Weddingbee Blog

Recently I’ve been overwhelmed by an outpouring of love and kindness from different people: family, friends, and even strangers! In the midst of a lot of stress and anxiety, these little bits of encouragement and kindness have meant the world to me and have been an overwhelming reminder that God is soooo good to me.

My littlest bridesmaid is still in HS, and lives far away in Colorado, so she and her mom picked me up a little gift to encourage me - a Starbucks gift card, a cute VS tank, and a note telling me to “take a deep breath” and relax from all of the stress of school and wedding planning… it was the sweetest and most unexpected gift, and so perfectly timed.

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Over the summer I got an unexpected wedding invite from an old college friend; being the lover of weddings that I am, I coerced Mr. Ramen to attend YET ANOTHER wedding of someone he didn’t know.

My friend’s then-fiancee, now wife, is Indian; probably 95% of the weddings I’ve been to have been Chinese/Asian weddings, and I’ve never had the privilege of going to an Indian wedding… I was seriously crossing my fingers hoping they would have an all-out Indian wedding, since every single one looks like an amazing party. Anyways, their wedding was crazy! Their entire wedding party was dressed in traditional Indian wedding clothing that the bride’s mother and family purchased in India. The bride entered to an Indian song instead of the traditional Canon in D/classical music, and the dinner banquet was Indian food! Seriously, Mr. Ramen and I were totally in food heaven.

The ceremony was outdoors - and it was a sweltering 90+*; thankfully they provided some super cute paper parasols to keep us cool! I was a sweat machine, regardless.

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Remember that little Manzanita forest I have going on back home? Yes… the nekkid branches, that’s right. I promised to tell you how we decided to decorate the branches, right? Well…

We’re approximately 50% decided on what to do with them.

And that 50% would be to make a little army of hanging votives. If you remember, I was a bit disgruntled at the beginning since we couldn’t use real candles at the Art Museum. So, these votives are really more like hanging vases. The plan is to put about 3 on each tree, and a teeny bit of water (maybe), and 1 white dendrobium orchid blossom inside. I have high hopes for these! I *COULD* use some LED votives, but… for now, we’ll just use orchids.
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Our invites are finished being pressed!!!

Yes, I am proficient with MS Paint. And this is just 1/2 of one of the stacks I received… sigh. LOVE THEM!

I just got our envelopes over the weekend so I could start addressing them (by hand… more on that little bit of insanity/epic fail another day…), and a tiny little part of our invitation suite - the rest will be here early this week!
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Goccoed Napkins. Beautiful, creative, affordable, cohesive, fun, quirky, a bit sexy? Yes. I’ve been drooling over the idea of making these cute little suckers for quite some time… so… I did it!

I would definitely recommend doing a little Google image research for inspiration - there are a TON of really sweet designs and fun ideas out there! Here’s a few that I came across…

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I love the chandelier graphic - and yes, you CAN get that super sharp resolution with the Gocco - as long as you remember to use the blue filter!

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I am a pessimist. In every scenario, I almost always imagine the worst thing that could possibly happen. For instance, I’ve lately been obsessed with the fear of tripping over my dress and FALLING DOWN the stairs during the recessional. I visualize it happening probably once a day… (I think I once learned that you start to go crazy when you are sleep deprived…).

I too often tend to focus on the negative aspects of life and can probably convince almost anyone that something is terrible. I AM SO NOT PROUD OF THIS! One of the things that I know I need to work on is my pessimistic attitude and outlook in life. Mr. Ramen is constantly gracious in gently pointing out to me all the good things that God has blessed me with in life… which I agree with.

So I’m starting this new thing, where I’m going to start counting my blessings every morning and night. Care to join me? I know, it sounds uber cheesy. Maybe it is. Meh.

I know as brides we tend to want to rant and rave about all the wedding plans that are falling apart, stress over the what-ifs, and obsess over every little detail that could possibly go wrong… And I’m not saying to not care about those things at all, but to remember that there are much more important things in life than if your envelope liner colors aren’t a perfect match to the cocktail napkins, or if your caterer didn’t email you back ASAP to confirm that they would julienne the carrots instead of slice them, or if your FMIL wants to wear a deep ivory colored gown (although these can definitely be stressful situations!). And the world isn’t going to end if your dream wedding shoes in your size are out of stock—although I know that exact feeling of devastation, when it feels like the sun might not rise in the morning.
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It all started with some lovely inspiration… see that wooden platform? I had to have it. Had to. It had that sexy, modern, but a little rustic vibe to it - and I had to find a way to DIM (do it myself). So, I enlisted the help of Mr. Ramen to tackle this project. Mr. Ramen and I have experience with the whole sanding/staining/finishing woodwork process when we refinished (from blonde wood to ebony)/re-upholstered my family’s old dining room table so I could take it with me to school…
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Okay, so maybe not for everyone, but it’s pretty traditional in most Asian weddings (at least in my family) to have corsages and boutonnieres for all important extended family members - aunts, uncles, cousins even. And it’s always a nice gesture to have flowers for your wedding helpers: musicians, guestbook and gift attendants, ushers, your DOC, etc.

So, Mr. Ramen’s mom is one of 5 kids, and his dad is one of 4. My mom is one of 6, and my dad has (thank God!) only 1 brother. Since the majority of them are married, this means for aunts and uncles alone, we’d need to provide about 25 or so corsages and boutonnieres. And then another 15, at least, for our helpers. At $8 a pop for a measly single rose, our budget definitely couldn’t handle that! So, how can we fix this dilemma?

Miss Ramen: “Oh, I can TOTALLY make all of the boutonnieres and corsages. How hard could it be?”
And before you start to laugh in my face at my DIY naivety, it’s actually… not that hard!

So I started by attempting to make them out of fake florals since they could be made well in advance, and ended up with these (thankyouverymuch Michaels and Jo-Ann’s floral clearance sales!):

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I looooove getting snail mail (a reason why I was kind of insistent on mailed RSVPs vs. online ones). I recently received this lovely hand addressed invite…

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*Warning! Some serious flower love contained in this post*

I’ve just always wanted an all white bouquet. Alllll white.

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If only we had like 300 less guests (heck, I’d attempt this if we had 150 guests!), and if only I wasn’t in school, I would be ALLLLLLL OVER this project… maybe I can somehow incorporate this into something??? Somehow?? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
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Back in the day, when I started reading Weddingbee on a regular basis, I would read about all of these wedding photographers - Scott Robert, Jessica Claire, Jose Villa, Jen Skog, etc… and I started to check out their blogs on a regular basis. One of these amazing photographers was Lunaphoto, whose work I quite quickly fell in love with. I then tried to persuade myself to not love them, since I knew that they HAD to be totally outside of any photography budget I could fathom.
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I had a minor meltdown when my Google countdown hit the 100 day mark, and now I’m realizing that we’re at about the 80 day mark. And I have um, let’s see… EVERYTHING left to do. It’s been too easy for the past couple of weeks or so to just relax (aka read Weddingbee, check email, refresh Weddingbee, check Facebook, repeat), focus on school (ehh, kinda?), and try to tell myself that I have puh-lenty of time left to get my crafting on. But, I actually don’t…

On one hand, I’m super excited to be married to my best friend and can’t wait to get to the wedding day, but on the other, much much larger, Shaq-sized hand, I’m completely TERRIFIED that my worst nightmares are coming true and we’re not going to get all of the wedding crafting done in time - not to mention, my wedding workouts. Ugh. The fact that school is starting to pile up is not helping at all.

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Apparently everywhere. Is it something in the water? Global warming?

Mr. Ramen and I have entered the twilight zone in life when all of our friends and families are getting married/engaged. Last year, I attended a whopping 8 weddings. This year, we’ve collectively been invited to 7 weddings, not including ours… WHEW! (4 were in the month of August alone!)

In my extended family, one of my cousins has gotten married each year since ’06! (Ours will be the 2nd wedding in ‘09). On top of that, sister/MOH Ramen got engaged 4 months after me and will be getting married in the summer of 2010! (So that’s 2 weddings in my immediate family - in 6 months! yes, my parents are excited, haha.)

I had the extreme privilege of swapping places with my sister (remember, she hid and took pictures of my engagement from afar) and helping surprise her at her engagement back in April - and planned a surprise dessert celebration engagement party later that evening for her and her fiance.
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Aside from being a general really-awesome-totally-adorable-just-want-to-kiss-him-super-sweet kind of guy (at least in my eyes), Mr. Ramen has been my design slave (I think I’ve mentioned this before… but it’s definitely worth mentioning again). Don’t worry - I treat him well; he is paid in neck/back rubs, homemade dinners, extra cuddling with me while watching heroes (I’m totally missing this new season, boooo), or SYTYCD (again… missing this season).

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