Entertaining a save option.

After trying out a few games at Play 'n' Trade today, an idea hit me that I thought would be hilarious..... about as fun as my cosplay wedding idea. =P

Yubo and I both tend to save our game before big decisions (and big bosses, of course), so I thought that might be a fitting gag for our wedding day.

We are going to have a projector down anyway and display a Chinese translation of our vows. I was thinking that before Yubo says "I do," he could turn to the projector which would now display a save option to save his "game" before proceeding to his answer. ((I've seen him do this A LOT in most of the games he plays, mostly to try out all the answer options))

Then we would finish to when I say "I do," and I would then turn to the projector and overwrite his save with my save, and then have the screen show something corny like "Save complete. There's no turning back now."

In a more extreme version, he would answer incorrectly and have to load the save point.

We thought it'd be really funny, and fitting for us. Thought our friends would understand it and maybe get a good laugh. Wondering if it might be something we really want to try, or if we should keep it with the cosplay wedding idea. I mean, we just want to have a fun wedding that fits our personalities and lifestyle.

Opinions?

Invitations.

Got the invitations ordered today. Ugh, they were pricey, but they'll look great.

Got most of the addresses on our guest list, but it's been a little frustrating getting the few remaining on both our sides. Yubo's also been a little stubborn about getting things done in my time frame. =P I let him push it off long enough, I think. I just want to get things done and over with now so we don't have to worry so much as we get closer to it. Haha... we'll see how long I can cling to that hope.

Latest on wedding planning.

I spent about a week in L.A. to get wedding planning done. My poor dad seemed to have missed the memo that my visit was for wedding planning so he was grumpy all week. I only got to have lunch with him once. =/

Cake
It was really stressful because I never got around to scheduling tastings before my flight, so when I called bakeries after arriving in L.A. I found that most of them wanted appointments made at least 3 days to a week or two in advance. I was really frustrated, but Mrs.Crumly saved me by getting an appointment with a bakery that a friend of hers used. This bakery ended up being the one I chose to go with.
Creative Cakes by Rockwell in Orange, CA. Their cake was absolutely delicious. They were reluctant about our filled cupcake idea, but the baker actually tried it and it worked out perfectly! I'd post a picture but I don't know how to get a picture off my phone onto the computer. It was the baker that sold us because she was so willing to try out our idea. The other thing that sold us was that they were priced so much better than the other bakeries we went to.
With that settled, we need to get the cake stand built (which Mr.Crumly is going to work on with a friend) and find a cake topper.

Photo/Video
After lots of talking with my mom, she gave up on trying to drag me around Long Beach and we went straight to L.A. Color in Pasadena. I love that they are familiar with both Chinese and American weddings, which isn't something I could confidently say of anyone I would have met in Long Beach. They are pricey.... not the most expensive I found, but pricey. However, we were able to put together a great package with them.
We saw some of the videos they had, and my mom saw how he put together a video of audience reactions to the slideshow pictures. So now she wants to do a slideshow. Mrs.Crumly freaked out a little bit when I asked her to pull pictures of Yubo. =P

Flowers
Unfortunately, the flowers that my mom bought from the silk market weren't quite as I pictured. There was some strange miscommunication. She thought I wanted something like white, off-white, and pink. I wanted pink cherry blossoms, white Stephanotis, and red Chinese peonies. My mom got some Stephanotis that were perfect, but we weren't able to find more. The cherry blossoms had more than 5 petals, unlike the Japanese ones I wanted. And the Chinese peonies she had a few of were white. She got some other peonies (different species) that were this weird dark pink and were too full and bulby.
She didn't want to pressure her best friend about the flowers because she just got remarried, so I suggested to just take on the flowers with our friend Edith up here in WA.

Wedding Gown
Met with Sylvia, Mrs.Crumly's coworker and friend. She's excited about working on my gown, but told me it would have to be three separate pieces (a top and two skirts), which I didn't really want but I suppose that will look best. For now I think all I can do is hope it actually turns out the way I have it pictured in my head.

Bridesmaids Dresses
One of the biggest frustrations. We managed to find this elusive Jordan 543 dress from a lady named Cecile in Glendale that was willing to order the sample for us to try on. I personally don't care for this lady, but she was cheaper than online options. So as of now, we have the dresses ordered and they should arrive at the store in 6 weeks (+ 1 week to get from L.A. to New York and Washington).

Church
I got to finally meet with our wedding coordinator. She's super nice and friendly, so I look forward to working with her. We got the big things mostly settled, and just need to figure out more of the details, especially sound stuff. Determined that the rehearsal would be on the Thursday before around 6p, so we're thinking about doing dim sum that morning instead of a rehearsal dinner.

Hair and Makeup
LOTS of miscommunication. My sister's friend is really nice, but I didn't get to see her work. She recently called me with a sort of quote, which is waaaaay outside our budget. So we may use Akemi's friend, but I'm thinking of just doing my own hair and makeup.

Music
Got to talk with Mr.A about the music for the day. We seem green; I just need to send him a lyrics sheet with notes on how Yubo and I want to sing our vow song. We also need to pick music for walking down the aisle, and whatever else. I trust him though, so I'm not very concerned about this.
Then I still need to contact my cousin about DJing at the reception. Need to get his number from my other cousin. @.@;;


So that's about where we are now. Still lots to do, so I'm taking a break from work the rest of this month. Also focusing more on healthy living............ sort of. =P And there we are.

The dress discussion continues.

My apologies if I already posted something similar with this information.

I was able to talk more with my mom about the whole dress thing. Turns out that the going rate for renting bridesmaid dresses is about $100 already, so we are finally set on just buying their dresses. We're (or at least I'm) looking specifically at this design in floor length, and in dark brown (or espresso, as their coloring is called). Archie says she's positive she'll look amazing in it, and would definitely wear it again cuz she loves brown. I also think Alex and Akemi would look great. Need to drag Alex into the store to try it on.

My mom argued with me a little bit about this. She told me she has never in her life seen bridesmaids in brown. She tried to sway me to peach or purple or something like that. I told her that I felt in the color scheme of cream, pink, and dark brown, a rich dark brown would be the most flattering. We just need to make sure the dresses are made with good material so they don't look like poo.

Then we got to talking about my dress. Yubo's parents are telling me that their seamstress friend (who did all the dresses for her own daughter's wedding this year) is excited to do it, but is really tied down with making the Nutcracker costumes for the dance studio that she and Mrs.Crumly work at. I told my mom about my convertible dress idea, and she seemed horrified that I wanted to wear something more of a cocktail dress (short) than an evening gown (long) at the reception. Again, she said she has never seen a bride in a short dress at a wedding.

For both dress reactions, I told her that was because she's only ever been to Chinese or Cambodian weddings. =P I think she would have died if I told her there are brides out there with black bridesmaids dresses (and even black wedding gowns in some cases). We'll see about the length of the reception dress. I like it short for a more spring feel, and also for ease of movement. I think it will also keep me from feeling huge when I have the larger skirt for the church on top.

I will be in L.A. for a week in January to try to finalize a bakery, photographer, videographer, and dress things. Hoping to get as much done as I want to.

Mmm.... drama.

It had been a while since my last break down with Yubo, so I figured it was about time for another one.

We've put our premarital counseling sessions on hold because we all got so busy, Pastor Wayne included. We've talked about trying to at least get a session in before Christmas, so I wanted to get more homework done. With the homework done, we'd be able to just jump into a session whenever available and not have to put off anything anymore.

There was a Couple's Project from the last session, Roles and Responsibilities, that we still needed to complete. It is a Roles Position Statement, about what we agree our roles should be when we're married.

The next session is Money, Money, Money. I was really excited about this one because it had charts in the Couple's Project for us to figure out a budget. I've been wanting to do that for a long time, but Yubo never had the time to just sit with me and go over it.

As we started going through the homework, Yubo remained distracted by the TV. I got frustrated because his attitude told me that none of this was important at all. I eventually left the living room to hang out with the cats in the bedroom. When after a long while he didn't come find me, I came back out and asked if anything more discussion was going to happen. He pointed out that I just got up and left. I told him that I was feeling ignored and had nothing else to do (especially since he started getting more and more interested in the commercials), and was also wondering where the cats were.

The tension was obvious. He tried to escape by offering to get food. As he got up, I threw out that we needed to find a way to not hate each other. He ended up sitting back down and explaining his position. The homework to him was tedious and unimportant, although he did recognize that the discussions were important.

I told him that nothing in his attitude or approach made it seem like anything in what we were doing was important, which -- as often happens with girls -- made me feel like I and we were not important. That turned into an outpouring of how ignored I was feeling for the past couple of days. I started crying. Blah blah blah. I mentioned that I hated feeling like this break down would make things better for a while before he reverted back to the way he usually is and the cycle continues.

After all that, I ended up leaving to get food. I knew he needed me to be away for a while, and I knew he was hungry. So was I, especially after all that crying. Afterwards, it calmed down a little bit. I still felt tension but tried not to show it. I think since I did that, he was able to feel like everything was ok.

We managed to get through the Money^3 homework. He was still distracted, but I was able to contain my frustration.

It's difficult for me to not apply his actions to other aspects of our relationship, even though they're not related. I tend to take things too far in my head. Even now, thinking about his procrastination, I wonder if he would never have proposed to me until I was about to leave him. That really has nothing to do with putting off homework, but that's how my mind works. Ridiculous extremes. I'm working on it, though. At least I don't say these things out loud as often as I used to. And now I can tell myself how retarded it is to even think like that.

Ugh. We'll get through it. I just really wanted to resolve more things before we actually get married rather than have to continue to work on them after the fact. There's him procrastinating and me wanting to get things done asap. A happy medium is somewhere in there.

Our latest test...

...and don't worry. It's nothing at all like Eric and Cara's. =P

Oh, the big issue of trust. Trust between each other (more my trusting him) and trust in the Lord.

We just became regulars on one of Lighthouse's worship teams. Really exciting, and such an honor for both of us. It's also neat that we're on the same team. Yubo and I really enjoy doing ministry together, despite the occasional butting of heads.

We got the e-mail asking us if we would become regulars on Sept. 26. After a good amount of prayer on our own, two days later we replied that we would love to join the team. Nothing was quite confirmed for us yet until we received another e-mail on Oct. 4 that our team was going to be the following Sunday.

Some of you readers may have noticed the mini comment battle on the "Playing House" entry -- that happened Oct. 5. We'll be very honest that the comments got under our skin quite a bit. We were wondering if it was conviction from God or if it was Satan's ploy to make us step down. We were a bit alarmed that such comments came so soon after our joining the worship team.

We both continued to pray and sought some counsel. The things that stood out to us the most was how judgemental the comments came across, and also that it was left anonymous. It was a little creepy that the commenter seemed to know so much about us, and may have been from Lighthouse. We figured that if it was really someone of God that wanted to support us in our walk with Christ and convict us of something they felt was wrong, they would not have stayed anonymous and actually would have come to us in person instead of online.

As we prayed, neither of us felt that we were supposed to step down. When we got over that and decided to go to rehearsal on Wednesday as scheduled, it felt good to be there. There were a few snags that didn't sit too well with us, but I won't post it here. We're going to find a time to approach our leader about it, but we felt it was more of Satan getting in the way.

So at the moment we both trust that this is what God wants us to be doing. And of course, if He tells us otherwise along the way, we both have no problem with that.


The next test just happened a short while ago, although it's been building up. Yubo's best friend wants them to invest in a little coffee thing. I don't know what they're actually called, but those little huts that usually sit at the edge of gas stations. Anyhow, the seller of one up in Stanwood (which is nearly an hour north of us) wanted to meet on Saturday (tomorrow).

The problem was that we already had quite a number of things booked for that day. He has a plumbing thing for the neighbor of one of our Lighthouse friends scheduled in the morning. Then we have a section leaders' meeting at our choir director's house at noon. Then we were schedule to help with assembling AIDS Caregiver Kits (a big project that our church has undertaken -- we're planning to assemble a total of 500 for World Vision). It was a lot of church stuff that we both felt took priority. That last one actually dropped for us as there were enough people already (*whew*) so we are considering stopping by the Paper Source to get more definitive pricing on our wedding invitations. We need to give Yubo's parents a cost to see if that works for them.

Yubo was originally going to not go to this Stanwood meeting, but then called me today and mentioned it as he went through his schedule with me. It was the first I heard he was actually going so I freaked out because I was certain he had gotten out of it.

He didn't even know quite where Stanwood was, so I hopped online to figure it out. He had things so back-to-back that I was getting anxious and irritated that he was going to miss too much of this choir meeting that he suggested. I was trying so hard to get my heart to stop racing because I was so frustrated with him, and I was just asking him to assure me that it would all work out ok and that I didn't have to worry about it. His efforts didn't quite help..... he's a pretty good salesperson but for some reason he has a really hard time selling me anything. It wasn't until he assured me that no matter what happens, he's leaving Stanwood at 11:00a even if he ends up having to get right back on the freeway and miss the coffee meeting. I don't know if he was originally intending to do that, but that really helped me out.

I told him that I would apologize to him tomorrow if everything actually works out the way he had planned, and would try my darnedest not to be too angry if it doesn't. He just has such a history of when any sort of work is supposed to be quick and easy and shouldn't take too long, something happens that makes things more complicated than he originally predicted and I don't see him for the rest of the day. (That's an exaggeration.... mostly.) It's difficult for me to trust him in this because I think he still tries to please everyone. I even offered to reschedule the meeting with our choir director, but he said to keep it.

Man... I bet it'd be great to get his side on this entry. I'm still working on getting him to blog, guys. I really want you to see his view of our world instead of just mine. And he's still talking about blogging... just waiting for it to happen. =P

Renting Dresses.

The more I get into this dress shopping, the more I'm drawn back to my original plan of renting dresses for both the bridesmaids and myself. Considering that most of my bridesmaids are currently in rather tough financial spots, it seems the better for them. It would be especially good if the cost is low enough that we might be able to split it with them to help them out.

For myself, the part of me that is my dad still likes the idea of renting and not getting stuck with this wedding gown that takes up space in the closet or storage never to be worn again.

I'm not getting so caught up in the aesthetics of the wedding anymore. The most important thing of the day is that we are going to be united before God with His blessing and be in celebration with our loved ones.

I think I do still want to focus more on the photographer/videographer. We want this day captured well, and we want to be able to share it with those that won't be able to make it. The plan is to show a video of the ceremony at the WA reception if a video is available by then.

We have six months to go, but I know that will fly by fast. I also know that things need to booked in time. Well, we'll see how this goes. A lot is going to come together in January when I'm in L.A. for a week before going with my family to China and Cambodia (yay!!).

I'm trying not to stress out or get impatient, and just trying to put it all in God's hands.