Weddingbee

I tried on my Vera dress again. Oh my gosh, it’s so beautiful! I really do adore this dress! When I put it on again, I couldn’t understand why I was having doubts about it.

Then it hit me. It didn’t satisfy all of my wedding dress fantasies. NO dress could satisfy all of them. I could easily imagine myself wearing a romantic poofy ballgown or a sexy mermaid dress or an ethereal chiffon creation or a vintage lace classic or a beachy backless number. The problem isn’t the dress. The problem is that I have multiple-dress-personality-disorder!

Well, I really think the only logical cure for my disorder is to… have multiple dresses!

Here’s what I’m thinking. (Or should it be “deliriously daydreaming”?)
* Welcome party- Knee-length white, lace dress
* Ceremony- Strapless, Aline Vera with semi-chapel train
* Reception- Red and gold chi-pao I got in Shanghai
* Beach photoshoot- Backless Vneck with sweep train

Welcome Party Dress

We’re throwing a welcome party for everyone instead of having a small rehearsal dinner. It’d be fun to wear one of these!

J. Crew French lace dress- on sale for $262 (was $495)

Diane vonFurstenberg lace dress - $396 (at Neiman Marcus)

Beach Dress

Nicole Miller empire gown- $330

Mori Lee Voyage line- up to $265

or

Destinations line by Mon Cheri- $250 to $500

Destination wedding dresses by Dessy- $275 to $300

So am I insane or what?!!

Part 1
Part 2

Up until this point, everything was going perfectly and seemed like a dream. But it was now time to MEET THE PARENTS (dun, dun, dun - cue dramatic music).

My parents are both traditional and liberal (well for Korean parents). My dad speaks accentless English, has a masters degree in English, and is an English teacher so he’s not your typical Korean dad. My mom’s English is not as good as my dad’s, but she can understand and speak English fluently. Still… in the end I guess they are your typical, traditional, Korean parents.

Mr. Bee is half Japanese, half White and sadly I knew from the beginning that race would be an issue with my family. I always thought that I would marry someone that was Korean, my family always assumed that I would marry someone Korean, no one in my family has ever married or even dated someone that wasn’t Korean. But I would never wish that Mr. Bee were Korean or anything else because that would make him a different person than the one I fell in love with.

I knew this dinner was not going to be easy and needless to say I was extremely nervous. My family was going to be hard on him. Mr. Bee on the other hand was as calm as a cucumber - he was prepared for my family to hate him for 10 years (yes he actually said that), and he would just show my family how much he loved me. What more could he do after all. My parents, my brother, Mr. Bee and I all met at a galbi restaurant in koreatown. My mom had booked a private room so that we could all talk.

Here’s a gander at some of the questions he had to answer:

1) Can you tell me the difference between: emotion, feeling, sentiment and sensation?

2) You seem like a very intelligent person. Do you think my daughter will be obedient enough for you?

3) Have you ever considered the economic and political direction of China over the next 30 years?

4) How would you define the word philosophy?

5) Who do you think needs the other person more: Hillary or Bill Clinton and why?

6) What were the main factors that contributed to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire?

7) Karl Marx wrote a good book on the division of labor that really influenced me. What do you think of Das Kapital?

Korean people believe in “jung.” They say that you’re only in love for the first three years of a relationship and then it’s all “jung.” What do you think about this?

9) Is there any chance your business could move to Los Angeles? (His company was based in New York)

(yes these questions are verbatim)

Mr. Bee also brought my father The Origins of Virtue as a gift because he had enjoyed The Moral Animal by Robert Wright and the two books are similar in subject matter. To which my father responded, “I wonder if this is a gift. Perhaps it is more like a bribe.”

Dinner lasted three hours. Mr. Bee was calm the entire time, and answered all the crazy questions perfectly. Despite their hardest efforts to rattle him, I could tell that my family was impressed. They liked him and they could tell that he really loved me. I doubt they would have been nearly as hard on Mr. Bee had he been Korean. It was a pretty unfair situation for him and I felt horrible. I just sat there the entire time quietly sipping my soju.

The odd thing is that my parents never brought up the fact that everything was moving so quickly. We’d hardly known each other 2 months and we were already talking marriage. When Mr. Bee brought it up, my dad deflected the topic of marriage altogether, and said that he would first need to meet Mr. Bee’s parents. An engagement is not something that takes place until the families have met in Korean culture. It’s not only a marraige of the two people involved after all, it’s a marriage of the two families. The only problem was, Mr. Bee’s parents lived on a remote island in the Philippines….

Part 1

So we met in November. Mr. Bee flew to southern California to visit me the first week of December and we drove down to La Jolla/San Diego for 4 days. In retrospect it seems a little crazy that we went away for the weekend the second time we ever saw each other. But we’d been talking on the phone every day including a record breaking 10 hour conversation and it felt like we’d known each other forever. The weekend was relaxing and wonderful. Spending 4 days, 24 hours a day together without fighting is a good sign - we really got along.

I flew to New York to spend Christmas and New Year’s with Mr. Bee. We did all the couple-y things like go to Rockefeller Center, ice skate at Wollman Rink, romantic dinners and drinks out on the town. On Christmas day we had tons of presents for each other. The first Christmas together as a couple is always so exciting. This was my favorite present - I’m a scrapbooker so Mr. Bee bought me a scrapbook and filled it with scrapbooking supplies…

A schedule of scrapbooking classes..

A copy of this astrological chart Mr. Bee’s friend did for him before we met…

There’s a good story behind this chart. Before we met, Mr. Bee emailed his good friend:

“I am meeting a Xangan for drinks tomorrow night. It was meant to be casual, but as I called her to coordinate it occured to me that it felt very “date-y”. Hmm… should be interesting.”

Her response:

“I put up a chart for your meeting tonight (it will be significant if you were to wind up together… er don’t worry about this, it all goes on behind the scenes when you have an astrologer friend)”“This is the chart of a (good) accident, waiting to happen and it’s all about Venus. Love and money… I am very sorry, but I have no bad news for chart, okay? There is a major window of opportunity here. Use it!”

Basically, it means that there were a lot of factors working in our favor from the day we were meeting, to the time, our birth sign compatibility, and something about a “harmonic convergence.” In other words, our “date” was gonna go unbelievably well. And boy was she ever right. She’s the same friend Mr. Bee called the day after we met and told her that he just met the woman he was going to marry.

Finally on the last page of the scrapbook, there were these stickers of a wedding dress.

The next time we would see each other in January, Mr. Bee would fly out to LA to ask my parents for their permission to marry me…

Can you have a wedding without a wedding party? No bridesmaids… no bestman… no matching dresses or rented tuxes?

Originally, Michael and I were going to have four attendants each. It was a very easy decision for me: my sister (matron of honor), my best friend for the past 20 years (maid of honor), my closest college friend and Michael’s sister. There were other friends who I would have loved to have in the bridal party, but 4 sounded like a good group.

Michael was planning on having his sister’s husband (best man), his sister’s husband’s brother-in-law (sister’s husband’s sister’s husband… huh?), his cousin’s husband and my brother-in-law.

…. His sister was the first to decline. She would rather just enjoy the wedding - no problemo. I can have uneven numbers or ask another friend (there was a law school friend I really wanted to ask, but I thought I should ask his sister first).

…. Then my college friend got preggers. (Yeah! She’s been trying for a year) She’s due a few weeks after the wedding and probably won’t even be able to attend (lives in DC).

…. Then his brother-in-law decides he wants a divorce. That dropped Michael down to his cousin’s husband and my sister’s husband. They were fine as groomsmen (two out of four) but he’s not really that close with either… not “best man” close… so he’s been avoiding the subject and hasn’t asked them. I know it’s really bothering him, so I’ve tried not to bring up the subject, but it’s T minus 5 1/2 months and counting, so some decisions need to be made.

Last night, I finally told him that he needs to deal with it and offered two options:

OPTION 1: No “best” titles - he can ask both guys to be “groomsmen” and just not have a best man; I would make my sister and best friend “bridesmaids” instead of maid and matron of honor (it’s only 2 of them, so they don’t really care).

OR

OPTION 2: No bridal party at all. We’d just have the kids (his nephew, my niece and nephew) walk down the aisles before us. My best friend would still be my best friend, she just wouldn’t be wearing a celadon green dress to prove it. Our sisters could be the witnesses and we’d obviously include everyone close to us in our pictures.

He’s thinking about it. I’m totally fine with option 1, but I don’t know how I feel about option 2 (even though I suggested it). Any thoughts?

I had to post this up but, um, how cute is this? This screams FUN WEDDING!

I joined xanga in April of 2003 and little did I know that it was soon to become a part of my daily life. The site is very addictive if I do say so myself. In June of 2003, I posted about a serious problem I was having with my family businesses. I was stressed, overwhelmed, and just venting. Mr. Bee contacted me through an email link on my site after he read the post because he thought he might be able to help me out. I’d never had any prior contact with him, but I gave him my work phone number, he called, and we talked on the phone briefly. He gave me some advice about different things I could do and if that didn’t pan out, he said he’d call in a favor from someone he knew in local government. Luckily, the problem worked itself out soon after and I emailed him to thank him for offering his help to a complete stranger.

Months went by. We commented on each other’s sites from time to time but we didn’t really have any other interaction - not a phone call, not a text message, not an instant message. One day I blogged about coming to New York for a vacation in November (I was living in LA at the time), and through a series of comments back and forth on each other’s sites, we somehow decided to meet up while I was there. I didn’t know anything about him other than his job and his age because he didn’t really blog, but I wanted to thank him for trying to help me out. He had an unfair advantage because knew me thru my xanga where I detailed pretty much every moment of my life.

We met on a rainy night at a small wine bar in the west village. I didn’t think it was a date, but soon it sure started to feel like a date. We hit it off instantly. I don’t mean in a “gee this is going well” sorta way… I mean in a “this is the coolest person I’ve ever met in my entire life” sorta way! I’m usually very guarded, but he made me feel very comfortable and at ease… he made me laugh a lot. People were sitting inches away from us on both sides, but we didn’t even notice because it felt like we were the only people in the room.We were so into each other our waitress kept refilling our wine carafe - we didn’t even order it and we didn’t even notice she was refilling it! The night was perfect - and it wasn’t just all the wine we had consumed. After that night, we were inseparable for the rest of my vacation.

The next day, Mr. Bee’s friend called to ask how his “date” went. He replied, “Barring an act of God, I just met the woman that I’m going to marry.”

*Le sigh* I was planning on going to Kate’s Paperie last week to buy some paper for the envelopes I’m making for my save the date magnets but then the strike hit. Bastards. And I didn’t wanna walk cause it was too cold & I didn’t want to give the cab drivers 10 bucks cause I’m a cheap ass. So I’m gonna go today. Yay!

My officiant bailed. Church duties. That totally sucks because I really wanted him to do it. I used to babysit his first daughter when she was a baby and he used to tutor me and my sister in return. We just go way back and it would have been awesome. So I’m talking to back up minister #1 and he wants me and c to take some pre-marital classes. Just too prep us for marriage life. Great. That’s just peachy.

This week I’m researching bridesmaid shoes. I don’t want to pay over $50 bucks for shoes when I know they probably won’t wear them again.

So here’s what I found so far:

Majestic / 5465 / ? Luxury / 5481 / $46.95

Lisa / 5353 / $49.95 Carla / 5466 / $49.95

I’m really liking the majestic but I think I’m gonna go with the last 2. 2 of my bridesmaids love wearing heels & one of them can’t wear heels so the last 2 pairs are perfect. All by Coloriffics.

I also bought the girls a cropped cardigan to wear with their dresses just in case it is cold when we go around Philly for photos. These finally went on sale at Abercrombie. I’m thinking about getting one in off white to go with my dress as well. I thought it would be a cute idea to get one in off white so I could wear one with them.

Merry Christmas all… hope Santa brought you nice things.

We got back from a Southern Caribean cruise earlier today. So much fun! I have pictures to share, but in the meantime these are the shoes I bought for the wedding.

They’re a little “prettier” than what I was looking for (I wanted *hot*), but they’ll be perfect with the dress. I wore the shoes one night on the cruise to start breaking them in and they were so comfy!

… Jimmy Choo … “Kandy” … 85mm … Nude satin w/crystals…

I definitely want to have something like this by the guest book/favor/place card table. It just sets such a romantic ambiance. I have plenty of tree branches in my mother’s backyard!

Borrowed from: MrsVioletBlue

Sorry to be MIA… work has been all-encompassing.

I’ve been dealing with wedding issues:

• we’ve been looking for a rabbi (no luck yet!)
• planning the honeymoon (Italy - I’ll provide all the juicy details in another post)
• met with a couple of florists and I’ve decided on Antheia in Jersey City. Her bouquets are incredible.

I’ve been sending Angie (the owner) pictures of chuppahs I like. I’d love something with flowering branches (even if it’s more like an arch than a chuppah), but I’ll probably miss the Cherry Blossom season by a month so it might be too expensive.