As you can tell by now, we are getting our wedding planning done in lightening speed. We have everything on the list, now it's time to actually tend to the list.
This week, we met with our realtor so that he could give us tips on what to improve/fix for Rob's house to be on the market. Nik, my realtor, was great. He's sold 2 places and found 2 places for me. If you need good realtor, I'll give you his info. I was a bit worried because the first time I went to Rob's house, my GPS took me to a wrong house. I didn't think Nik could find the house. But he sure was a professional. He showed up fashionably 3 minutes early. Rob was unloading my bike from my car as he pulled in.
A quick tour was in order. Rob's bathroom and kitchen were beautifully remodeled. There were just minor details we needed to tend to upstairs as we expected. Downstairs was what we worried about. Good news was, after meeting with him, we realized that we didn't need to do a few things we planned on doing in the basement, or just needed to do a water down version of what we planned. That's good! But then, we also found out that the market was a bit worse than we thought. Fortunately, our price point wasn't the same as our competition, ours was lower, so that might give us an edge. Ours was more affordable for sure. So we planned on getting things done and put it on the market mid-Jan. Rob had a lot of experience with home improvement, he knew that there were many dependencies so he's not as optimistic about the Jan timeframe than I was. I knew it would happen on time. I just somehow knew.
I think getting his house ready to sell might be the biggest test of our relationship thus far. Life will throw many things at us but we'll be ok. I think we are seasoned (old?) enough to figure things out. We've talked about work items and timeline, etc. We are petty much in agreement. So this is one of the interesting item that's worth for everybody to follow. Let's see if we make it with laughter Or anger. :)
Invitation
Monday, September 27, 2010
Sunday, September 19, 2010
The Perfect Dress
Wedding Dress shopping... I'm excited; however, there is a show called, Say Yes to Dress, it seemed to be such a long and painful process, some brides had lots of drama as well. But what girl wouldn't be excited about choosing a wedding dress. It's sort of the once in a life time chance that you get to really dress up like Cinderelle, going to an amazing party, and dance with your prince charming. It even gets better because you don't need to lose a shoe for the Prince to find you and marry you. He marries you right there at the party. You enter last and make a big entrance. :-) OK I feel weird to say that it's a once in a life time opportunity, I've done it once but again, it's totally different this time because we are planning everything ourselves, and we take the time to plan. Oh, back to the dress...
My wedding dress hunting crew consists of my two daughters and their friend Katie. I browsed around and found JCrew bridial. Their dresses are plain and simple, it's my kind of style. So I made an appointment with them. Then I thought I would go to a more traditional bridal shop as well, so I made an appointment with Amanda's Bridal Boutique just 5 minutes from my house in downtown Redmond.
On Friday, we went to JCrew. They were nice dresses but for some reason, none of the dresses I tried on wow me. I know the rule of thumb is, I need to "love" the dress. They were very simple and cute but I looked at myself after putting them on, I didn't feel like I was getting married. There was one that had potential but they only had 4 left that's my size. By the time I made up my mind, it's probably already all gone anyway. They measured me and told me I'm a 2 or 0, I am not a 0, they don't do alteration there, I started to worry about the fit as well. I was thinking that maybe we'll be going to 10 bridal places before I could find something.
On Sat, we went to Amanda's Bridal. I didn't have high hopes. I thought that maybe they have gowns only for big huge church wedding, like princess Diana's 12 feet in diameter gown or something like that. Anyway, we walked in there, it's a very small shop. The sales lady told us to look for dresses that we might like, and she would hang them up outside my dressing room for me. We started looking, and many of them had too much beading and laces, and they just seemed so huge and heavy, I thought, oh no, this certainly was not my thing. But we decided to split up into two teams, Dannah and I, Jesse and Katie, then we started going through the mountain of dresses. The girls had pretty good eyes, they started finding dresses that had more slender skirts. We ended up with about 9 dresses. One of them looks like a Cinderelle dress, I didn't want it but the girls insisted that I needed to try it on so I complied. :-)
There was no mirror in the dressing room which made me nervous because I didn't even know the dress look on me. How if it looked reallly ugly on and the girls would laugh at me. :-( The first dress I put on had lots of beading on the bodice and a more simple skirt. I walked out of the room, I saw smiles on the girls' face, then it was a "wow". I stepped on the platform in front of the 3 way mirror, I smiled. I thought I looked like a fairy tale princess. So we put that as a definite candidate. I then put on the others, we liked every single one of them except for the 2 mermaid dresses. Though they looked good enough on me, they were not as comfortable because the fit was tight from waist down. So we eliminated the 2 mermaid dresses, I still had 7 to choose from. I knew we were in trouble, they all looked good on me. Jesse said, "Mom, they all work, you need to get one that you absolutely love." Then the other girls said, you need to find one you can imagine yourself getting married in. There was one with beautiful laces, I put it on, I think I wowed myself but then another customer in the store said to me, "That's the best dress ever, I put it on and that was it." I thought, great, I'm not going to pick this one now. I'm sure many brides pick same dresses all the time but with somebody right there telling you the dress is her dress as well, it's a bit weird.
After closing my eyes, imagining at our wedding, wearing my wedding dress walking toward Rob and his smiling at me, I had two dresses in mind. So I put the two dresses back on again. It's the first dress I put on and another one. I picked the other one. The whole process was a lot less painless than I imagined. The only problem was that I had too many good choices, I guess that was a good problem to have. I put the deposit down, it's not a pricy dress, and it's going to arrive in Feb. The shop will do all the alterations, and it's going to fit me perfectly. :-)
I'm just so thankful to have Jesse, Dannah, and Katie helping me out. They were very honest to me, I definitely have a winning dress shopping team. Big thanks to you team. :-)
My wedding dress hunting crew consists of my two daughters and their friend Katie. I browsed around and found JCrew bridial. Their dresses are plain and simple, it's my kind of style. So I made an appointment with them. Then I thought I would go to a more traditional bridal shop as well, so I made an appointment with Amanda's Bridal Boutique just 5 minutes from my house in downtown Redmond.
On Friday, we went to JCrew. They were nice dresses but for some reason, none of the dresses I tried on wow me. I know the rule of thumb is, I need to "love" the dress. They were very simple and cute but I looked at myself after putting them on, I didn't feel like I was getting married. There was one that had potential but they only had 4 left that's my size. By the time I made up my mind, it's probably already all gone anyway. They measured me and told me I'm a 2 or 0, I am not a 0, they don't do alteration there, I started to worry about the fit as well. I was thinking that maybe we'll be going to 10 bridal places before I could find something.
On Sat, we went to Amanda's Bridal. I didn't have high hopes. I thought that maybe they have gowns only for big huge church wedding, like princess Diana's 12 feet in diameter gown or something like that. Anyway, we walked in there, it's a very small shop. The sales lady told us to look for dresses that we might like, and she would hang them up outside my dressing room for me. We started looking, and many of them had too much beading and laces, and they just seemed so huge and heavy, I thought, oh no, this certainly was not my thing. But we decided to split up into two teams, Dannah and I, Jesse and Katie, then we started going through the mountain of dresses. The girls had pretty good eyes, they started finding dresses that had more slender skirts. We ended up with about 9 dresses. One of them looks like a Cinderelle dress, I didn't want it but the girls insisted that I needed to try it on so I complied. :-)
There was no mirror in the dressing room which made me nervous because I didn't even know the dress look on me. How if it looked reallly ugly on and the girls would laugh at me. :-( The first dress I put on had lots of beading on the bodice and a more simple skirt. I walked out of the room, I saw smiles on the girls' face, then it was a "wow". I stepped on the platform in front of the 3 way mirror, I smiled. I thought I looked like a fairy tale princess. So we put that as a definite candidate. I then put on the others, we liked every single one of them except for the 2 mermaid dresses. Though they looked good enough on me, they were not as comfortable because the fit was tight from waist down. So we eliminated the 2 mermaid dresses, I still had 7 to choose from. I knew we were in trouble, they all looked good on me. Jesse said, "Mom, they all work, you need to get one that you absolutely love." Then the other girls said, you need to find one you can imagine yourself getting married in. There was one with beautiful laces, I put it on, I think I wowed myself but then another customer in the store said to me, "That's the best dress ever, I put it on and that was it." I thought, great, I'm not going to pick this one now. I'm sure many brides pick same dresses all the time but with somebody right there telling you the dress is her dress as well, it's a bit weird.
After closing my eyes, imagining at our wedding, wearing my wedding dress walking toward Rob and his smiling at me, I had two dresses in mind. So I put the two dresses back on again. It's the first dress I put on and another one. I picked the other one. The whole process was a lot less painless than I imagined. The only problem was that I had too many good choices, I guess that was a good problem to have. I put the deposit down, it's not a pricy dress, and it's going to arrive in Feb. The shop will do all the alterations, and it's going to fit me perfectly. :-)
I'm just so thankful to have Jesse, Dannah, and Katie helping me out. They were very honest to me, I definitely have a winning dress shopping team. Big thanks to you team. :-)
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Making a List and Checking it Twice
1. Living arrangements - need to put finishing touches to Rob's house so that he can sell it and get another house with Ronit.
2. Pick a date - March or April? We realized that it's more complicated than just pick a date, so we made a mental "list".
3. Size of our wedding
So far, we decided on a medium size wedding.. Took us two different days and about 30 minutes each time, we have the "list", Rob seems to know exactly who he wants to invite on his side. But poor Rob had to suffer through my going back and forth with who to invite without losing patience, what a swell guy. I know that we might end up adding more people.
4. Who's going to marry us?
My old madam priest, Rev. Whitney DeVine is going to marry us.
5. Where should we get marry?
We'll get marry the same place as the reception. Rob said that he hadn't been to church since he was 12 or 13, he didn't want disasters happen when he walked into a church, like lightening strike him down or the entire church fell down on his head, etc. But I made him go to church with me a few weeks ago, my church didn't fall down on him, and it became sunny during the service. All jokes aside, this way, our guests don't have to travel from church to the reception.
Rob noticed that he's been sort of Asianized. He craves for noodles and Asian food more when compares to the past. OK, I'm turning him Asian, so he said anyway. He even threathened to grow a FuManChu beard thing for our wedding. I killed that thought of his very quickly. We figured that we waited 40 some odd years to finally meet and be together, saving the best for last and all, we might as well have a party, so Chinese wedding banquet is in order. This one is easy, there aren't many choices in Seattle for restaurants that host Chinese wedding banquet and good location, there is one.
Last Sunday, we went on an under cover mission to check the place and the food out. It's under renovation. Good! By the time we get marry, it will look brand new. I decided that the food is good. After dinner, we asked for the manager who's in charge of banquet reservation. She showed us the room that would accomodate our estimated party size. It's a corner room with view of south Lake Union. And the manager told me that for sodas, she would charge me $1 per can, it's usually $2.5 per can. I'm Chinese enough to know that she tells everybody the same thing. I smiled and thanked her. We signed the contract and paid the deposit.
While signing the contract, I was a bit nervous, I think I was actually having some kind of a rush. I was 23 the first time I got married. My ex-mother-in-law kindly took care of all the wedding arrangements which until this day, I was very thankful for. I only remembered showing up at the wedding. However, it sort of made the entire experience not real, the planning and working with your other half is actually a great bonding experience. We haven't fought about anything yet, I'm sure we'll at least disagree at some point but I think the collaboration really pull us closer together.
We still need to go back and determine which menu we are going to go with but that's minor details. I consider getting a venue done.
6. When do we let our guests know?
Done, I sent the Evite for Save the Date out on Monday night.
7. Where do we get our cake?
I don't think Rob cares, I mentioned it to him that I have my sight is set on Regent Bakery, and he's ok with it. They charge $4.75 per person, with minimum of 70 people, which fits our plans but I might change my mind if the Russian competition comes in with a cheaper price and comparable quality.
8. How about flowers?
The restaurant manager told us about this Russian florist they use who are cheap and good. Chances are, we'll just go with that.
9. Wedding gown and Rob's tux
I'll let Rob worry about his tux. I made an appointment with JCrew bridal and a little bridal place in downtown Redmond this weekend, I'll see what I find. My wedding dress shopping crew includes my daughters and Katie, who's my BFF Stephanie's daughter. She's been friends with my girls since they were like 4. She's more like my niece than anything else.
I stumbled onto JCrew's bridal boutique online awhile back. Their collection is simple and is sort of earthy, kind of right up my alley. However, the photos they have online, all their model slouch, I can't really tell if the dresses indeed look good or not. I just can't bring myself to order online and take that kind of leap of faith on a wedding dress. On the website, it says that they have bridal boutiques in some of their stores where you can go in and try the gowns on before ordering. So I thought, sure, they'll have them in New York, LA, Las Vegas, or San Francisco, I'm in sleepy Seattle... Then I looked at the list, there is one right here at the U-Village. I thought it's meant to be. But it took a whole week for them to call me back, and I can only find an appointment for Firday late afternoon. But we are going for it. Then Sat afternoon at Redmond, we should be all good.
10. Honeymoon :-) - Bora Bora
Have any of you seen the movie Couples' Retreat? I personally think it's funny, and it's filmed at the St. Regis on Bora Bora. Rob saw it and had his heart set on it. I think it's a good choice as well. My friend June and Henry went there on their honey moon and loved it. Henry sent me a bunch of info from their travel agent, it's going to be great. I know it's going to be expansive but as Henry said, we just need to look at it as a once in a life time sort of thing. Yes, it's my second time around but I know it's going to be the last. I don't think I was ever as sure about anything in my life before.
11. Invitations
We'll send it out when we have the details, hopefully in Jan. If we don't have most of the stuff ready by Jan, I might have a nervous breakdown. I'm the kind of person who usually get things done early. In college, I'll have my paper done 3 days before it's due so that I could take it to the TA to have him/her review it.
12. Musicians
Vidas from my church is going to play the guitar, or maybe a bit of piano for us. I'm going to have some kind of surprise for entertainment. All rated G though.
13. Photographer
I've sent out a mail asking for recommendation at work to a women chat alias.
14. Maid(s) of honor and best man
Checked. That would be my daughters and Rob's best friend Bill.
Are we missing anything?
2. Pick a date - March or April? We realized that it's more complicated than just pick a date, so we made a mental "list".
- We should give us enough time to prepare for the wedding and time to sell Rob's house and buy another house.
- It needs to be on a Sat.
- My daughters need to be with me, their dad is flexible but I don't want to cause too much trouble for everybody, though the selfish child inside me says, "You should have your way, you are getting married." But I really don't want to incur bad Karma.
- Preferrably around the opening day of baseball so family can go to a baseball game together (Rob's wish list).
- Rob mentioned that there was some game sometime during the week of the April 4th, he prefers to watch it but if 2nd is the right date, he can record it. I give him credit because he says it's not a must, though I gave him the "you wanna schedule our wedding around a game" look adoringly.
3. Size of our wedding
So far, we decided on a medium size wedding.. Took us two different days and about 30 minutes each time, we have the "list", Rob seems to know exactly who he wants to invite on his side. But poor Rob had to suffer through my going back and forth with who to invite without losing patience, what a swell guy. I know that we might end up adding more people.
4. Who's going to marry us?
My old madam priest, Rev. Whitney DeVine is going to marry us.
5. Where should we get marry?
We'll get marry the same place as the reception. Rob said that he hadn't been to church since he was 12 or 13, he didn't want disasters happen when he walked into a church, like lightening strike him down or the entire church fell down on his head, etc. But I made him go to church with me a few weeks ago, my church didn't fall down on him, and it became sunny during the service. All jokes aside, this way, our guests don't have to travel from church to the reception.
Rob noticed that he's been sort of Asianized. He craves for noodles and Asian food more when compares to the past. OK, I'm turning him Asian, so he said anyway. He even threathened to grow a FuManChu beard thing for our wedding. I killed that thought of his very quickly. We figured that we waited 40 some odd years to finally meet and be together, saving the best for last and all, we might as well have a party, so Chinese wedding banquet is in order. This one is easy, there aren't many choices in Seattle for restaurants that host Chinese wedding banquet and good location, there is one.
Last Sunday, we went on an under cover mission to check the place and the food out. It's under renovation. Good! By the time we get marry, it will look brand new. I decided that the food is good. After dinner, we asked for the manager who's in charge of banquet reservation. She showed us the room that would accomodate our estimated party size. It's a corner room with view of south Lake Union. And the manager told me that for sodas, she would charge me $1 per can, it's usually $2.5 per can. I'm Chinese enough to know that she tells everybody the same thing. I smiled and thanked her. We signed the contract and paid the deposit.
While signing the contract, I was a bit nervous, I think I was actually having some kind of a rush. I was 23 the first time I got married. My ex-mother-in-law kindly took care of all the wedding arrangements which until this day, I was very thankful for. I only remembered showing up at the wedding. However, it sort of made the entire experience not real, the planning and working with your other half is actually a great bonding experience. We haven't fought about anything yet, I'm sure we'll at least disagree at some point but I think the collaboration really pull us closer together.
We still need to go back and determine which menu we are going to go with but that's minor details. I consider getting a venue done.
6. When do we let our guests know?
Done, I sent the Evite for Save the Date out on Monday night.
7. Where do we get our cake?
I don't think Rob cares, I mentioned it to him that I have my sight is set on Regent Bakery, and he's ok with it. They charge $4.75 per person, with minimum of 70 people, which fits our plans but I might change my mind if the Russian competition comes in with a cheaper price and comparable quality.
8. How about flowers?
The restaurant manager told us about this Russian florist they use who are cheap and good. Chances are, we'll just go with that.
9. Wedding gown and Rob's tux
I'll let Rob worry about his tux. I made an appointment with JCrew bridal and a little bridal place in downtown Redmond this weekend, I'll see what I find. My wedding dress shopping crew includes my daughters and Katie, who's my BFF Stephanie's daughter. She's been friends with my girls since they were like 4. She's more like my niece than anything else.
I stumbled onto JCrew's bridal boutique online awhile back. Their collection is simple and is sort of earthy, kind of right up my alley. However, the photos they have online, all their model slouch, I can't really tell if the dresses indeed look good or not. I just can't bring myself to order online and take that kind of leap of faith on a wedding dress. On the website, it says that they have bridal boutiques in some of their stores where you can go in and try the gowns on before ordering. So I thought, sure, they'll have them in New York, LA, Las Vegas, or San Francisco, I'm in sleepy Seattle... Then I looked at the list, there is one right here at the U-Village. I thought it's meant to be. But it took a whole week for them to call me back, and I can only find an appointment for Firday late afternoon. But we are going for it. Then Sat afternoon at Redmond, we should be all good.
10. Honeymoon :-) - Bora Bora
Have any of you seen the movie Couples' Retreat? I personally think it's funny, and it's filmed at the St. Regis on Bora Bora. Rob saw it and had his heart set on it. I think it's a good choice as well. My friend June and Henry went there on their honey moon and loved it. Henry sent me a bunch of info from their travel agent, it's going to be great. I know it's going to be expansive but as Henry said, we just need to look at it as a once in a life time sort of thing. Yes, it's my second time around but I know it's going to be the last. I don't think I was ever as sure about anything in my life before.
11. Invitations
We'll send it out when we have the details, hopefully in Jan. If we don't have most of the stuff ready by Jan, I might have a nervous breakdown. I'm the kind of person who usually get things done early. In college, I'll have my paper done 3 days before it's due so that I could take it to the TA to have him/her review it.
12. Musicians
Vidas from my church is going to play the guitar, or maybe a bit of piano for us. I'm going to have some kind of surprise for entertainment. All rated G though.
13. Photographer
I've sent out a mail asking for recommendation at work to a women chat alias.
14. Maid(s) of honor and best man
Checked. That would be my daughters and Rob's best friend Bill.
Are we missing anything?
Monday, September 13, 2010
How It All Begins!
Our story is not that unusual, and it's probably very much like most people's. Rob's version would be:
Boy meets girls, get together, not working out; then boy meets more girls, not working out; then Rob met Ronit, and everything worked out perfectly. :-)
Now, here is Ronit's version:
Ronit meets boys, married one of them, not working out but got two absolutely wonderful daughters out of it. Ronit meets more boys, not working out. Then after conversing with Rob through emails for a week, Ronit went to Gregg's Cycle at Bellevue. While Ronit was drooling over pricey beautiful road bikes, though she just acquired a beautiful Cervelo RS, a boy came up to her and said, "Are you meeting someone here?" Ronit smiled and said, "Are you Rob?" Then followed by one hour and 15 minutes of conversation at a nearby Starbucks. And that led to riding (bicycle) on a cold, sunny morning, and another ride on a cold, rainy morning; before they knew it, movies and dinners started to happen. Rob, like most men, didn't remember many details but when it came to things that Ronit told him, he always remembered. Other than Rob being handsome, Ronit found him gentle, confident, down to earth, easy to approach, with incredible amount of common sense, truly cared about Ronit and her daughters. Then... Ronit went to Hong Kong for 10 days to see her mother, that was the longest 10 days of both Rob and Ronit's lives, then they knew... There was no talking about the future, everything was put into actions and their future started to take its form. There was work but it was easy, there was never any negotiation, there was no struggle, only respects, laughters, and be there for each other.
On September 4th, 2010, Rob and Ronit went on a day trip to Vancouver, BC. While sitting outside a little cafe on Robson street, with Ronit's Chihuahuas, Nubie and Copper as witnesses, Rob proposed to Ronit. Ronit said yes, and Rob put the most beautiful ring Ronit had ever seen on her finger. Rob smiled and Ronit had teary eyes...
And that's how it all begins...
Boy meets girls, get together, not working out; then boy meets more girls, not working out; then Rob met Ronit, and everything worked out perfectly. :-)
Now, here is Ronit's version:
Ronit meets boys, married one of them, not working out but got two absolutely wonderful daughters out of it. Ronit meets more boys, not working out. Then after conversing with Rob through emails for a week, Ronit went to Gregg's Cycle at Bellevue. While Ronit was drooling over pricey beautiful road bikes, though she just acquired a beautiful Cervelo RS, a boy came up to her and said, "Are you meeting someone here?" Ronit smiled and said, "Are you Rob?" Then followed by one hour and 15 minutes of conversation at a nearby Starbucks. And that led to riding (bicycle) on a cold, sunny morning, and another ride on a cold, rainy morning; before they knew it, movies and dinners started to happen. Rob, like most men, didn't remember many details but when it came to things that Ronit told him, he always remembered. Other than Rob being handsome, Ronit found him gentle, confident, down to earth, easy to approach, with incredible amount of common sense, truly cared about Ronit and her daughters. Then... Ronit went to Hong Kong for 10 days to see her mother, that was the longest 10 days of both Rob and Ronit's lives, then they knew... There was no talking about the future, everything was put into actions and their future started to take its form. There was work but it was easy, there was never any negotiation, there was no struggle, only respects, laughters, and be there for each other.
On September 4th, 2010, Rob and Ronit went on a day trip to Vancouver, BC. While sitting outside a little cafe on Robson street, with Ronit's Chihuahuas, Nubie and Copper as witnesses, Rob proposed to Ronit. Ronit said yes, and Rob put the most beautiful ring Ronit had ever seen on her finger. Rob smiled and Ronit had teary eyes...
And that's how it all begins...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)