How sweet it is.

I was so surprised and very honored that our wedding was posted on Style Me Pretty!!

photo by Ohana Photographers

Thank you to SMP for the super sweet post and to our lovely coordinator, Paola Spagnoletti of Just Chic Events, for submitting the entry. We could not have pulled off the wedding we envisioned without all these wonderful vendors, whom we love and would highly recommend:

Day-of Wedding Coordinator ~ Paola Spagnoletti of Just Chic Events

Photographer ~ Chris Austin of White Haute Photography

Second Photographer ~ David Baxter of Ohana Photographers

Lighting and drapery ~ Mars and Nancy of Flowers on Mars

DJ ~ Michael Antonia of The Flashdance

Make-up ~ Julie Han (aka miss cakeface)

Bouquets and boutonnieres ~ Liza of Letters 4 Lilly

Cake ~ Laurie Mura of I Believe It's Cake!

Maybe I'll get around to the recaps one day soon...

Concrete jungle where dreams are made of.

Two things I love to do more than anything with my girlfriends are shopping and eating. What better place to do both these things than in New York City?

For my bachelorette trip, my three bridesmaids and I headed out to NYC. I had so much fun and words cannot express how thankful I am to my wonderful bridesmaids. Unfortunately, the other three girls in our group weren't able to make the trip out and they were dearly missed.

Rather than a silly penis veil (which so would not go with any of my outfits), the girls had me wear the Chubby Bunny for Hello Kitty bow headband in the limited edition black sold at the Three Apples event at Royal-T Art Gallery. It was fabulous.

It was ridiculously cold but so worth freezing our LA asses off. We managed to accomplish a pretty good balance of

touristy stuff:

ice skating in Central Park

Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center

posing for pictures in Times Square

more posing in Times Square

controversial Obama ad

Empire State Building

walking across the Brooklyn Bridge (this is how I saw the Statue of Liberty :P)

shopping:

Dylan's Candy Store

just a few purchases from my faves: boutiques on the Lower East Side, Brookyln Industries, Top Shop, Marc Jacobs accessories, Uniqlo

eating:

pizza at John's Pizzeria

delish dinner at the Stanton Social

best bread ever at Bruschetteria on the Lower East Side

McDonald's french fries are so damn good after a night of drinking

Serendipity frozen hot chocolate

The Burger Joint

and drinking:

Stanton Social

W lounge

Silhouette fun at the W

NYC is amazing. This was my first trip out, but definitely not my last. Thank you Emily, Maryn, and Tritia for the fabulous and unforgettable bachelorette trip.

It's official...

...because it's Facebook official. ;)

This girl

is MARRIED.

Was it a perfect night? Hell no. Was it an amazing night? F*N YES!!!!

SO much more to come.

Be our guest be our guest be our guest.

One of my biggest projects for the wedding has been the invitations. The insanely expensive type of invitation that I wanted was not in the budget. I have a love-hate relationship with Adobe Illustrator. It has amazing functions but some things are just so damn complicated. After designing it, I let it sit on my computer for a few (several) months, since invitations did not need to go out until December. I figured the easy part would be printing and sending them out.

Well, December crept up quickly and I ran into several issues during the printing. First of all, the paper was too thick to print on our own printer. Gah. Thank you, mrs. a, for letting us borrow yours! Then, the yellow I used in Illustrator was printing brown the on the printer. Gah. Finally, though I set the size on Illustrator to the size of the paper, it was getting enlarged in the printing. Gah. I am easily frustrated, especially when technology does not work. Lucky for me, I have a very patient, computer-savvy, perfectionist fiance'. He spent several painstaking hours fixing each page. Thank you, mr. c for doing everything for me that I don't have the patience for. You spoil me.

While he printed, I made address labels and return address labels. We used our customizable stamps by Stamps.com purchased from Walgreens during the summer upon a deal alert from this guy.

4 different engagement photos taken by our wonderful photogs, Chris and Erinn Austin.

After printing, we folded each page and perforated the RSVP postcard and it was ready for assembly. I went back and forth on how to bind it. I tried ribbon, I tried thread, I tried staples. I know it wasn't the best looking option, but I went with staples because it was the easiest and I was already behind in mailing them out.

i love this thing. thanks, mrs. gb.

ready to assemble.

The invitations finally went out last Tuesday, with, of course, one more complication. Unfortunately, when mr. c went to mail these out, they weighed 1.2 ounces, 0.2 oz over the 44 cent stamp rate. Gah. So, he had to purchase 17 cent stamps and stick them on each envelope:


I am completely happy with the final result:

it reads: leave us a message...but nothing boring.

Invitation Cover: Kelly Paper Solar White Classic Column $32.59/250 pages
Invitation Pages: Kelly Paper Solar White Classic Crest $21.90/250 pages
Envelopes: Kelly Paper Pewter Class Crest $55.95/250 envelopes

How lucky we are.

We are so lucky to have such ridiculously talented friends.

My long time friend, Laurie, recently started baking and designing the most amazing cakes. When she started posting pictures of her cakes on Facebook, I knew I wanted her to do my wedding cake. She makes cakes for all occasions and her creativity never fails to impress. Here are just a few showcases of her talent:

Can you believe these are EDIBLE?!

I am super excited about what she is designing for our wedding. I know it is going to be amazing. If you need a cake or just wanna see crazy food art, check out I believe it's cake!

My make-up is being done by my high school friend, miss cakeface. If you need make-up tips, you should definitely check out Beauty Booger! We did a make-up trial last month and I could not be more happy with the results:

Thanks, miss cakeface. :)

Here are a few more pictures taken with the photobooth on my new mac book:

I love these lashes.

taking pics of yourself feels kinda awkward. :-)

I'll be getting my hair cut and styled by another high school friend, Kylene. She works at Carlton Hair Salon at Westside Pavillion. I am always happy with the results, like for our engagement shoot:

If you need a great haircut on the westside, make an appointment with Ky.

If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it.

mr. c spent a lot of time designing an engagement ring perfect for me. I didn't even know what I wanted, but apparently he did.

Perfect and lovely it is.

While I was teaching, I got to wear it everyday. I keep it in the box when I don't wear it. Since I started working in a lab again, it stays in the box most of the time because I can't wear it with gloves. My first day, I almost threw it in the trash with my gloves! Eek!

On Saturday, we went back to the same jeweler in LA's jewelry mart to get our wedding bands. Gah, wedding bands are expensive! But, it is something that is going to last a few years lifetime right? ;) Since my engagement ring is custom, I had to leave it there so the jeweler can create a perfect fit for the wedding band. So, as he says, I am "unengaged" for the next two weeks.

Please Mr. Postman, look and see.

I've taken quite a long break from posting and wedding prep all together. I just got back from a week in Hawaii for a WORK trip. Amazing.

view from the Sheraton Waikiki

But I can only use the new job and new apartment as an excuse for so long. Now, it's November and we are less than 100 days away from our wedding!

I love getting things in the mail. Thank goodness for online shopping, especially Etsy!

We got some ties that don't suck for our groomsmen from here:


I purchased a customized feather hair piece from here:


I'm looking forward to receiving our bouquets, boutonnieres, and corsages from here:


One last thing we got in the mail from our photographers, Chris and Erinn Austin:

One super swanky DVD of high-res images from our engagement shoot.

After looking through hundreds and hundreds of pictures of ourselves, we chose several to print out at Target to decorate our new apartment. Here are a few more of my faves...