LOOKEEEE.....I have some pro-pic previews!!!!

These aren't Angelica's....they're from the blog of the second shooter Angelica brought, Josh Lynn (also AMAZING!!!).  We LOVE them and can't wait to see more of his stuff....and Angelica's, of course!

We smell?

We loved everyone's answers to our wedding guestbook....but I am afraid the best one came from our 6 year old flowergirl (the older one).  BK is ner nickname, btw. We started cracking up when we saw it.  I present to you in all its glory (click on it for a bigger view):

Alaska....HOOOOO!

Now with wedding planning out of the way, we're ready to book our honeymoon.  i have no idea how people plan for both the wedding and the honeymoon.  The way we were the few days before, we would have no time to pack.  Anyhow, we're going to Alaska...in May (obviously not now)....if  I can get the days off.

We were going to go with royal carribean, but I couldn't get off for the days of the cruise we wanted (we request vacations once a year....everything else is add-on requests.  If there are people before you, there's no way you can get off).  So instead, we're going with Holland America, partially because I hear the food is good.....there are cooking classes on board....and they're known for their cruisetours.  Basically, it'll be 7 days of cruising the coastal cities and glaciers...then another 7 days in a tour bus/tour train exploring the innards of Alaska.  So like a cruise combined with a "normal" land vacation.  They own their own hotels, buses and trains...and everything is luxury lines.  Their trains have clear domed ceilings, so you can see everything.  I know the average cruising age will be like 70 hahahahahaha.  That's okay with us....we're not looking for a booze cruise.  We'd prefer the peace and quiet to the spring break crew.  It's a little pricer thansome other cruiselines....but hey, it's our honeymoon...and it's still cheaper than doing some of the more traditional destinations. 

I can't wait!  All we have to do is find a travel agent because you can't book Holland America yourself online.  And i would LOVE to have a digi-SLR to shoot with.  I hope I see some awesome wildlife.  I will have to restrain myself from petting them.

This is what the itinerary looks like.  I'm contemplating getting there a day early to hang out in my beloved Vancouver.  i  Vancouver.

I am dreading having to go back to work.  These past few days have been the best days EVER.  We're not honeymooning til May (hopefully, if I can get off)...but we took a week off anyway to do nothing.  Literally.  All we've done is sleep, eat, watch TV and go online.  This is better than honeymooning right after.  We totally felt like we were consumed with the wedding...especially the few months before.  The entire week before, we ate out every day or bought frozen pizza because we didn't have time to cook.  We were also averaging 2-3 hours of sleep a night. 

Now we're back to planning and cooking full meals together (something we really enjoy) and sleeping to our little hearts' content.  And the best part is not having anymore wedding related payments to make.  It totally felt like we weren't making any money after rent, my student loans and all that wedding stuff.

But we got ourselves a nice little wedding present.  Lenny saved all his sony point since forever...and had racked up enough points to get us this:

YAY!  A nice 32" Sony Bravia LCD.  It's so nice....and it was FREE (sort of).  It had arrived just in time to greet us when we came back to Philly.

And be prepared to be grossed out, but look at what came out of my hair when I took it down that night:

HAHAHAHA.  I threw that fake hair at Lenny and he was totally freaked out.

Ready for LOTS of pics?  (pics from friends and family...taken from our flickr wedding account)

Before I start...this is totally not wedding related, but did you know that song "See You Again"...it's sung by that Hannah Montana girl?!!!!!!!!!!!  I LOVE that song right now...i know it's such a stupid song...but it's so catchy.  When I found out, I was like NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...I am NOT a hannah montana fan.  I'm trying to play it repeatedly to get it out of my system.

I didn't show this link to many people before...but I kept track of all my wedding stuff on my knot bio page.  Now that it's over, everyone can look!!  My Planning Bio   I'll make another one with pro-pics and reviews when the time comes.

Ok...here we go...the ceremony.    First of all, I am proud of everyone for showing up on time (for the most part...there were a few stragglers who saw me in the hallway as I was waiting to walk in).  Little confession:  We lied just a little bit on the invite....ceremony started at 12:30, not 12:00.  tee hee.  But at least you guys got breakfast and stuff there.  Anyhow...the room was pretty much full when I walked in....I was told at 12:00, the room was only 1/2 full...so I guess my predictions were right!!!!  There were a LOT of people there!

The processional:

The groom (he said people started laughing when he walked in...he would like to know why)

The rest of the boys....AKA my new brothers.  I'm stoked to have brothers....I've always wanted brothers. 

Lenny's parents:

My mom escorted by my cousin.  My mom was so worred that her dress would be "too sexy"...it took so much convincing for her to get it

My bridesmaid, MC_Fairy

The MOH and my sister

Then the kiddies.  These kids were CRAZY...they were screaming and shouting and causing all sorts of ruckus outside.  Their moms were frantically shushing them.

The boys:  (yay for my pillow!  And the younger boy is holding a jewelry box....with a little tub of lotion in case Lenny couldn't get his ring on)

The girls:

I heard Ayumi was quite the little character.  During our quick rehearsal beforehand, she actually refused to go down the aisle and we were like, uh oh.  Turns out, she was afraid of the maitre'd...so once he was gone, she was okay.  We were totally pep talking her the entire time outside ("ayumi, you can do it"  "Ayumi, you are a brave girl"....etc)...and as soon as she walked in, we all rushed over to peek through the doors to see if she would bolt or not.

Then me and daddy!  He was so funny...during rehearsal, the maitre'd told him give me a peck on the cheek, shake hands with lenny and then hand me over.  Right before we walked in, my dad was like, "OH...you know what we should do? Before I kiss you, we should HUG first".  I was like okay dad...whatever you want.  So we did it his way!

Oh...and i didn't know lenny was going to give me a peck on the cheek when i got up there (he said it wasnt planned...he just felt like doing it).   I was like giving a quick sideways glance at the pastor thinking, uh oh...am i going to get in trouble?! hahahaa

We are married!!!!!!!!!

Our guestbook page and program....designed by April...photographed by Yach

We missed most of cocktail hour because of the tea ceremony, which we did right after.  This is only HALF of the room...there's another half waiting for tea! It was crazy. We actually did finish in about 1/2 hour....but we took 10 minutes to ourselves in the bridal suite before heading downstairs to see everyone.

Placecards:

My entourage lined up at the start of the reception:

Place settings, table numbers, favor cards:

We wanted something really simple and elegant.  I wanted it to feel like a big family holiday dinner almost....nothing too crazy on the tables. 

First dance:

Best man and MOH toasts.  Both of them rocked.  the best man speech had us tearing up (and I am not a crier!) and the MOH speech/rap had everyone on their feet.

Cake cutting:

Again...we wanted simple (that was pretty much the theme throughout)...we just chose a basic cake with simple decor.  Asked the florist to fill the gap with some red flowers...and popped my $3 Mr. and Mrs. bird cake topper on top.

Parent/child dance.  My dad really wanted to do this.  He spent the entire time discussing the attendance rate of the wedding. "so, how many people didn't show up?"  "you heard that so and so wasn't coming right?"  hahahahahaha.  he's hilarious.

Then FINALLY we danced.  Sorry everyone, the table visits took SOOO much longer than anticipated...our whole reception schedule totally went out the window!  But at the end, we're glad we took the time to go around and say hi to everyone...we would have felt awful if we didn't.

Craziness

Our last song....and one of the fondest memories i'll remember from the night.  EVERYONE on the floor screaming the chorus to "Living on a Prayer". (I also like how you can't tell that Merry is a bridesmaid unless you knew....woo hoo for non-bridesmaid looking jcrew dresses)!

oh yeah....my bouquet...i totally LOVED my bouquet. THey smelled SOOOO good too.  Even Lenny kept smelling them. I took these the morning after...held up pretty good considering they're really delicate.  I gave my florist the leftover scraps from my dress after alterations.  She found a portion with my buttons running down it and made it into my stem wrap.  It was such a nice touch.

Thank you everyone for all the great memories.  I'll post pro-pics when Angelica gets back from her vacay.  What surprised me the most was that I enjoyed the ceremony a little more than I enjoyed the reception.  I know it's supposed to be that way, but until it happened I always thought I would feel the other way.  The ceremony part really was special....I felt like it was just me and him in the room...and I'm glad we put in our own little touches.   And that it was short.  HAHAHAHAHA.

This is our second slideshow that we didn't have time to show during the reception. In retrospect, it probably wouldn't have made a different timewise if we showed it...but at the time, we felt like we were running out of time. The first one was dedicated to us and our immediate family.  This one was for extended family and friends. Enjoy!

More pics later...but this is how the night ended:

Oh yeah...the chefs at Westbury Manor told our Maitre'd that he has NEVER EVER seen ANY wedding party eat as much as our during cocktail hour.  They were shocked at how fast it was going.  And they've had parties larger than ours.  The maitre'd came up to the bridal suite during our little moment alone after the tea ceremony and was like, "omg...your guests REALLY know how to eat!!!"  hahahahaha

I'm MARRIED!!!!!!!

Thanks to those who came out and celebrated with us!  And special thanks to everyone who helped out in any way, shape or form...I couldn't have done it without you all.

Upload those pics to my flickr account PLEEEAAAASE (thanks yach for already doing it!)  Angelica's on vacay for two weeks, so we won't get to see a preview until she's back.

I'll write more tomorrow when I get back to Philly.

2..................

We slept 3 hours last night.  Today was our final meeting with the reception hall, so we were trying to get everything done in time.  But everything is mostly done.  We ended up bringing 6 boxes of stuff over to the hall for them to keep until the wedding.

AND I SAW THE PEACOCKS TODAY!!!!!!!!!  I actually saw 4 of them...all together!  I knew my reception hall kept peacocks roaming around the grounds (I don't know how they don't run away)...but I didn't think they had them out during the winter!  They must be used to people becuase I walked within inches of them and they didn't even flinch.  I couldn't get them to fan their tail though.  I guess I wasn't an attractive enough bird for them to show off for me.  I hope they walk by the reception room on Saturday!

Programs - done

Placecards and placecard holders - done

Paid off the final balance of the reception -

Met with my florist and paid off that balance

I still can't believe we finished all the programs and placecards.  It was soooo much work...like 3 days worth of non stop work by the two of us.  It's hard to all the DIY stuff with just two people.  I have NO idea how yach did it by herself.

Tomorrow, I'm getting my hair trimmed by my hair girl and getting one last hair trial in.

3................

The weather forecast looks better every day!!!!  As of now, the 5 weather forecast websites we stalk say a high ranging from 42-47 degrees!!!!!!!!!!!  Of course at night, it's back in the 30's, but whatever!  We have a special little portion of our bridal shoot that needs to be taken outdoors...so we are SOOO excited about the weather.

Things are slowly getting wrapped up.  Placecard holders are all done...just finishing up some of the names.  And then I have to alphabetize, which sucks.  It's funny, when you have a guestlist that's 99% asian, you only really use up like 10 letters of the alphabet when it comes to the first letter of your last name.  I have a HUGE pile of C's, H's, L's and W's.  Actually, i had to separate out the Li's into a pile of their own, so I actually have two huge piles of L's.  If you're an L, good luck finding your name!  At first glance, all the last names look so similar!  It was also nice to list friends recently married as Mr. and Mrs. husband's name....because a few years ago, so many of these people would have been Mr./Mrs. so and so & Guest.

Things left to do....

-Finish tying those freakin programs...we're a little over half done.  We decided to put that aside because we wanted to finish the placecard holders.

-Finish the slideshow...Lenny is trying to whittle down his picture list..he had like over 80 for himself!!!!

-Fill out all the paperwork for the reception hall

-Get contacts (I have an appt today).  I've been on my last pair of daily's for the past year! hahahaha.  Well, i normally wear my glasses every day, so it's okay.

-Lenny has to get his haircut..it's like a fro now (that's today too).

I think that's it.  I may actually be able to relax a little on friday.  Plus, I have my hair trial on Friday...hahaha yes, the day before the wedding.  I thought I was going to change my mind last minute (I considered it)...but I haven't so, we're just doing a final trim because I haven't cut my hair at all for over a year! not even a trim! So the ends aren't looking too nice.

I can't wait to see everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Hint to my guests:  bring a pen with you.  There are some writing activities!  We'll have pens there, but this way, you won't have to wait in line to do it!

AND BRING SOCKS!!!!!!!