Ms. PiggyBoo

Wedding shoes
June 22, 2010

I found my wedding shoes this weekend. My friend and I went to a few places like Macy’s, Kate Spade, Bloomingdales and Nordstrom search for the perfect shoes for my wedding! Well, I want to wear a beautiful pair of shoes at my wedding day although they may not be as visible as other accessories like vail and necklace. Since I am so used to wear many flat shoes, it is very challenging for me to find a heal shoes that I can wear for long hours. I also wanted to wear it in the future rather than a white silk pair of shoes for just wedding. After I had disappointed visits and search from Macy’s, Kate Spade and Bloomingdales, I thought I would not find the shoes today. Well, Kate Spade has various wedding shoes but they are only available on the internet. How am I supposed to know which one is comfortable for me to without trying them on? Bummer Our last stop was Nordstrom at Union Square. We browsed around the causal shoes floor but no luck. Then, when we went to the upstairs for more formal section, there was not a large section of shoes to choose from but I found THE ONE. It is a pair of Jimmy Choo! Yes, I’ve never had such an expensive shoes in my life, but hey I deserved every happiness in my life! I tried on a few pair of JC’s collections and I finally found the one which is perfect for my feet. (Well, I will see how comfortable they might be, but it is Jimmy Choo.) Like I said earlier, I am not used to wear any of heal shoes like more than 1 inch. At the same day, I bought a pair of “practice” heal shoes from Steve Madden. I am wearing this 4 inches (0.75 platform) heal shoes this week at the work. I passed the first day and I am in the second day. Are they comfortable? Yes, as matter of the fact. They are more comfortable than any of my leather less than 4 inches heals. It is still hard to believe that I can hear such a high heal shoes for a long time. Well, I am so happy to see all pieces are coming together for our big day. We sent out the wedding invitation to our guests last week. We have 101 days left for our big day, yay! I just cannot wait to get married

Bridal bouquet
June 14, 2010

Well, it is important to me although I may need to toss it to the group of single “girl” guests at the end of the reception (or not). I know that I don’t want all red roses for my bouquet. I like purple and pink flowers so here are a couple of examples I found from the Knot. Since my wedding is going to be in early fall, I am not sure if any pink and purple flowers are available. I am so clueless about flowers.

Wedding gift registry
June 12, 2010

Mark and I went to Crate & Barrel to register our wedding gifts at very first time! We had a ton of fun to scan through all items we wish to received as generous wedding gifts. Some items are truly useful and practical and some of them are very wishful. We are going to register more gifts at other places so that we can cover various items we would like to receive We are thinking about Macy’s and/or Target.

Wedding web site
April 25, 2010

Mark created our wedding web site which is up and running beautifully. He is very good We are going to update any announcements and information of our wedding to this web site.

June 10, 2010

Mark updated the web site with more information about our decision to choose such a small but intimate and non-traditional wedding for our big day, locations for rehearsal dinner, wedding ceremony and reception. He also added some lodging information in Sonoma and San Francisco for the out-of-towners.

Wedding officiant
April 25, 2010

Mark found a local wedding officiant (Kate Talbot) in San Mateo who can do a secular wedding for us. We made an appointment to see her in Saturday morning. Kate is a very nice lady and has been doing this for 10 years. She showed us many appreciation cards from the couples she performed the wedding. She gave us the sample readings and listened to us what we would want for our wedding vow. The detailed ceremony venue needs to decide but we decided to select her as our officiant for our wedding.

One more item is checked from our To-Do list for our wedding. The list is still long.

Wedding dress
April, 25, 2010

This is my dress I decided to wear for my special day in October. I really enjoyed going to different bridal shops and tried many different shapes, designs and colors. But this is my dress I fall in love with. I am so happy to finally find the dress. I made an appointment to try the Noe again and they took 30 measurements of my body. I am going to have a couture wedding dress.

I already made an appointment my first fitting in July and second one in August. By my first fitting day, I need to find a pair of my wedding shoes and undergarment to wear on the day. I also need to search for my hair accessories and veil to go with. I have a lot more to shop for my wedding date. I am so relieved and exciting at the same time.

p.s. Here is the fact. Before I could image to get my own wedding dress, I found Amy Kuschel web site a couple of years ago and book marked her web site. Somehow, while I was looking for my dress, I honestly don’t know why I didn’t make an appointment first time. Well, after many tries, I landed her salon and found my dress.

Wedding dress (tryout)
April 17, 2010

My wedding dress search continues today. This is my 3rd place to visit the bridal shop. I had an appointment at 11 am at Amy Kuschel in San Francisco downtown. The location was very close (1 block & 1/2 street away) from my 1st tryout place. Amy Kuschel has two floors in the building; one is for showroom/salon and second is for her own design/workshop. The process was similar to the other two places, but it is more formal to me. The salon was very spacious and bright 5th floor facing Grant Street. I love the salon! A selection of wedding gowns was smaller than other two but reasonable amount for one designer. She has not only her own designed dresses to choose from, but also beautiful hair pins, veils and different color and type of wedding sashes and ribbons.

A nice girl, Katrina, was my coordinator. We briefly discussed what I have tried on and liked the style and shape of the dress. We talked about my budget (sshhh… I won’t tell) of the dress. She would let me know if the dress I chose would be over my limit. That is a nice warning! I even told her which dresses I liked from Amy’s web site. She told me that the price I see is what I am going to pay includes alternation fee. Once I decide the dress, they will do 30 (thirty!) measurements on my body. Which means, I will have one and only dress in the world!! After we chatted over these things, we finally went through each her collection and picked up what I like within my budget. I picked 7 different dresses. I mainly focused on trying the slim or modified A-line dresses this time. During my 2nd tryout, I discovered that I prefer to have slim A-line to just A-line dresses, because I look taller and slimmer Since no picture was allowed (again) during dressing up, no picture of me with the dress I love, but here is Noe.

Due to time constrains, I need to make up my mind to pick up the dress by the end of this month, so that my dress is going to be beautifully altered before my wedding in October. I don’t want to rush my decision but I am very leaning toward this place to make my dress for my special date. Oh, decision, decision…. Well, I don’t intend to go for my 4th appointment with other places. I think I know what I like now. It is funny that the dress I originally dreamed about was not actually I ended up liking. This happened to me for picking up my engagement ring with Mark. I had a wonderful time to try on many different types and shapes of wedding dresses. It is too bad that I need to pick up only one from these collections. Well, all I need is only one to wear anyway.

p.s. During I was trying out her dresses, Amy (the designer) came down from her workshop upstairs to the showroom and greet the guests. She was a very nice lady and fashionable, of course.

April 4, 2010

I went to a different place (Bridal Image) to try on my wedding dresses yesterday. It was my second tryout. The place is bigger and has more selection (bargain) of weeding dresses than Novella. However, I just didn’t feel very enthusiastic about that place. I don’t know why. Is this the location or interior of the place or a lady who helped me to coordinate? It is about the same numbers of dresses I tried on, but NO PICTURE (boo boo) to be taken. Hence, no pictures to be shared. Well, the lady didn’t do good job at all to fit each dress properly to my body. It was always loosen to my body so it is kind of hard for me to see how well the dress was fit. I tried on a different kind of dress, trumpet or mermaid, this time. It was good on me but I still like A-line & strapless dress after all. Although they had a bargain price dresses, I wouldn’t go back there to pick up my dress. Sorry, an old lady Well, I only had two options to try on but I decide to try one more place before I decide to go back to Novella. I will need to make a call this week if I can make an appointment within 2 weeks.

My dress search to be continued….

March 28, 2010

I did my very first tryout of wedding dresses with my friend, Misaki, at Novella Bridal near Union Square yesterday. The reason why I picked up this place to try on my first wedding dresses was that they carries a couple of my favorite design dresses with a reasonable price. The appointment was one hour long and one friendly girl, Matie, was my coordinator. I told her what my style I have in my mind which is A-line and “sweet and cute” with beading decoration. Well, within one hour; actually we went over an hour appointment because her next appointment was canceled, I tried 9 different dresses! There is only one size per dress. When I undressed in the fitting room, she came in and helped me a wedding dress one at the time. I simply couldn’t wear a wedding dress by myself!

The first dress was very beautiful design but I would never picked it up by myself. It was just simply elegant. It was funny how to tie the dress together to fit my body was using three jumper cable claws on the back of my dress. All dresses were amazingly fit my body properly with this technique. Each dress was different in its own way. I could simply reject some of dresses at the first attempt, but others I had to try twice. It was a very happy and exciting experience to try them all, since I will wear only one dress at my wedding. Within these tryout dresses, I narrowed down my favorites to two dresses so far.

I am going to a different place next Saturday to do the same thing. I hope I can make up my mind to wear on my big day within a couple of weeks because it will take 3-4 months to order my dress and another 6 weeks or so to alter my dress to fit my body. Then the final fit! It is a long process for sure.

Wedding ceremony location
March 28, 2010

Mark and I have been searching a perfect place to have our wedding ceremony. We really want to have a small, intimate and romantic wedding ceremony. We had two options of location to marry; winery or beach. Since we live in San Francisco, it is not hard to find wineries and vineyards in Sonoma and Napa Valley. We did two Saturdays (March 13 and 20) trip to Sonoma Valley to search for our wedding ceremony location. We ended up going to close to 10 different places with two trips; we even ended up going up to Santa Rosa which is 2 hours drive from San Francisco. Each winery or vineyard offers us different things, but we have a budget for our wedding and preferable date to get married. We found out some interesting facts that month of June and August through October are the most popular months and Saturday is the popular and expensive day to get married. Site fee of some wineries is double to triple if the ceremony happens on Saturday. All of immediate family members from us are out of towners; flying from Japan and Texas.

After two trips and more researching, we found a place to have a wedding ceremony at Gundlach Bundschu(gun-lock bun-shoe) vineyard. They allow us to have a daytime ceremony since the spot to have an intimate ceremony is isolated from the wine tasting building. GunBun also offers a rehearsal dinner at the barrel cave. It was something we both are interested in. Well, I think I can say we nailed down the ceremony location, yay We are still exchanging emails with an even coordinator at GunBun to clarify our outstanding questions. But we are hoping to make a final decision within a week.

More pictures are accessible from Picasa album.

p.s. Wedding planning requires a lot of works and collaboration with each other. Things are coming along but a list of things to do is still long and undecided.

Engagement Ring
March 1, 2010

Mark popped the question to me on January 22, 2010. I was waiting for this wonderful moment. A few moment of silence scared him little bit because it took me a while to comprehend his question and answer to his proposal. Of course, I said “YES” and obviously cried for happiness ♥ ♥

Now, it was time to look for a perfect engagement ring. “Perfect” means what we (well, mostly I) love. Mark has a certain view and opinion about a diamond (which is commercialized to say “Girls’ best friend” or “Forever love”). We searched a very specific criteria and place where the diamond is produced. We searched online and dropped by a few of jewelry stores in the city includes Tiffany & Co.

Since I don’t usually buy a fine jewelry, I didn’t even know what kind of ring (i.e. cut, clarity, color and carat weight) I wanted. After we educated ourselves about diamonds from jewelers and internet resources, we kind of narrowed down what type of ring with 4Cs (with a Tiffany’s term) and found a store to go.

Brilliant Earth in San Francisco was the place. We made an appointment on February 4 to see the ring. I created a couple of images of ring I wanted in my mind while I was browsing the internet, but when I tried them, unfortunately they were not good on my finger or I didn’t find them beautiful after all. After 2 hours appointment, we picked up the ring we both loved. It was a platinum “Tiffany” or solitaire setting with a round/brilliant cut with 6-prong diamond. We even looked at the actual diamond we picked up under 10X microscope. It was a very simple setting ring with a big diamond. Since the ring and band are very classic, I can have more options to choose a wedding band from. More exciting time for me later.

Since it took about 2 weeks to create and receive the ring, we couldn’t get it by the Valentine’s day when Mark originally planned to give it to me. When we returned from our London/Dublin trip on February 18, I was so anxious to see and wear the engagement ring. When Mark checked with the BE person on Monday, February 22, he was going to pick up the ring on the Thursday. Since I have waited it more than 2 weeks, I could wait another a couple more days. Well, he actually didn’t tell the truth about getting the ring on Thursday. He already picked up the ring on that Monday!! He totally tricked me

When we picked up the Indian food for dinner on Monday, he left a ring box inside of a take-out brown bag. He asked me if I wanted to have a dessert. When I looked at the inside of the brown bag (with Chicken Masala curry) in the garage, here was a wooden box!! It was the ring box. Once he saw my surprised face, he downed his one knee and proposed me again with the ring. When he opened the box, I saw the most beautiful and gorgeous ring I have ever seen. My eyes were filled up with tears from eruption of joy. It was hard to see the ring with teary eyes, but it was such an elegant and sparkling ring.

From the next day and on, I flaunt my ring to everyone at everywhere Every time I look at this ring, my heart starts pounding and I naturally put a big smile on my face. It is a symbol of his affection and love for me. I dearly love him and I cannot wait to marry him.

Our next Plan for wedding to decide where and when to marry and what to wear. I’ve already started browsing a wedding dress.