Monday, March 30, 2009

not a bad weekend

Had a productive and fun weekend..

Saturday:

went to Page's (Tommee's niece) 7th grade graduation - didn't know that a batch of 120 girls would take about 3.5 hours of programme time.. got really hungry halfway through it.. but it was really great to see Page march on that stage.. looking forward to 4 years of major changes for this 14 year old ward of ours..

had lunch at Yuujin near Greenhills - really good japanese place, not too expensive but they have really big servings! you should check it out. It's at Wilson St. right beside Mercury Drug. Must try: Crazy Maki - awesome!
**loved their display of geisha dolls!

went to Kamuning to pick up TL's wedding attire.. unfortunately, we have to go back for his linen pants.. the cloth we bought for his pants wasn't enough so we had to buy another one.. although I did get to have my own linen pants made from his unused cloth.. hehe "free" pants!

went to greenbelt with Page & Heaven to buy Page's graduation gift.. a kick-ass pair of purple gradient Nike Dunks.. her eyes were all sparkly when she found out that that's what we were getting her..

TL got his monthly haircut and we ended up watching Monsters vs. Aliens with the kids. A short funny movie but is definitely for kids. We had a great time chilling with his nieces since we haven't been able to spend much time with them with all the wedding preps we've been doing..

Sunday:

Finally got to attend church after a couple of Sundays missed. Our officiating pastor for the wedding was the speaker. I always enjoy his sermons because not only do you learn from it, he entertains you along the way. That's actually why we decided to get him for the wedding.

Went to SM megamall afterwards and purchased a washer and another A/C for the house. The labandera will thank me for picking the automatic washer when she realizes that she's going to have to wash clothes for about 6 pairs of couples when my parents and brothers plus their wives come home for the wedding.
I will not go back to SM megamall to buy big purchases.. They took about 1 hour to process the things I bought. I had to use my international credit card to purchase and they were giving me a hard time asking for an international ID. I said I didn't have one but I never had a problem buying anything from SM Makati with that credit card and they never asked for an international ID from me. In the end, they processed it anyway. labo.

Anyway, we went straight to my Lola's house in Pasig to have lunch. While we were on the way:
Tommee: What's the food there? Is there enough food there for us? Do they know we're coming?
Suyen: I don't think you should worry about the food...
see, when my lola serves food for the family on Sundays, it's an all out affair.. the only thing missing is an actual buffet table because of the smorgasbord of food she serves.
On our way home:
Suyen: ayos ba food? nabusog ka ba?
Tommee: I think I just found my new Sunday tambayan - parang ayaw ako patigilin ni Lola sa pag-nguya!
(hahahahahaha)

When we got home, one of our Sunday rituals is to download the latest episode of Smallville and playing Justice League on PS2 while waiting for it. The episode was entitled Hex and it was pretty cool because Zatanna (The Mistress of Magic of JLA) was featured. (Tommee loves Superman, I love the Justice League hehe)

Anyway, we also finalized our guest list! YEY! and we were able to fix the seating arrangement, too.

Here's the "awesome" finale to our weekend- 
Right before dinner, when Tommee prepares our iced tea, he chops up big chunks of ice with a small but very sharp knife (I am definitely not a fan of this, I prefer having ice cube trays and have always been worried about him or anyone else in his family who does this). 
Wouldn't you know it, he SLICED his left thumb (very deeply, I might add) doing this last night! AAAAAHHHH!! There was blood all over the kitchen floor!
It's a good thing my mom is a nurse and I learned a couple of basic first-aid stuff. I did act quickly and told him to put pressure on the cut and ran all over the house to get gauze, betadine, tape etc.. Although I did get a little woozy from seeing all the blood (thing is, I have no problem when I'm the one with the gushing blood from wounds but when it's from other people, I get freaked out - good thing I didn't pursue being a doctor ahahaha).

and so, that was the finale of our weekend, Tommee with a big bandage on his left thumb:
Tommee: aaahh! my thumb hurts! it's throbbing and I'm not sure if it's because it's still bleeding.
Suyen (very calmly): you know why it's throbbing? 
Tommee: why?
Suyen: BECAUSE YOU JUST SLICED YOUR FINGER OPEN!
Tommee: oh..haha

I wonder what our married life would be like?? hahahaha

Friday, March 27, 2009

random photography

Since I got engaged, I have put some of my "stuff I want to do" on hold.. I really want to get into photography more and was starting to save up for a DSLR and some Lomos, but for now, I guess I have to settle for my point and shoot digicam.

I like to think of myself as a random photographer. I like taking pictures of just random things.
These are not exactly professional and these are all raw.. but I love them nonetheless..


this is a actually a heart-shaped soap
 (I used my phone cam for this - sucky resolution)


this little flower is from my family's farm in Pangasinan


pedestrian bridge over Geary Boulevard (San Francisco)

Nolan - rockin' out!

*Note to self: do not forget your interests especially after you get married!

Wedding playlist part 1

songs to greet our guests as they are ushered to their seats..

Somewhere Over The Rainbow by: Israel Kamakawiwo'ole
Breakfast In Bed by: Nicole Kea
Drive by: Ziggy Marley

from: 50 First Dates OST - love that album.. perfect for the beach..

*Next up: Part 2: Processional

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

wedding day prep dress

As much as I love bathrobes, I never could see myself wearing one during my wedding day preparations. Besides, it's not exactly a flattering thing to wear when you're getting all made up and everyone is taking pictures of you getting ready. I was on the look-out for something simple, light, and it had to be a tube top style because I needed to get it off me via my hips, legs and feet rather than my head - must not mess up the wedding do.

Although I did consider wearing my japanese bathrobe/kimono, I couldn't resist this when I saw it on a mannequin at the tiangge (bazaar). 


If you look closely at the design, it is very close to the design of my wedding dress (a little teaser for those who haven't seen the dress. hehe). 

So there, my wedding prep dress is light, flowy, fits perfectly and is turquoise - PERFECT!

*Plus, it's something I can wear during our beach honeymoon =)

Friday, March 20, 2009

DIY beach buckets *update*

The DIY diva strikes again! haha 
gimme a break guys.. the wedding is a few weeks away.. I'm am trying to get everything done before the month ends so that by the time April comes around, I'm not cramming and stressing myself out.. 

Anyway, I made an entry before about the beach bucket I was using in lieu of the flower girl basket and the kiddie table "centerpieces".

At first, I wasn't sure what to do with the black and turquoise ribbons.. I first started just tying 1 black and 1 turquoise ribbon together on the side, but they turned out "blah" - so dull. It took me a couple of days to finally figure out what to do. I decided to wrap 1 of each color ribbon around the whole bucket. Wrapping it horizontally was quite boring, too, so I figured I'd wrap it diagonally. Then I added another set of ribbons tied on the side, so that's a total of 2 black and 2 turquoise ribbons on the side. I apologize for my sloppy photography, I'm feeling lazy to fix up the shots.. hehe 
*Although I did get frustrated with how the turquoise ribbon kept coming out as plain blue, but trust me, it's turquoise =) I'll get our official photographer to document this little detail haha

I got some cheap "sand-castle making tools" in the department store (Thanks SM/Toy Kingdom!). I thought the colors would clash with our motif, but I actually think it makes the buckets "pop". =)

Before I babble on and on, let me show you the final products!


This is the flower girl's beach bucket - she gets the actual "tools" - that was Tommee's idea. This will be filled with different shades of white petals.

The other 2 will be used as the kiddie table centerpieces



that little sailboat is so cute!

YEHEY! Another DIY to check off my checklist.. =)

next?

if only I had a wedding registry..

This would be at the top of the list... and I wouldn't mind it in red. =)

image source: kitchenaid.com


If it could include non-home stuff, I have a whole different list for that.. haha

Thursday, March 19, 2009

DIY fan giveaway tags

Getting the fans was a last minute decision for us. Although I have been thinking about this since the beginning of all the wedding plans, - considering ours is a summer wedding and our wedding day might turn out really hot and/or humid - I thought it would be a great part of the giveaways since it will really be useful.

The fans are sandalwood fans. They come pretty cheap here in the Phils. I got them on wholesale thanks to our coordinator. I ordered 40 pcs. for all the ladies in our guest list. 

I basically made the tags similar to our wine labels with just an aquamarine or turquoise border with our monogram, names, location and date of the wedding.


I used Adobe Illustrator and InDesign to design the tags

I printed them out on cream colored cardboard paper

Using my handy cutter, ruler and self-healing cutting mat

the results of cramped hands

sort of preview (this is not the actual fan, this is an old fan I've been using - my lola gave this to me)

DIY guests' Boracay information sheet

I can't help it. I could have skipped this whole process but the DIY diva in me wouldn't settle for a generic guest information sheetp. So, instead of letting my coordinator handle this on her own, I asked her if I could make my own. (Why do I always seem to make the wedding preps harder on myself? haha) She was so nice about it and even offered to print it out- colored and everything, no charge! yey! 

*Tommee sometimes looks at me crazy - sometimes, he can't grasp my OC-ness about things.. He didn't even know that I was planning to do that kind of work on the info sheet. He was happy with the generic one, but he was proud of what I did =)

Ok, so on with my DIY info sheet..

Some of our guests have never been to Boracay, or if they have, they haven't been there in a while, and believe me, a lot has changed over the years. I'm a bit sad that it's getting too commercialized, but I can't deny that it still has a great white beach (more on station 1). Anyway, I decided to customize our own Boracay information sheet.



I got this map from directrooms.com (You can go here) and I found this site very useful in getting maps customized to your venue/location. As you can see, the hotel is highlighted with a yellow person marker (haha)

That was the first element I added to the page. I also wanted to make the info sheet more interesting than just a few pages with words on them, so I spiced it up with some clip arts. I added some of our personal faves of things to do and places to eat and other useful information for Boracay. 

Here's the final output:

TA-DA!





birthday summer shopping

Sometimes, something can be both good and bad. I just had my birthday a couple of days ago and people can't help but ask me what Tommee's bday gift was. Here's the thing you should know, he's not really the surprise-you-on-your-birthday kind of guy, he's more like the ask-you-straight-out-what-you-want kind of guy. On the other hand, I love surprises. I love surprising other people with gifts and I love getting surprises. So you can see the problem. But, his style actually comes as a blessing at times. This year, I knew I needed a new summer wardrobe - a. because I had to donate a lot of my old clothes because they don't fit me anymore and b. because we will be spending 3 weeks- getting married, vacationing and honeymooning- at the beach. So, when he asked me what I wanted for my birthday this year, that's exactly what I asked for. Now, I get to shop for whatever summer clothes, accessories, and whatever that I like. - and to top it off, he is willing to go shopping with me!

I haven't gone shopping in ages! It feels so weird.. nevertheless, I will do my best.. heehee =p

*You should have seen me do my happy dance when he told me my budget =) Let's just say it was twice more than what I expected.. hehe


Wednesday, March 11, 2009

flower girl's beach bucket

I knew I didn't want to use a basket for the flower girl, and saw these "beach buckets" from another beach wedding but I couldn't seem to find them anywhere. Good thing Sis Lyn (a fellow w@wie) told me where to get them - they're actually stainless steel ice buckets that you can get at any hardware or department store. They're really cheap so I decided to get 3. 1 for our flower girl and 2 for the kiddie table at the reception.

I had to paint them and at first couldn't decide what color, I ended up spray painting them aquamarine and will tie a black and turquoise ribbon on it later on.



I'll post more pictures when I've set the whole thing up.. =)

candles, candles and more candles

While I was still in San Francisco, my mom helped me buy all kinds of candles for the wedding. As long as they were in the blue/green shade and beige, I was happy. I wanted different types so we bought any size and any style. Here are some of what we got:





I love these martini glass candles.. so cute!


here's a bigger version


some pillar candles

and my favorite among them: tiny candles
they're about 2 inches tall each :) really cute


I have another batch coming in from my mom. I'm hoping they arrive sometime this week so I can ship all the things we need for the wedding to Boracay c/o Amanda.

Friday, March 6, 2009

our DIY wine labels

It seems like the past few days have been my DIY-days.. Though it is a lot of work, I am having fun doing all these. 

This time, I made customized wine labels for our honorary sponsor gifts (i.e. ninongs and ninangs)


I made 4 different color combos using turquoise and aquamarine, since I couldn't decide on just 1 color, I decided to use these two.


We bought these house wines from Marks & Spencer

At first, I tried to just put the sticker over the original labels because I thought I could use them as guides so that the labels will still be centered and everything. But when I tried it, the sticker was too thin to completely mask the original. I ended up scraping off the original labels.


TA-DA! 
Tommee & Suyen's very own wines =) hehe

I still have to attach the tags with the names but other than that, it's set..




Wednesday, March 4, 2009

our DIY music CD giveaway

YESSSSSSS!

My hands are hurting so much from cutting 70 freakin' pieces of CD covers but it is so worth it! I finally finished packaging our CD giveaway. Whooooo! (haha sorry for the uncontrolled obvious elation)


From the very beginning, we decided that our giveaways/favors would be music CDs. For those who know me (or read my blog about how we met), our first date was the effect of him giving me a mixed CD. 

Tommee and I actually burned (c/o his HP laptop) and toasted (c/o my MacBook) all the CDs this past weekend and I was "stuck" with having the covers printed, cut and placed inside the CD cases. I made the covers (using my photoshop skills - yeah! haha) months ago, but only finalized them this weekend. 


Tommee liked the concept of 2 "views" of the beach - one during the daytime and one at night- to represent us, I guess (haha).  I just added our monogram and the details of the wedding. 

I used the same image inside as background for the list of songs. (ok, it's not totally finished because I still have to make the stickers for the CD itself, but still)

We were supposed to have 10 songs each but since one of "my" songs is really long, I had to delete one of them and we ended up with only 19 songs in total. These are the songs that are part of our wedding playlist and are also the songs that we've "dedicated" to each other. (sorry if the pictures a bit blurred)

Here's the song list (in case you can't read it from the picture):

Tommee
1. Hanging By A Moment by Lifehouse
2. Spin by Lifehouse
3. Take Me Away by Lifehouse
4. You and Me by Lifehouse
5. Sugar by Tonic
6. Far Away by Nickelback
7. Thunder by Boys Like Girls
8. Come On Get Higher by Matt Nathanson
9. Superhuman by Chris Brown feat. Keri Hilson
10. With You by Chris Brown

Suyen
11. Everything by Lifehouse
12. First Time by Lifehouse
13. Dance Inside by The All-American Rejects
14. I'm Yours by Jason Mraz
15. Better Together by Jack Johnson
16. Beautiful Surprise (forgot this back when we had it printed and just remembered it's by Indie Arie)
17. The Way I Am - Ingrid Michaelson
18. Say It Again - Marie Digby
19. One For You (Unplugged) by Studmuffin


As you can see, we're fans of Lifehouse (although Tommee is the ultimate fan) and we definitely don't have the "conventional" love songs. We both love rock/alternative songs and we made sure that this is really presented in our wedding. I'll share our wedding playlist next time, but for now, I want to bask in the great feeling of finishing these up! =)

P.S. I'll let you in a little secret. The song One For You is actually Tommee's song for me. He made this with his band when he first met me and as an early wedding gift, he re-recorded an unplugged version for me. =) awwwwwwwwwwwwwww... haha

Monday, March 2, 2009

yey for my first wedding dress fitting!

I finally had my first dress fitting this past Saturday and I am really happy with the outcome. I admit I was getting worried because Ruby (the seamstress) told me that it would take her around 1 month to finish but she didn't get back to me until 1 month and a half after.. (Believe me, when you're waiting for 2 more weeks for something as vital as the wedding dress, it is agonizing!) 

As much as I would love to post the dress here, I can't and I don't want to in the fear of Tommee seeing it here. I will say that Ruby got the look and flow of the design I was going for and the color is perfect. No white wedding dress for me, I have an ivory-colored dress with a satin lining and silk-chiffon overlay. Although it is a little loose (I did lose weight! Boo!), the only other problem I have is the lining. It may not be enough so we might have to double it. I really need to gain weight. I know it would look so much better if I could fill it out.

My mission this week is to find THE UNDIES to make it work.