We recently had our engagement photo session with our photographers Jesse and Crystal from Knot Photography.  Jesse and Crystal are both partners and husband and wife.  Jesse takes the grand pictures while Crystal has very insightful visions of the details.  We took advantage of the warm weather we've been having and decided on three main locations for our photo shoot, all withing five miles of our home.  We first went to Malaga Cove Plaza in Palos Verdes where charming fountains and iron gates make the perfect backdrop for some elegant pictures.  There is also a little park at the Palos Verdes Library for some cute strolling pictures.  We then drove to the Trump Golf Course for some pictures in front of the grand Country Club.  We then hiked down to the beach at Portugese Bend where Mr. BAW proposed exactly one year ago.  We all had a wonderful time.  I especially enjoyed the photo session because Toby was with us the whole time. 

For most couples, they want their engagement session to be very casual.  Many even wear jeans and t-shirts for the photo shoot.  But I wanted the engagement photos to be a little more formal.  Afterall, how often do you get to have someone photograph the two of you on a date.  And with such beautiful scenary, I wanted to get a little dressed up.  So Toby wore his bowtie for the occasion.   Here are three montages I put together, some in color and some in black and white.  I love how the pictures turned out and are excited to have Jesse and Crystal document our up-coming wedding.

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Life is all about compromises and decisions.  So when we got engaged, we identified a few things that are most important to both of us and we were going to save on others.  The wedding site and the food were at the top of our lists.  For some reason, flowers are not terribly important to me.  Therefore I decided that we were not going to allocate much budget to flowers at the wedding and reception.  I've decided that I want candles as our centerpiece at the reception.  So all we really need are bouquets for me and the bridesmaids and boutonnieres for the groom and groomsmen. 

I was never really picky about flowers either.  I've always love roses.  So hardy, so elegant, and so many colors.  But lately, after browsing so many weding websites, I've fallen in love with peonies.  These large but delicate flowers are so fragrant and sensuous.  The pastel colors are soft and regal.  I happened upon them at the local Trader Joes of all places.  They were cheap, $6 per bundle.  I bought some with the intentions of using them for our engagement photos.  I ended up forgetting to bring them to our photo shoot.  Don't ask, I was quite upset.  But in the process, I decided that it wasn't difficult to make my own bouquet!  Take a look at the one I made with the peonies from Trader Joes.  I stripped off the excess leaves, cut down the stems evenly and wrap the bunch together with a large ribbon.  The flowers are so beautiful that you really can't mess up! 

Of course there are many things to consider...such as the availability of peonies in September.  Unfortunately, after some net research, they are NOT available in September.  A true shame because they are so beautiful and hardy.  The bouquet I bought on Saturday is still gorgeous today, 4 days after!!  Which means that I can make the bouquets two days in advance of the wedding and keep them in water.  Alas, such beauty are only available to May and June brides.

But the lesson here is that I really think I am going to make my own bouquets with whatever flowers are available in September.  My trusty backup will be some form of pale roses.  But some people on the net have suggested gardenias as a substitute for peonies.  I hope to make bouquets for under $15 per person.

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I did it, I got my Chinese wedding dress...also known as qi pao.  Traditionally, the Chinese wedding dress has to be red for a bride.  It is made of silk with heavy embroidery.  The most popular embroidery design for a bride is the phoenix and dragon, symbolizing the bride and groom.  However, I feel that the phoenix and dragon design is too gaudy.  So when I found this dress while shopping with my mother, I immediately wanted to try it on.  The design is a simple floral design, very clean. 

The best part of it all is that it fits me very well.  The length is perfect.  Since the cut of the qi pao is very slim, the dress has two slits on the sides of the dress to allow for walking.  Many qi pao have slits that are way too high for a family affair!  But this dress has conservative slits that still allows me to walk comfortably.

I will wear this dress for the Chinese tea ceremony prior to the traditional Western ceremony.  The tea ceremony is an act of serving tea to the bride and groom's parents and grandparents as a gesture of appreciation for raising them.  Sometimes other elderly relatives such as aunts and uncles will also participate as a gesture of respect from the bride and groom.

Since I will only be wearing this dress for less than an hour on the day of the wedding, I may decide to wear this dress to our rehearsal dinner the night before. 

The details of the dress...I like the floral pattern, it goes well with our Cherry Blossom theme. 

The details of the neckline...there's a key hole design and the chinese knot button. 

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Happy Father's Day!!! 

Here's the front picture of the Father's Day card I sent out to both of our fathers.  This just gives you a glimps of what Toby's work day looks like. :-)  He's quite the hard worker...as his co-workers snooze away, Toby's busy slaving away in front of the computer.  That's a real tie he's wearing!  As you can tell, he wasn't so keen about having to wear a tie.

We had our engagement photos taken yesterday and it was a fun experience.  Our photograpther and his wife (also photographer) was extremely fun and easy to get along with.  They are a young couple, in their late twenties and recently got married themselves.  They love dogs so they were happy that we brought Toby along for the photo shoot.  Toby had his bowtie on and looked extremely dashing. 

We drove to a few local places for the photo shoot, including Palos Verdes Beach down by Portugese Bend where we got engaged.  I can't wait to get the pictures from the photographer.  I'll share some pics once I get them.

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As I have been busy preparing to send out my invitations I started to realize that I must comlete and finalize our wedding website since the website is printed onto our invitations.  Luckily, I have been working on it for months now.  The only thing I'm lacking is the Guestbook feature.  But in order to put in a Guestbook freature, I have to leverage off of the Comments feature on my weblog.  But apparently, I can only make one guestbook at a time, I have to disable the comments feature on my weblog until after the wedding.  At that point, I can transfer all of the Guestbook entries into another file and re-activate my comments feature on the weblog.  I'm sure there are other ways and services that will allow me to make a new guestbook, but I would like to incorporate my wedding website design so I would need to have full html control.  So for now, if anyone has comments to post regarding my blog, they'd have to email them to me. 

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What can be more romantic than Old Blue Eyes himself?!  I've been extremely busy the past week preparing our wedding invitations.  The main task of cutting 450 pieces of cardstock into 150 sets of invitations takes a long time, especially when you're a perfectionist like myself.  No one could help me because I had to ensure that each component of the invitation was cut right down the line so that none of the red borders showed, or too much of the cards were trimmed off.  So the only way to do it exactly the way I wanted it was to do it all myself!  It's ok, I gave myself tons of time to finish. 

After that, what's left?  Preparing the envelops of course!  I purchased 200 cream envelops from Kelly Paper last month to go with my invititations.  I wanted to print our return address on the envelops but I have terrible luck with printing envelops on my printer so I wanted to avoid that frustration.  I also wanted our cherry blossom theme somehow printed onto the envelops.  So I decided to make custom stamps, designing my own return address and floral stamps at Impress.  I had ordered customized stamps from them before and they were great. 

So I spent one afternoon stamping away, all 150 envelops!  I stamped the front with our return address and the back flap with the floral design.  It's trickier than meets the eye!  You have to be very careful not to smudge the ink, not to touch the envelops with your red fingers accidentally, and to ensure that they are COMPLETELY DRY prior to stacking them together.  I ended up allowing the ink to dry for a few minutes and then going over each envelop with a tissue to blot out the excess ink before allowing them to dry for a few more minutes.  Even such careful handling, I got a tiny bit of ink on a few envelops...but so faint that probably on I will notice.  I do like that the print from the stamp is a little faded in some areas, kind of like postal parcels from the past.

Ever since I started making invitations I've been reading about the whole process of postage stamps and post offices online.  There's been so many horror stories of invitations being too heavy, postage being ugly, and rude postal workers that I was a little nervous about my first trip to the post office.   However, I discovered a little gem...the El Segundo Post Office.  For those who don't know, El Segundo is a quaint little city where I happen to work.  This little quiet town has a post office that feels like you're at Mayberry.  The staff is super friendly.  I went up to ask for wedding invitation stamps.  The woman immediately shows me their hearts design but asked me when I needed to send out the invitations because the stamps won't come out til mid June.  She also showed me the new Sinatra stamps.  I personally think that the Sinatra stamps are adorable and perfectly sentimental for wedding invitations.  I'm sure we'll be playing some Sinatra at the reception.  So that was it, I bought 150 Sinatra stamps.  I also purchased 150 postcard stamps for the RSVPs.  The total was $100.  During the ringing up, the postal lady told me that I should bring a sample invitation in to let them weigh it.  She also explained to me what hand canceling means...that they won't run the invitations into sorting machines so they will stay nice and clean.  She told me to bring the inivitations into the post office on Thursdays (their least busy day) and they will hand cancel them for me.  She also congratulated me on the upcoming wedding and shared her engagement ring story with me!!  So sweet.  I'm definitely sending my invitations out through them! 

The last thing I will do before I address the envelops and stamp them is that I'm sending an RSVP postcard to myself, just to make sure it works.