Re-focused

Those that know me well know that I am extremely goal focused. This has served me really well in my professional life and now that I am in school, but in wedding planning, has been more of a burden than a blessing. Part of it is that the wedding is so far away and, before classes start, I find myself idle at times so I find myself obsessing of little tiny details and an impatience to just "book things already". Being action oriented, I always am ready to go-go-go! but I know there is a time and place for everything. Luckily, H is around to keep me in check and he does it so sweetly - he totally has the right to check me with a "get a grip on yourself!!" but instead, listens to me talk about seating arrangements for a wedding we are planning almost 18 months away before smiling, kissing me on the forehead and saying "that sounds great, babe - we can think about this more when the time comes."

This is going to sound super lame, but I recently watched the Bachelorette Wedding special with JP and Ashley's wedding. I watched it partly out of curiosity to see how that whole saga was going (I wasn't crazy about Ashley's season but I am an avoid Bachelor/Bachelorette fan!), but ended up really enjoying it because it spend a bit of time going over the couple's experience wedding planning. It was fun to watch them go through it and make decisions at some point H and I will make. The show made planning look painless and that wedding planners are a huge part of that - something to think about but I still need to investigate more on cost :)

Anyway, from watching the show, it was so sweet to see how in love this couple was and it really reminded me of how much wedding planning is an learning and growing experience to go through with your soon-to-be husband. The wedding is a celebration of your relationship and all of the bells and whistles of the event are really just a backdrop to the simplicity and purity of the love that is shared between two people.

So as anxious as I am, I am so lucky to have a fiance who loves me for my enthusiasm and who is able to ground me, ever so gently. I know we're only in the beginning phases, but I am super excited to be planning what is sure to be a kick-ass wedding and to spend the rest of my life with my best friend.

Rules of Bling Maintenance

 So I'm probably the worst person to write on this topic since I barely know the four C's when it comes to diamonds (cut, clarity...?), but I do have a couple months of experience sporting my engagement ring so I wanted to share some things that I've learned about "bling" maintenance.

When I first started wearing the ring, I was concerned that the fit was not right. Sometimes the ring felt too tight on my finger. Then, as the weather started to cool down, my ring would feel too loose and would swivel awkwardly around my finger at times. I always knew that your body would change to adopt to changes in the weather, but wearing a ring, you really notice how you swell up in heat (and the ring feels super tight) and how in the cold, your finger shrinks in circumference. I guess the trick is to find a size that is tolerable and comfortable in both heat extremities. There are lots of different ring designs that try to accommodate comfort in wear - my ring in particular has a "comfort fit" design which means that the band is rounded in all sides to minimize chaffing. My original band was a pretty generic one that actually used to leave red marks and sometimes hurt when taking on/off. I didn't mind it at the time, but now after wearing a comfortable band, I see what a tremendous different it makes. It was an upgrade, but one that I would recommend!

When I first got engaged, you'd seriously have to fight me in order to get me to take my ring off. No way I was letting that sucker out of my reach. However, wearing it all the time means that it got dirty really easily and the shine of your diamond was dulled. When I brought my ring back to the jeweler to get a loose stone replaced (in the band), she was shocked at how "dirty" it was. Being that I wore it everyday and all the time, I didn't really notice but apparently a lot of dust and debris had gotten caught in the crevices of the ring. The jeweler then gave me some tips on how to keep the shine brighter for longer, namely to wear the ring less and to clean it more often.

Wearing the ring less was a no brainer, but a suggestion that kind of hurt my feelings. I love my ring and what it represents, but the jeweler recommended just wearing it outside the house.  This means not at night and not while doing chores. This was hard for me to hear but I tried it out over the last few weeks and it actually does keep the shine a lot longer and, while I do forget to put the ring on sometimes, it's probably not a bad habit to build. Cleaning it is actually not that hard either. The jeweler gave H and I a little tub of cleaning solution that helps to clean the ring. You just place the ring in a little basket and submerge the ring into the solution, letting it soak overnight. When you take it out of the solution, you rinse with water and dry with a soft towel. The shine is pretty remarkable afterwards.

The latest development in bling maintenance has been getting ring insurance. It is an added expense, but it is probably well worth it. In order to do this, you need to get your ring appraised; after that, you just need to add it to your homeowners/renter's insurance as an extension. Ring insurance varies by the cost of the ring being insured and where the ring is living (haha), so I'll need to remember to change the policy when I figure out where I'll be moving to after school.

Learning to "We"

Something that I've become more conscious of lately is in using the language "we". Being a long-time couple, H and I had long adopted the "we"-ness long ago but after getting engaged, you start getting a lot more questions where the "we" comes out. It's a delicate balance since I don't want to speak on H's behalf, but at the same time, we've been together long enough that I feel very confident about knowing what we do and do not agree on and so, in some situations, "we" is appropriate and shows solidarity. I'm sure it's something that we'll figure out with time, but for now it's something we are still getting used to.

(See, I did it again!)

The Order of Things

I've learned that there are really two phases to wedding planning - the first part revolves around the venues and the second part comes later, closer to the wedding and is more about the details (i.e. the cake, the flowers, dress, etc.). The venue part is probably the more stressful part because there are a lot of hidden questions that need to be answered in order to shop/select your venue.

The questions we had to answer before shopping for venues were:

• How big do we want our wedding to be? Given how huge our families are, what is the minimum size for our wedding?
• What is our budget? And, secondarily, how will the wedding be paid for?
• Do we want to get married in the SF Bay Area (where I grew up) or in the LA Area (where H is from)?

Now that we have most of these questions at least semi-answered, I think it's important to highlight how hugely important these decisions are since they essentially shape the wedding in the broadest form. It's kind of scary that all these big decisions need to be made so early in the planning process, but in a weird way, it's good since it forces you to really think about these important issues now and commit to the decisions you make.

Of the three questions, we tried to tackle the size one first, which was actually probably the hardest once since it basically required us to start making a preliminary guest list. It is amazing how fast a guest list can burst out of control and you can easily end up with a guest list twice the size of what you had anticipated. Additionally, not only do you have to construct a list of all your friends, but you also need to consider the friends of your parents as well! There's a lot of voices and opinions as you start to put together the list, but luckily everything worked out okay and we were able to get a hopefully accurate guest list count. We're not planning to have our wedding until August 2014 (due to my work schedule) so the lists may fluctuate a little in the next year and a half or so, but at least it gives us a starting point!

The budget questions was approached a little less gracefully. To be honest, I had absolutely no idea how much a wedding cost. I knew that dresses were expensive and food could be costly, but the total cost was something that I had never really contemplated. I read that the average wedding costs about $30k and was a little more expensive in California, but in doing research found that the standard deviation and range were humongous. Originally hoping to just go with the "average" cost to plan out a budget, that quickly made me reconsider my plan. I'm not sure if it is more normal to set your budget at what you can afford or at what you think it reasonable. Being Asian-American and raised in a pretty conservative house-hold, I've always been a sucker for value! Also, as a business school student, I conducted due-diligence to understand going rates by throwing out RFPs and performing benchmark analysis on venue quotes. This helped in understanding market rates for things and put into perspective what different budgets could afford. Once we tested the water, we were able to gain perspective on what we felt comfortable spending on and set the budget that way. According to theKnot.com (my best friend in planning), the venue cost is typically about 45-50% of your wedding cost so after checking out venue quotes, we doubled the number to see if it was something we were comfortable with.  Again, not sure if this is the normal or "right" way to go about this, but it was what we did and worked for us!

As for location, both H and I were pretty indifferent about where to have our wedding. I had originally envisioned getting married in SF, but to be honest, that was an assumption I was neither really passionate or tied to. Actually, our pending decision to get married in LA was strongly based off of our answers to the previous two questions.

And that's the order of things as done by H and V :)

Setting a Date(ish)

 We've made our first official decision in wedding planning! We have set a target date of late July/August of 2014.

Why so far away you ask? Well, we both easily agreed that we wanted to get married during the summer (probably the most popular season to get married, but it's easy to see why - good weather, easy for friends/family to travel, etc.). The 2014-part of it has a lot to do with my job schedule. We felt that it did not make a lot of sense to rush to get married this summer after I graduate from business school only to be potentially separated again for my first rotation in the rotational management program I am entering after school. We both strongly feel that marriage should be a celebration of joining and starting a new life together and so we'll wait until we are officially reunited in San Francisco in the later summer of 2014. I'm sure the wait will be worth it :)

So while it's not an official date, it's a date(ish)! First decision down... 99,999 more to go!

The Beginning

 After getting engaged late last October, my fiance and I enjoyed months of post-engagement bliss. It's a wonderful time that is a repeat of the "honeymoon phase" of your relationship - everything feels so new and exciting again, and you feel so incredibly loved and lucky. Never a super romantic couple, we were suddenly living a romance movie  - eyes sparkling, music playing when you touch, and all of that (okay, maybe for us it was more of a rom-com). You receive a downpour of congratulations from your family and friends and it feels pretty awesome to reach such an important milestone in your relationship that you can't help but beam with pride and love.

But then... the questions start.

"When is the wedding?"
"How big will your wedding be?"
"What kind of dress do you like?"

Without any idea of how to respond, I most commonly laugh and shrug but internally, it left me worried and perplexed. I had always dreamed of being married to the perfect guy when I was younger, but had not ever really fixated or thought about the wedding part. Without any specific opinions or desires, I felt inadequate when asked these questions -- was I supposed to know all this stuff already?

Now that I have a couple months of "engagement-ness" behind me and am a little more researched in all-things-wedding, I am feeling more excited about the planning the wedding and look forward to sharing this adventure with you!