flowers for days

my bouquet with my wedding invitation front and center.

we were really happy with our wedding florist, fleuretica. they were a magical partnership of creative ladies who dreams up the most beautiful flower arrangements fit for gods and goddesses and little girl-ladies who call themselves bagnatic ;)

unfortunately, my wedding photographer was less than fantastic so i didn't get many great shots of my wedding bouquet or the bouquets my bridesmaids carried.

my bouquet is the 2nd one from the left.

another angle of my bridesmaid bouquets.

my husband's boutonnière.

table centerpiece at our wedding banquet.

flowers for our wedding cake.

so after our wedding, my husband still uses their services to get me flowers for all kinds of occasions. not going to protest that...nope.

1st valentine's bouquet as husband and wife. he wanted the arrangement to resemble our banquet centerpiece. LOVE.

i in turn, sent him this arrangement to commemorate our 2nd wedding anniversary.

my husband sent these, oops-i -forgot-to-send-you-something-for-our-2nd-wedding-anniversary succulents. ha!

2nd valentine's arrangement i received. i absolutely LOVED the orange tone to these flowers.

i TOTALLY LOVED this little lady bug detail. lady bug luck i say.

and for mother's day, he gave me this flower arrangement. awwww....not yet a mommy, but still in love.

so as you can see, long after our wedding, we still love our wedding florist the best. unless they close shop, move away, or become too crazy expensive, i think our flowers will always come from them. if only they can fill my wee home with flowers every single day....a gal can dream right?

i favor favors

some people probably think party favors are useless, but i for one, really like receiving them, even though they are....useless. most of the time they are anyway.

i've isolated my warm feelings about favors to the fact that i like walking away from the gathering with something. and when you are handed one, or find one at your assigned spot, it feels like an itty bitty present. for me??? really for me??? i gush, i gush. then i open the little box and think, dude, they are jelly beans, meh. but i still appreciate it :)

so when we had our wedding, no matter how overblown the budget got, i INSISTED on having wedding favors! i was told to skip it by various friends to stay within budget, but i just couldn't. after noticing my obsession with having a wedding trinket (whoops, was i THAT obvious?? *cough*), my SIL was gracious enough to gift us our wedding favors.

the boxes were absolutely beautiful. there was a choice between the red and gold and although the red was pretty, the gold boxes were actually a lot sturdier.

we ended up going with the gold boxes because they were sturdy AND they matched my obsession with gold.

each box was filled with a chinese couple kissing keychain (that was a mouthful!) their lips are automatically drawn to each other when they get close. it was too, too cute!

and of course, they were assembled with love for our 180ish guest list. the wedding day went by so fast. it's pretty sweet to dig up these little details again for blogging purposes. *sigh*

blue boxes for my sistas

even before i asked my "sistas" to be my bridesmaids, i already had their presents in mind. seriously, that's what a jewelry whore-centric bride would do. and nothing will do for my gals unless it's wrapped up in a pretty robin blue box a la tiffany & co. so my younger sister, my SIL, and my old friend from high school who i call my "soul sista" became my trinity of gals. they were perfect for our wedding gala, so amazingly helpful and thoughtful. a little silver tiffany necklace was just a small token of our appreciation because they did so, so much for us!

each sista received a silver tiffany notes letter pendant to wear for the wedding. it was the perfect accent piece for their dark purple bridesmaid dresses. i also thought it would become a super wearable necklace on the daily. to this day, almost 2 years later, my soul sista still wears her pendant every single day. the other two, not so much. *sigh*

i definitely need to get one for myself though!! it is so dang cute!

married. soooo married.

i posted this a while back on my food blog, theroamingbelly.blogspot.com i'm going to pull a lazy move and repost it here so i can "move on" with my blogging.

dudes, i got married :0

on august 27, 2011 as a matter of fact. here's the top layer of my then day old wedding cake. the flowers were freakin' awwwwwesome on top don't you think? thanks to fleuretica for the beautiful burst of blooms...i wish they can fill my world with flowers EVERY DAY.

i also went on a horrible diet. i mean, it kinda worked and all...but a diet for a food blogger! that's like fucked up! but it was worth it not to souffle from the back of my white dress even though i still rippled in all the wrong places.

immediately afterwards, i went on an edible rampage...trying to fetch back the coat i was determined to shed for my wedding and what better way to do so than en route to vegas for our mini-moon (more posts to come on that one).

aria treated us well. we were upgraded to a mini-suite when they learned *cough* when i told them we were newlyweds. SCORE!

we were even greeted with a bit of sweetness. "yumz!" said my sugar depraved body as i INHALED and i mean INHALED most of it. no joke.

the mini-suite was spacious and awesome and let's not forget, an upgrade. wheeee!

the night view was uh-mazing.

so what does it feel like to be married? well, it feels just like living together except now everybody wants to know when i'm gonna get pregnant.

of wedding things and wedding bling

oh weddings. weddings. i will be having one of these in A YEAR so this beautiful skinny girl that you see in this picture...isn't me. she's my cousin-in-law and that's my very happy cousin. their wedding was absolutely gorgeous and made me so teary-eyed....

when i first got engaged, i was just basking in the glow of being engaged and would admire my bling in all sorts of lighting....i still do as a matter of fact. here's me shamelessly checking out my ering bathed in candlelight at their wedding reception.

but as time steadily progresses, i feel more and more choked...venue, colors, guest list, budget, photographers, themes...ACK. i know i still have a year to plan, but REALLY, how does one plan for something that they've never planned before and how does one make it as beautiful as my cousin's wedding pictured above? to be continued.....

august 2011

this sunday was a productive one. i rounded up my fiance's mom, dad, and sister (my side of the family couldn't go...boo!) to go with us to a potential restaurant where my wedding reception will be held. if you're not familiar with chinese wedding banquets, think of gaudy gold, huge double happiness chinese characters, golden phoenix and dragon decorations, and lots and lots of red paint which makes for a cheesy fobolicious time. i have no probs with that since i'm such a fobmonster myself, but if i can find a hybrid venue that serves the banquet food, but looks less fob and more mod, then i'd pick that one hands down! trust me when i say that venues like these are hard to come by!

anyways, i think i've found the place! they were closed down for a bit for remodeling (per my future mil's intel) but recently reopened the exact same way it was before...perhaps the economy socked them a big one as well. anyways, i'm pretty sure this is the place i want (plus the fact that i don't really care to look some more...yup, no bridezilla here). it satisfies the not so fob requirement that i wanted in the decor, but now, it'll have to pass the food test as well, being the pudgy roaming belly that i am :) both sides of our family will have to go back to try the banquet style meal (a whopping 10 courses! burp...) before my fiance and i can decide....to be continued.

a look at their historic tree.

green and chic wedding attire

thoughts of wedding planning sometimes flutter into my head and then i chase them out as quickly as possible because i start hyperventilating. the idea just seems so FOREIGN to me. like hello, i don't even feel comfortable when a group of my friends take me out for my bday dinner! recently, one of the last folks i talked to about my engagement advised me to "have fun" while i'm planning it...but really, fun for me consists of walking around silverlake with my fiance and our dog and then catching lunch at an outdoor cafe. fun rarely involves spending $k of dollars on something i can't even wear :( the last time i checked, i don't believe i can "wear" a wedding.

so how does one keep a wedding on the more "affordable" side? how about making your own dress out of recycled materials? not only will you save money, you will also be kind to mother earth while you're at it. look at this dress made out of plastic shopping bags. i love how the plastic bags were twisted into rosettes.

this dress is made from pieces of newsprint and torn up magazine pages. a schlack of clear binding liquid hardens the dress so the pieces of paper can keep its form. if it was in pure white, would this make an acceptable wedding dress as well?

and if you know about chinese weddings at all, there are multiple outfit changes during the reception. first comes the wedding dress, then the red chinese cheungsam, and finally a gown of your choice. how about this one for the gown portion? funky but chic, don't you think?

so basically, all i really need to do now is to gather all the white plastic shopping bags that i can find and to save all the newspapers that my dad goes through. and the brown bags for the gown? i guess i better increase my shopping sprees to bloomingdales!

but whatever the case may be, a wedding will probably involve an outfit or two right? in my case probably three. i still have a lot of time to decide...and that well wisher is right. i should have a lot of fun while figuring all this out...like how to wear plastic bags in the most gorgeous way possible.

**the first two dresses came from an art exhibit at the l.a. county fair. the last dress can be found at scp's bloomingdales customer service department.**

ENGAGED! say whut?!

seriously, my momma can't believe it either. for the longest time, she thought i was a lost cause, a spinster in the making because i never brought a boyfriend home. i would if they weren't so darn old school. with the older generation, dating is not part of their verbage so bringing home a boyfriend was an announcement to the world that marriage was imminent. like book a banquet hall ASAP and call all the uncles and aunts. so for the longest time, i didn't even indicate to my parents that i was even dating, until it got rather serious with the ex. to make a long, painful story short, let's just say that this is not my first engagement ring in my life, that i made a very painful but mature choice, and that things finally ended between me and the ex. i think my mom felt rather devastated for me. that in itself, was the hardest burden to bare.

i think for two years, my momma must have prayed rather hard for me because about a year ago, buddha finally answered her prayers and i started dating my boyfriend, now FIANCE :) he is a wonderful man, caring, kind, and considerate. he reminds me every day that loving someone can be effortless, drama free, and completely mature. i feel so content right now. so, so, content.

we knew we would eventually get married and last weekend, he proposed with the most beautiful tiffany engagement ring. ahh, the dude knows me so well! :)

i feel so, so blessed to have found a great partner in life. and to be spoiled with such a lovely engagement ring is like delicious cream cheese frosting on a spectacular red velvet cake. completely decadent!

being engaged makes me feel so nervous. i don't know if i can handle "wedding planning" when the easiest, most bagnatic thing to do would be to just run off to vegas and make it short, simple, and sweet. ack, but the parental units are involved and the initial convo we've had sounds like a full out chinese banquet to me. i'm thinking the wedding might be in 2011, after i'm offically done with my 2nd masters and we can save a penny or two. but till then, i'll continue to blog about the process, my other loves, and all the other stuff that makes this online outlet my escape route of choice when i need an escape.

*sigh* engaged. what an odd feeling it is. if you haven't already guessed, my momma is THRILLED. in fact, i think she likes my fiance more than she likes me! you should see the lunches she packs for him when we visit my parents on sunday. i know she's already counting down the days till i pop out her first grandkid. 2011 is not sitting well with her at all...to be continued!