Weddingbee Blog

I’m a PK (pastor’s kid). I grew up attending bajillions of weddings that my dad has officiated, and I’ve always imagined that I too would get married in a church. How quaintly traditional of me, I know. I never imagined I would get married outside, or on the beach, or on a mountainside, or in a courthouse, or anywhere else. Just a church.

And not just ANY church. I really wanted to get married in a Spanish mission-style church; a church with old-school pews, not theater-style seats, and a semi-long dramatic aisle. Although Phoenix is a very diverse city with a lot of churches, it was still hard to just find one church that could accommodate our then 250-guest wedding (now 350, yikes!), was available on our date, would let us have our own officiant, and wouldn’t charge us an arm and a leg (our little church doesn’t have its own building). Some churches were just ruled out based on their interior decor (think early ’90s purple and teal), size capacity, location (I think our guests would not be happy to drive 30 min+ from the ceremony to the reception), or rental fees (up to $2K and more!).

Notes to my fellow Phoenix brides: A LOT of churches don’t rent out their facilities to non-members! And if they do, you often times have to use their clergy/have them participate in the ceremony. Also, expect church rentals to be in the $800-2,000 range. Seriously. Probably 95% of the churches we looked at were $1500 to rent.
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* Do you know what movie that line is from? A million e-props if you do!

Mr. Ramen and me enjoying the to-die-for chicken and rice from the Halal Cart on 53rd and 6th in NYC ~ taken by Mrs. Caramel, one of my college friends! This goes to show that good food doesn’t have to cost a lot of $$!

I love food. I even told Mr. Ramen that the perfect proposal would be for him to take me to Napa to eat at French Laundry, and then for him to just hand me a ring. Ha ha. His proposal was much better than that, but only by a little bit… quite obviously, food means a lot to me, and to Mr. Ramen as well (I’ve converted him into a food snob, mwahaha!). The food is what Mr. Ramen and I usually remember most when we go to weddings.

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I could totally make this into a long drawn-out story, but I’ll just cut to the chase.

My family moved to Phoenix in ‘04. I had briefly been introduced to Mr. Ramen, whose family goes to the church that my dad currently pastors in Phoenix a few months prior to then. We were NOT into each other when we first met, but we somehow became friends anyway. After I graduated from UCI (goooo anteaters!), I moved to Phoenix since I had no plans for the future. Mr. Ramen and I started hanging out on a regular basis, and were both involved with a Christian campus ministry at ASU. I was never really interested in him, since he IS younger than me, but we just clicked! And at some point, we both started getting mixed signals from each other. We both confided in a mutual friend (one of Mr. Ramen’s groomsmen, D) who decided to try to mastermind us together.

—> Funny tangent: Mr. Ramen and I had played a practical joke on this same friend, D, about a year before we started dating. We were both on AIM, chatting with him at the same time (I think we were actually sitting next to each other, giggling) and telling him that we liked each other and didn’t know what to do. He was freaking out completely! Funny how the tables turned, and this scenario actually became reality! <—
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Actually, in my case, I’ll be wearing ivory (which highlights my lovely golden-yellow skin tone, as one bridal assistant informed me). I received permission from Mr. Ramen to post pictures of my dress under one condition: that I am not in them. So, here is my dress! I love her so so so so verrrrrrrrry much. At this point, the alterations I need are very minimal - I ordered the length custom-cut, since it was cheaper to do that then pay for alterations, since my dress is LACE. This is another reason why I chose ivory - I think that lace just looks richer and antiqued in that more yellow shade. And let’s be honest: I looked really bad in the white dresses.

Here’s a close-up of the lace detail.
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I have this problem. My brain runs a mile a minute (I think most female minds are like this), and my tongue can’t keep up, and I end up smushing words together. This can be either really funny or terribly embarrassing, or sometimes a bit of both. For example, I was once trying to say “pop my pimple” (I’m not sure why I was saying that to anyone…) but it came out as “pimp my Popple“. Am I the only one who had a Popple? I loved that little thing!

So, what does that have to do with blogging? Um, nothing, aside from my feeble attempt to explain WHY I haven’t written about very basic wedding minutiae like:

• Our wedding color
• What flowers/florist we’re using
• Our wedding cake choice
• HOW I met Mr. Ramen!
• Have I mentioned that sister Ramen/MOH is actually getting married about 6 months after I do??? That’s another story for another day.

So, I’m going to be kind and rewind and try to update you on these small yet significant details, starting with COLORS! Being in optometry school, I could totally be a nerd and explain colors to you, BUT I will spare you the boredom and effort of scrolling through a boring post to get to some PICTURES (my sister said she only looks at posts with pictures. SIGH).

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One of my good friends from AZ recently got married, and she used to tell me about all of the wedding nightmares she had. I laughed and thought it was cute and funny… until it happened to me. My nightmares aren’t horrific and don’t happen often, but they’ve involved such things as:

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One of the biggest dilemmas Mr. Ramen and I have faced with our manzanita branches (and let’s just say there have been NUMEROUS dilemmas, including cleaning the branches, scraping all of the bark from the branches, trimming the branches… etc.) was how to get them to stand up.

While it is easier to transport the branches if they are free and not attached to anything, you run the risk of the centerpiece tipping and falling on your Aunt and her dinner at the reception, especially when you want to hang things from the branches, which we of the simple taste (HAH!), of course, want to do.

We ran a few dry runs of sticking the branches in a vase, and placing a ton of rocks around the branch to secure it. This was not exactly a success. So, I began to scout for inexpensive ways we could secure the branches. We had met up with the owner of Blooms and Branches* in Rancho Cucamonga (he’s a really sweet man) back in July, and he had suggested either plaster, or this yellow foam sealer/insulation in a can. Since we wanted to put the branches in glass vases, we decided to go with the plaster, and used these directions that you can find on Nettleton Hollow’s blog.
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She’s here! She’s beautiful, more beautiful than I remembered…

And yeah, I’m talking about my wedding dress. SIGHHHHHHHHHHH. I would LOVE to post a picture of my dress, but a) Mr. Ramen is quite dedicated to reading my wedding blog now, because he says, “it’s my wedding too!” And b) I actually want it to be a surprise for him, to see me in THE dress. So, I’m going to just tell you about my experiences dress shopping, and show you some of the ones that didn’t make the cut…

Since we got engaged in January, I’ve spent the majority of my time in SoCal, slaving away at school, and so I have visited just about EVERY SINGLE DRESS STORE in Orange County, not to mention a few in San Francisco, San Diego, and Phoenix. Seriously. I am not kidding. I’m a tad bit of a perfectionist, and had to see every single dress that I could before I made a decision.
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Yes, I used to watch Homestar Runner in college with my friends. There’s no shame in that. But this post is not about marshmallows… it’s about pomanders! Yes, giant balls of fluffity tissue paper flowers! And yes, I ignorantly volunteered myself for this project. (Warning! Picture-heavy post!)

The infamous tissue paper pomanders from Amanda of Vintage Glam! BTW, she’s AWESOME, and totally gave me some tips on her process and ordering tissue paper…

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Lately I’ve been finding myself SO caught up with wedding stuff, work (I work for a department office at my school), and school, that I never get around to working out.

Now, I’m not the kind of girl that will starve herself. For anything. Especially not a dress. My dress already fits me, but I’m also not the most naturally slim chick, either. I’ve always been athletic, and need to regularly exercise to stay toned (and sane).

So, instead of depriving myself of food, I’ve made a few lifestyle changes…
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Okay, so they’re not really body shots, but they are WAAAAAY sexier than my body. Here is my sexay ring.

One of the engagement pictures my dear friend Becca shot for us (more on that later!).

These pictures aren’t so clear, BUUUUT…. they’re just soooo cute!
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We haven’t sent out our invitations yet, but I’ve already received a few “nos” from friends after sending out our STDs. It’s this mixed bag of emotions. On one hand, we do need some people to say “no”, so we don’t go over our max capacity, so that’s good; on the other hand, we DO like these people, so we WANT them to come (I mean, after all, that’s why we invited them, right?). Of course, there are those “obligation” invites that you WISH would tell you they can’t come, but of course, those people sometimes come anyway (come on, I know you all have those people on your guest lists, whether they be parents’ friends, coworkers, or people you haven’t seen in a very long time).
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There are ups and downs to having a fiance who by trade is a designer. It’s awesome because there are SO many crazy benefits (have I ever mentioned that Mr. Ramen works for Xyron???). From cool materials, to a personal design-slave who can carry out my every wish in Illustrator and other design programs, to access to sweet tools like a laser cutter (which may be put into action)…. etc.

One of the downsides is that the man seriously has an opinion on evvvverything. This can be good, but sometimes he really gets stuck on one thing that he likes, and I just can’t fight him. Well, I usually end up caving in to him. But he has a good eye, and he’s a good sounding board for my crazy ideas. So, this works perfectly.

Anyways, from the beginning, I knew that I wanted some variance in our centerpieces. When you have ~35 tables to decorate, you get to expand your creativity. Back when we were thinking of working with a florist, we decided that our 18 “low” centerpieces would be simple.

Enter, the floating bowl.
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I think one of the most frustrating things about planning this wedding is feeling a little bit alone. I mean, I’m not so self-centered that I expect everyone else’s life to revolve around me, or our wedding. But sometimes, you just want some support, you know? I’m not even talking about some physical help, but to know that people actually care about what’s going on with my LIFE. Not just the wedding. Because my life is so much more than just one day. While support from the wedding blogging community (because I know we all go through this) is nice, it’s just not what I’m left wanting.

Sure, the wedding is important to me. I’m excited for it! It’s a big day! But… what happens when it’s over? Will anyone have anything to say to me? Will I have anything left to say to anyone else?

I think the thing that all brides battle is becoming so obsessed with planning the wedding that we forget that life doesn’t just end when we get the ring. I don’t want to be at a loss with all the “free time” I’ll have after the wedding (although I’m sure school will make sure I don’t have too many of those moments). I don’t want to dwell on the “what ifs” and “wish I hads” of wedding regret. I want to be able to smoothly move on into married life, and I don’t want my friends to say, “I’m so glad you’re back!”
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Knowing that real floral centerpieces were out of the question (budget-wise, as well as style-wise), I became EXTREMELY interested in branches…

I was inspired by this curly willow setup, and wanted to incorporate my beloved paper lanterns. So, my genius idea was to have a tall cylinder vase of curly willow with 3 white paper lanterns, and to paint the table number on to one of the lanterns. Genius, right? Right!
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