This past weekend chris and i joined his brother patrick and gf morgan on a mini road trip up north to johnstown ny to attend his cousin scott's wedding.
of course i bring my camera on the trip but i fail to remember to bring it to the wedding?! "big headed shrimp" i am, chris would agree. it was my first ever DAY wedding! i have to say it was not so bad and it was pretty much like any other evening wedding i have been to, except it ended when the sun was still sorta peeking out. the weather held up for the outdoor ceremony, where the bride and her bridesmaids walk down a white bridge over a pond (really pretty). as soon as lunch/dinner started, we notice the rain pouring down!! but all is not lost. the reception was indoors so it didn't matter much. in actuality, it was soo romantic! all the guests throughout the party ventured outside to watch the rain fall and to catch some fresh air. (if i ever get the photos from my future mother in law i promise to share). everyone had a great time and i danced till the party ended
after this wedding, i have to admit i'm no longer concerned if it rained on my wedding day. if i could have a wedding with such a beautiful backdrop and for my guests to witness the calming rainfall and to exeperience the same romance that i did, i'd welcome it with open arms...of course the condition would be that i'd have to have some sorta awning and stuff over the reception and what not to ensure my guests don't get soaking wet lol.
there was also something at this wedding that i've never seen before either, and i think its called the dollar dance. (?) where each guest gets in a line and pays a dollar to dance with the bride or groom. i've heard of it but have never actually seen it happen...but i happily complied, paid my dollar and had a short dance with the groom. in hindsight, this is probably a really good way to spend a bit of time with each of your guests on the dancefloor! not likely i'll repeat it at my wedding though i think.
congralations to scott and stacy again, and we wish you both a lifetime of love and happiness and we hope you enjoy your honeymoon in disneyworld this winter!!
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Friday, September 26, 2008
The big ole chinese banquet
or in my case my big fat chinese engagement party. ok so one of the first things that i needed to tackle after i became engaged was the engagement party. i kid you not, i was engaged on friday night, wasn't able to tell anyone until saturday afternoon (due to no cell phone reception unless you were on top of some mountain) and by sunday dinner (mid autumn festival) i was confronted with the prospects of having an engagement party.
i quickly had to decide what kind of affair it would be. there is the totally economical, have a party at our home, which i had to ix nay due to the sheer number of guests that will be invited. the alternative was to find a restaurant that can accomodate the 80-90 guests and still wont break the bank and or cost the same as if we were to have a wedding 2 months from the date. chris and i both come from big families and there is no way that my modest southern brooklyn block would be able to park that many cars, its a virtual impossibilty. so upon discussion with mom, it was decided that we would have a 10 course chinese dinner at one of the new chinese restaurants that opened up in my area. the decision was pretty easy. i had considered if i wanted a chinese banquet for my future wedding and decided that i didn't want a gaudy chinese wedding with trumpet and lion dances accompanied by a 10 course cantonese family style dinner. so a good compromise to show my future husbands family what my culture is all about, we settled on having a chinese engagement banquet.
a 15 minute walk or a 5 minute drive from my humble abode, we chose spring garden chinese restaurant. we met with the restaurant manager over dim sum and discussed menu. i have to admit this was pretty painless. most chinese restaurants have prefixe chinese banquet menus, but considering we're going to be having a lot of non chinese guests, we couldn't really use any of the prefixed menus that were available to us, so we had to get a little creative with the dish selections so that we can accomodate less adventurous palates. an auntie probably never heard of abalone and will most likely be weirded out by its slimy appearance. or our tree hugger cousin may think that shark fin soup is animal cruelty and sic peta on us or something. so we changed some of the more exotic dishes and replaced them with something that will be more audience friendly to people of all cultures. in the end i think we did pretty good. momma tse did a good job negotiating the menu down so no complaints from me.
i quickly had to decide what kind of affair it would be. there is the totally economical, have a party at our home, which i had to ix nay due to the sheer number of guests that will be invited. the alternative was to find a restaurant that can accomodate the 80-90 guests and still wont break the bank and or cost the same as if we were to have a wedding 2 months from the date. chris and i both come from big families and there is no way that my modest southern brooklyn block would be able to park that many cars, its a virtual impossibilty. so upon discussion with mom, it was decided that we would have a 10 course chinese dinner at one of the new chinese restaurants that opened up in my area. the decision was pretty easy. i had considered if i wanted a chinese banquet for my future wedding and decided that i didn't want a gaudy chinese wedding with trumpet and lion dances accompanied by a 10 course cantonese family style dinner. so a good compromise to show my future husbands family what my culture is all about, we settled on having a chinese engagement banquet.
a 15 minute walk or a 5 minute drive from my humble abode, we chose spring garden chinese restaurant. we met with the restaurant manager over dim sum and discussed menu. i have to admit this was pretty painless. most chinese restaurants have prefixe chinese banquet menus, but considering we're going to be having a lot of non chinese guests, we couldn't really use any of the prefixed menus that were available to us, so we had to get a little creative with the dish selections so that we can accomodate less adventurous palates. an auntie probably never heard of abalone and will most likely be weirded out by its slimy appearance. or our tree hugger cousin may think that shark fin soup is animal cruelty and sic peta on us or something. so we changed some of the more exotic dishes and replaced them with something that will be more audience friendly to people of all cultures. in the end i think we did pretty good. momma tse did a good job negotiating the menu down so no complaints from me.
Star of Mount Jo
because it is THAT important, i will dedicate one whole post to "my precious", so without further ado, i present to you, the star of mt jo!
THE proposal
A few years ago, chris and i went to the adirondaks high peaks region on memorial day weekend to escape the city life. he was already familiar with this region, having gone up many times throughout his childhood with his family and as a boy scout. for a lack of better words, he's an uber wilderness man at heart, and kinda sexy may i add. i on the other hand have never been up to the high peaks region, and the only wilderness-y thing i've ever done was basically hike up a tiny little mountain in westchester NY. wilderness girl i am not. but i was glad i went on this weekend getaway because i quickly fell in love with the region for all its natural beauty, not to mention the amazing view from atop a mountain. so we've always said we'd go back every year to hike a mountain and to just basically enjoy the adirondaks. for various reasons we haven't made it back up there until this fall.
to be quite honest, i was sorta expecting his proposal since i knew he had the ring already, albeit i never SAW the ring and have no idea what it looked like (i swear!). how you wonder, well usually he wouldn't mind if we had friends join us for any sort of trip or adventure, but this time he was quite adamant that it just be the two of us. so from that moment on i had a sneaking suspicion this would be the weekend of all weekends.
so we arrive at the adirondak loj at heart lake and check in and its around 4pm and rather rainy. i love going up mt jo, but i felt it was too rainy to go and was getting a little sad i may not make it up on this trip. we were due to leave on sunday and on saturday we were supposed to leave at the crack of dawn to hike up mt marcy and would take up a whole day (i also thought he would propose on top of mt marcy). but chris insisted that i loved mt jo and we should try to hike up jo despite the weather since the rain turned into a light drizzle anyway. so dressed in our ponchos we began to ascend mt jo, it's a pretty short hike about an hour up and an hour down but the view from the top is breathtaking.
i made it to the summit! and it even stopped raining at this point! (it was a good omen now that i think of it haha)
(this is heart lake, our loj was right next to it, and the foot of the mountain was basically in the loj's backyard)
to be quite honest, i was sorta expecting his proposal since i knew he had the ring already, albeit i never SAW the ring and have no idea what it looked like (i swear!). how you wonder, well usually he wouldn't mind if we had friends join us for any sort of trip or adventure, but this time he was quite adamant that it just be the two of us. so from that moment on i had a sneaking suspicion this would be the weekend of all weekends.
so we arrive at the adirondak loj at heart lake and check in and its around 4pm and rather rainy. i love going up mt jo, but i felt it was too rainy to go and was getting a little sad i may not make it up on this trip. we were due to leave on sunday and on saturday we were supposed to leave at the crack of dawn to hike up mt marcy and would take up a whole day (i also thought he would propose on top of mt marcy). but chris insisted that i loved mt jo and we should try to hike up jo despite the weather since the rain turned into a light drizzle anyway. so dressed in our ponchos we began to ascend mt jo, it's a pretty short hike about an hour up and an hour down but the view from the top is breathtaking.
i made it to the summit! and it even stopped raining at this point! (it was a good omen now that i think of it haha)
(this is heart lake, our loj was right next to it, and the foot of the mountain was basically in the loj's backyard)After chris and i make it to the top of the mountain, he instructed me to remove my poncho so we can sit on them and appreciate the scenary, or so i thought! so i'm like busying myself with taking photos of the area (see above) and making chris take pictures of me to commemorate the fact that we once again made it to the top of jo (yes i'm a photo whore, well... to some extent) i was determined to document as much of this trip as i possibly could, chris starts to pace around the top of the mountain. now to be honest, i just thought he was just walking around to appreciate the scenary from different angles. i thought the proposal would come the next day so i was in no way suspicous of anything. finally i look at my watch and i mention it is getting late and dark and the sun will set and we dont want to be caught on the mountain when it is full dark and that we should start heading back. and with one last look out over the clouds, chris tells me he has one last thing left to do before we descend. ladies and gents you guessed it, the boy gets on his knee and my waterworks start and the rest is shall we all say history. i remember most of what he said to me (surprisingly) but i won't be recapping that in this journal as chris wanted to leave that precious moment private to just the two of us, so i suppose i will respect his wishes :)
we're engaged!!!! this was probably like 2 minutes later, please try to ignore my atrocious hair and check out the hardware on my left hand!!!!
basically all in all, chris managed to do the unthinkable (at least i thought was originally unthinkable) surprise proposal.
note: for those of you who are really curious, he actually didn't propose with the ring, but rather presented to me after i said "yes". which in hindsight was definitely the smarter thing to do, because i can bet you that if he proposed with the ring, i would not have remembered one thing he said to me, and instead wouldve just stared at the ring and not have the wonderful memories i now have.
note: for those of you who are really curious, he actually didn't propose with the ring, but rather presented to me after i said "yes". which in hindsight was definitely the smarter thing to do, because i can bet you that if he proposed with the ring, i would not have remembered one thing he said to me, and instead wouldve just stared at the ring and not have the wonderful memories i now have.
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