We tried a second Chinese restraurant for our rehearsal dinner, China Garden in Westlake Village. I was really hoping this restraurant would be good because it's really close to Westlake Village Inn. The only restraurant we were considering so far was Szechuwan Garden in Moorpark but their service isn't great. China Garden has a small backroom for large parties but it only fits a table of 12 and we expecting at least 20 for the rehearsal dinner. The rest of the restraurant was big enough to hold us. The food was decent but the service also wasn't good. Szechuwan Garden's food was better and they have a section that could fit our party.
We're going to try one more restraurant, Lakeview Garden, which is also closer to Westlake Village Inn, before sticking with Szechuwan Garden. I wish it wasn't so hard to find a decent, authentic Chinese restraurant in the area. There is absolutely no Cantonese restraurants!
-
- Current Mood
-
calm
On Sunday, I got a makeup consultation at Merle Norman in Westside Pavilion! Stef Hwang referred me to a makeup artist there who did her makeup for her engagement pics. Karin is Asian so she is knowledgeble about what colors look good and what features need to be highlighted for Asians. She was awesome and I was thrilled with the result!! I liked her so much that I'm changing the time for my engagement pictures so she can do my makeup that day.
What else have I been up to?
1. Booked flight for honeymoon
2. Asked several friends to be attendants/helpers at the wedding. Everyone agreed!
3. Went over to Stef's apartment to see samples of rehearsal dinner invitations. They looked fab!
4. Looked at a bunch of engagement pictures for other couples to get examples of what to wear for our engagement pictures. Bought a solid purple shirt at Target for the engagement pictures.
5. Thought about wedding insurance. I keep flipping back and forth on it. It cost about $350, which is a lot, but not as much as our cost of the wedding. Insurance would protect us from any of our vendors running off with our money or help us get our money back if a 9/11 happens on our wedding or something. Most people don't get it and right now, we don't think we'll get it.
6. After the unfortunate Mary Kay consultation, I've been thinking about what to try next for the bridesmaids makeup. I found out at the Sherman Oaks Macy's that the MAC counter at Macy's no longer charges money for makeup consultations and don't have a minimum purchase either so we're going to try a MAC consultation at Macy's in February.
Now for my sad cheongsam story...so I took the cheongsam I bought on eBay to get it altered. BAL Tailoring has altered several pairs of jeans for us before but this is the first time I took something else there. I dropped off the dress and asked them to take in the waist. I came back to pick it up a few days later and when I tried it on, they had tightened the hips and I could barely pull it over my hips! They said they would fix it and I came back a few days later and it was still too tight. Each time they altered it and put it through a sewing machine, the fabric would get a little more frayed because it's really cheap material. After coming back again, it was still a little tight at my hips and uncomfortable. The dress however was in bad shape. When I brought it home, I noticed that they only altered one side of the dress, not both sides, so the dress was bunched up on the side they continually altered. *sigh* It looked horrible. I decided to cut my losses and give up on the dress. So now I'm looking for another one or possibly renting one.
-
- Current Mood
- calm
Wow! I haven't posted in my wedding journal for 3 weeks!! Amazing! Despite that, I still think about wedding planning every day of course!! Today is our Engagement Anniversary!!! Yuppers! We've been engaged for a whole year. It's crazy that it went by so fast. Only four more months to go and yet so much to do still.
On Thursday, Chris and I had our food tasting at Westlake Village Inn. While planning for this appointment, I kept telling myself not to expect too much. We might be stuffed in the kitchen with just get a bite of each choice and I'd have to ask a million questions to make sure all our bases were covered. Becky, our site coordinator, and Westlake Village Inn well exceeded my expectations!!
When we arrived, we were escorted to our reception location, the Provence Room. We got the entire room to ourselves for the tasting! There was just one table in the middle of the lower level next to the windows and there for four places setup. Next to the table was a smaller table with about 10 different napkin folds for us to choose from! Becky was finishing up a meeting so Chris and I watched the ducks in the lake while we waited. When she was ready, we all sat down and the food service began.
First, they brought out some yummy bread and little patties of butter that were in cute shapes, like roses and pinwheels. Next, we tasted two different salads and three different dressings. They were full-sized portions and absolutely huge. As we tasted the food, Becky ran through the entire wedding day with us and helped us map out the sequence of events as well as what we needed for each event, like microphones, tables, etc. It was great!
After we chose the salad and dressings, the seafood entrées came out: fettuccine with shrimp and my favorite linguine with clams! Each dish was so pretty and nicely presented! It was lovely! I had to taste the linguine with clams because that's my favorite food. It tasted fabulous! The fettuccine with shrimp was really nice-looking but the taste couldn't compare to the linguine with clams. We picked the linguine with clams as our seafood dish. We also tried our chicken dish, which was penne with chicken breast. It was surprisingly good! Chris and I don't have high expectations for chicken since it's usually bland and dry but it was really good!
Anyway, I was just thrilled with our tasting! Becky covered everything for the big day and I barely asked any questions because she answered them all! It was an excellent experience and Chris and I didn't need to eat dinner!!!
-
- Current Mood
-
cheerful
There was a bit of a panic early last week when AquaFuzion and I were talking about invitations and they had down the wrong amount. They thought I ordered 100 when it was really 175. They were very quick to resolve the problem though and they didn't argue with me about it. Luckily, I printed the most important e-mails before my computer crashed so I did have proof if they did argue with me. I was a bit disappointed that their records were wrong. I had just posted a stellar rave on the Knot Boards about them based on the walkthrough and then this happened. One bride was even debating on whether or not to book them and said my experience with them was tipping the scale in their favor! But I was good and didn't freak out all over the internet before letting AquaFuzion fix the problem. Looking back, it wasn't that big of a deal and in any case, I should be on my toes with any vendor. The good thing is that we agreed on some new decor ideas after the walkthrough and they gave me another great deal on them! I've referred a lot of brides to them so I think they know I've got a lot of influence and they appreciate my referrals.
I spent a lot of this weekend managing the guest list. Up to this point, I've been using an Excel spreadsheet but it's getting harder to use once I start adding columns to track what pre-wedding parties people are invited to, gifts, and place card names. So I decided to try using an Access database. Spent a few hours working on that and then I discovered The Knot has a pretty nifty Guest List Manager on their web site. I spent a few more hours formatting my data so it could be imported to their web site and once I got it up, I realized the manager has some pretty nasty flaws. So I went back to the Access database. *sigh* So much time wasted. Well, now I've got the data in a way I like it so hopefully it works out.
I got the $12 cheongsam dress I bought off eBay. I'm lucky I got it because the seller gets like 7 negative feedbacks a month about not receiving the items or slow shipping. The seller doesn't seem to be good at returning e-mails too, according to the feedback. Anyway, the dress has a stain on it! It looks like someone spilled tea after it was already folded but before it got into the plastic bag. The stain goes from the chest area through the back of the dress too. I e-mailed the seller to complain but I haven't heard back yet. I'm not sure if I'm going to hear back. If I don't hear from them by Saturday, I'm just going to dry clean it and see if it comes out. I'll continue to demand my money back of course since I don't want to wait another month for them to ship me a new dress.
-
- Current Mood
- cheerful
Chris and I met with AquaFuzion yesterday at our location to do a walkthrough. They are my "day of" wedding coordinators and florists, as well as doing my invitations, cake, and chair covers. I am so thrilled with them!! First of all, I mistakenly got the appointment time wrong and made them wait an hour for me. I apologized profusely but they were more worried about me waiting for them in another part of the hotel!
During our walkthrough, they suggested some amazing ideas and it was just so exciting to be at the location and talking about how everything will look and how the events will flow! It makes it all so real! Though they had some great ideas for flowers, I kept asking if it was enough and they were so great in keeping me in check with my budget. If I made a pricey suggestion, they would say "It would be nice but we have to remember your budget and the money is better spent if we do this to make the most impact."
I thought it was great!!! Having a vendor who would rather keep you on track with your budget than to try to get you to spend more so they could make more money!
Anyway, I just had to say how happy I am about them. I'm really glad they are doing both my coordination and my flowers because they have the freedom to lay out the room so it works together. (i.e. the guest will go to the guestbook table here and then flow to the place card table over here, then go to the cocktail area.)
I asked which bakery they are using for my cake and the woman who makes their cakes works for Ritz-Carton as a pastry chef! She only works with AquaFuzion and doesn't have her own bakery. That was really exciting too since I always thought they would just work with a local bakery.
Debbie and Sandy also showed me a sample of the chair covers and put them on a chair in my reception room. It looks fabulous!!! They also showed me a sample of my invitations, which look exactly like I wanted them too, and I got to pick the ink colors. There were so many choices, 20 different shades of purple alone! They gave me the envelopes already so I can start addressing them.
It's just so neat to see everything coming together!
-
- Current Mood
-
excited
busy
contemplative
hungry