Save the Dates

Just in case you didn't catch the Save the Date back in November...

Photographer: Thomas Origami Chung
Prints: Walmart HP kiosks
Location: Downtown Portland, Oregon
Design: Me




I made two different save the date prototypes, but we couldn't pick one, so we just printed out both and sent them to guests randomly.




<3Jenny

The search for the perfect photographer

If you couldn't tell already, I'm a super picky person.  And I was just as picky with the photographer as I was with everything else.  Mikey doesn't care.  I think the only thing he was concerned about was how much longer he would have to listen to me obsess about the photographer.


My thoughts on wedding photography:

-Try to go through a referred photographer. You know what you're getting when you do business with someone who's already worked with someone you know, plain and simple.

-Even though I mainly based my wedding photography choice on referral, I did some research before I found our photographer.  My main thought is this: What did people do before there was the internet?  How hard was it to get what you wanted when you didn't have an example?  I Google searched wedding photography Bay Area, indie wedding, wedding photojournalist and looked up names, looked up websites, emailed people, read reviews, and rifled through thousands of images and saved pictures I liked.

-Wedding photography is really expensive.  The average wedding photographer quoted me prices like $2500, $3000, and $3500, and always added on, but "it depends what you want," AKA "the price goes up."

-Lastly, I've always loved my mom's wedding album.  It's not an extensive wedding album. I think there are like 20 pictures in the whole thing, but when I'm done flipping through it, I always wished there was more to see.  I think that's what I love about it.  And the pictures are so alive.  Closed eyes, open mouths, laughing, jumping.  So a wedding book with a million portraits was never on my wishlist from a photographer, give me 20 great prints of genuine moments in a regular photo album and I'm good.


So in short, I based my decision on these things:

1. Referral
2. Style
3. Price


Meet our wedding photographer Juvenia Tso-Wheeler (click the link to check out her site)!

I don't know if you can tell, but her blog was pretty much the template for this blog (thanks Juvenia!).

But how did I find Juvenia?  Not through a Google search, but through a coworker at Genentech, Eric Tso,  Juvenia's cousin.  He referred me to Juvenia after hearing about all my wedding talk.  It's not what you know, but who you know, right?!

After a bit of facebooking, flipping through some of her pictures, emails, and a price quote, I was sold.  Done deal, sign the contract, put down a deposit, and forget about searching, photographer found!





-Jenny

You know what else is very Mikey and Jenny?

If you want to see pictures of Nathan more often, come here!

Pictures of Nathan to be added weekly (my new goal for this blog =P)!

Maybe this will be incentive enough to make you guys check out our blog for wedding updates (*cough cough, gift registries, *cough).




Best,
Jenny

Say Yes? to the Dress

The dress is picked and already hanging in my closet, accumulating filipino smells. 

Of course I love it.  But I wasn't always sure about it.

I've said this to anyone willing to listen to my crazy worries about my dress.  I just wasn't sure.  I love it, but felt anxiety over it.  I can't put my finger on it.  I think it might the cost.  Or it might be the fact that Mikey didn't help me pick it out at all.  Trust me I tried.  I begged Mikey to take a look at it after I already bought it, but he refused like a gentlemen.  He wants to be surprised.  Another reminder of why I love him so much, he's a romantic.


My thoughts on dress shopping.

-Shop by yourself for awhile or you will be seduced into what other people love on you.  Just try stuff on without the slightest intention of buying.

-Figure out what style you like before bringing the friends and moms along.

-Set a strict budget and stick to it!  Dresses can get up there in the numbers real fast, so be real with yourself about how much your comfortable spending.  Really think about how much your putting down on a dress your only gonna wear once, but think about forever.

-Pick something special.  Do you really want to pick a dress that is so now and everyone is wearing it? 

-Pick something that is you.  Classic, modern, vintage, trendy, intricate, simple, romantic, sexy, etc. 

As for me, Cousin Christine categorized me as "classic, with a bit of non-traditional."  I'd categorize my normal attire as masculine shlumpy (always with a man's over sized something), but I don't think I could pull off a man's button down with a gown bottom this time.



So all of those thoughts are all well and good, but here's the problem:

For one, I probably could have shopped forever for my dress.  There's just too many options out there!  Put three dresses in front of me and I'll pick my favorite out of the three, no problem.  But put an infinite amount of dresses in front of me, and I'll second guess my choice a million times and want to see every dress out there.  So doing it in three trips was kind of fast for me (shopped once in Longview, Washington; Portland, Oregon; and San Francisco, California). 

Now I understand why some people have stylists. 

Secondly, not having my right hand man along to help me made me extremely insecure about my choice, and I was constantly second guessing whether he would like it or not. Would he like it?  Would he think I was ridiculous, which has happened more than once when I tried walking out of the house in something too Vogue.

Thirdly, I was with my mom and Mikey's mom.  I'm not saying they have terrible taste or anything, not at all.  But what they pictured me in and what I pictured me in weren't always the same thing.  They loved some dresses I felt luke warm about and they were so so on some dresses that I loved. 

Their opinions on the dress I did get?  In a word, forced.  Like their "it's so beautiful on you" didn't seem as genuine as "it's so beautiful on you" with the dress I knew they wanted me to get.  But they were very kind, they just wanted me to be happy.  And I was happiest in the dress I got, I just didn't feel so comfortable with my decision after their luke warm reception of it.  So that feeling and doubt kind of stuck with me until I picked up my dress. 

 It's pretty sad, and I would probably never admit it out loud in real life, but I really needed some kind of validation for my dress choice.  I needed someone to ooo and ahhh over my dress and tell me it's so me with some genuine enthusiasm.  I just didn't get that from the few people I showed my dress to.

It wasn't until after I tried my dress on for my maid of honor, my best friend since the second grade, Gabbie Cruz, that I got the appropriate enthusiasm I needed to forget about the so so reception by the moms.  She said everything I needed to hear about it.  And that was it, anxiety gone.

I told Mikey that Gabbie told me everything I needed to hear about it and he seemed pleased.  Pleased that he no longer had to hear about my dress wah wah obsession.




-Jenny

An invitation story

So you guests are checking out the blog now, which means you guys got the invitations!  Excitingggg!  And don't be disturbed by the delay of your invite, it doesn't mean you were an afterthought, or you were forgotten, it just means one of two things.  1) That we got your invite back for some reason (despite the correctness of address) or 2) me and Mikey just took forever to finish up all these invitations.

So what you may or may not know is that me and Mikey made the invitations.  From design to printing, to cutting and gluing (yah that's how you spell it), we did it all.

Except for the paper, we didn't make the paper.

After what seemed like months of combing the internet for the perfect invitation that matched our style and budget, I made the executive decision to make the invitations.  My reasoning was we would be able to save money and get exactly what we wanted.  But we had no idea where to start, and we also had no idea how much work it would actually be.  Yeah, we had a lot of examples of what the final product should look like and include, and we had a general idea of what we wanted our invitations to look like, but there's a lot of variety and options and decision making involved, which most people may not know, are not my strong suits.

Suffice to say, it took a few trips to the Paper Source and Michael's and many prototypes to nail down a final invitation design.

 Raffea ribbon-Michael's Craft Store, Rose print paper and ivory card- Paper Source, white cardstock - Staples, (not in picture) Target gift wrapping paper as envelope liners -Target

And once we had the design down, it then became an issue of time, patience, manpower and supplies.

If there was a free second during the week, we were sitting at the dining room table cutting and gluing.  And if we had the ball rolling and getting shit done, we would always realize that there was something else that needed to be done.

For example.  Once we finished the invitations and RSVP's, I wanted envelope liners in the RSVP's too.  We had to cut and glue more. Once we finished that up, "Oh shoot, we need directions!"  More printing, more cutting.  Once that was done, "What about the hotel information and registry info!?"  "Uhhhhh, business cards with blog info!"  So we added the business cards.  "Okay we're ready to send these things out!"  The damn envelopes wouldn't run through the printer, so we had to buy envelopes that would (I really wanted the envelopes to be addressed pretty =) ).

And still, even after all of you have received your invitations, there are still people waiting for their invitation.  We have the envelopes, but not all the addresses. We have the addresses, but not all the invitations.  We need to make more!  It's always something with these invitations.

Every time we've been short of finishing, production would stop, a week would go by, and before you know it it's May, almost June, almost July, almost our wedding!

Sometimes I don't know what I was thinking when I thought this would be a quick and easy project.  But I do really love how they turned out, and really, that's all a picky girl like me could ask for.   Now if we could only finish them all up and not worry about sending them out anymore...





<3Jenny





PS Don't forget to RSVP!

The only bridal show we will ever go to

On 4.20 we went to Casa Real to check out their bridal show, something Amore. If you don't know what a bridal show is, it's just a place for wedding vendors to show you their stuff.  We were hoping to find an officiant, a cake, and a florist at this bridal show.

We walk in, grab our champagne, and started eating everything in sight.

I think we tried every cake vendors' cakes, and each vendor had 3 different samples.  That was a lot of cake.  My cake fix was definitely fulfilled.  But do we have a cake yet?

I had my eye on a cake by Jen's Cakes.  We're following up with a tasting at their bakery this Saturday.

They also had a few of the snack upgrades you could get at Casa Real. 

Mexican Hot Chocolate and Churro.  Lounge set up by Nicole Ha (which I also <3, but way out of budget).

Mikey's favorite was the chips and mini hamburger sliders.

I was sure flowers was where I would be minimal on the budget, but it's looking like I might just take what my Mom has already offered me for the flowers and blow it all on Nicole Ha's vision of a wedding. 

Her set up totally sold me...

It was a shabby chic/romantic themed table setting.

Oh and how I loved this bouquet!

I spoke with her for a second and she seemed super nice, professional, and very accommodating to any budget.  And surprisingly straight forward.  When I asked other vendors how much things cost, other vendors would give me the sale talk, and dress up a simple answer with a, "it starts here (insert a ridiculously high price), and goes up or down, depending on what you want."  I asked how much a ceiling arrangement was that she did and Nicole Ha straight up told me how much it was.  I thought that was pretty cool of her.  I followed up the other day and made a consultation appointment with her.  I'm pretty excited about it.


We did meet with the officiant there, but unfortunately, he was already booked for August 19th.  Not so unfortunately though, I thought he was kinda...creepy?  =) Mikey thinks I'm crazy picky, but I don't want to stand up there on my wedding day suppressing the giggles.


-Jenny

Our blog needs pictures.

What I've noticed is the blogs I like contain pictures.  And maybe this speaks to my distracted mind as well, but the blogs I read also have very brief posts to go along with those pictures.

So coming up, pictures.

-Jenny

Wedding Colors

What is the wedding color, you may ask?

This is the perfect example of my indecision, I can't pick just one color to run with.  So we have wedding colors. And not even a definite set of wedding colors.  Our wedding colors are more of a color palette of summer neutrals.

Think light pinks, lavender, light brown, beige, bronze, seafoam, really anything pastel or light in color.  So no red, okay?

J/K, J/K wear anything you want (no jeans though).

Best,
Jenny