Our photographer sent us a teaser....

This is iT Photography

Can't wait to see the rest.

Other banquet updates

Our invitations are out! I have hand delivered the invitations with bridal cake cards to my relatives. I have mailed the invitations to HK. I have mailed the invitations to my out of town friends, and in town friends. It is done!

We have recruited our friends (and occasional game nite/dinner companions) Kat and Trieu to assist us in finding the perfect (and within budget) red and white wine for the banquet. They're much more knowledgable about this process than we are (translate: we are clueless), and have had many suggestions and ideas thus far. We are planning a wine tasting field trip (lol) and that will be fun.

I made an appointment with the seamstress back around Thanksgiving. She told me that I don't need to go in for my first fitting until the end of January. So that gives me time to do 2 things: find my shoes, and lose those last nagging 5 lbs!. The hair people, I have been trying to set up a consultation appointment at the end of January also for the three of us, so I am continuing to work on it.

I suppose things are chugging along.

We are married!

Well, legally married. We officially tied the knot and signed on the dotted line on Friday, December 12! We have not yet paid our respects to our elders and had the tea ceremony. In other words, we haven't gotten married in front of our family and friends.

It was a good day. I didn't think I would be nervous, but when I heard the marriage commissioner tell us the vows of marriage and what marriage means and is, I found myself tearing up. We were both nervous. Even after all this time, we were nervous. We got to share this day with his sister, my sister, my brother, and my good friend (and maid of honor), Rose.


The weather behaved for the most part. It was sunny that morning, but got increasingly overcast and cold that day. It was pretty damned cold! And we had made arrangement to incorporate our civil ceremony into our engagement photo session, so that afternoon we had to smile and look happy in the bitter cold. Then - later that night it started to rain. So I say it was lucky.

We haven't gotten our photos from that day from our photographer yet, but I'll post some here taken by Margie that day. They turned out great! I can't wait to see what magic our photographer has produced for us.

Wedding planning reflections

Planning a wedding is a lot of work and stress. I guess that's an obvious statement. But the process of planning a wedding has really tested me in some respects. It's made me really evaluate my relationships with the people in my life. Specifically I am talking about the multitude of people who have offered their help vs. the people who have offered "advice" which is really thinly veiled "must do instructions." As a tried and true Libra, and as the oldest child, I have always tried to be diplomatic and patient. In short, I am non confrontational. I pick and choose my battles, because I really don't want to expend the time and energy fighting battles I deem to be silly and not worth my time. As this process has evolved it has really become trying. I have realized that I can't just sit back and be indifferent like I normally am. Because now, it's about me personally and not about events that are happening around me. I've come to realize that the people who truly know how I am accept me for who I am. Even when I am like "eh" and don't get that child-like excitement that is the norm. I am me. And for those relationships, I am grateful. Those are the people that I truly can depend on, and to whom I can truly call my friends. For those of you, I thank you. I wouldn't have survived without you.

Bridal Cookie Cards

We purchased 100 cards on Black Friday. My aunt, Tony and I sat in The AA Bakery in Chinatown while they prepped the cards. This meant that each card had to be hand stamped with the store's name in addition to a signature authorizing the card to be used.

Growing up in ABC has made following a lot of these traditions difficult, especially since I didn't understand or much less knew that these cards existed. But a good source to understand these traditions is the book Good Luck Life by Rosemary Gong. This book provides an explanation for the bridal cookies.

The bride has a cookie day before the wedding. I think of this as the engagement party essentially. The groom's family delivers a roast pig, various bridal cookies, chickens for offering, and any other things according to the tradition of the groom's family's village (ranging from various teas, wines, fruits, etc). The roast pig and other foods are divided by the bride's family and returned to the groom's family. The cookies are distributed to the bride's relatives. Now for those relatives who cannot make it to the event and to also save the trouble of the groom's family of delivering hundreds of cookies, the cookie card is used. The cookie cards are distributed to the relatives, so that they can bring the card in to the bakery and they can redeem the pastries.

A majority of my friends grew up here without practicing this tradition. I've attended many weddings (both friends and family) where they did not participate in this tradition. In the spirit of mixing modern and the traditional, I've decided to only pass these cards out to the relatives that I am inviting (on this side of the Pacific ocean). I won't pass these cards out to my friends since I know they will not redeem the cookies, nor will they eat the cookies.

So with invitations and cookie cards in hand, it is time to march forward and send out the invites.

The third dress...

has been a challenge to find. I think I've lost about 10 lbs this year and it's impacted the way I fit into a dress. I've been looking far and wide for a red dress to wear for the banquet, and possibly for my engagement pictures. I've purchased 5 different red dresses and I haven't liked how any of them looked. And going to stores have been hard since they don't carry all of the brands they carry online (um, like Nordstroms), so I have had to buy them online and hope they work. Well they haven't. I think I'm in between sizes right now, so whatever dress I ultimately get, I may have to get emergency alterations on, but OMG, why is it this frustrating?

The Invitations...

have arrived. We picked them up from H2 today, and we were happy. Well, we should have been happy, considering the amount of fighting to get the cards just right. It looks good, just like how we wanted. Our beautiful trilingual cards. It's real now. The invitations are here. We are getting married folks!

On the upside and further musings...

My bridesmaids have selected their dresses, courtesy of David's Bridal. The dress looks cute, and they have placed in the order for the wine color. It's due to arrive in December, which gives plenty of time for alterations and the such. I'm happy that this is another item to take off the list. I will be more prepared when I go see my florist! Yay!!!

What will be next on our list of items? Well, in a couple of weeks, I will go with my aunt to purchase the bridal cakes ("lai beng") cards. We will start off with 100 cards. I already envision this will not be enough, however, who knows? And then the head ache will begin as we start to do the invitations.

...and I spoke too soon.

So, Tony and I have been having relatively good success with our vendors. The process has been pleasant (probably because we have been picking the people that we want) - but I must have spoken too soon.

We got the first proof of our wedding invitations last week. Boy, was it bad. We customized the language of the invitation to fit our needs. And this is what H2 cards told us we could do. We hashed it over with our parents for days. Back and forth, before we all came to an agreement. And what did the proof look like it when it arrived? It had punctuation marks where we didn't want them. They inserted words that we didn't have. The added entire sentences that we didn't ask for. They inserted an additional feature to the card that we didn't ask for. There were so many mistakes, we couldn't possibly make handwritten corrections and then fax it back to the printer.

We went to them in person, and asked them to fix the card. Rather than apologize for not following our proof and assuring us they can fix it - we were told repeatedly, that "this is not how it is done" and "our graphic artist was following our standard template." Yes - I told her - we understand that, but you told us the layout was customizable, and this is the layout that our families agreed to, and we insist that the layout be EXACTLY as we sent to them. I think I said this point at least 3 times, and finally because there were a growing number of customers waiting to be helped, she finally agreed, and said she would have her graphic artist work on it Monday and send us the revised proof. The graphic artist department was not working today (Saturday), she said.

Well, first of all when we first entered the store, another person was assisting us, and she made SOME of the changes we asked for. So, if she could do it, why couldn't they do it?

In any event - the invitations are continually evolving at this point. We haven't even gotten to the actual sending of the invites yet, but this is proving to be the biggest headache of all.

Wedding Invites

are coming along! We've been working on the template with the in-laws and my dad. It was not always easy. I'm not sure if they understand we appreciate the complexities of our culture, and want to incorporate some elements of it into our wedding BUT we didn't want to look like we were stuck somewhere in the Qing Dynasty. So there were many discussions about the specific wording we were going to use, and what really wasn't necessary since we weren't have the 24 hour wedding celebration. In any event, we've sent our templates to the printer and now we wait.