Weddingbee

Calling all engaged photography lovers: Ray and Erwin from Apertura Photography are hosting a free engagement session contest! They photographed our wedding and engagement session and we couldn’t have been more pleased with the pictures. From their blog:
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I love the Life and Soul article in this month’s “Real Simple” magazine. Real Simple readers answered the question, “What’s the Secret to a Good Marriage?” Here are some of my favorite answers:

My husband and I have a strict rule: Never argue with your clothes on. If we are out and about to fight, we know that we have to wait until we’re home and undressed. By then we’ve usually forgotten what the trouble was about.
Amy Hadsall
Cameron, North Carolina

Marry someone you love exactly as they are, and be sure they feel the same. That way, you’ll never expect more of each other than you are each happy to give. I didn’t realize this until my second marriage. Another secret? Don’t get married until you’re sure of who you are.
Lisa Noll
Martinsburg, West Virginia

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Hey ya’ll.

I haven’t disappeared off the face of the earth, but let me tell ya, married life sure is BUSY. Two sets of family + two sets of friends + double the committments = no free time at all. Is my schedule always going to be so crazy? I’ve been treasuring every spare minute that I have.

Another strange thing happened recently: I totally forgot about our wedding. For months after the big day, I’d constantly reflect on our amazing, fun, and joy-filled wedding day. Now, I barely think about it.Yes, it was absolutely wonderful. But in the grand scheme of things, it was only a day, and that day has now faded into a busy mess of purchasing a new home, working crazy hours, and adjusting to sharing life with another person.

I wish I could get back into wedding mode because I have a stack of thank you cards to write. Also, I still need to finish approving my wedding album so that I can finally have our digital wedding pictures. I just have absolutely no urge to look at anything wedding related.

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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.”

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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.

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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 ).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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