Monica & Tuan

Tuan and I have been searching long and hard for a flower girl and a ring boy for the wedding. We both love kids and incorporating them into our wedding was something we really wanted (plus dressed up kids make for some adorable photos!).

But our search has been rather ... difficult. I mean we didn't just want to pull some random kids off the street and have them in our wedding (for one thing it would be weird having strange kids in your wedding party, and secondly it would freak both those kids and their parents out!).

Many of our friends don't have kids yet, our parent's friends' kids are all about our age, our niece won't even be 1 year old by our wedding, and other relatives with little kids (such as cousins) live on the other side of the world and are not likely to make it to the wedding.

But this past weekend I had a chance to meet my mother's friend's granddaughter. And the moment I laid eyes on her, it's like a neon sign started flashing in my mind with the words "Potential Flower Girl!!!". The thing is, cute little potential flower girl (PTG) is barely 3 years old. So I still had my doubts. So in the midst of play time with her (we banged out some tunes on the piano, I introduced her to the house pets, played cars and I spy with my little eye), I snuck in the following questions:

• Do you like flowers? Answer: "yes" (Monica thinks to herself "awesome!")
• Do you like throwing flowers? Answer: PTG gives Monica a strange look and says "NO!" (Monica thinks "not so awesome")
• Do you like dressing up and wearing pretty dresses? Answer: "yes. my favourite dress is pink!" (Monica thinks "Yay! One of my colours is pink!")
• Do you like walking in front of lots of people, say like 80 of them? Answer: "yes. my mommy taught me how to walk" (Monica thinks "I don't think she quite understood the question")
• Do you like people taking photos of you? Answer: PTG shakes her head vehemently. (Monica thinks "Too bad, my photographer takes awesome kid photos!")

Turns out, PTG isn't so camera shy after all. And she also knows how to use my Canon digital camera. So I think that if a 3 year old can operate a digital camera, she can be a flower girl. Unfortunately it looks like my PTG might not be in town for the wedding. Her family is planning a summer getaway right around flower girl duty time. And so the hunt continues ...

Labels: flower girl

My name has always been a pain in the sense that it's so long. Not to mention my current signature is just my name in cursive - very boring and very forgeable. One of the side advantages of getting married will be a new shorter and hopefully more creative signature. I find myself testing out different kinds of new signatures with my new name. I'm a doodler, so I find myself trying out signatures just about anywhere. The above possible signature was born on a Jack Astor's tablecloth using crayons :)

Labels: signature

One of my many ideas for wedding favours was to have champagne glasses etched with our monogram/logo. I thought (and still think) that it's a classy gift and could be put to good use and something people would always remember came from our wedding (i.e. personalized).

Searching around for vendors that would make personalized etched glassware was a challenge. And in the end proved to be too expensive. But I couldn't let it go just yet. I decided to try and etch my own glasses. I used champagne glasses from Ikea, my print gocco machine, and some etching cream and did a trial run today. After a few hours and lots of frustration, I made 2 very imperfect champagne flutes:
Some parts of the text did not etch completely, giving our monogram a very jagged and unprofessional look. It was hard to achieve perfect flush contact between the gocco mesh filter and the champagne glass as the glass was not a uniform surface. So next I tried glass votive holders. And while there was improvement, it still wasn't good enough.
Seeing as it took me hours to produce 2 champagne glasses and 2 votive candle holders, I don't think I'm up to the task of producing 250 of these "pain-in-the butts". So while I might do a few more just for myself, I am now brainstorming new wedding favour ideas.

Labels: glass etching, gocco, wedding favours

This year for Valentine's Day, just like for Christmas, Tuan and I are not exchanging gifts. However, that has not deterred me from buying him a card. However, having seen the Valentine's Day card exchange going on at Weddingbee.com, I decided to spruce the card up a little bit. Playing on the "bee" theme (as in "Will you bee mine"?) I totally stole Mrs. Lemon's felted bee idea and came up with this for the envelope:


And as for the card itself, I bought my usual Hallmark card (I am so guilty of flipping over a card and looking for the crown!) but replaced the photo of the strange couple at the front with one of our engagement pics.

I think he liked it. And as it turns out I still got a dozen red roses for Valentine's Day, and a super nice dinner at the Keg (used a gift card we received for an engagement gift from 2 very wonderful friends ... you know who you are ... thanks so much!).

Labels: Valentine's Day

So imagine my surprise when I couldn't fall asleep tonight and decided to surf the web, I discovered that our photographer had put up a few of our engagement pictures on his website!

Labels: Engagement Photos