweet nothings in each others ear?

Ew! Puke! BLECH!

I hope we get at least a few really good ones so I can have them printed and displayed during the wedding... We'll find out in a few weeks! Wish us luck!

fake-smoochies!

this and that

Hunny Bunny has given me free reign when it comes to registering for gifts. He concluded that I'll "be the one using all of that crap" and so he, in turn, does not give a crap what I buy. If only that were the case for all walks of life.

Anyagirlcandreamcantshe, I've decided that I will only register for dining/kitchen items because I like to buy bedroom and bathroom items for myself - not to mention the fact that I'm anticipating that most of our families will be giving us cash.

*ca-ching!

I figured that if I only register for a small(er) amount of gifts, then the likelihood of us receiving a whole bunch of mismatched items will be a lot less!

HB did however make one small request. He wanted me to register for this disgusting beach towel! Thank goodness he was just joking. I wouldn't have allowed it anyway. Yes. I am bridezilla.

Oneof my bridesmaids and I are making a day of it. Having breakfast, then pedicures, then off tell people what to buy me.

I mean us.

my first wedding gift

My over-excited gramma was bursting to give me my wedding gift. I think she wanted to make sure I didn't feel neglected because she had already given my cousin her wedding gift! But my cousin is getting married next month!



How much do you adore these Whopper-sized south sea pearls? The colors range from ivory to light gold and the shape of each pearl is unique - not perfectly round, but perfect for me! They're extremely heavy around my neck. I guess so I'll always know they're there!

I want to wear them with everything. But more importantly, I plan to wear them with my wedding dress. *sigh*

Hunny Bunny wants to know where his pearl necklace is.

great balls of yellow

I really know nothing about flowers other than they're pretty and sometimes they make me sneeze. I certainly didn't know how much they cost!

The first florist that I met was probably the tackiest florist ever. Her entire portfolio was so 80s and featured gladiolus in everything! I have nothing against gladiolus but all I could think about was the movie Coming to America when I saw her arrangements!

I couldn't get out of there fast enough. She kept telling me that she could do whatever I wanted but her portfolio was so out of date and style that I really didn't feel like I could trust her.

Then one of my bridesmaids and I visited a florist who had the most wonderful samples. Everything looked so elegant and tasteful and just plain gorgeous. She had so many wonderful ideas and suggested so many types of flowers. She seemed to know exactly what I wanted:

a hand-tied bouquet with ribbon wrapped stems featuring pale to deep yellow flowers such as ranunculus, dianthus, freesia, full-headed roses and cymbidium orchids with burgandy throats

Perfect. I love it. *ahem* That is until she sent me the estimate.

$420 for rose petals for the tables???

I was a little discouraged until I got recommendations from two friends who went to Details...Florist for their weddings. I told the florist exactly what I wanted, praying that she could do it for less.

I was so impressed that she understood my limited budget. She had several suggestions on how to cut costs.. But even her base costs were far more affordable than the other gal I met with. In fact she was more than 50% less - for more flowers!

$30 for all the rose petals.

She explained that a lot of the petals would come from mine and the bridesmaids bouquets so they were mine anyway. She also suggested that it would be nice (and more affordable) to have the groomsmen and other honored guests wear ranunculus boutonnieres and have HB be the only one wearing a cymbidium orchid. It would tie into the orchids in my bouquet. What a great idea!

And while I was going through her portfolio, I realized that she also did the flowers for one of my good friend's sister's wedding! With three happy customers, I was more than sold.

Flowers? Check.

i do

We picked our guy - Rev. Ray Van Winkle. Hunny Bunny and I aren't religious but Rev. Ray does non-denominational ceremonies. And he also married our good friends a few years ago and came highly recommended.

He seemed nice and very professional.

Our only criterion was that he didn't try to be funny. I mean, if something funny actually happens, of course he can adlib but HB and I went to a wedding a couple years ago and the officiant kept cracking lame jokes that no one understood. Yikes.

I have to admit that I felt a little queasy when we were sitting there looking over some sample vows. Ok. Maybe a little more the queasy. I wanted to yack. I have yet to revisit the book of vows that he emailed to us for fear of getting freaked out again. I think I'm more freaked out than HB!

We're getting married in exactly 5 months!!!

say cheese

I've been so busy the last couple weeks trying to finalize as many vendors as possible. We finally chose a photographer. His name is Young Lee and while he doesn't normally do wedding photographer, he's doing it for us!

The whole process was so frustrating. I met several wedding photographer but none of them felt like the right match. There was one photographer who had beautiful photography but when we went to meet him, I just didn't really like him. He seemed just a tad condescending and a bit snobby about his work. His fees were also pretty steep given what was included in his package, which was basically nothing... 6 hours of photography time ($300+ for each additional hour - we would need him pretty much all day because of the tea ceremony) and a DVD. To get everything I wanted, it would end up well over $5000.

Anyway, Hunny Bunny is a graphic designer so he took it upon himself to ask around the office and came up with Young Lee, who had done work with the company. HB decided to send him an email and see if he'd be interested. To my relief and excitement, he was!

And he was extremely accommodating and affordable. He's providing us with a full day of wedding photography plus a half day of engagement photos and all the photos on DVD for half of what the other photographer was going to charge.

Yay for another thing checked off the list! Now I need to figure out what I'm going to wear for the engagement photos and where we're going to have them done! Because our wedding is in November, most of our photos will need to be done indoors so I really want to have photos outside. I just don't know where!

There's always the typical Alki Beach with the Seattle skyline as the back drop but that seems so cliche. HB suggested a golf course since he's been so obsessed lately, but I'm kinda iffy about that. As fun as that sounds, I don't want to disturb the other golfers who are actually there to play!

I kinda like Volunteer Park too. My parents used to take my brother and me there a lot when we were kids and there's also a lovely view of the Seattle skyline.

If you have any ideas, I'd love to hear suggestions from you!

flower power

After a brief wedding planning hiatus, I'm finally back! With just a little over six months to go, I really shouldn't procrastinate. The wedding will be here before we know it!

Next on my list is finding a florist. I really don't know anything about flowers and I certainly don't want to pay that much for them. Thankfully, the W Hotel is providing us with these impressive candelabras for each table so we really won't have to worry about getting arrangements.

I do want to add some color to the table though and at first was thinking about just getting flower petals and tossing them around. That is until I came across lillyella's pom-pom flowers! How whimsical! They look really simple to make, affordable too!

Am I crafty enough to make 200 of these? Maybe... I'd better start with just one. I'm thinking of somehow incorporating them into our wedding favors, which we haven't quite decided on yet though I do have ideas.

What do you think? Is it cheesy? Does it seem cheap? I kinda like that people can take them home too.

Now I need to work on the real flowers. I would like my bridesmaids to have white fluffy flowers, but I should talk to my mommy to make sure that's okay with her. Something about white flowers and Chinese people don't sit well - hoping she's not gonna get all superstitious on me! For my bouquet, I'm thinking of yellow flowers.

Unforch, my favorite flowers - dahlias and peonies - aren't in season and I don't want to pay $10 a stem. Yikes.

Maybe I'll just go with a Thanksgiving theme since our wedding is in November. I can walk down the aisle carrying a cornicopia and the bridesmaids will carry little jack-o-lanterns! The groomsmen can rake up the yard and wear a couple dried leaves...

sweet

One of my bridesmaids just sent me a message:

I had a dream and it was your wedding day. And it was really beautiful and I got really emotional and I grabbed you to tell you how happy I was for you and it was weird cause I was really crying when I woke up! Tears everywhere!

Awwwwww... I love you, Veen! And I'm so happy that you'll be there with me!

dolly

How cute is my mommy? For the last couple months, she's been fretting about whether or not she'd find a dress for my wedding. Errr.. You still have nine months.

Anyway, she called me with good news! She picked up not one, but two options on sale at Nordstrom.

Option 1: Simple silk dress with matching jacket in a lovely shade of blue.

Very elegant. Very safe.

Option 2: Hot momma wearing a slightly irredescent navy blue taffeta with a darling floral neckline. Perfectly echoing the rosette on my bridesmaids' dresses.

Very daring. Very Audrey Hepburn, no? Very va-va-voom - for my mom any way.

Gotta take the hem up a few inches though. Show some skin.

Mommy decided to keep both. One to wear to my cousin's wedding in July and the other to wear to mine!

Can you guess which one I'd prefer at mine?

with this ring..

While browsing through one of those secret-members-only-online sales (I think it was Hautelook, but I'm old and can't remember things too well.. Oh and send me an email if you're not a member and I'll send you a link!) I came across this cute little sterling silver ring. (See I'm so old that I can't even remember who the designer is!)

Anysenile, I thought it'd make a nice gift for my bridesmaids. I considered saving it until next year as part of their bridesmaids' gifts before the wedding, but I'm not good at keeping secrets so I decided it'd be fun to give to them for Christmas this year. It's really a pre-thank you for putting up with me for the next year!

They don't have to wear it during the wedding or anything but I just really liked how simple and sweet it was. So much so that I bought one for myself too. Isn't that shameful?

I should be thinking of others but really I'm constantly thinking of myself.

At least I admit the selfishness, right? Isn't that half the battle?

one down

Golly! This wedding planning thing is a total snap!

Last week I said I was going to wait until these Pradas got to 60% off before I would buy them. Well lo and behold, Barneys must have heard my cries because they just got marked down!

Luckily, they had one last pair in my size. And I still had $60 leftover from a gift card!

Now my problem is deciding whether or not I can hold out a year without wearing these beauties. On the one hand, I should probably break them in. On the other hand, I don't want to ruin them at all.

My MOH made a good point though. She said if I wore these for the next 11 months, they'd not only be broken in but they could also be my "something old". You really can't fight with logic like that.

I wonder when the Oscar de la Rentas will go on sale... I'm just sayin'...

potential

I'm starting really look for shoes for the wedding. I'm leaning towards getting shoes that are fun and don't necessarily match my dress in style or color. I want to be able to wear them again.

To be honest, this whole wedding thing is really just an excuse for me to buy more shoes!

I like the idea of sticking with our yellow and grey color scheme. Right now, I have my eye on these Prada peep toes. They're on sale at Barney's but I'm going to hold out and see if they get marked down further.

They're not so high that I can't walk in them and I know I'll wear them again.

I also really like these Oscar de la Renta d'orsay heels in yellow (not coral!) at Nordstrom. They're not on sale yet so I'm just biding my time. Don't you think a little pop of yellow would be so adorable in our wedding photos? A little bit unexpected and a lotta bit fun!

Would it be so bad of I got both pairs? I mean, since I am planning to have a couple changes of clothes, shouldn't that include shoes too?

best song ever

Initially, I thought Hunny Bunny wouldn't want to have a First Dance because he just not that kinda guy so I wasn't really thinking about it. But as it turns out, HB actually doesn't mind and said we should have a first dance. I've been keeping a mental list of the songs I might want.

After attending the NKOTB concert this weekend, I have the perfect song at the top of my list.


HB was a tad reluctant about my song choice but he has since relented. YAY!

I'm sure you can guess which song it is. If not, email me and I'll tell you.

Go ahead, laugh all you want. I <3 NKOTB!

make me beautiful

I know my wedding package at the W Hotel includes a makeup artist by Smashbox to do my makeup on the day of my wedding. But honestly, who knows how good that person will be? And obviously, I need to be the star of the day!

So my mom's friend's daughter Stace does hair and makeup and I've heard that she's really talented - she freelances for MAC and also does her own thing. She did the hair and makeup for the model in the photo. Gorg, right?

I get to do a trial run with the Smashbox artist several months prior to my wedding so I'm going to see how good she is. If I don't like what she does, I'll give the freebie to one of my bridesmaids and hire Stace for myself.

At the very least, I'll have her do my hair. She already promised me a "homey discount" and said she could bring and assistant to help with all my bridesmaids' hair.

All I know is that I want my skin to be glowy and completely flawless. And I want all my bridesmaids to have similar ethereal looks nothing too dramatic or vampy - just simple and clean. One of my BMs tends to wear pretty dramatic makeup so hopefully she won't kill me for requesting that all the girls look similar. *wink

games we play

My maid of honor is starting to collect ideas for activities during my bridal shower. Indeed, I can already tell that it's going to be a classy event.

more clothes!

My aunt stopped by the other day and dropped of the Chinese kwa that she wore in her wedding nearly 20 years ago. In the meantime, another one of my aunts also wore it during her wedding and a family friend borrowed it too! I think it's a good sign since all of these women have been happily married since.

(Now the dress that's displayed isn't the exact dress that I plan to wear during the tea ceremony - I still want that to be a surprise for HB, but it kinda gives you an idea of what it looks like.)

The quality of my aunt's dress is soooo much nicer than what's available out there today. It's mostly handmade and rather than sequins and beading all over, the dragon/phoenix symbols are embroidered in a silver thread.

Sadly, it's a tad snug around my shoulders. I can zip it up just fine but I can barely lift my arms. I guess this will give me incentive to lose some weight! So maybe it's actually a good thing.

Have you noticed that most of my wedding accomplishments have revolved around clothing? I have my priorities, you know.

i can breathe now

After thinking long and hard, my dad decided that instead of an intimate dinner for six (HB's parents, my parents and us) for the first meeting, it would be less pressure to have a dinner party with my dad's side of the family in conjunction with his 60th birthday. (That sentence seems awkward! Sorry!) More people around gabbing = less awkward silences.

Anyway, we ended up choosing Zen Garden Chinese Restaurant in Mill Creek as the location because they could accomodate twenty people easily and affordably. Food was delicious. And with all the conversations going around, no one felt the need to fill the space with idle chatter. It was a huge load off my shoulders - especially since HB was grumpy, dumpy. Phooey.

Mommy sat by Mommy and made small talk. My poor dad confessed to me later that he didn't want talk to them too much because he was afraid he wouldn't be able to hear their responses! (He's gone deaf in one ear. Boo.)

Thinking it was finally over, and forgetting how gracious HB's parents' can be, they insisted on inviting my parents out for dinner the next night! Yes, you read that right. Another dinner. I suppose it's better than them fighting for the bill that night! I remember this one time where my mom and some guy ripped the receipt in half after struggling for several minutes. Crazy.

For the next meal, we went to Tamarind Tree for Vietnamese food. Not my favorite place at all, but HB's parents didn't want us to go to some scuzzy hole in the wall, even if the food is better!

I can understand. Good first impressions right?

This time they invited their side of the family and it turned out to be a good thing because HB and I haven't seen anyone since we got engaged!

And then I went for a massage the next day. I needed it.

Peace at last!