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Oahu is a small island. It only takes a few hours to drive the entire circumference, but you wouldn’t know it by the sheer amount of activity and people in Waikiki. It is a bustling city with an immense amount of restaurants, sights, and things to do. We took our trip in October, which was off-season for travel. Our plane tickets were less than $300 a piece, after taxes and the weather was still great. It rained a bit off and on, but the weather was warm and sunny for the duration of our trip.
The best part of Oahu was the food. There were so many fabulous places to eat on Oahu, and many of them are reasonably priced. We ate and ate, and then ate some more. I probably gained five pounds on my honeymoon. Chalk it up as more to loooove. 
Day #5: On our first day, we rented a convertible, the perfect Hawaii cruising car. Unfortunately, just as we started driving with the top down to our hotel, it started raining! I know drivers were probably looking over at us and thinking, “Those tourists.”
Aloha! 
This is my very belated honeymoon post! It has been almost two months since our trip to the Hawaiian Islands, but I still wish we were back there!
Mr. Eggplant and I had a WONDERFUL time. We visited the islands of Kauai and Oahu, which were as different as night and day.
Kauai: Beautiful, quiet, relaxing, quiet, peaceful, and did I mention quiet?
Oahu: Upbeat, bustling, and tons of shopping everywhere. It’s like a mini Hong Kong, but with lots of Japanese tourists who love to shop, I tell ya. I’ve been to Oahu before, but it has definitely expanded in the last five years.
As we were traveling to the airport, I realized that I forgot my wedding rings! 
But it turned out to be the best non-decision ever, because I didn’t have to worry about them getting lost or dirty from all the sandy beaches we visited. I picked up a place holder ring at Wal-Mart once we arrived on Kauai.
I (finally) ordered our thank you cards! Mr. Eggplant and I were married on October 20th, so it looks like I just may make the two-month etiquette deadline for sending out thank you cards (that is, if I can get myself to sit down and pound them out this week 
).
So, obviously I’m married already and this entry is waaaay, super belated, but I wanted to document my LA bachelorette weekend!
Originally when my girlfriends asked me where I wanted to go for my bachelorette, I had something calm and relaxing in mind, like a weekend spa retreat in Calistoga or Napa. But I soon remembered that marriage = joint bank accounts and I’d better do some major shopping while I still could! I’ve quit shopping almost cold turkey since the wedding, but it was nice to get some last minute splurges in. 
My friends organized a shopping extravaganza/ yogurt eating weekend in where else, but the City of Angels!
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On my wedding day, I did not have “something old” to wear with my “something new” or “something blue.” The Eggplant family just doesn’t have any of those neat little traditions that other families have, like old lockets or vintage necklaces that are passed down from generation to generation.
Well, on the morning of my wedding, my very thoughtful cousin gave me a sweet gift that will hopefully start a new tradition within our family.
Many people instructed me to make half as many wedding programs as guests. They were absolutely right. I had 180 guests at the wedding and I crafted 110 wedding programs, yet still ended up with a handful left over. I remember right before I walked down the aisle, I passed by my basket of wedding programs and saw that it was still half full, which made me very sad. All that hard work and no takers. 
Well, people must have taken them home as keepsakes after the ceremony was over because when our coordinator gave us back our supplies, there were only five programs left!
The process of making our programs was so fun! I edited the graphics in Adobe Illustrator and used InDesign for the page layout, which made everything a breeze. Our family and bridal party all got involved and it was truly a labor of love.
Here, our friends are lovingly helping us assemble everything during the week before the wedding. That’s my dad’s guitar on the right. He loves playing and collecting guitars. I think he has six in his collection so far.
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
While I’m waiting for the DVD of pro pics from our Saturday wedding, I thought I’d share the pics from our crazy, pink Chinese banquet. The person who documented the day was our videographer from our Saturday wedding. In the artistic sense, his pictures leave much to be desired. I was frustrated by the end of the night because we were asked to take about a billion cheesy, posed pictures. But now that we have the photographs back, I’m happy that we at least had someone there to document the event. He even made his way around the room to get table pictures of the guests during dinner.
The banquet was very different than our wedding on Saturday. It was loud, crowded, and pretty crazy. I mentioned before that I’m an introvert. Well, all the commotion was a little overwhelming to me. I found myself hiding in a the “bridal suite” (aka, a dark closet upstairs) for the first hour of the event. Guests ate dinner and left as quickly as possible. In fact, many of the attendees didn’t pay attention to the speeches or slideshow, grabbed more than one wedding favor out of the baskets, and left before dinner ended. It just felt like some just didn’t care much to be there. I predict it’s probably because most of the guests were our parents’ or grandparents’ friends and they have never met Mr. Eggplant or me before. It’s hard to care about a wedding when you don’t know the bride or groom.
Anyway, onto the pictures!
Reduce, reuse, recycle! We brought over a few flower balls from our Saturday wedding to reuse them in our decor. 
We also reused our signage and candy buffet.
Shame on me! It has been a month since my wedding and this is what I’ve done with my dress:
The poor thing is laying on my bedroom floor, uncleaned and neglected.
I can’t believe it has already been a month of marriage!
Mr. Eggplant surprised me yesterday and took me out to celebrate our first month of newlywed bliss. We had a delicious meal at Clementine, a wonderful little French restaurant in the Richmond district of San Francisco. The food and service was excellent. We’ll definitely be visiting again soon.
Mr. Eggplant snapped a picture of me while we were waiting for our food.
Are there any fellow stamp addict readers out there? 
I thought I’d share a little stamping tool that made my life tons easier while I was hand stamping the cover of my wedding programs. It’s called a Stamp-a-ma-jig and you can get it for about $10 on Amazon. Basically, it’s a rubber stamp positioner that will help you to perfectly align your stamp before you commit your ink to paper.
For my programs, I ordered a custom stamp from Impress Rubber Stamps to decorate the cover.
Weddings have many moving pieces. With all the contracts, details, and communication, there is a high chance for something to go wrong. Mr. Eggplant and I were incredibly selective with our vendors, choosing only the ones we knew would provide superior customer service. I made a point to confirm our vendor contracts in the week before the wedding.
Even so, some things simply fell through the cracks. Perhaps my error was confirming everything via email, where communication mistakes easily occur. During the wedding, I definitely let go of all the mishaps. But once we returned from our honeymoon, we began addressing the open issues.
With one vendor, we did not receive many of the items that were paid for in our contract. The company was (and still is) extremely reputable, receiving only the highest praise from people that have worked with them in the past. I enjoyed communicating with them during the planning process because they were always responsive and professional. I believe that our case was a one-off situation and might even recommend this vendor to others, pending resolution of our open issues. Reputable service-oriented companies will usually be more than willing to address any problems that a customer has with their products or services. Hopefully this will be the case with us!
I just thought I’d share one of my last minute wedding projects that I crammed in during the week of the wedding (two days before our nuptials, yikes!).
With the help of Mr. Eggplant and few of my bridesmaids, we created this quick, cheap, and easy wedding favor 
:
Truth be told, I don’t like attention. On the morning of my wedding, I was trying to convince my bridesmaids to link arms with me so that we could walk down the aisle together… and I was dead serious! Why? I am a total and a complete klutz. I mentioned that I tripped and fell on my behind during the wedding rehearsal, right? Well, you can just imagine how terrified I was about my “first dance” with Mr. Eggplant. I had nightmares of wobbling around in four-inch heels, tripping over my dress, and landing flat on my face.
I’m not ashamed to admit that my husband is much funnier and wittier than me. I really should ask him to apply for a weddingbee blogger position, shouldn’t I? 
Well, here are the rest of our teaser wedding pictures through Mr. Eggplant’s eyes (check Apertura’s blog to view the images in full size):
More Wedded Bliss (As Told by Mr. Eggplant)
Many of you may have already checked out the remaining pictures on our photographer’s blog, but I thought I’d finish off the set and let you know what really went on. People rarely hear words from the groom, but that’s usually because we’re still recovering from the honeymoon food comatose and the “Newlywed Nineteen”– the amount of weight you gain immediately after you get married. Word to the future grooms: Make sure you’re in your best shape before the wedding because that’s the thinnest you’ll ever be. And one would think I’d be lighter with all that cash leaving my pocket.
“Pure Joy” or “Team of Endearment”
I like that song with the lyrics that go, “the look of love is in your eyes…” because that’s what this picture reminds me of. The look on Mrs Eggplant’s face is so endearing that I smile every time I look at her. She seems so happy to marry me. Wow, a man can get used to this. One more oldies reference for the road… how great it is to be loved by you.
Of all the adjectives that our guests used to describe our wedding, “personal” was the one we heard most. With 180 people, our reception food expense was huge. Mr. Eggplant and I were forced to find creative ways to maximize our remaining budget to create a memorable event. Mr. Eggplant is a huge fan of everything media, so when we began planning, he had his mind set on having a full-on multimedia event. As it turned out, utilizing media gave us the most bang for our buck in the personalization department. Everyone really enjoyed the little things we did to make our wedding unique. I will be writing a short series to share how the Eggplants used media to personalize our wedding.
People often say that setting the tone for an event is very important. How does someone do this? Well, Mr. Eggplant came up with the neat idea of creating a music video that would be played for our guests prior to our bride-and-groom entrance. The video took a quick few hours to shoot and the final product was completed by one of our friends who is currently studying film editing.
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Mrs. Eggplant, San Francisco Age and Occupation: 28, Human Resources Fiance's Age and Occupation: 24, Associate Marketing Manager Engagement Date: January 19, 2007 Wedding Date: October 20, 2007 Blogging Since: May 31, 2007 Venue: Ceremony at a cement and stained glass cathedral and reception at a boutique hotel ballroom About Me: I'm a shopping junkie who lives to discover great deals and a craft addict that loves to scrapbook and knit. My profile picture was taken on the day I got engaged which is why my smile is so huge!
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