Celebrating 4 Years of Marriage

Anniversaries. More than birthdays or holidays, this is the one day of the year you celebrate your relationship with that special someone.

This year, our 4th wedding anniversary, I will be spending it alone.

Definitely sucks and I am crossing my fingers that it will be the last anniversary we spend apart. That old saying- "distance makes the heart grow fonder"? So true.

But not to be a total debbie downer, here's a celebration in photos of our anniversaries past. Enjoy! :)

Wedding day fist-bump

Surfing lessons on our Honeymoon

To this day, still one of my favorite pictures

Our 1st Anniversary, celebrated at Disneyland

My husband surprised me with an impromptu trip.

Around our 2nd Anniversary at my Grandma's 90th Bday

Year #3- A quick B&B Vineyard Getaway

And since it's THT- one of our first photos together- NYE '06/'07. I married such a weirdo, huh? ;) 

Do you have a tradition for celebrating anniversaries?

3rd Wedding Anniversary!

Today is our 3rd wedding anniversary. I can't believe it's been three years already! The time really does fly by. 

Dearest may not make grand romantic gestures, but it's the little things he does, like make me coffee every morning or pick up my favorite foods when I'm feeling down, that make me fall in love with him every day. 
He went as far as suggesting that we go to Disneyland instead of our recent vineyard trip, even though we're going in 3 months anyway and it was his birthday (he's not the biggest fan of Disney, but goes because he likes to see me happy). I declined, which he later told me he knew I would do, which is why he asked. lol.  

Anyway, here's a quick look back:

Probably my favorite photo of the day. 

The gazebo was so beautiful at night.

My brother took this one on the sly.

How awesome is this?!

Yes, we had Mickey Antenna balls as our cake topper. 

Not entirely sure what I was doing, but I'm sure I was having fun. 

Fist bump after the kiss. ;) 

More wedding photos...

Yes, we fist bumped after we kissed.

Wedding Recap!

All in all, I'd say the wedding was pretty perfect. It was better than anything I had imagined and we had such a blast. There were a couple hick-ups, like it being 88 degrees (yikes!) and not accounting for my dress for our first dance, but it made the day more memorable. :)

Some highlights:
Me squinting at Dearest during our vows.

My red shoes!
Hmm. Why am I up here all by myself? ;)

Aww. :)



This is one of my favorites. :)

I'm sure there will be tons more pictures and stories to come! :) Stay tuned for more.

Shower & Bachelorette Fun

A few highlights from my bridal shower and bachelorette night. :)

And they're off!

On Tuesday, I sent my beloved invitations out into the world. And based on the RSVPs I've been receiving, they made it in one piece! I heard a horror story from a fellow bride that her envelope seals didn't hold and her invitations were arriving open and even missing some pieces. Yikes! Getting the mail has never been so exciting.

In other news, I had my first gown fitting with my super talented Aunt. It was really exciting to see the dress on me- and with the right length. The best news- it fits! I can still lose a bit more weight with it still fitting, so that's my new goal. No pictures to post- I want it to be a surprise. :)

My mom made these "kissing balls" for the ceremony chairs. How cute are they!?

It's Official... I'm a Bridezilla.

I went to the Post Office today to buy stamps for the invitations. Each one costs 81 cents to send, but they don't have 81 cent stamps. The poor lady must've thought I was crazy, asking to see a bunch of different designs and styles. I finally decided on using two 44 cent stamps with the King & Queen of Hearts design because they fit together to look like one stamp. And yes, it's wasted postage. My thoughts: after all the time and effort put into those invites, I don't want them plastered with strange stamps. I want them to still look pretty even after going through the rough road of the USPS to your hands. My bridezilla moment for the day. :)

Anyway, invites are going out next week!

I got bored....

...so I made a flower for my hair for the wedding. I picked a vintage-looking button for the center to go along with my vintage engagement ring. What do you think?

Invitations!

I am so happy to say that the invitations are done! We finished assembling them and 95% have been stuffed and addressed, all ready to be sent out in April. It's been a long road with these invites.... After going to Paper Source with my mom and seeing all the beautiful samples with embossing, we were hooked. Seemed easy enough, until we realized that it was 13 stamps (and powdering and heat gun-ing) PER invitation. We made 100 invites. You do the math. Needless to say, I'm glad it's over.

Dresses!

I was browsing through my pictures and found some of the dresses that I've tried on. The dress I chose may or may not be in here. You'll just have to wait and find out. ;)
The first one (pics 1 &2) is a gorgeous Oleg Cassini satin dress with tons of beading and a super long train. The second is so light and flowy- perfect for a beach wedding! It's got a beautiful lace up back, too. The third and fourth are definitely two Dearest would like- they have ruching across the bodice and show off my curves. ;) The fifth I've already posted about, but it was my runner up dress.

Food Tasting!

People only really go to weddings for the food, right? We had our food tasting for the wedding at the hotel tonight. All the food looked amazing and tasted so good. For hors d'voeurves we had crab cakes with a creole remoulade, portobello puffs (red peppers, cheese and mushrooms wrapped in puff pastry) and mini beef wellingtons. Dearest picked the beef wellingtons since we always watch Hell's Kitchen and they seem to be the hardest for the chefs to cook.
Entrees consisted of Sonoma chicken breast served with wild rice, zuchini and squash.
Alaskan halibut with a saffron beurre blanc over mashed potatoes with asparagus.

Herb crusted salmon with a citrus glaze over mashed potatoes served with broccoli and cauliflower.New York steak with a green peppercorn sauce served with yukon potatoes and green beans.
In the end we decided on the chicken, steak and salmon (with asparagus instead of broccoli). A little tip- the steak was by far the best and the salmon a close second. During cocktail hour, you'll be munching on crab cakes, portobello puffs and rosemary crusted lamb lollipops. Enjoy!

Waiting Game...

At this point, the wedding has now become a waiting game. I just booked the florist, which was the last of the vendors to nail down. The next thing on our list of things to do is to taste the food and decide on the menu... which doesn't happen until January. In the meantime, I'm still working on our invitations. It's a ton of stamping, but I still have quite a while before they need to be done.

Other than that, we're gearing up for the holiday season. I busted out the Christmas music a couple weeks ago. :) We're planning on hosting a Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner, so that'll be tons of fun. And of course the Christmas tree and shopping for gifts!

Wedding Update

A few updates with the wedding- we booked our DJ! They always say, the music can make or break a wedding... so we went with a well known and highly rated company. Their customer service thus far has been amazing! We couldn't make it out to their showcase of DJs, so they mailed us a DVD recording to watch with a bag of popcorn! Very nice touch. Dearest and I are still, well I should say Dearest, is still deciding on our music. He has an idea for our first dance, but we'll see. :)

Aloha honeymoon! We're going to Hawaii for our honeymoon! Sadly our road trip wasn't feasible (too many days to take off, etc). Dearest has never been to Hawaii, so he's really excited. I'm sure we'll have a great time kayaking, snorkeling and hiking. Oh, and eating delicious food! MMmmm I can taste the fresh fish already...

Our Ultimate Marriage Test

For our honeymoon, instead of going somewhere tropical like Hawaii or somewhere romantic like Paris or somewhere just down right fun like Australia, we've opted to go on what I like to call The Ultimate Marriage Test. It's going to be 2000 miles, 2 countries, 4 states and 18 days of 24/7 togetherness. The road trip of a lifetime... to Canada! :) We were going to go on a mini-moon to Disneyland, but Dearest wanted to go somewhere new and we're going to Disneyland for New Years Eve anyway. It's not set in stone, but it seems like what we're leaning towards.

Since we're also taking Italian this semester (yes, I'm going back to school, but this time for fun) we are planning to go to Italy for our 1 year anniversary. We figure it'll give us over a year to become fluent.

Speaking of Hawaii, I'm going in a couple days! Yay! Maybe all that swimming and running on the beach will whip me into shape. I'm trying to lose that last 5 lbs! And I'm sure eating chips and all that cake tasting didn't help. :D

Delicious Cake!

We went cake tasting this past week and boy was it yummy! I never knew there were so many different varieties of wedding cake. There was chocolate with chocolate mousse, vanilla with strawberry preserves, lemon with lemon cream, chocolate with raspberry mousse... I could go on for a while. After tasting enough cake to consitute a meal, we decided on the flavors we're going to go with. Each tier will be a different flavor, so be sure to look out for the variety! :) We're scheduling a later appointment to figure out the design and look of the cake.

Engagement Pictures... Check!

A couple days ago, we had our engagement pictures taken by our amazing photographer. Even just viewing a few of the shots on the small screen of her Canon (yay for brand power!), I knew that we had gotten the best photographer for our big day. She's so fun and easy going about things, making what could have been a seriously awkward 3 hours into a fun time with friends. The pictures wont be done for a few weeks and I am SO excited to see them and share a few with you!

And if you're looking for a great photographer at a very low price, let me know! :)

New Job

I started my new job a few days ago and I'm really enjoying it. It's a small team of only 7 people, including me, so it's a tight knit group. Lots of inside jokes that I'm slowly picking up on. ;) Training is going pretty well. I have to admit that the work is pretty basic compared to what I've done before. Just a lot of steps to memorize and products to learn.

In other wedding news, Dearest and I are taking our engagement pictures today! I'm really excited! I'm definitely excited to showcase my shoes. :D We've been waiting to send out 3/4ths of our Save-the-Dates because we want to use one of the photos from our engagement session, so they should be going out by the end of the month. Stay tuned for more news. :)

The Handsome Men

Being a woman and having never worn a tuxedo, I stopped in at Men's Wearhouse to poke around and see what sorts of styles and colors were available. The sales associate was really helpful in explaining the different styles of tuxes (the fit, number of buttons, lapel styles, etc) and colors/patterns. Here's a tux I like.

My main goal was to find a shade of pink that I liked. Pink, our accent color, can come in many many many shades and normally brides bring in their bridesmaid dresses to match the color. I on the other hand, decided to go backwards. I found a shade of pink at Men's Wearhouse and then I'll match everything else to that. Much easier, in my opinion. :)

With the help of my mom, we were able to get an idea of what Dearest and his groomsmen would wear. I know the guys aren't so fond of wearing pink, so I just wanted a pink tie, which matches quite well with a black vest, yet the color really pops. Dearest doesn't like to wear white, so he'll be wearing a silver vest and tie.

She's Here!

I ordered my dress in May and she wasn't set to arrive until early September- smack in the middle of my Hawaiian vacation. I called yesterday to check on the status of the dress and to my surprise, it had already arrived! My mom and I picked it up today and I love it! I had tried it on in ivory, but ordered white and it's beautiful. I can't wait to wear it on our wedding day. Dearest always asks if I want to get a second dress for the reception, but no way! I want to wear it as long as possible! I may even shorten it after the wedding so I can wear it on our anniversaries. :) The wedding seems more and more real now that I have my dress.

Yummy Yummy Cake!

For me, one of the most important things about the wedding is the cake. Only once in your life can you go all out with a cake- like a 5 tier, fondant covered, sugar flower embellished, decadent triple chocolate cake. :) I orginally wanted to have cupcakes because well, cupcakes are so much more delicious than regular cake! But they are pretty impractical for a 250+ reception. There would be cupcakes on the tables, on top of speakers, as "floral" arrangements, coming out of peoples' pockets... So we've decided on a classic cake with a personal twist. Here are a few of my inspirations: