Happy Memorial Day!

We spent Memorial Day in Portland, OR this year with the Banerjees and the Schneiders. We had a great time shopping tax-free, seeing the Gorge and Multnomah Falls, and eating TON of good food. I recommend Oba! for dinner and Papa Hadyn for dessert. Will be posting pictures soon.

On the wedding front, we have been shopping for wedding rings, bridesmaid dresses, wedding shoes, and hotels. We're having fun, but there always seems to be more to do. We're going to LA this weekend, so we'll have more wedding planning. I need to learn more about these Filipino wedding traditions!

Wedding Alert! Bad Oracle!

I just wanted to warn people that I found out this week that there is going to be a big Oracle convention in San Francisco during our wedding weekend. I suggest that you book your hotels early because they will fill up fast. I am trying to block off rooms for you at a few hotels. The Hilton in Chinatown is the closest hotel to the Empress of China where we are having the reception and will offer us rooms at $279/night if we book at least 10 rooms. If you think you would be interested, please email me or Edwin ASAP so that we can try and reserve a room for you. This would probably be easiest for anyone that would like to stay as close as possible to the reception. Here is the link to their website if you want to see what these rooms look like:
http://www.sanfranciscohiltonhotel.com/?cid=goo

I am also working on some lower priced options and will announce them on the wedding website as soon as I can.

Bike to Work Day and Bay to Breakers

It's been a pretty busy and stressful week at work. I'm really looking forward to the weekend. I just wish that it wasn't supposed to rain all weekend. Supposed to work on invitations this weekend with Show. Booked the organist too.

Bay to Breakers is this weekend. For those not in the Bay Area, this is kind of a fun walk/run from Justin Herman Plaza to Ocean Beach. People get dressed up in costumes (or run around naked) for the 7 mile course. I do like doing the walk, but I don't like the walk in the rain. It gets really wet and cold. Oh well, I'm not really signed up for it anyways. We'll see if I motivate.

Today was the first time I rode my bike to work today. It only took 15 min to ride to work and coincidentally, it was also Bike to Work day. I'm told that there were free give aways for participants, but I didn't see any. I just thought that there were a lot of people riding their bikes to work. The ride home was a lot harder. It was really windy and it made it seem a lot longer. This is definitely the shortest and cheapest option. I'm not riding tomorrow though because Edwin said it was going to rain.

Wedding Menu Finalized

So we finalized the menu today. Glad we got that done. I just hope that we'll be able to eat some of it! LOL. If you want to see what's on the menu, check out our wedding website.

Last week, I also did some initial drafts for the invitations and programs. I spent 2 hours at Papyrus studying invitations and programs- I felt like I was back in school. (Now if I could only find where I put my notes...) Next on my To Do list is to finalize the organist, research area hotels, and finding bridesmaid dresses. We have started looking at registries, but we haven't finalized anything yet. So much to do!

So, to recap this weekend, we went to Nirav and Bhavana's baby shower on Saturday in Fremont. It was a beautifully warm weekend. (It's almost like summer here! So strange for this time of year in SF.) Congrats to Jen and Vic on their new baby David! You can see their pics on their blog. Vic is going to be one of our emcees at the reception so I can't wait to meet David.

Here are some pics from the Napa Diabetes ride last week:

The dog didn't eat my homework- my computer died!

So I'm here is Seattle right now for work. As most of you know, I come up here about once a month. Most of the time, I love coming up here. However, this time, my computer died and I feel completely paralyzed!

5 reasons you have to admit your computer is dead:

1. You get the C: prompt
2. You can't open any files
3. The background on your desktop changes (and you didn't change it!)
4. You computer tells you that you have a Trojan virus (do not open files from IM unless you know that the person on the other end is truly your friend- it came from a friend's IM address, but they didn't send it to me...)
5. You push the power button and nothing happens so you have to remove the battery and unplug
6. You start getting weird popups
7. Your screen starts to meltdown etch-a-sketch style

Getting any work done is proving challenging when you work for a company that is web-based. Anyway, if you don't see any posts for a while, it's because my computer died. :(

Fun in Windsor and the Napa Diabetes Ride

So this past weekend we had a lot of events. We went up to Sacramento on Saturday to celebrate Gianna's first birthday (daughter of my cousins Barry and Gigi.) Then, we spent the night in Santa Rosa with Greg and had dinner in Windsor. After dinner, Greg took us to probably one of the coolest candy stores I have ever been in. It was called Powell's Candy Shoppe in downtown Windsor. As you can see in the pictures above, we had a lot of fun watching "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" and Edwin dressing up a the dread pirate Roberts.

There were all the old candy favorites that you don't see anymore. The coolest display was the one in a converted card catalog. Remember those? It also had a soda fountain with all the old soft drinks that in those old fashioned bottles. Really fun. I think we must have spent at least an hour just "reminiscing."

We also did the Napa Diabetes ride on Sunday. I'll post pictures up later, but it was a gorgeous day for a ride. There were about 35 of us on Team Vino Velo. I did the 10 mile with Kaori, Maika, and Jamie's dad. Edwin did the 50 mile. Our ride was only about 1 hour. Maybe next year I'll do the 25 mile ride... :)

Good stuff in Waikiki

We had a really great recommendation by the front desk in Waikiki for a Japanese restaurant. Here are some good eats:

Menchenko-Tei
2255 Kuhio Ave.
808-924-8366

Kaka'ako Kitchen in the Ward Center

Here's a funny pic of Maika from yesterday at our place. This just cracks me up! She is just too cute.

Fun in the sun!

So we're back from Hawaii today. We flew back on the red-eye, so work today was a little painful, but at least we got to go on vacation. Not a whole lot to report, but we did eat and eat and eat. While we were there, they had a Spam Fest. Unfortunately, we missed the Spam Fest because we were snorkeling in Hanuama bay. I'll post pics up soon.

The month of May is going to be busy. We are doing the Tour de Cure on Sunday. My parents are coming next weekend for a week and then we go to Portland for Memorial Day with the Schneiders and Banerjees. At least I don't think we'll have to worry too much about wedding stuff since we got most of the stuff taken care of. Put in a deposit for the reception the day we left for Waikiki.

Passion fruit = Lilikoi

So we leave to Hawaii today for Darrell and Susan's wedding. I'm looking forward to the relaxation. No wedding planning for 5 days. No work. Just some sun, snorkeling and fun.

How far in advance do you start packing for a trip? My mom usually starts about a month in advance. I guess for our parents' generation, this is not that uncommon. Going on a trip used to be an event. I don't even think about a trip until maybe that week. I usually do it the night before which I think is kind of pushing it. Edwin, though, he's got nerves of steel. He can wait 2 hours before leaving to begin packing for a trip. Granted, it depends on the length of the trip. For a longer trip, we would probably start a little earlier. Just curious because I'm sure that it varies.

Going to the chapel and we're gonna get married...

So I have to admit, it's been a lot of fun planning our wedding. I thought that it might be stressful, but I think that we have been pretty lucky or maybe Edwin and I are on the same page when it comes to event planning. We're about ready to put down a deposit for a reception place. That would pretty much seal the deal for what will be the biggest cost factor of the wedding.

We knew that we wanted a Chinese banquet and so that limited the number of decisions we needed to make when it came to venue. I mean, there are a ton of Chinese restaurants in San Francisco, but not that many that can hold over 200 people. In fact, there are about 5 or 6. 2 of them were not available the month of October and another one was over our budget. That leaves 3 options. We have eaten at one before, so we tried the final 2 last week. When you put that into perspective, you don't really have to make a ton of decisions, right?

As I mentioned before, I already have my dress, but I thought I would post a picture of my wedding dress shopping posse- Sin Yen, Kaori, Michelle, and Matilde. Thanks for all the help, girls! Matilde was the winner who chose the dress that I eventually selected. I tried on a dress that I probably would not have picked out for myself and really liked it. So my advice for anyone dress shopping- try on things that you normally wouldn't, you might like it!

Hawaii Here We Come!

So I realized this week that we are going to Hawaii next week. It's not that I forgot, but I didn't realize that the trip was coming up so quickly. We are going to Honolulu for Darryl and Susan's wedding. Looking forward to having a break and a nice vacation. We'll be going with Matilde, Sujay, Nikki, Ed, Chris, and Corinne. We're looking forward to some relaxation, snorkeling, and lots of eating.

Wedding News: We now have a wedding website. See our link in the sidebar or click on the link: http://www.theknot.com/ourwedding/MichelleFong&EdwinLager

We also are trying to finalize the reception venue. Went to taste 2 different venues this week. Hopefully, we can wrap things up before we leave, but my guess is that there may be some negotiation involved and it will be a little while longer.

Birthday Bonanza

Well, I guess that there is a lot that is special about October 20th. I got 2 emails from friends that both have their birthdays on that day. So I guess that there will be a lot to celebrate.

Hope everyone had a Happy Easter. We had a lot of fun at Jamie, Kaori, and Maika's with a traditional Easter brunch, Easter egg hunt, and egg dyeing. Kaori was utterly grossed out that we ate the eggs after we had dyed them. Is that so bad? It's just food coloring, right? We made some pretty yummy egg salad sandwiches. I haven't heard of anyone getting sick from it yet...

What's so special about Friday, October 20th?

Well, I bought my dress off of ebay yesterday and we decided to have the ceremony in Treasure Island (off the Bay Bridge and in between SF and Oakland.) Treasure Island is an old military base and has gorgeous views of SF. Take a look at my pics!

This week has been so much better in that I feel a lot less stressed than I felt last week. Though I can't believe that it's only been 2 weeks since we got engaged because I feel like we have gotten a lot done. Next up- we want to lock down a reception place. By the way, the wedding date is set, so put this on your calendars- Friday, October 20th is the BIG DAY!

Love is in the air...and raindrops keep fallin' on my head.

We received a very cool engagement card today from our friend Pablo that said, "Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves." Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Isn't that lovely? What makes that quote so cool though is that I can picture our dear friend Pablo saying these words. He's always been very poetic.

So we're trying to decide on venues and dates. Surprisingly, there are places left, but it will most likely be on a Friday or Sunday rather than a Saturday. We're checking out the Treasure Island chapel tomorrow. However, with the rain, it may not be the best day to go.

Rain, rain, go away. Come again some other day. Maybe if I say that enough, we'll get to see the views tomorrow. After Edwin proposed in the rain last week, I remember thinking to myself that rainy days are now going to bring happy memories. It only took me a week to get sick of the rain again. It's been raining all month. I guess those of you in the East and Midwest would say, "You have no snow. I don't want to hear it." Oh well. :) LOL

I love Ebay!

So, I spent most of my weekend shopping for a wedding dress. Went to 4 stores and tried on over 30 dresses. Had a lot of fun with Matilde, Sin Yen, Michelle, and Kaori. So I find 2-3 dresses that I really like and look good on me. People have told me to go to stores to try on the dress and look on the internet to see if you can get a cheaper price. Well, bridal shops are getting smarter. They don't let you take pictures of the dresses and some of them are cutting out the manufacturer tags so that you can't find the dresses.

So, I start looking at these wedding dresses online to look for the 2-3 dresses that I liked. I was able to find 2 of them in my size on ebay for less than half of what each store quoted me. So, at first I was a little skeptical because I didn't want to buy a used dress, but I found that there are a lot of people who sell new dresses on ebay. One of them was a sample dress that was being sold by a bridal shop. The other was someone who hadn't worn the dress, but couldn't fit into it because she was pregnant and couldn't fit into it anymore. I've also heard of some people that bought a dress and then found another dress and so needed to sell it. Anyway, it just goes to show you how people gauge you when you are planning for a wedding.

It's good to have smart friends!

So I want to start this post by announcing that I have the BEST wedding coordinator/bridesmaid- my friend Nikki. I am astounded by her organization and pure genius. She has put together this work of art in spreadsheet form that outlines almost every conceivable wedding location/reception hall in SF. It's got cost estimates, availability for dates in October, phone numbers, websites, and her comments on how the staff has answered her calls. I wanted to cry because it was SO helpful and because her comments were SO funny. Much better than my random website research. If you ever need someone to help you with your wedding in SF, boy, do I have a recommendation for you!

Secondly, so looking at one of the venues, I found a most hilarious statement on a church website, "Learn more about our commitment to gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning individuals."

So little time!

Time flies when you're planning a wedding. 2 days after the proposal and it seems like there is not enough time in the day. Thanks to everyone who sent notes of congratulations. I don't think that I got much done at work on Monday!

Things to do this week: determine a budget, wedding party, and preliminary guest list.

As any good modern day bride-to-be (hey-that's me!), I went to the www.theknot.com website. I have determined that they are evil. First, I enter in a date for the wedding. I put in October 14. (THIS IS NOT THE DATE- I am merely putting something in as a point of reference!) It tells me that I have less than 192 days to plan a wedding. Then, I look at their To Do checklist and it has a list of 179 things to do with 45 items overdue! We haven't even started yet and we're behind!

As most of you know, I am a Type A personality. I don't panic- I move. I start making lists ad nauseum. I don't think that anyone can call Edwin a Type A personality, so you can already tell this is going to be fun. Maybe that's why we're together- we balance each other out. I tell him to get his butt moving and he can tell me to chill out.

Everybody knows that weddings are money sinkholes. We know it's going to be expensive. But it still never really prepares you for the sticker shock. I don't think that either one of us has ever spent this much on anything. Maybe a car, but at least you get to pay that in monthly installments and use it over the course of a couple of years. This is one day! I know it will be worth it, but sometimes you have to wonder.

I'm already going wedding dress shopping. Crazy. Last week, I thought that I would have a nice, relaxing weekend while Edwin went snowboarding and scuba diving.

WE'RE ENGAGED!!!

It was a rainy day here in SF. I fell asleep in the car thinking that we're going shopping, but when I woke up we were parked at Coit Tower. I was a little dazed and very confused. Edwin told me that he wanted to see the Parrots of Telegraph Hill in the Filbert Gardens. (We had just seen this documentary about wild parrots that fly around in SF.) I'm like, "In the rain? Can't we look for them when the weather is nicer? But OK, whatever."

We get to a landing and Edwin starts telling me how much he loves me, and I don't remember much more because I think that's when I realized what was happening. So he proposes, I say yes, and he pulls out a ring box. As he's openning the box, the ring pops out and there's a look of horror on Edwin's face. For those of you who have never heard of/seen the Filbert Gardens, there are a series of wooden and brick stairs embedded in LOTS of foliage. So, there was a distinct possibility of losing the ring in a very wooded area.

Luckily, it didn't roll and it was right at our feet. Above is a picture of us right after the proposal. (Notice the ring!)

We'll post updates to this blog when we have more details, but we're thinking of having the wedding in October in San Francisco. In the meantime, here's a close-up of the ring.

Japanese Paper Light Parade

So on the first day of my visit to Japan in November, Kaori and Maika took me to a local parade that they have in Okegawa. It was really cool in that all of the "floats" were painted by hand and lit up from the inside. Don't even get me started on all the food stands.

Here is an example of one of the cool "rotating" floats. Most of them were pulled by hand and a lot of them were being pulled by kids (child labor!) so I guess they couldn't have been too heavy, right? There was even one float that had a real cherry tree on it.

Woo Woo!

This is an actual news clip from Oakland. I admit that I haven't seen these whistle tips on any cars in the Bay Area, but I believe that it exists! This video makes me laugh every time I watch it!