Reflections of Mom

I don't say a lot about losing my mother. I'm still very emotionally scarred and traumatized from the experience. Though I suppose it's normal. There's a lot of feelings that I'm not ready to explore because it means a lot of crying. And with my dad's passing this year, my siblings and I have officially become orphans. This isn't the post in which I will share my feelings. Rather, I have a couple of things to post, because I can't post it on FB because I don't want to deal with the feedback (however well-meaning it may be).

A couple of things I have seen that I do want to post on this blog. On Mother's Day I was in Toronto on a trip with a friend and I saw the following sign, which made me think of my mommy:
This was probably the first picture that is vaguely related to my mom that I tagged on FB. FB is a funny thing. There are people who have no qualms about sharing everything on FB. But my mom is something truly deeply personal that I really can truly share with some people. There are only some people that really understand or really just listen. I have no problem with people that share everything. I'm not in that camp.


Tonight, I happened the upon the video "媽媽" by MC Jin(歐陽靖) + Hanjin(陳奐仁) on FB, and what MC Jin raps in Cantonese sounds so much like my mom that all I cried really hard during his rap solo. And then I watched it again, and cried again. I wanted to comment that I cried during while watching, but that seems to be sharing too much. So I share with you, the silent one the video 媽媽 by 歐陽靖 and 陳奐仁.

3...2...1...10!

That's right, it's 3/21/2010 - the second day of spring and we're celebrating another first anniversary.

Annie, I love you.

December 12, 2009 - Happy Anniversary to Us!

One year ago Annie and I went to SF city hall and had our wedding ceremony performed in front of the mayor's office. Fast forward 365 days later and we are celebrating our one year anniversary! I love my wife, Annie, very much and I hope she knows that :D

On The Second Day of Spring...

March 21, 2009 (3...2...1) we were finally married!

Then came March 27, 2009 which marks the 10th anniversary of Annie and I being together. Wow, can you believe it's a decade in the making? :)

The dilemma now is which day do we celebrate? 12-12? 3-21? Or keep the 3-27 date? I guess we'll celebrate all three for now.

We're in the final home stretch

19 days and counting. It's getting close! Hard to believe that the last year and 3 months are starting to wind down. I'm very tired, very emotionally exhausted, and it's been making it hard for me to post updates. But I'll make an attempt to do.

I. Bridal Shower.
So, my last post was about my hair trial. The week after that on 2/7/2009, my bridesmaids threw me tea party at Lovejoy's Tea Room. I'm feeling a little bit lazy, and the fact that I have more to update, I will just direct you all to my yelp review - short and sweet. It was good seeing my friends and family, and I really enjoyed the rose tea. Yummy. I need to go back and buy some of the tea for myself- I forgot to do that last time. Here are a couple pics:



II. 2nd Dress Fitting

I had my second dress fitting with Angie this past Saturday. I tried to lose 5 lbs - but sadly, I didn't, but was able to fit just fine into the dress again. And I did note that the dress was less tight around the stomach area, so maybe I am losing some weight. Angie asked me to bring along the veil and my jewelry for the fitting. This was the first time I got to see me in the entire outfit. It was so pretty. I would love to post some pictures in the outfit, but Tony may see the blog, so I can't post them until later.

III. Money Box

The money box. A box that holds the cards and envelopes your guests may bring. Did you know there is a whole industry for the box? The are 4 tier, personalized-to-your-wedding-colors boxes (while incredibly awesome) such as the boxes seen here. The problem? They range from $40 for 1 box through $100+ for 16+ boxes. They are really just boxes with accents and color fabric, etc, etc. I also visited some Hong Kong-style wedding salons where the boxes are rented at $25/day. The boxes are essentially hhat boxes with the double happiness motif stuck on it. So I decided, we can make our own money box. I recruited my maid of honor, Rose, and her bf, Wayne and we made (well, they made - I just helped decorate, since I am not an artsy-crafty person) the box.
Here is one of many brainstrom sessions about how the box should be wrapped.

Here Wayne and Rose are getting into the wrapping.

And here is the box:




It's a box. It will hold cards. It's red and has double happiness on it. Mission Accompli.
The Double Happiness motif is purchased from Ho Tai Printing (thanks Rose for getting it!)
The gold hearts are from my wedding invitations. They turned out to be pretty handy.

Hair Trial

So I actually had my hair trial on February 1 - but I came down with a cold on January 31, and really have been fighting it all week since then. I am just congested now.

In any event, our hair trial was done at Salon Studio 2000 of Miss Chinatown USA pageant fame. They were the sponsors and did the hair and make up for the pageant. While they are a little bit pricier for wedding-day-of services, the stylists were friendly and worked with us (me and my two bridesmaids) on what exactly we were looking for in our hairstyles. The hair trial itself was an alright price. I believe the owner of Salon Studio is Suzie, and she was there that day, but our hairstylist will be Hanh Tran. From Hanh's chatting with my bridesmaid, I learned that Hanh was one of 2 stylists from Salon Studio responsible for Miss Chinatown contestant hair (the rest of the people did makeup).

The first thing Hanh asked me was if I had an idea of what I wanted my hair to look like. I had known for a while what I wanted my hair to look like - the difficulty was trying to find a picture of the hair. I went through 2 bridal magazines (they came in handy again) and tore out pics of hair styles that were close, but not quite. But lucky for me, earlier that week, the SAG Awards were on tv, and I found the hair - Kate Winslet's hairstyle. Essentially: "a low bun that is soft and elegant with a touch of modernity." And being the obsessed Hollywood culture that we are, there a plenty of pics of Ms. Winslet's hair from all possible angles. One look at the picture and Suzie was like "oh, that's actually very simple and pretty." Hanh said "I'm not going to need this [the curling iron]." All about simplicity and elegance. Yay! I asked to see if they had hairpins with pearls and they were able to include that for me. Fini!

I initially contacted several other people for hair appointments; and while I was considering using the services of another company - that fell through because they were pretty flaky about getting back to me in terms of making an appointment and answering questions (esp vial email - in fact, I think the company still has not gotten back to me.) In any event, Suzie was responsive and helpful - so that made me choose her. I think our hair is in good hands.

Dress Fitting #1

Today I went to my first dress fitting. I was really nervous about the fit since I had purchased the dress back in August. When I tried it on in November, the dress didn't zip up as nicely as it did as in the bridal salon. So I had gone a mission to lose 5lbs - it is really hard to purposely lose 5lbs. But it worked. I went to the fitting today with all of my undergarments and my shoes and it zipped up perfectly. Angie of Maria's Alterations and Bridal (as recommended by Trudy's) told me the dress was a perfect fit. The bust has to be taken in (because I'm not a Miss American contestant), the hem has to be taken in because it's long, and the bustles have to be added. A couple of extra stitches here and there. I decided I'm going to try to lose another 5lbs so that it wont be a glove-like fit. For fitting #2 (in about a month) I need to bring in my jewelry and veil in addition to all of the accessories that I brought in today.

What does this mean? I have to limit my love of pastries and cookies. Damn it!

61 Days to Go

We're down to the two month mark. We gotten responses from about 1/3 of our invitees, and yes, while I know the rsvp date is February 14, 2009, must you really wait until then to send it back? My dad has been told by some of our relatives that it's not 2/14 yet, but they will probably be coming. Really? Is that really necessary? We have a website for you to rsvp at too you know. Do it soon people, we are doing our seat and menu confirmation with the restaurant soon after.

I had a makeup trial this past Saturday with my cousin Paula. It lasted 4 hours. She did a great job, and was really patient with me as I struggled with the foreign language that is makeup and tried to explain to her what effect I was going for. It was very pretty at the end, I enjoyed the overall result. But it was good to get out of the way the things that I didn't like so that I don't have to freak out about it that day. It's a good thing it was family and not a stranger. I'm thinking if it was a stranger they would not have been as patient with me. She gave me a list of items to remember to have with me that day.

This Saturday I have my first dress fitting. I called the seamstress today to confirm the appointment. Her accent reminds me of my aunt who is from Myanmar - I wonder if the seamstress is from there also? I'm nervous just because I hope I can fit into my dress the way I did when I first tried it on at the bridal salon. I have all the items: the strapless bra, the slip, my shoes. My shoes are very simple, ivory colored Lindseys from Coloriffics. The price on the linked site is not what I paid for the shoes (I got a deal). Not too tall because I don't want to tower over Tony.

On February 1 I have my hair trial appointment. I'm still debating if I want to have any hairpins in my hair? Do I want a silk flower? Will it mess up my hair from taking on and off during the day (I do have 3 outfit changes)? I already have to deal with the veil. I'm working on it.

I originally wanted cz/crystal jewelry because I remembered just how much I enjoyed the sparkly effect of my wedding dress. So I purchased Givenchy Bridal jewerly - a necklace, a bracelet and dangly earrings. Well, after I held it up against the dress, my first thought was "Pearls it is." So I returned the jewerly. My MOH and I went around downtown to find the right pearls. We went to this store on Powell street called Paris Jewelers. And the guy behind the counter kept asking me whether I wanted to try on the pearls or not. I tried to explain to him that the pearls weren't what I had in mind. And he kept giving me this "duh" look and tellling me "these are high quality pearls you know." (emphasis was not added). Needless to say, we left pretty soon after. I found my ivory colored pearl necklace with pave from Carolee (which by the way, also makes the Ralph Lauren jewerly line) at Bloomingdale's of all places. I know it says white on the website, but they're more of an ivory color. They didn't have a matching bracelet or earrings (which I also later realized that I wanted stud earrings). But I just went to the designer's site and purchased the matching bracelet, and hopefully matching earrings. The jewerly is simple and pretty and not too over the top. Just like I want it. Another question presents itself: do I need jewerly for my third dress? I wore simple cz hoop earings at my civil ceremony and no necklace. Should I do that again? Another question to consider.

Sometime between my hair trial and my eventual bridal shower I have to fit in another meeting with my florist. Then I have to meet up with my wedding coordinator that day, Kat, to figure out the schedule.

The wines

Today, Tony, Kat, Trieu, and I were on a mission. Kat and Trieu planned out this wine-filled packed day with 10 wineries (we managed to go to 7) and scheduled in lunch and dinner. It was intense.

We went to Artesa, then on to Folio. After tasting 10 wines, we had to break for lunch since we were really loud/pink/buzzed at this point. We went to V Sattui for lunch in their deli. We had foie gras and sweet baguette, a prosciutto panini, a salami/provolone cheese panini, and a pastrami sandwich. After we were well fed, we went to V Sattui's wine cellar for 6 more wines. Then we headed over to Louis M. Martini just to taste their Amabile Moscato (and purchased a total of 4 bottles - we got one for ourselves). After that, we headed over to Prager Port to try 2 of their Rieslings. This was an interesting winery (Prager Port) since it was a teeny tiny tasting room and it took a good several times to find. Then we attempted to go to Arger-Martucci but the lady told us she was understaffed (and by herself) and a busload of people were coming. So we decided to go to Sutter Home instead. We ended up in the sister wine tasting room, Trinity Oaks. We had four complimentary tastings. And then, we made it to the Sutter Home tasting room, where we had another 4 wines to taste. Then we ventured down over to St. Supery, and tried 2 more (well by this point, I was the only one tasting/drinking) - very dry Rose (not so good) and a very yummy Muscato. And finally, we went over to Napa Cellars to see Folio a Deux to try the Menage a Trois, but ended up not tasting anything. We did try a sampling of all of their bread and pretzel dips. So how many wines is that? A grand total of 29 wine tastings. I fully drank at least 4 glasses of wine. Whew.

After this full day of drinking and feasting, did we find the wine for the wedding? We got 2 cases of Spellbound 2006 Riesling from Folio. It was yummy (so were a lot of other Rieslings and Muscatos we tried today, but this one was great). And we got 2 cases of Sutter Home 2007 Red.
One red and one white. We have found our table wines for our banquet. Both wines are light, not too complex in taste, are not too heavily spiced, and will go well with the seafood/poultry dishes we will have at our wedding banquet. The wine tasting notes indicate they will go well with Asian food. Mission Accompli!

And here it is: