the 1st step…
September 10, 2008
Today we went to the court registering for the marriage license.
It all happened very quick, though. We found a hard time finding a parking spot downtown (as expected) and finally we found one fairly close to the court. However, we only had 20 min. there since after that 20 min., the area becomes a tow-away zone. So, we sprinted straight to the building, scrambling around trying to find the place, and there we are, inside the probate office. Luckily, there was no wait and we started the process almost immediately. We were really excited about the whole process which only took about 10 min. OMG, we did it! The first step of marriage…I can’t believe it’s time already. So, after everything’s signed and sealed, we dashed back to our car and luckily, it’s still there ^^.
38 days to the wedding! Oh nooo……. ^_^.
registry time
August 5, 2008
Here’s a short note on wedding registry:
Initially, I didn’t even think about creating one. In the place where I grew up, we didn’t even have what’s called a wedding registry. Bottom line, I’m just not used to the idea. However, I lived here in US long enough and as I would say over and over again, I read too many wedding mags. In every one of those, there’s section devoted to registry. By now, you must know already what I’m going to say next… Yes, finally I created a registry. Not only one but TWO registries ^.^ (those marketing/persuassion techniques indeed works!).
Well, there’s a reason behind my change of mind (Obviously, those marketing people behind the mags can’t persuade me that easily). Creating a wedding registry is a one-in-a-lifetime event. Why don’t I just make one for fun? There’s nothing to lose and I will get the experience for lifetime.
Edy, well,being Edy, suggests that we creates a registry at amazon.com. That’s completely opposite of what I think of the registering experience I want (the process is just so… unmemorable, you register for everything from your laptop. I want the browse-touch-scan kind of registering!). Anyway, he brought up the pros and cons (why so complicated!? Registry is just a registry) and we finally agree on it. But, later on, I still want to have the traditional registering where you go to a store, browse, and scan. So, I decided to just create another registry (there’s no harm in having more than 1, by the way). I like Crate & Barrel stuff so we went there last week and had so much fun browsing and scanning. I think this is the best solution for everybody (well, me and Edy 
). Enough about wedding registry. Until then…
the b.m. dress
June 1, 2008
I’m quite surprised when the bridal salon called me and said that the bridesmaid dresses have arrived. I thought, from what they said before, the dresses should arrive sometime in mid-June. Well, that’s good then. Better be early than late, isn’t it?
So, with 2 of the girls, we went to pickup the dresses yesterday in Cincin. (1.5 hrs. drive, not too bad). The dresses are beautiful but they need to be altered (as expected) to fit the girls better. Like what I just said, it’s good to have the dress early when there’s still plennnnty of time to alter it.
a visit to Hilton
May 20, 2008
We went to Hilton today to tour the site and met with the just recently hired catering manager. We’ve been in contact with Hilton since last year where the hotel was in its transformation phase (a.k.a. did not look appealing at all) and they still didn’t have a complete staff. We’ve been so excited on this appointment since today would be the first time we’ll see what the lobby, ballroom, etc. looks like (BTW, the sales mgr. informed me that they just passed the building inspection and just got their food license last week and will officially open on mid-June).
Finally, we met with our catering manager (or social manager? hmm….) and thankfully, she’s really nice and helpful. So, they took us to the hotel across their temporary office and voila! We just went in through the side entrance and there is this beautiful wallpapers throughout. The further we went in, the more excited I am. At last, the foyer to the ballroom area! OMG, I’m so excited beyond words. The color of the wallpapers in the foyer, the color and style of the ballroom decor and chandeliers, all of those really well-matched and complement my wedding color theme. I’m glad the hotel turns out beautiful (well, it must be! considering it’s a “fresh-from-the-oven” building as well). All of these just make me more excited and nervous as we are getting closer to the ‘date’.
another video session
May 18, 2008
Yesterday we had another pre-wedding video session. We had our first video session at Bali last year but found that we missed something so we decided to have another one here. I also think since we’ll show the video in both countries, it’s going to be interesting to have videos taken in both Indonesia and US settings.
I started the day by getting my makeup and hair done at 6.45 AM in the morning. I found this makeup artist and hairstylist through some extensive searching (thanks to Google ^.^) and was really anxious how it works. Fortunately, it went really well. I told them what I like/don’t like and they translated my ideas perfectly. I like my makeup and the hair design.
Around 10AM, we went to this park at Dublin and ready to start the session. We’ve been really worried if it would rain but thanks to God, eventhough it’s a bit chilly and windy, it did not rain. However, I’m a bit sad that the strong wind kind of ‘messed up’ my hair a bit but that’s okay, still looks good ^^. Even, toward the end of our session, ‘Mr. Sun’ bravely showed its glory. At the end, we had so much fun and it went really well. We really want to extend our gratitude to Chandra who helped us out in this session.
mock-up invitation
April 27, 2008
We just received our wedding invitation mock-up from indo and sadly, really dissapointed with how it turns out. While we were in Indo last year, we chose the material that will be used for the invitation cover and the color that we chose didn’t turn out as beautiful as we think it would be. To rub salt into the wound, there were a lot of print errors, wrong cards size, etc. Really, really want to cry…
I’m still questioning myself to this day why I chose orange color as my wedding theme. It’s so hard to find the exact orange that I had in my mind which is the rust orange tinged with red. I remembered pink has always been my favorite but for my wedding, I just don’t want it to be pink, lavender, white, or any other color; Just this orange. I’m curious about the meaning of orange color and here’s what Google search yields:
“Orange combines the energy of red and the happiness of yellow. It is associated with joy, sunshine, and the tropics. Orange represents enthusiasm, fascination, happiness, creativity, determination, attraction, success, encouragement, and stimulation.” Well, not bad :).
Back to the topic, I’ve started working for this invitation from Summer last year but it’s almost a year and far from final yet. I almost tought of changing my theme color alltogether. Immediately I called my MOH (at 1 in the morning!) for emotional support and she made me think straight again (Thanks so much!). I think this is the first time that I felt the long distance between me and my vendor really a nuisance. We emailed each other countless times but the result was still not as expected.
Finally, we made a conference call appointment with my stationer on Monday morning (Indo time) so I hope things will work out really well at the end.
so far…
April 24, 2008
So far … so good! We are happy, in love, on-track with our wed prep, and enjoy every little bit of our (before-married) life. Thanks God for Your blessings and always being there for us. Life is so wonderful.
What’s next? I’ve just bought favors and ribbons, finally found makeup artist and hairstylist, DJ’s checked. I think that’s all for now. Oh, no, I have to start listening to a lot of songs. Really need to choose good songs
especially those special songs such as the entrance song, first dance song, etc. This is the most stressful part of all the wedding prep I think. We don’t know a lot of songs except the classic and really famous ones. Often, we’d just turn on the radio and listen to whatever it plays so we might recognize the tunes but have no idea what the title is. I feel grateful that I grow up in the internet era that there is a streaming site called imeem(dot)com where I can just type the song I’d like to hear (the DJ company gave a very long list of songs for us to choose). The website has an extensive collections from users who post their songs there. It’s a very good site, like, right now, I’m listening to True Worshippers newest album “All Things New”.
Furthermore, we have to choose the songs for our Indo wedding. This music things is just a real headache. My mom wants me to choose 70’s and 80’s oldies songs and while I admit that some of the songs are nice, but too much of those will make my wedding feels ‘old’ (like those ‘tembang kenangan’ show. FYI, it’s an old Indo TV show that they no longer have now). I just hope that by the time we have to make the final song list, we can reach an agreement where everyone will feel happy :). Happy all the time, yeah!
cake anyone?
March 7, 2008
I love this part of our wedding planning. I always love cake, even there are times when I crave it so much that I’ll buy the smallest cake available just for myself. Sadly, Edy is not that crazy with cake and often it will end up on the trash since I can’t finish it myself.
We went to a bridal show here in-town on January and we got to taste cake samples from A LOT OF bakers. However, we didn’t like most of them except one that was a combination of chocolate and vanilla cake and not too sweet. After the bridal show, we visited some more bakers and after looking around for a while, we decided that we still like the one we tasted at the bridal show.
I designed the cake myself. I like a simple style cake and decorate it with fresh flowers (sugar flowers are much pricier as well). To complete the wedding theme, I tried to incorporate some part of my invitation and my dress in the design but I didn’t know yet if it’s feasible or not. So I drew my design on a piece of paper and showed it to the baker. The baker said that it looks good (I hope she’s being honest ^^) and helped me chose colors and fine tuning the details. We’ll meet again sometime closer to the wedding date to finalize the details and now, I can cross one more wedding checklist. Oh, it was so fun planning a wedding!
one more task done
February 21, 2008
I’m really excited with this wedding prep. There are so many new experience I’ve yet to see. I’ve met with a lot of people and learnt a lot about having a wedding in US and the wedding industry as a whole. In my spare time, I did some research here and found that the wedding industry is a couple billion dollar industries here. I’m interested in join in the crowd and start business (it’s a low entry barrier industry) in this industry but definitely not right now.
Anyway, I’ve met with couple florists around town. I’m really interested with this particular florist in downtown area but they do not have pictures to show to me. The store is cute and the flower arrangements they put in the store is very beautiful, like those kind of arrangements you’ll find in leading magazine. However, I’m just not comfortable by the fact that he has only a few of wedding arrangements pictures to show to me. Therefore, I decided to move on to other florist. We met with Michael, the owner of Cua florist and he treated us very well on our first consultation. We like his personality, his arrangements are beautiful, and his quote is reasonable so we decided to go ahead with his company. From this experience, I observed one important thing. It’s simple: Service is everything. We met with couple different florists but what sets them apart are the level of service they provided for customers (assuming other factors remain constant or at least comparable). This is an important notion to keep in mind if any of you (or us) want to start a business in US (or anywhere else in the world).
the bridal party
February 11, 2008
Finally, I’ve made up my mind on the size of my bridal party and who I want to be in there. I’ve asked the girls and Edy also have asked the boys. It’s all set now. I’m glad that I started my wedding preparation way ahead so that I can take my time and didn’t feel burn-out. That’s smart of me! ^^
The next step is to order the dress I guess. I’ve found the dress at the same bridal salon where I purchased my gown. The design is simple, the color is pretty, and it’s the kind of dress that you can wear again. About the tux for the boys, no need to worry now. There’s still plenty of time.