Long time no post! There's been a lot of drama in weddingland. Luckily, it's mostly been sorted out, and we are moving forward with the planning. Lots of you know the story, but I'm not going to write about it yet. You'll just have to wait. :)

But! I had one detail I did want to share with you. One of the things J and I wanted with the groomsmen was that we didn't want them to wear tuxes. We are not super formal people, so while our wedding does have formal touches here and there, we wanted the men to wear suits and not feel overdressed.

J was in his friend's wedding in March. His friend is also one of his groomsmen. Their wedding gave J and his friend the perfect time to take advantage of the Men's Wearhouse buy one, get one free sale. Apparently, Men's Wearhouse doesn't mind if the two suits are not for the same people. This was great, because J basically got his suit for half price!

Anyway, one idea I wanted to do was I wanted them all to wear similar ties. I really liked the idea of the boys wearing ties that looked close but weren't the same. So, a couple of weekends ago, J and I hit the mall to peruse the sales.

We went to all the big department stores, and all of them were having sales on their ties. I was pretty proud of myself for picking out the ties, because I didn't pull out the ones we'd bought to compare tie color.

They look really good! We haven't decided which tie will go to whom, but I'm pretty sure they will all look snazzy.
Don't the colors look neat? Additionally, we bought ties for the dads. We are having them wear gold ties. That ties (ha ha) all the colors together. I'm pretty excited to see them on the wedding day!

I've been blogged!

Check it out. Love it!

I've been doing pretty well getting wedding things accomplished lately. I wrote before about the "wedding funk" I was in. There wasn't really anything that jump-started my desire to finish planning this shindig, but there was definitely a sense of urgency resulting from the "HOLY CRAP FOUR MONTHS" realization I came to. There is so much to do with four months to go until the day, so it was important that I get my butt in gear.

This weekend was supposed to be the florist weekend, but the florist meeting I had got postponed until next weekend. Plus, my sister (who is my maid of honor) was in town. She is the one who designed the save-the-dates, so it was only fitting that we go to the invitation place to pick out our invitations instead!

My ideas about the invitations have been through many iterations. I initially was dead set on pocket invitations. I still love them. I just love how they have the inserts arranged all pretty within the invitation. I looked into them though, and for what I was wanting, they were really just too expensive. I probably still could have had them if I had compromised on some things, like the paper, and instead of having them made to make them myself, but I didn't.

We ended up designing a really pretty invitation that allowed me to use all the pretty iridescent papers that I loved. Instead of a pocket, it's just a long rectangular invite, but instead of having a 5x7 size that I've seen a lot, we made one that was long and skinny, more like 4x11. The best part about this design is we can use the graphic my sister made! I really love that graphic and I am really pleased we worked the whole thing in.

So yeah, we have the order put in! The proofs should be done in a week or so, so once we approve them, they will be printed. I am really excited! The design details will have to wait until the invitations actually hit the mail. Next week...the florist appointment. Hopefully I will have figured out an idea of what I want by then.

The wedding band has been purchased!

First of all, this isn't actually the only wedding band I've purchased. We actually purchased a different one prior to this. When we first started talking about wedding bands, I thought that all I wanted was a plain, white gold band. So that's what we got me. It was pretty, and most of all, it was cheap. However, once I started thinking about it, I realized that I kind of wanted something with a little bling to it. I like the idea of just wearing the wedding band if we travel, so I don't have to worry about my pretty engagement ring, but I didn't want to wear just a plain white gold band. I talked to J about it, and he said that it was probably okay to get something different if I wanted it, as we hadn't spent that much on the first band anyway.

If any of you have seen my engagement ring, you know that it's a cathedral setting with pave-set stones on both sides. When we walked into the store on Sunday, I was first looking for a pave-set band that would closely match the sides of my engagement ring. Since my ring did not come as a set, there is no matching band with the exact same pave-set stones. I tried on a bunch of rings with pave-set, channel set, and even prong set small diamonds all around the band. None of them matched the sides of my ring well enough. I knew that if I just bought one of those, I would end up hating that it didn't match my ring exactly.

I ended up looking for rings that would complement, but not match, my engagement ring. This one ring that caught my eye right off the bat was one that looked like a simple white gold band with some diamonds embedded every couple millimeters. I thought it looked nice, and thought it might go well with my ring.

And it did! I really liked the way it paired with my ring. Funnily enough, this ring was about half the price of the other rings I'd first tried on, so there was definitely some upselling tried on us. It didn't work though, because I think this band is absolutely perfect with my engagement ring. And here it is!

I am really excited about it. The only thing about it is it only comes in a standard size six, and my ring finger is a 5 1/4. We had to special order the ring, and apparently the jewelers are closed during the month of July. The special orders apparently take three months. This is cutting it rather close to our wedding day, but hopefully it will work out! I have my fingers crossed.

Hurray! The save the dates have gone out! Good thing too, because I was reaching the end of the window where it's not weird to receive a save the date. I am very happy to get those out the door.

My sister did the design of the save the date, and she is amazing. They look great. She even designed the custom graphic I have been totally in love with, which has been my one great idea of this whole wedding planning process. It ties together J's Irish heritage and my Chinese heritage.

(image redacted)

The only problem is, I didn't order enough. I also don't really think I should spend the money to order more, so what's been sent out is all I'm sending. Hopefully people will understand that not getting a save the date does not necessarily mean they are not invited to the wedding. We'll see! One more thing done!

The engagement photo shoot was a lot of fun! We met our fabulous photographer, April Greer, at Dragonfish in downtown Portland first. Since I am really uncomfortable having my photo taken, I was really going to need a drink before setting out. Luckily, Dragonfish has some delicious drinks which totally helped.

I'd originally planned on just wandering around either downtown or the Pearl, since I didn't know how far we'd probably go with the wandering. Surprisingly (to me), we really took most of our photos in about a three block radius of Dragonfish. The weather was oddly cooperative as well; even though it had been raining for a bit and really windy before we started taking photos, when we started really wandering around outside, the sun came out and stayed around for the rest of our session.

Not surprisingly, I don't really know how to pose and stuff for the camera. I still felt uncomfortable, despite my delicious drink. April was really great in that she totally gave us direction when J and I just kind of sat there and looked at each other. It was really helpful, especially when we felt really awkward taking photos in public. People really like to stare! Also, since they were engagment photos, it was kind of like just making out all around the city. Not terrible, but kind of awkward with people watching.

The funniest part of the afternoon was when we were taking some photos in the park blocks. April had J and me stand in the grass on this small hill, and as we were trying our best to look like a pair of lovebirds, this homeless-looking guy (girl?) wandered by and yelled at us, "get a room!" J and I just cracked up.

Also kind of funny about the day was that there was this couple taking wedding photos in the same area we were! I couldn't tell if it was the actual day of their wedding or it was a day-after shoot or anything. We took our photos on a Thursday, so it's likely that it was just a day-after shoot. After watching that couple's photographer (and stylist, who was following them around and positioning the couple and making sure the girl's dress fanned out properly...weird!), I am really glad we have April doing our photos. The other couple's photos seemed really weird and oddly posed. I'm sure they will turn out ok in print, but watching them being taken was a whole different matter. In any event, we made April promise not to make us take photos like some of the ones we saw. She said that was no problem, heehee.

Anyway, the photo session was great! We really felt less awkward as the time went on, and I think it will probably reflect in our photos. April told us it would probably be about two weeks for the proofs to be done, so I was really surprised and excited when she sent me a few sneak peeks on Friday! I posted a few below.

So there's our shoot! I am really excited to see the rest of the photos. April is the best photographer ever!

Hello! Guess what, another wedding thing is going to be taken care of tomorrow!

Tomorrow I'm taking a half day off of work, going to get my hair styled by my stylist, grabbing J and meeting our photographer downtown for our engagment photo session! I am super excited, as I love love love our photographer, and I am excited to see what kinds of places we will discover for photos. I am doubly happy because up until yesterday, the forecast for Thursday was showers. As of yesterday, though, the chance of rain is only 20%! And while it would have been nice to have Monday and Tuesday's gorgeous sunshine to take photos in, I have been informed that cloudy skies are actually best for photos as they diffuse the light. So, I guess I will take it.

I spent some time and money with my bridesmaid, K, on Sunday. We took our bank accounts to the cute boutiques on NW 23rd to find some engagment photo outfits. I definitely did my part to stimulate the economy, but I am not sure the stuff I found will work for the shoot. We will have to see how the weather shapes up tomorrow. In any event, I am sure I will find some cute things to wear. Too bad I haven't been following my diet, but oh well. Today's burrito was delicious, even if it wasn't waist-friendly.

I haven't done much planning with my venue lately because I just don't like communicating with them. Also, we heard from a family friend of J's that he thought our venue was up for renewal of their liquor license and it might be denied! Of course, that made me freak out, as most things do these days. However, with more digging around, it seems that the concert venue/bar below our wedding venue is the one that is up for its OLCC license renewal. I guess the neighborhood is unhappy with the drunk patrons from the bar that spill into the residential streets after shows, and are drunk and disorderly or start fights. Hopefully this will not affect our wedding venue! J has already called the coordinators and left a message, so we will see what they say.

Up next (hopefully soon!): flowers, cakes, and fittings! Oh my!