3.5 hours later...

duuuuude, we spent freakin almost 4 hours hashing things out with our first florist interview. yes, we already pretty much had one picked out, but we decided to try out other options to see if they'll compare, price-wise and quality and style. so we found one that one of my clients are using for their wedding and this vendor is doing some drapery for them as well as some lighting. so we went to check her out and it was quite a productive session. it was our first one and that's always the hardest because that's where you really have to choose what kinds of flowers and style... many of which i hadn't really thought too specifically about. i'm not super tied to any one flower or anything. i just wanted the flowers to reflect our colors. it was so hard to choose a flower and then to try to envision what it'll look like, then choose bridesmaid bouquets after, then the sponsors' corsages and on and on and on. at first i was being more particular, but by the time 9pm rolled around, i was just saying yes to everything. sooo tiring. so now we're debating if we even wanna go through the whole thing again. i think we ought to give our original florist a chance though, cuz we do like her style lot. we're just really drained from that 3.5 hour meeting.

honeymoon - check!

whoohoo! we got our honeymoon! my god, it'll be a lovely 3 week vacation! we're starting out in florence for 3 nights (taking visits to cinque terre and pisa during those days) and then 4 nights in rome. and THEN we set sail on a mediterranean cruise with stops to athens, mykonos (greek island), and egypt! yes, we're going to egypt! we get to see the pyramids and the nile river! can you believe it? dude, and the best part is, we're doing all of the hotels with points! AND my parents are helping with the cruise! it's going to be sooo awesome!

... hope work will let me take off. hehe! it's go live time for this huge upgrade project that we're doing around october. they better be on time, or they won't have me around. but 3 weeks, wow! i feel so big baller... but thank goodness for points!

yay!!!

i have 2 more bridesmaids, whoohooo! i had such a great time with lana, herman, maria and of course, the fiance last night! we went to palms thai restaurant in hollywood. poor maria totally got lost cuz she was testing out her new navigation system, which apparently sucks big bootie. but i'm glad we got her out of her cranky pants mood and had a great time with duck red curry, and glass noodle salad and tom yum gum (something like that) - you know, that really spicy sour soup. and at the end of dinner, thai elvis sang happy birthday to maria, yayyyy! happy birthday dear friend! oh and then, i gave them their presents. they were so cute opening them, sychronized with each other. but maria was so caught up in the cute wrapping and i swear, she looked like she didn't even want to untie the ribbon cuz she was admiring it so much. lana was sooo excited that she just tore through it, and she quickly read the gifts and started nodding really really excitedly! hehe! she kept looking at maria, wondering why she wasn't even reacting. and maria was just on the first coaster. she saw her name and she showed us, "oh look, it has my name!" and lana says, "yea, look there's more." so maria saw the "will you..." and then read the rest of the gift. hehe! awww, and they were both so touched when they read the entire phrase. and i was really really happy that they were really really happy to be my bridesmaids! i really just wanted them to feel special cuz i am sooo thankful for their friendships through the years. and they're so funny. they started making up phrases to put around the house for lana's boyfriend, michael. "will you... clean the table?" "will you... sweep the floor?" "will you... put the toilet seat down?" hehe! good times, good times!

1 down, 5 to go

whoohoo! last week, henry and i went out with jonathan and caroline. hadn't seen them in forever! i noticed throughout the night, caroline and i were just chit-chattering away. i missed that with girlfriends. we continued to hang out at their house and i asked my first bridesmaid to be my bridesmaid! i really wanted to make my girls feel special, so i made them a little something. i wanna share it but i still have 5 of them left to ask, so i'll save it for a little later. hopefully, by next week, i'll have 4 bridesmaids and 2 matrons of honor to present! oh and henry's so funny at how he asked his groomsmen too. he didn't really know how to ask jonathan, but it seemed like such a scripted moment when caroline asked, so how will you ask you groomsmen henry? and henry just goes, like this, as he flings the little screaming monkey to jonathan. hehe! it was the funniest moment! and jongo's like, oh that's funny, not even realizing that henry's actually asking him until henry said the words. then he just laughed even more. hehe! good friends, good stuff!

so tonight, i'll knock down 2 more bridesmaids. and tomorrow, one of the matrons of honor - who doesn't wanna be called matron because it sounds too matronly. but she doesn't wanna be maid of honor, because she doesn't want people to think that she divorced her husband already! hehe! she's so funny. so i'm currently throwing around the title lady of honor. any suggestions?

5 weeks later

it's been a little over 5 weeks since we got engaged, 4 1/2 weeks since we started planning and by the end of last week, we had our [location] site (brackets are for jongo), decided on our dj, photographer and florist i think. then i didn't see my fiance for 3 whole days! i think we had a really hard time with it cuz when i visited him yesterday, it was like we hadn't seen each other for a year! we're counting the 7.5 months til we can just sleep in the same bed and neither one of us will have to get up at 2-3 in the morning to go home.

so yesterday, we started our gift registries. i feel like we really sucked at shopping. i know he feels pretty accomplished because the items we put on the registry are things we really wanted. but we only played with the online registry for only a couple of hours. and when i viewed it as a guest, i felt like it was such a skimpy list! shoot, and that was only one store! as a guest, i like to have lots of choices on gift registries, so i really like jay and cici's. they put down everything from napkin rings to lamps. so i don't really want to say where we registered yet because we're soo far from getting started. and macy's wont let you register online. you have to go in store... poo. and for another store, well, gosh, we were so tired from registering from the first store, that i think we only put down drinking glasses and just stopped.

then we talked about honeymoon stuff. oh so fun! we're thinking of taking 3 weeks off now. the way the cruise is working out, we'd only have 3 land days in italy. i hear it takes 3 days just to go around rome! and since we're there already, might as well see the other areas. i want to see pisa, and esp. cinque terre that jay, glenn and chris have told so many stories about. i'd love to see florence while we're at it. i wouldn't mind seeing venice. but that's much more out of the way.

a coworker was talking about how 3 weeks gets to be too much so i was thinking, would we want to come home already after the cruise? then henry reminded me of how we felt after 2 weeks in hawaii. we still didn't want to come home yet. so i think we'd be just fine with 3 weeks. i'm excited! i think i ought to learn how to speak italian though. i'm sure glad i took spanish in high school. hopefully that will help me learn italian.

we got our site!!

yayyy, we got our reception location! aughh, what a struggle that was to make a decision and try to choose what's best for us and still consider the budget. and after all that weighing out, calculating spreadsheets, we still ended up with waaaay over our budget. geez louise!

but we're sooo super happy with turnip rose. they're rated the #1 best caterer in orange county, so i really didn't mind having just chicken. but since we were no longer having chinese banquet, henry was rather concerned about having good food that his family will enjoy. so we've upgraded to a duet of yumminess. sadly, no more chocolate fountain (even after i found a really great deal and price at amor chocolate fountains. their packages are a really good deal. the elegant package (3rd highest) is $750 for 4 hours with 4+ dipping items! but we couldn't bring in our own vendor as the location is actually run by a catering company. they wanted to charge us $3000 for a choco fountain. are they nuts? so no choco fountain for us. BUT we got a pretty cool surprise in place of it i think. they have these cute little chocolate covered strawberries and they're decorated like little tuxedos and dresses! how cute is that?! AND to top it off, they're injected with liqueur! yummm, looking forward to that!