For my honeymoon, I took with me some homemade sunblock. We also bought commercial sunblock once we got there. The commercial sunblock was my backup for when I ran out or if I should find it unusable for whatever reason. I did not test my sunblock before using it so I had no idea if it was going to be effective. At the end of the trip, I have to say, it absolutely DOES work!
Basically, I had some titanium dioxide and zinc oxide powder lying around with my soaping supplies and added lots of that stuff to my homemade lotion. It completely changed the texture of the lotion and every time I added a small spoonful of either powder to the lotion, I rubbed some of the mixture onto myself to see how bad the whitening effect was. I did not use micronized powders, so I think whitening is something I just had to deal with. I stopped added powder when I figured I don't want to whitened more than this. Then I was done and I had sunblock!
Some things to note about this sunblock. It's not waterproof or even water resistant. It readily washes off with water. That was okay with me since I spent most of my time out of the water because I don't particularly like the water. It also definitely whitened the skin wherever I applied and yes, the whitening effect was definitely noticeable. I supposed I could have used an oil and beeswax lotion to make it more water resistant, but I don't like the greasy, sort of sticky feeling of those formulations. As for the whitening effect, it is possible that I went a little overboard with the amount of powder and could have done with less. Whatever the case, I can say that I spent almost every day for at least 10 days lying on a sunny beach and never burned and tanned minimally. The one day I tanned the most was the one day I didn't use my homemade sunblock. Granted I stayed under a shady umbrella most of the time, I'm telling you I've tried many brands of sunblock and this stuff works!
Next time, I'll try it with a little less powder, or make it with a small amount of colorant to balance out the whitening effect. I'm still not sure how to make it water resistant without using beeswax and if I do use beeswax, I'm not sure how much would be needed to make it really water resistant. Hmmm... I'll have to do a little experimenting next summer. :-)
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Saying good bye to my last name
For as long as I can remember, the expectation was that the bride changes her name when she gets married. I never really questioned this and until I was getting married myself, I never gave it much thought. At first, my hubby and I just assumed I would drop my maiden name and take his. However, as I thought about it, I started to feel more conflicted. Why should I have to drop a part of me that's been a part of me and my heritage my whole life until now? Why should I have to drop something has been so integral in identifying me as part of my father's family without being able to pass this legacy to my children? In Chinese tradition, the bride never loses her name, even though technically, she is no longer part of her father's family anymore. I also started to feel a bit offended that it's assumed that I should have to give up something so integral to my identity and the guy doesn't have to give up any part of his. Is it fair? Certainly not! However, it's tradition and still a very popular one.
I remember at one point, bringing up the idea of keeping my maiden name to my hubby. He totally balked at the idea, being the traditionalist that he is about these things, and I backed down. Now, the more I think about it, the more unhappy I am with this tradition. It's totally one-sided! My giving up my name is not just disavowing my relationship to my parents' family, it is also disavowing my Chinese heritage. The new name I'd be taking on is decidedly not a Chinese name. I don't have a Chinese first name, so in essence, people who see my name will automatically assume that out of all the ethnicities I could be, I couldn't possibly be Asian. Ha! I admit, I do relish the idea of making people look twice at me and then at my name, but the feeling of indignation is still there.
Now that it's finally sinking in that my name has changed, I'm not sure I like it. I sort of regret having made the decision and wish I had at least made the decision to delay doing it so I can really ponder what it meant without having my head filled with wedding drama and stress. Despite my rather meticulous nature, I must admit I didn't give this as much thought as I should have. Honestly, during the planning process, I really didn't think it was that big a deal.
Thinking about it some more, what may be really bothering me is the assumption that I would be the one to drop my name. The tradition was never questioned and I was never given a real chance to figure out my options. My hubby knew he wanted me to take his name and there was no question in his mind, as far as I could tell, that that is what should happen. I still regret not having pressed the issue more when I brought up the idea of keeping my name. He made his objections known and pushed for it with more conviction than I had at the time. In the end, my hubby got what he wanted and I'm the one left holding this bag, but it's my own fault for not having been stronger. And in case you were wondering, hyphenation is totally not an option with my maiden name. It would sound ridiculous!
However, the name change is a done deal because we signed the marriage license and my new name is now technically in effect. I suppose I can change it back if I really want to but as indignant as I am, I'm also lazy and don't relish the thought of going through a name change process. I'm really just pissed about feeling like this was a done deal before I had a chance to really flesh this change out in my head. I'm pissed about the unfairness of it and I feel rather hussled into it. In truth, I never really thought about my maiden name as precious or valuable or anything. I took it completely for granted. Now that I've lost it, I'm feeling really sad about it. I'm starting to realize just how much my father's name means to me.
I remember at one point, bringing up the idea of keeping my maiden name to my hubby. He totally balked at the idea, being the traditionalist that he is about these things, and I backed down. Now, the more I think about it, the more unhappy I am with this tradition. It's totally one-sided! My giving up my name is not just disavowing my relationship to my parents' family, it is also disavowing my Chinese heritage. The new name I'd be taking on is decidedly not a Chinese name. I don't have a Chinese first name, so in essence, people who see my name will automatically assume that out of all the ethnicities I could be, I couldn't possibly be Asian. Ha! I admit, I do relish the idea of making people look twice at me and then at my name, but the feeling of indignation is still there.
Now that it's finally sinking in that my name has changed, I'm not sure I like it. I sort of regret having made the decision and wish I had at least made the decision to delay doing it so I can really ponder what it meant without having my head filled with wedding drama and stress. Despite my rather meticulous nature, I must admit I didn't give this as much thought as I should have. Honestly, during the planning process, I really didn't think it was that big a deal.
Thinking about it some more, what may be really bothering me is the assumption that I would be the one to drop my name. The tradition was never questioned and I was never given a real chance to figure out my options. My hubby knew he wanted me to take his name and there was no question in his mind, as far as I could tell, that that is what should happen. I still regret not having pressed the issue more when I brought up the idea of keeping my name. He made his objections known and pushed for it with more conviction than I had at the time. In the end, my hubby got what he wanted and I'm the one left holding this bag, but it's my own fault for not having been stronger. And in case you were wondering, hyphenation is totally not an option with my maiden name. It would sound ridiculous!
However, the name change is a done deal because we signed the marriage license and my new name is now technically in effect. I suppose I can change it back if I really want to but as indignant as I am, I'm also lazy and don't relish the thought of going through a name change process. I'm really just pissed about feeling like this was a done deal before I had a chance to really flesh this change out in my head. I'm pissed about the unfairness of it and I feel rather hussled into it. In truth, I never really thought about my maiden name as precious or valuable or anything. I took it completely for granted. Now that I've lost it, I'm feeling really sad about it. I'm starting to realize just how much my father's name means to me.
The honeymoon
We went to the Dominican Republic for our honeymoon and splurged to get the VIP treatment at the all-inclusive resort we stayed at. We had been there before, which is why we chose it. It was a safe choice and we totally love it there!
This was our hard-earned do-nothing vacation, so we spent our two weeks doing nothing but wake up, eat, slather on sunblock, sit on the beach, eat and drink some more. My hubby had a hard time disconnecting and never fully did that. I wanted a total disconnect from anything non-vacation, meaning I didn't want to read the news, hear about the news, check email, surf the web or check my voicemail. My hubby couldn't do all that and I did get annoyed with him when he read something in the news and tried to talk to me about it. He got the picture after I complained and he limited his conversations to news articles that were mostly fluff.
There's not much else to say about our honeymoon. We had a good time, relaxed and slept our fill every day. Our days on the beach consisted of us ordering drinks, eating hors d'oeuvres, watching the waves, reading and knitting. Every so often, we'd take a walk along the beach, play in the water and pet the "beach dog." I call him that because he hangs out on the beach on most days and is super friendly and sweet! He has soft fur and loves being petted. People also tried to feed him, but I think he mostly hangs out at the beach because it's a nice place to hang out and lots of people pet him. I'm not sure if he belongs to anybody as there never seems to be an owner around.
At the end of two weeks, we were actually quite ready to come back to NYC. Not that we didn't have a wonderful time or anything. We had a great time! It's just that we can only do nothing for so long before we start feeling a little restless. Also, the daily routine of slathering on tons of sunblock was getting on our nerves. That is one part I don't think I'll ever miss! When we landed in NY, I realized that there were definitely things I missed!
For one thing, I really missed the food! The resort's food was pretty excellent. Not only was the food delicious, there was a lot of variety. Most all-inclusives aren't as good on the food front. However, there's no beating the quality and variety of foods available in NYC! We also missed hanging out and chatting with our friends and family. Most of all, we missed our cat! I will say that the one thing I didn't miss was the daily commute. Oh well, the honeymoon is now over. Time to get back to the daily grind!
This was our hard-earned do-nothing vacation, so we spent our two weeks doing nothing but wake up, eat, slather on sunblock, sit on the beach, eat and drink some more. My hubby had a hard time disconnecting and never fully did that. I wanted a total disconnect from anything non-vacation, meaning I didn't want to read the news, hear about the news, check email, surf the web or check my voicemail. My hubby couldn't do all that and I did get annoyed with him when he read something in the news and tried to talk to me about it. He got the picture after I complained and he limited his conversations to news articles that were mostly fluff.
There's not much else to say about our honeymoon. We had a good time, relaxed and slept our fill every day. Our days on the beach consisted of us ordering drinks, eating hors d'oeuvres, watching the waves, reading and knitting. Every so often, we'd take a walk along the beach, play in the water and pet the "beach dog." I call him that because he hangs out on the beach on most days and is super friendly and sweet! He has soft fur and loves being petted. People also tried to feed him, but I think he mostly hangs out at the beach because it's a nice place to hang out and lots of people pet him. I'm not sure if he belongs to anybody as there never seems to be an owner around.
At the end of two weeks, we were actually quite ready to come back to NYC. Not that we didn't have a wonderful time or anything. We had a great time! It's just that we can only do nothing for so long before we start feeling a little restless. Also, the daily routine of slathering on tons of sunblock was getting on our nerves. That is one part I don't think I'll ever miss! When we landed in NY, I realized that there were definitely things I missed!
For one thing, I really missed the food! The resort's food was pretty excellent. Not only was the food delicious, there was a lot of variety. Most all-inclusives aren't as good on the food front. However, there's no beating the quality and variety of foods available in NYC! We also missed hanging out and chatting with our friends and family. Most of all, we missed our cat! I will say that the one thing I didn't miss was the daily commute. Oh well, the honeymoon is now over. Time to get back to the daily grind!
Side note on wedding drama
It seems that no wedding planning process is complete without at least a little drama. In my earlier post, I wrote that we were lucky that there were no other hands in the wedding planning process but our own, which made things much, much easier. What I didn't mention was the difficulty in dealing with certain family members while we were planning our wedding. Although they didn't ruin the wedding or make a scene, I do feel that our relationship with these people have been permanently altered.
At first, we thought it might be a jealousy thing. Some people just don't react well to happy news when they're miserable. Some people get downright nasty when they're jealous. During the wedding planning process, my hubby and I have had our fair share of damaging interactions with unhappy people. As much as we would like to sympathize, forgive and help them, we have come to the conclusion that in some cases, you can't help them unless they help themselves and it's best to protect ourselves in the meanwhile. In truth, there is lingering anger, frustration and lots of hurt feelings still, but now that the wedding's over, the pressure to try and get them to behave nicely is off. Despite the hurtful behavior from these people, my hubby and I strove to give them every chance to "get over it" and start acting gracious. In the end, they still behaved like petty people, more focused on their own misery than trying to at least not be rude to us on our wedding day. I feel like they were almost angry that they couldn't ruin it for anybody without embarrassing themselves in front of everyone.
In any case, I won't go into details, but the ongoing and the on again, off again drama plagued our planning process. It took up not only an emotional and mental toll, but sucked up time because with every incident, there had to be some tears, venting, analyzing and then discussion on how to move forward. So you can say that these incidents weren't minor to us. Perhaps these people always had tendencies towards being petty, jealous and mean, but certainly they had never acted to such an extreme degree until we were engaged. Much of the process was tinged with the "what do we do about these people?" question. In the end, we chose to try to be gracious towards these people. However, we also had to shield them from some other guests that they were... unfriendly with. That meant that the mean people could not be given places of honor normally accorded to people in their positions.
Despite the unpleasantries, and we did experience a little at the wedding, they were unable to ruin it for us. That's partly because there were just too many people that were having a good time and really wanted to wish us well. It's also partly because the wedding was about us, not them, and as much as they'd like to pretend it's all about them, I'm sure it was a difficult fantasy to keep up. Thank goodness for that!
At first, we thought it might be a jealousy thing. Some people just don't react well to happy news when they're miserable. Some people get downright nasty when they're jealous. During the wedding planning process, my hubby and I have had our fair share of damaging interactions with unhappy people. As much as we would like to sympathize, forgive and help them, we have come to the conclusion that in some cases, you can't help them unless they help themselves and it's best to protect ourselves in the meanwhile. In truth, there is lingering anger, frustration and lots of hurt feelings still, but now that the wedding's over, the pressure to try and get them to behave nicely is off. Despite the hurtful behavior from these people, my hubby and I strove to give them every chance to "get over it" and start acting gracious. In the end, they still behaved like petty people, more focused on their own misery than trying to at least not be rude to us on our wedding day. I feel like they were almost angry that they couldn't ruin it for anybody without embarrassing themselves in front of everyone.
In any case, I won't go into details, but the ongoing and the on again, off again drama plagued our planning process. It took up not only an emotional and mental toll, but sucked up time because with every incident, there had to be some tears, venting, analyzing and then discussion on how to move forward. So you can say that these incidents weren't minor to us. Perhaps these people always had tendencies towards being petty, jealous and mean, but certainly they had never acted to such an extreme degree until we were engaged. Much of the process was tinged with the "what do we do about these people?" question. In the end, we chose to try to be gracious towards these people. However, we also had to shield them from some other guests that they were... unfriendly with. That meant that the mean people could not be given places of honor normally accorded to people in their positions.
Despite the unpleasantries, and we did experience a little at the wedding, they were unable to ruin it for us. That's partly because there were just too many people that were having a good time and really wanted to wish us well. It's also partly because the wedding was about us, not them, and as much as they'd like to pretend it's all about them, I'm sure it was a difficult fantasy to keep up. Thank goodness for that!
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Wedding after-thoughts
I did the best I could to plan a big, expensive event. The truth is, I've never done this sort of thing before and I can't say I really knew what I was doing. However, I knew what I wanted in general and figured that I'll do what I can towards my goals and let the chips fall where they may on the wedding day. So basically, I had no concrete idea what would stand out to my guests and what touches they would find attractive or amusing.
So here is a list of things my guests have specially told me that they appreciated:
- Music from Tetris for the prelude music. As guests were getting seated for the ceremony, the DJ played a mix of Tetris music. Anybody who played Tetris growing up instantly appreciated this!
- Using Love Me Do by the Beatles for the Bride's Entrance music. People were clapping to the music as I approached and I must say, it was one of most gratifying sites I've ever seen!
- Using Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom End Credits for the recessional music. Some guests didn't get this, but others thought it was totally awesome.
- A few of my guests thought the ceremony that the Rabbi created with me and my hubby had our personalities stamped all over it. It was very important to us that both of us were represented in the ceremony and both backgrounds were given equal attention. The result was a nicely balanced ceremony.
- The MC and DJ. I can't take credit for their work, of course. I can't even claim I found them myself. A good friend of mine hired them for her wedding and recommended them to us. We hired them because we liked the MC, who was also our sales rep, and their company also handled our photography. I figured the fewer vendors we had to deal with, the better, as long as the few vendors we choose were good. They were an awesome choice! Our guests actually got up and danced and I owe it to them!
- Rocky the raccoon. Our stuffed animal raccoon was a huge hit! The significance of raccoons was explained in the ceremony, so when people saw him at the reception, they understood why he was there. What I didn't expect was for people to dance with him on the dance floor, pose with him for pictures and try to feed him glasses of champagne!
- Guest book tree. We ordered a tree poster from Etsy that came with leaf stickers. Guests could write their name on the leaves and stick them on the tree. Everyone really loved it, but it was a real b*tch getting the sticker backing off. Afterwards, hubby thought maybe it would have been better if we had pre-stuck the leaves and all guests had to do was sign it. However, sticking stickers on something was part of the fun! Oh well.
- My many dresses. I wore a total of four different dresses that night. The white wedding dress, the aubergine evening dress, the red wedding qipao and the low backed lavender dress with navy blue sash. I sewed the last dress myself. Guests seemed to really like this particular tradition in Chinese weddings and I love wearing fancy dresses!
- Cake toppers. We used bride and groom rubber duckies we bought at City Hall when we got our marriage license. People commented that they had never seen such cake toppers before and thought they were adorable. Hubby and I just thought they were cute when we got them. I originally didn't plan on having cake toppers at all, but hubby really liked them. Turns out he wasn't alone!
I do have a couple of regrets. One is that there were none of my hand-wired butterflies on the cake. I spent an entire evening hand-wiring 60 butterflies, carefully stuffing them into a big envelope and sent it to the venue's baker. My fingers were quite sore by the end of that evening. I made the effort to confirm that the baker had received the butterflies along with an example photo and general instructions. I also emailed the sales rep and banquet manager about them and they acknowledged everything should be in order. None if made any difference and there were no butterflies on my cake. The other regret, which is not nearly as big, is that I didn't get around to making centerpieces. The venue provided votives for the tables, which is great because they looked pretty, didn't block anyone's view of anything, and I didn't have to bring a big box of centerpieces for them to set up. It turned out fine and I didn't have to drive myself crazy making centerpieces, but there's a part of me that thinks it would have been a great craft project to undertake!
Other personal touches included our hand-made ketubah, which didn't make as big a splash with the guests, but seemed to impress the Rabbi and Maitre'd. It was made by me. Lol! It's actually a rather small ketubah, but I was constrained by the size of the artsy papers I had to work with. The ketubah was made in layers. I bought a black bordered cardstock frame with cardstock backing and built it up from the backing. I also bought this green paper with some stylized plantlife on it. I pasted that onto the center of the backing. I then cut out individual blades of grass out of darker green, plain paper and pasted it onto the bottom border of the stylized paper. I left the upper parts of the blades unglued so that they curled a bit and stuck out. The ketubah text was printed onto a sheet of plain vellum paper and that was the paper we signed. Once that was signed, the vellum sheet was placed, right adjusted, under the curled tips of grass. The black bordered frame, which was prepped before the wedding, had a tree cut out from brown paper pasted on the left border, and the bottom border also had blades of grass glued to it. Instead of leaves, I tore off blossoms from my leftover fake hydrangea flowers and hot-glued them to the top of the tree, which became the top border. At the signing, I placed the vellum sheet onto the backing, then took a clear plastic sheet and placed it under the blades of grass over the vellum sheet, and then placed the modified frame border on top. Everything was taped in place temporarily so that it can be displayed. Once home, I glued the vellum sheet down and then tried to glue the plastic sheet down in way to minimize the paper's exposure to air, then I glued down the frame. It was a lot of work, but I think it was worth it! Actually, I had a different design in mind when I was designing it in my head, but once I started working on it, the project sort of just resulted in what I described above. Lol! I'm planning to mount the whole thing onto sturdier backing to prevent warping in the future.
All in all, I think I was a decently crafty bride. Here is a list of my completed projects:
- 6 bouquets
- 2 corsages
- 5 bouts
- hubby's crocheted yarmulke
- 3 memorial candles (just cylinders of printed vellum paper)
- ketubah
- invitations
- 3 metal-framed fabric purses (special gifts for some special people)
- hair flower clip
- Bridal Suite sign
- Reserved seating signs
- my last dress
- table number signs and stands
- veil
- garter
The above list was a LOT of work. There was research, a couple of failed attempts for a few items, and a lot of effort. For a few items, I ended up causing more trouble for myself than I had to. For instance, the table numbers, reserved seating signs and the bridal suite sign were printed on plain white paper that was cut and then mounted onto cardstock. What would have saved me a lot of time would have been to print the signs directly onto cardstock. The invitations took way too much effort because it had so many parts, and so it had many steps just to complete one. There was no need for the invitations to be as complicated as I made them out to be.
My advice for other DIY brides is to keep things simple and don't sweat the small stuff. Do the practical stuff first and then the fluff stuff. When I say fluff stuff, that includes things that are usually present in weddings, but aren't necessary to make the wedding happen or make the wedding run smooth, like a veil or centerpieces. Make sure you have plenty of time to do your DIY projects and always have a backup plan in case the project fails. That means that if your veil came out funny and unusable, be prepared to buy one. If you find you've bitten off more than you can chew, find ways to scale back.
There are also lots of ways to save money without DIYing from scratch. Blank invitations and escort cards can be bought at stationery stores and printed out at home. Pretty table number templates can be downloaded and printed onto sturdy cardstock. Our table number stands were just cones of cardstock paper with a slit cut into the tip. The table number card was slipped into the slit and voila! The table number is standing up! Also take advantage of certain wedding websites or other event-planning websites if they offer RSVP functionality. Make sure the RSVP functionality fits your needs. The great thing about online RSVPing is that if someone forgot to RSVP, you can IM, text or email them and they can take care of it right away, rather than waiting for snail mail to come through. You'll also save on paper and postage. You should also take advantage of what the venue has to offer you. I didn't realize that I didn't need to bring a card box. They had a beautifully decorated mailbox and wheelbarrow setup for cards and gifts. The venue also provided the ceremony wine, a beautiful tea service set and tray for the tea ceremony, the cake cutting and serving utensils, champagne glasses for the toasts and votives for the tables. It's nice that we choose a venue that did the baking, catering and hosting. It was nice because they did a good job. It would have been horrible if they did a bad job. So choose your vendors wisely.
My last bit of advice for future brides is this: don't let the best be the enemy of good enough. Probably not an exact quote, but it says what I mean. Searching for "the best" causes immense amounts of stress because "better" things are always on the horizon. Remember why you're having a wedding when you feel sucked in by the wedding industrial complex. You're having a wedding because you want your friends and family to witness you getting married, and because afterwards you want to party with them to celebrate! At its heart, that's all a wedding is. If you keep this in mind, that desperation you may have been feeling trying to order the "perfect" shade of rose petals to line your aisle may start to melt away, the grief you may have been feeling when you realized the veil is not EXACTLY the way you imagined it may lift, and the frustration you may have been experiencing when things aren't going according to your plan may begin to smooth over.
Granted, I had it very easy during the planning process in some regards. I am not one of those brides that dreamed of getting married since girlhood, so I was not pursuing efforts to make my fantasy a reality. My family and friends are well aware of my record for being headstrong, stubborn and opinionated and refrained from trying to control any aspects of the wedding. My hubby's family stayed out of the planning completely as they are a very carefree, hands-off kind of family. Neither of us had a large guest list, so not much arguing there, and we had plenty of moral support whenever drama did occur.
We also did a lot of things that made the process much easier for us. We choose to limit our wedding party to just us, 2 groomsmen and 4 bridesmaids. The less people we have to organize, the easier on us. We didn't choose their outfits. We gave them guidelines like, wear a dark suit or navy blue dress and accessorize as you like. That way, no time was spent shopping and the bridal party can take care of themselves. We also limited the number of vendors we had to deal with. That also meant we had to choose our vendors carefully. I spent more time weeding out vendors that didn't meet my basic criteria before arranging to meet them. That meant we only had to meet a handful of vendors before choosing the one we liked best out of the bunch. I also spent lots of time researching reviews for these vendors. Keep in mind that many wedding websites will take down bad reviews at the vendor's request without notifying the reviewer, so make sure your research is as extensive as possible. If there is little reviewer information on a vendor, make sure you get a good amount of time with the vendor in person to get a feel of their personality, style and professionalism. Be clear about what you want and see if they can deliver evidence of being able to handle such requests. We also kept from making too many specific requests. We really wanted to just give the vendors an idea of what we'd like to achieve and then let them use their best judgment. Lastly, the thing that really made my wedding planning process smooth was keeping to a well-thought out schedule and keeping to a strict budget. Basically, staying organized and keeping the number of parts involved to a minimum. Fewer moving cogs means less things to track and less opportunities for the machine to break down. The tradeoff is that if one of your few cogs does break down, the machine is more likely to roll to a halt because it's mostly likely a pretty critical cog.
If my planning timeline had been less thought-out or less organized, I would not have had as much free time during the last month before the wedding. That is not to say I wasn't busy, but nothing took on an air of frantic desperation. I firmly believe that proper prior planning prevents piss poor performance. However, some things that go wrong are beyond your control. If that happens, roll with it and move on. Don't let anything spoil your day because nobody and nothing should be given that much power over your wedding experience!
So here is a list of things my guests have specially told me that they appreciated:
- Music from Tetris for the prelude music. As guests were getting seated for the ceremony, the DJ played a mix of Tetris music. Anybody who played Tetris growing up instantly appreciated this!
- Using Love Me Do by the Beatles for the Bride's Entrance music. People were clapping to the music as I approached and I must say, it was one of most gratifying sites I've ever seen!
- Using Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom End Credits for the recessional music. Some guests didn't get this, but others thought it was totally awesome.
- A few of my guests thought the ceremony that the Rabbi created with me and my hubby had our personalities stamped all over it. It was very important to us that both of us were represented in the ceremony and both backgrounds were given equal attention. The result was a nicely balanced ceremony.
- The MC and DJ. I can't take credit for their work, of course. I can't even claim I found them myself. A good friend of mine hired them for her wedding and recommended them to us. We hired them because we liked the MC, who was also our sales rep, and their company also handled our photography. I figured the fewer vendors we had to deal with, the better, as long as the few vendors we choose were good. They were an awesome choice! Our guests actually got up and danced and I owe it to them!
- Rocky the raccoon. Our stuffed animal raccoon was a huge hit! The significance of raccoons was explained in the ceremony, so when people saw him at the reception, they understood why he was there. What I didn't expect was for people to dance with him on the dance floor, pose with him for pictures and try to feed him glasses of champagne!
- Guest book tree. We ordered a tree poster from Etsy that came with leaf stickers. Guests could write their name on the leaves and stick them on the tree. Everyone really loved it, but it was a real b*tch getting the sticker backing off. Afterwards, hubby thought maybe it would have been better if we had pre-stuck the leaves and all guests had to do was sign it. However, sticking stickers on something was part of the fun! Oh well.
- My many dresses. I wore a total of four different dresses that night. The white wedding dress, the aubergine evening dress, the red wedding qipao and the low backed lavender dress with navy blue sash. I sewed the last dress myself. Guests seemed to really like this particular tradition in Chinese weddings and I love wearing fancy dresses!
- Cake toppers. We used bride and groom rubber duckies we bought at City Hall when we got our marriage license. People commented that they had never seen such cake toppers before and thought they were adorable. Hubby and I just thought they were cute when we got them. I originally didn't plan on having cake toppers at all, but hubby really liked them. Turns out he wasn't alone!
I do have a couple of regrets. One is that there were none of my hand-wired butterflies on the cake. I spent an entire evening hand-wiring 60 butterflies, carefully stuffing them into a big envelope and sent it to the venue's baker. My fingers were quite sore by the end of that evening. I made the effort to confirm that the baker had received the butterflies along with an example photo and general instructions. I also emailed the sales rep and banquet manager about them and they acknowledged everything should be in order. None if made any difference and there were no butterflies on my cake. The other regret, which is not nearly as big, is that I didn't get around to making centerpieces. The venue provided votives for the tables, which is great because they looked pretty, didn't block anyone's view of anything, and I didn't have to bring a big box of centerpieces for them to set up. It turned out fine and I didn't have to drive myself crazy making centerpieces, but there's a part of me that thinks it would have been a great craft project to undertake!
Other personal touches included our hand-made ketubah, which didn't make as big a splash with the guests, but seemed to impress the Rabbi and Maitre'd. It was made by me. Lol! It's actually a rather small ketubah, but I was constrained by the size of the artsy papers I had to work with. The ketubah was made in layers. I bought a black bordered cardstock frame with cardstock backing and built it up from the backing. I also bought this green paper with some stylized plantlife on it. I pasted that onto the center of the backing. I then cut out individual blades of grass out of darker green, plain paper and pasted it onto the bottom border of the stylized paper. I left the upper parts of the blades unglued so that they curled a bit and stuck out. The ketubah text was printed onto a sheet of plain vellum paper and that was the paper we signed. Once that was signed, the vellum sheet was placed, right adjusted, under the curled tips of grass. The black bordered frame, which was prepped before the wedding, had a tree cut out from brown paper pasted on the left border, and the bottom border also had blades of grass glued to it. Instead of leaves, I tore off blossoms from my leftover fake hydrangea flowers and hot-glued them to the top of the tree, which became the top border. At the signing, I placed the vellum sheet onto the backing, then took a clear plastic sheet and placed it under the blades of grass over the vellum sheet, and then placed the modified frame border on top. Everything was taped in place temporarily so that it can be displayed. Once home, I glued the vellum sheet down and then tried to glue the plastic sheet down in way to minimize the paper's exposure to air, then I glued down the frame. It was a lot of work, but I think it was worth it! Actually, I had a different design in mind when I was designing it in my head, but once I started working on it, the project sort of just resulted in what I described above. Lol! I'm planning to mount the whole thing onto sturdier backing to prevent warping in the future.
All in all, I think I was a decently crafty bride. Here is a list of my completed projects:
- 6 bouquets
- 2 corsages
- 5 bouts
- hubby's crocheted yarmulke
- 3 memorial candles (just cylinders of printed vellum paper)
- ketubah
- invitations
- 3 metal-framed fabric purses (special gifts for some special people)
- hair flower clip
- Bridal Suite sign
- Reserved seating signs
- my last dress
- table number signs and stands
- veil
- garter
The above list was a LOT of work. There was research, a couple of failed attempts for a few items, and a lot of effort. For a few items, I ended up causing more trouble for myself than I had to. For instance, the table numbers, reserved seating signs and the bridal suite sign were printed on plain white paper that was cut and then mounted onto cardstock. What would have saved me a lot of time would have been to print the signs directly onto cardstock. The invitations took way too much effort because it had so many parts, and so it had many steps just to complete one. There was no need for the invitations to be as complicated as I made them out to be.
My advice for other DIY brides is to keep things simple and don't sweat the small stuff. Do the practical stuff first and then the fluff stuff. When I say fluff stuff, that includes things that are usually present in weddings, but aren't necessary to make the wedding happen or make the wedding run smooth, like a veil or centerpieces. Make sure you have plenty of time to do your DIY projects and always have a backup plan in case the project fails. That means that if your veil came out funny and unusable, be prepared to buy one. If you find you've bitten off more than you can chew, find ways to scale back.
There are also lots of ways to save money without DIYing from scratch. Blank invitations and escort cards can be bought at stationery stores and printed out at home. Pretty table number templates can be downloaded and printed onto sturdy cardstock. Our table number stands were just cones of cardstock paper with a slit cut into the tip. The table number card was slipped into the slit and voila! The table number is standing up! Also take advantage of certain wedding websites or other event-planning websites if they offer RSVP functionality. Make sure the RSVP functionality fits your needs. The great thing about online RSVPing is that if someone forgot to RSVP, you can IM, text or email them and they can take care of it right away, rather than waiting for snail mail to come through. You'll also save on paper and postage. You should also take advantage of what the venue has to offer you. I didn't realize that I didn't need to bring a card box. They had a beautifully decorated mailbox and wheelbarrow setup for cards and gifts. The venue also provided the ceremony wine, a beautiful tea service set and tray for the tea ceremony, the cake cutting and serving utensils, champagne glasses for the toasts and votives for the tables. It's nice that we choose a venue that did the baking, catering and hosting. It was nice because they did a good job. It would have been horrible if they did a bad job. So choose your vendors wisely.
My last bit of advice for future brides is this: don't let the best be the enemy of good enough. Probably not an exact quote, but it says what I mean. Searching for "the best" causes immense amounts of stress because "better" things are always on the horizon. Remember why you're having a wedding when you feel sucked in by the wedding industrial complex. You're having a wedding because you want your friends and family to witness you getting married, and because afterwards you want to party with them to celebrate! At its heart, that's all a wedding is. If you keep this in mind, that desperation you may have been feeling trying to order the "perfect" shade of rose petals to line your aisle may start to melt away, the grief you may have been feeling when you realized the veil is not EXACTLY the way you imagined it may lift, and the frustration you may have been experiencing when things aren't going according to your plan may begin to smooth over.
Granted, I had it very easy during the planning process in some regards. I am not one of those brides that dreamed of getting married since girlhood, so I was not pursuing efforts to make my fantasy a reality. My family and friends are well aware of my record for being headstrong, stubborn and opinionated and refrained from trying to control any aspects of the wedding. My hubby's family stayed out of the planning completely as they are a very carefree, hands-off kind of family. Neither of us had a large guest list, so not much arguing there, and we had plenty of moral support whenever drama did occur.
We also did a lot of things that made the process much easier for us. We choose to limit our wedding party to just us, 2 groomsmen and 4 bridesmaids. The less people we have to organize, the easier on us. We didn't choose their outfits. We gave them guidelines like, wear a dark suit or navy blue dress and accessorize as you like. That way, no time was spent shopping and the bridal party can take care of themselves. We also limited the number of vendors we had to deal with. That also meant we had to choose our vendors carefully. I spent more time weeding out vendors that didn't meet my basic criteria before arranging to meet them. That meant we only had to meet a handful of vendors before choosing the one we liked best out of the bunch. I also spent lots of time researching reviews for these vendors. Keep in mind that many wedding websites will take down bad reviews at the vendor's request without notifying the reviewer, so make sure your research is as extensive as possible. If there is little reviewer information on a vendor, make sure you get a good amount of time with the vendor in person to get a feel of their personality, style and professionalism. Be clear about what you want and see if they can deliver evidence of being able to handle such requests. We also kept from making too many specific requests. We really wanted to just give the vendors an idea of what we'd like to achieve and then let them use their best judgment. Lastly, the thing that really made my wedding planning process smooth was keeping to a well-thought out schedule and keeping to a strict budget. Basically, staying organized and keeping the number of parts involved to a minimum. Fewer moving cogs means less things to track and less opportunities for the machine to break down. The tradeoff is that if one of your few cogs does break down, the machine is more likely to roll to a halt because it's mostly likely a pretty critical cog.
If my planning timeline had been less thought-out or less organized, I would not have had as much free time during the last month before the wedding. That is not to say I wasn't busy, but nothing took on an air of frantic desperation. I firmly believe that proper prior planning prevents piss poor performance. However, some things that go wrong are beyond your control. If that happens, roll with it and move on. Don't let anything spoil your day because nobody and nothing should be given that much power over your wedding experience!
Monday, September 27, 2010
Whew! I survived wedding planning!
Yes folks, I was able to fly over the hump and get married! I know, it's been over a month since my last post, but the last few weeks leading up to the wedding was busy. Not hectic, but busy - both at work and at home. Thus, I had little time or energy to blog. After the wedding, we went off to our honeymoon and spent 2 weeks on a nice, beautiful beach! Whoo hoo! Boy did I need that vacation!
Anyways, to recap some of the events leading up to the wedding, I had my bachelorette party the Friday night before the wedding, completed the Ketubah, ironed my white dress, finished sewing my last dress, printed out escort cards, sewed the garter, and left explicit instructions with instructional photos and the day-of timeline with our vendors. I thought I might come off as a little control-freakish and paranoid when I handed the photos and instructions to the vendor, along with a very detailed timeline, but the vendors all looked at them and said, "This is perfect!" My hubby got the impression that most vendors tend to play more guessing games with other brides, or sometimes brides didn't put as much thought into their timelines and/or instructions. I did a lot of research, paid attention to details and allowed the vendors to use their best judgment as well. My attitude towards the vendors was for them to tell me what they need from me in terms of general direction and for me to let them do their jobs and show off their skills.
Most of my wedding stuff was pretty straight-forward, standard wedding stuff. That minimized any confusion that the vendors might have with anything weird. Special instructions that had to be done included putting a rose on a reserved chair in the front row for my hubby's father, who passed away a few years ago, memorial pillar "candles" for his father, his grandmother and my grandfather, and placing our raccoon, Rocky, around our guest sign-in tree to look like he's signing the tree. I also wanted the baker to put butterflies that I had hand-wired into the cake, but apparently the baker forgot. Not having the butterflies was a disappointment, but overall, the day went great! I must hand it to the Maitre'D for keeping me on schedule and making sure that my hubby and I were properly fed. He and the waitstaff kept bringing us food, which was really helpful! I think we would have eaten much less if they hadn't done that. So thanks to them, we actually got to eat at our own wedding!
Basically, the day went like this:
Spent the night before in my parents' house, as per Chinese tradition, and woke up early to get my hair and makeup done. As I was getting made up, my hubby made the traditional journey to my parents' house to pick up his bride. We didn't do the bride price thing or the games, so when I was all made up, he and I left for the venue around 9am. We arrive at the venue at around 10:40AM, which was ahead of schedule.
I go to change into my white dress and when the photographer and his assistant arrived, we did an hour of formal photos with just me and my hubby. Once the bridal party and family arrived and we did an hour of formal photos with them. Then I changed into my purple dress and we signed the ketubah and marriage license, and headed outside for the tea ceremony.
My mother brought her own tea and pillows for me and my hubby to kneel on, and the venue provided the china and the setup. One of my bridesmaids handed us the tea to serve to our parents, who would take a sip and then give us a red envelope. Once the tea ceremony was done, I headed back to change back into the white dress for the marriage ceremony.
Once I was properly gussied up, I headed down to where we were lining up. The Maitre'D was waiting and was directing everything, which made everything so smooth and easy! The processional was led by my hubby's mom and stepdad, who looked so sweet as they walked down the aisle. Both my mom and my dad escorted me and it was really awesome to see my guests clapping to my entrance music, which was Love Me Do by the Beatles. The ceremony ran a bit longer than I'd like, but that's partially my fault as I okayed it with the Rabbi and with my hubby. My feet were killing me in last few minutes! The shoes I wore are actually very comfortable, but apparently, not so fun to stand still in for 30 minutes. There were a couple of memorable moments that stood out for me. One was when I sipped from the Kiddish cup, I said, "Mmmm, that's good!" So when the rabbi heard that, she said, "Yeah? Okay, then have another sip!" So both my hubby and I had a second sip. Lol! Another memorable moment was when hubby's mom was doing her reading, she teared up and almost made me tear up too! I also had to fake some of the hebrew parts because I didn't know/memorize the words and the Rabbi commented how on well I faked it. Hahaha! Once we were pronounced man and wife, we left the ceremony to do a few more family photos and then on to cocktail hour! On the way to the bar area, I dropped off my bouquet and picked up the toss bouquet.
So that's when the real mingling began. At the end of cocktail hour, we did the bouquet and garter toss. Hubby wanted to use his teeth to take off my garter and the MC asked about hubby using his teeth, but I loudly proclaimed this was a PG show and there will be no teeth! Lol! Hubby's sister caught the bouquet and one of his groomsmen caught the garter. The whole affair was entertaining, but not out of the ordinary.
Once everyone was being directed into the reception area, I changed into my red qipao. Hubby was waiting outside the reception entrance and when I arrived, we were introduced and did our first dance. Others were invited to dance once we had a few moments on the dance floor to ourselves and I honestly thought this was going to be a pretty shy crowd, but people really did get up and dance! It was great! I don't remember the exact sequence after that, but I do remember the Maitre'D and wait staff making sure we got food to eat and time to eat. I remember the parent dances, which was done to Sunrise, Sunset from Fiddler on the Roof, and I remember lots of hugs and dancing! After the cake cutting, I changed into my last dress, which I sewed myself. That's about the time when everyone started to say their goodbyes, which was fine with me and my hubby because we had been up since at least 5AM that day!
Once we had everything packed up, we walked to the building over, where we had a complimentary night in one of their rooms. Yes, the venue we picked also had a hotel on their grounds, which made them a very full-service venue! We spent that evening reading cards, opening gifts, cleaning up, decompressing and then sleeping. All in all, it was a good day!
Anyways, to recap some of the events leading up to the wedding, I had my bachelorette party the Friday night before the wedding, completed the Ketubah, ironed my white dress, finished sewing my last dress, printed out escort cards, sewed the garter, and left explicit instructions with instructional photos and the day-of timeline with our vendors. I thought I might come off as a little control-freakish and paranoid when I handed the photos and instructions to the vendor, along with a very detailed timeline, but the vendors all looked at them and said, "This is perfect!" My hubby got the impression that most vendors tend to play more guessing games with other brides, or sometimes brides didn't put as much thought into their timelines and/or instructions. I did a lot of research, paid attention to details and allowed the vendors to use their best judgment as well. My attitude towards the vendors was for them to tell me what they need from me in terms of general direction and for me to let them do their jobs and show off their skills.
Most of my wedding stuff was pretty straight-forward, standard wedding stuff. That minimized any confusion that the vendors might have with anything weird. Special instructions that had to be done included putting a rose on a reserved chair in the front row for my hubby's father, who passed away a few years ago, memorial pillar "candles" for his father, his grandmother and my grandfather, and placing our raccoon, Rocky, around our guest sign-in tree to look like he's signing the tree. I also wanted the baker to put butterflies that I had hand-wired into the cake, but apparently the baker forgot. Not having the butterflies was a disappointment, but overall, the day went great! I must hand it to the Maitre'D for keeping me on schedule and making sure that my hubby and I were properly fed. He and the waitstaff kept bringing us food, which was really helpful! I think we would have eaten much less if they hadn't done that. So thanks to them, we actually got to eat at our own wedding!
Basically, the day went like this:
Spent the night before in my parents' house, as per Chinese tradition, and woke up early to get my hair and makeup done. As I was getting made up, my hubby made the traditional journey to my parents' house to pick up his bride. We didn't do the bride price thing or the games, so when I was all made up, he and I left for the venue around 9am. We arrive at the venue at around 10:40AM, which was ahead of schedule.
I go to change into my white dress and when the photographer and his assistant arrived, we did an hour of formal photos with just me and my hubby. Once the bridal party and family arrived and we did an hour of formal photos with them. Then I changed into my purple dress and we signed the ketubah and marriage license, and headed outside for the tea ceremony.
My mother brought her own tea and pillows for me and my hubby to kneel on, and the venue provided the china and the setup. One of my bridesmaids handed us the tea to serve to our parents, who would take a sip and then give us a red envelope. Once the tea ceremony was done, I headed back to change back into the white dress for the marriage ceremony.
Once I was properly gussied up, I headed down to where we were lining up. The Maitre'D was waiting and was directing everything, which made everything so smooth and easy! The processional was led by my hubby's mom and stepdad, who looked so sweet as they walked down the aisle. Both my mom and my dad escorted me and it was really awesome to see my guests clapping to my entrance music, which was Love Me Do by the Beatles. The ceremony ran a bit longer than I'd like, but that's partially my fault as I okayed it with the Rabbi and with my hubby. My feet were killing me in last few minutes! The shoes I wore are actually very comfortable, but apparently, not so fun to stand still in for 30 minutes. There were a couple of memorable moments that stood out for me. One was when I sipped from the Kiddish cup, I said, "Mmmm, that's good!" So when the rabbi heard that, she said, "Yeah? Okay, then have another sip!" So both my hubby and I had a second sip. Lol! Another memorable moment was when hubby's mom was doing her reading, she teared up and almost made me tear up too! I also had to fake some of the hebrew parts because I didn't know/memorize the words and the Rabbi commented how on well I faked it. Hahaha! Once we were pronounced man and wife, we left the ceremony to do a few more family photos and then on to cocktail hour! On the way to the bar area, I dropped off my bouquet and picked up the toss bouquet.
So that's when the real mingling began. At the end of cocktail hour, we did the bouquet and garter toss. Hubby wanted to use his teeth to take off my garter and the MC asked about hubby using his teeth, but I loudly proclaimed this was a PG show and there will be no teeth! Lol! Hubby's sister caught the bouquet and one of his groomsmen caught the garter. The whole affair was entertaining, but not out of the ordinary.
Once everyone was being directed into the reception area, I changed into my red qipao. Hubby was waiting outside the reception entrance and when I arrived, we were introduced and did our first dance. Others were invited to dance once we had a few moments on the dance floor to ourselves and I honestly thought this was going to be a pretty shy crowd, but people really did get up and dance! It was great! I don't remember the exact sequence after that, but I do remember the Maitre'D and wait staff making sure we got food to eat and time to eat. I remember the parent dances, which was done to Sunrise, Sunset from Fiddler on the Roof, and I remember lots of hugs and dancing! After the cake cutting, I changed into my last dress, which I sewed myself. That's about the time when everyone started to say their goodbyes, which was fine with me and my hubby because we had been up since at least 5AM that day!
Once we had everything packed up, we walked to the building over, where we had a complimentary night in one of their rooms. Yes, the venue we picked also had a hotel on their grounds, which made them a very full-service venue! We spent that evening reading cards, opening gifts, cleaning up, decompressing and then sleeping. All in all, it was a good day!
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