Wedding preparation for LA and tips for making crafts for your own wedding:

IN PROGRESS:

Alright… I was going to write about this earlier but I didn’t want to let the secret out and ruin the surprise when our guests receive their invitation ^_^. (or maybe I am just lazy)

So lets start from the beginning…

Ceremony Location: The Neighborhood Church in Palos Verdes, CA
I first lay my eyes on this church back in high school when I went there for some church function. It is a historical building right on a cliff. This Spanish adobe style building has windows in the sanctuary that over looks the ocean (makes great photos). Although there was a 3 hour time frame for each wedding party, it was enough for us to get everything done. They had a beautiful room for the bride to change in… so lots of pretty pictures there too ^_^. The pastor was welling to work with us to incorporate both Chinese and English vows during our ceremony, which made it very special for Eric and me.

Tips for program booklet at the church:
Try to include some of the family members in the ceremony (i.e. scripture reading). If there is a gap between your wedding ceremony and reception, you may want to include local attractions in your program so your guest can have something to do while they wait for the reception. You can include some puzzles or brain teasers about yourself…it was a big hit at ours. Sample:XXXXXXXXX

Invitation: Message in a bottle
Since I am very into arts and crafts, I thought making my own invitation would be very cool and I can also save money. Well… It was very cool but it certainly did not save me any money. First thing first, my wedding invitation was in the style of message in a bottle. I got the idea online for beach theme weddings.

You can either get the whole thing made, printed, and mailed for you from www.mypersonalartist.com for XXX per invitation … or you can try to be crazy like me and do it separately. (At Mypersonalartist.com they can also personalize a watercolor on all of your wedding stationeries… but you will need to talk to them in advance).

DIY tips for message in a bottle:
Bottles and the boxes can be ordered from www.sanblastarts.com for $0.68 per bottle
Sand from Michael’s for $3.50/bag (enough for 70+ bottles)… don’t go to the beach to get the sand… we tried it and it smells bad.-_-
Shells and starts: from www.orientaltrading.com ( cheap… one bag of each is enough)
Invitation with original watercolor printed from www.mypersonalartist.com for XXXX
Color printer from Costco (I went through 2 sets of cartridge for 70 invitations)… if you don’t mind that the letters are not raised then the best quality print on the color printer looks just like the flat printing they do at the invitation stores.
Ribbons: I got them in downtown LA’s fashion district… (Take 110 N to 10E exit Mapleturn left onto Maple and keep going for about 5-7 blocks and you will be in the fashion/fabric district) You can find all the supplies you need for your craft stuff (i.e. ribbons, candles, veil beads…) for a lot cheaper then Michael’s or Jo-Annes.
Postage: you can do a personalized stamp from www.stamp.com or you can use the automated machine at the post office.




Wedding dress and bridesmaids’ dresses:
I don’t really have any tip for the wedding dress besides… if you like it… just get it… it will cost you a lot doesn’t matter how you cut it… so just buy the one you want so you can be happy ^_^
Bridesmaids’ dresses, however, you can get them in downtown LA fashion district for a really good price. Go down Santee street (one block west of Maple) and go you will see lots of prom/wedding party dress stores… they run about $45-55 for short dresses and $55 and up for long dresses (the place I went is called Christies). All the stuff you see at David’s bridal or Jessica McClintock stuff, you will see the exact same style for 1/3-1/2 the price.

Wedding Hair and make-up:
Up-do is definitely the way to go for Asians… unless you have naturally curly hair. Since I already had a wedding in Taiwan, I knew my hair gets flat towards the end of the day… so I got an up-do this time… less things to worry about.
I had little white orchids in my hair while the bridesmaids all had a mid-size pink rose in theirs (matched their dress perfectly).
Do do a test make-up session with the make-up artist. Make sure you take pictures of how it looks like and have it in hand the day of so you can remind the make-up artist how it was.
My make-up artist name was Alicia in Newport beach. E-mail me if you need more info…. I liked the make up.

Reception location:
To follow our beach theme, we picked The Portofino Yatch club in Redondo Beach (15 min drive from the church). It has a great view of King Harbor and it also has a beautiful view of the lights from Palos Verdes at night.
The Pacific ballroom was perfect for the 110 guests that we had. It came with a terrace that allows guests to enjoy the view before our reception.

Tips for hosting alcohol:
Eric and I wanted to serve alcohol but didn’t have a big budget for it… the hotel wanted to charge us $5/glass if it is something their distributor carries (yaks!). After we found out that the distributor does not carry Taiwan Beer, my brother was able to buy 4 cases of it from Ranch (48 big glass bottles = less than $50) and bring it in ourselves. They did charge us $6/bottle corkage fee… but it was still cheaper than $5/glass (cuz each bottle serves 3 glasses). It was as if we had an open bar ^_^

Reception decoration:
I bought a lot of shells and sea stars from www.orientaltrading.com , which makes good decoration on the table of the reception. They are really cheap… you only need one bag of baby shells and one box of mini sugar stars and that will be enough to cover 12 -15 tables. I also glued sea stars and sand dollars on the menu… it turned our really nice.

Wedding Favor: Do what will reflect you the most. It took me a long time to figure out what I wanted to do for the party favor. I saw these butter spreader with sea shells on it for $3/pair that says “spread the love” which was super cute… but it was out of my price range… then I realize why look further… I have over 100 CD’s most of them are songs that Eric and I enjoy. So we put together 2 music CD’s with romantic songs that we like and also fun songs that we like… put on CD label with our pictures on it and… DONE!!! ^_^

DJ: I like our DJ a lot because he know how to read the crowd. Also he was able to use all the songs we like from our wedding favor. I guess if you already have a list of songs that you like you can easily do the IPOD thing but don’t stress yourself over it. If you have friends who are good with IPOD and computer music stuff then great… if not then just hire a DJ. Here is our DJ’s websiteXXXXXXXX

Flowers: I can’t say much about this because my bestfriend’s mom and her friend did the whole thing for us for a price much cheaper then what the flower stores were quoting me ^_^ Recycle the flowers… whatever you have at the church… move it over to the reception.

Cake: From my impression… nobody really care about the cake as long as it looks nice for the pictures. We just ordered what the hotel well cover in the package and had Carol’s mom decorate the cake with lots of flowers… it looks awesome. I also wanted to have a very personalized cake topper… so I took Eric and my picture and gave it to a claymation store in Taiwan and had a topper made that way ^_^

Photographer:
So I did a lot of research on the photographer. Do go in a talk to the photographer. Take a look at their portfolio but at the same time take a look at their work in progress. I really like my photographer’s work in progress so we booked him. Also, doing an engagement photo session with the photographer is a good idea just because you can get used to the photographer and know their strengths and weaknesses and be able to tell the photographer what you like changed for your wedding pictures.
My photographer’s name is Teak and this e-mail is:XXXXXXX

Honeymoon:
If you are not going on your honeymoon right away, make sure you do take a short trip somewhere. The wedding is exhausting you need to take a break and spend sometime just for the two of you.