Saturday, 3/15/08:
WOW, it is exactly 2 weeks until the VERY BIG DAY!!! The time has absolutely flown by since I last wrote to y’all. I think “flown by” is rather an understatement as you might say that time has trampled all over Matt and I via the frenzy of all of the wedding planning necessary to put together what we hope will be a special day for us and for you!
For those of you who are married and had a formal ceremony and reception, I think that you would have some empathy for our current plight. However, we have no one to um, blame except ourselves;) You see, we ambitiously or stupidtiously chose to remodel the aforementioned house and plan a wedding in less than 6 months time! Needless to say, it feels like we haven’t slept for months, which is not that far from the truth really;)
And I am very much the “flushing” bride and not the “blushing” bride these days. Let me explain…I seem to vacillate between the emotions of stress and happy excitement, sometimes with cause and other times, it just seems very random and I am not manic…really I’m not;)
Reasons for a bride to be “flushed” or red in the face:
(1) When the gorgeous wedding gown you spent a petite fortune on and waited for months to arrive at Saks comes on time but the lining is not sewn on right and the details on the side of the bodice are not finished properly:(
I’ve always loved this wedding gown designer’s designs but boy oh boy, she needs to get a better quality assurance team in place as I would not recommend her to anyone out there who might be looking for a wedding gown. But Saks did go the extra mile and worked with the design house and they cut me a new dress in record time. This one is in much better shape and I go in for my final fitting next week…woohoo!
(2) When an experienced tailor in Shanghai botches the custom-made traditional Chinese wedding gown by making it way too short for me and with an arm not sewn on properly. My mother and father took a vacation in China and Hong Kong last November so my mum thought that she would bring my exact measurements to someone in Shanghai (where the tailoring for these gowns is supposed to be best) to have my traditional gown made. She also had hers made there and it is absolutely beautiful!
However, when she brought mine home and I tried it on, the first thing I noticed was the really gorgeous and unique fabric…mom did good:) Then, unfortunately, the second thing I noticed was that it was 4 or 5 inches too short. The next thing my future mother-in-law noticed was that one arm was not sewn on straight and it was pretty obvious. It’s kind of tough to try to get that fixed when I’m in San Francisco and the tailor is in Shanghai:(
(3) Chinese traditional gown, take 2: So my mom and I thought that the easiest thing to do would be to order my gown in San Francisco where the shop owner could take my measurements personally and take responsibility for anything that went wrong. So in mid January, I found a very unique pattern, it was the only one that I saw in SF Chinatown that I liked and placed the order with the shopkeeper. Unfortunately, he didn’t make the gown on site and had to send it to Macau to have it made.
Due to the Chinese New Year holiday over in China where everyone takes a week off, my 2nd gown was delayed slightly and didn’t get delivered until last week. I eagerly went to the shop to try it on and the 1st thing I noticed was that it didn’t fit in the hips correctly…a definite no-no as the fit in the keipo should be cut perfectly to a woman’s curves. Then I noticed that the fabric around the front and side of the legs were also cut too wide…so in a nutshell, this 2nd dress sucked too:(
I mean, c’mon, the Chinese have been probably making these dresses for at least 100 years…why did mine have to get screwed up twice;) I will find out tomorrow if a tailor in SF will be able to fix it and fix it on time…otherwise I will have to make keipo #3!
Does anyone else feel like I’m being tested by the wedding goddess here;) But you know what they always say, the 3rd time’s the charm…so my 3rd try to get a decent Chinese traditional gown is going to be golden, I just know it!
Reasons for a bride to be “blushing”:
(1) Our Engagement Shoot:
On a blustery and cold but sunny March day in San Francisco, my wonderful fiance and our very zen dog, Coho, embarked on a grand adventure to a couple of very cool locations in our home town to do our engagement shoot with our wedding photographer. Our photographer, Genevieve and I, were both just recovering from the nasty mutant strain of flu bug going around but we were having so much fun that we temporarily forgot the nagging unpleasantness of our respective illnesses.
Although I’m incredibly unphotogenic, Genevieve managed to take some pretty cool pictures of Matt and I…some where I even look like a normal human being;) People, it is definitely worth it to hire a professional photographer for your wedding…she’s been worth every penny so far!
And I got a chance to put on a funky little outfit replete with my favorite Lanvin coat and pretend in my own head that I was some kind of supa model or something;) And oh yeah, my fiance didn’t look too shabby either…he went out and bought some new duds just for our shoot and I dare say, he outdid me in the wardrobe department…but just for that day;) And we might just decide to spring some of these pics at some point during our wedding so look for them!
(2) My extraordinary bridal shower:
One of my bridesmaids, Suzanne, was gracious enough to throw me a bridal shower at her amazing home located in Muir Beach. The view from her living room is absolutely magnificent, with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the Pacific Ocean!!! Needless to say, it was the perfect locale for a nice, intimate get-together with a few of my gal pals.
As I like to call her now, she is the hostess with the mostest. Everything was presented just beautifully, every detail well thought out. She even enlisted Matt to come up with the one bridal shower game that I was down with playing:) And we all had so much fun with it so thank you Suz and everyone who attended!
Suzanne made 3 different quiches for my girls that day and boy, each one was full of flavor and delectable to the palate. Then we topped it off with a pink, princess cake with the message, “Happy Trails Judy!” scribbled artfully and humorously over the round fondant dome. My sister, Annie, was kind enough to supply this girly but not too girly cake for my shower. Thanks Annie, that cake was so yummy, fluffy, and not too sweet…perfecto!
(3) Last but not least, my fantastic fiance, Matt:
Now certainly, remodeling a house and planning a wedding in less than 6 months would certainly create a significant amount of stress for any couple and relationship. And oy, we have had some doozy-filled moments;) But through it all, we’re still together and going strong, even as we’re working at the speed of light to get the final details nailed down in the last 2 weeks.
If all of the trials and tribulations we’ve gone through in the last few months don’t prove that we are right for each other, I’m not sure what will;) He and I are still very much in love and just trying to hold onto each other tight during the last dizzying spins and turns of this wedding planning hurricane!
Alright, seeing that it is now past 2:00am, I should probably putter off to bed. But being the natural nightowl that I am, and with my head constantly filled with all of the wedding details that Matt and I have to attend to still…we’ll see what time I actually fall asleep.
And if you read my ramblings this far, I thank you for your time and attention! Contrary to what some of my venting above might suggest, I can’t wait to marry Matt and he, I. And we’re so excited and looking forward to seeing all of you exactly 2 weeks from now to celebrate with us and do it up right!!!
xoxo,
Judy
P.S. And oh yes, if I might make a little request, please leave more comments for us!!! It will help us feel loved and provide lots of encouragement to us as we go through this last stressful phase:)
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Hello Family and Friends!
Hope 2008 is starting off with a great happy bang for y’all and welcome to our still-in-progress wedding web site! We’re slowly but surely adding more information that we hope will help make your stay in our beautiful city of San Francisco more enjoyable. And of course, there’ll be all of the usual wedding event goodies and tidbits that you might expect from a “wedding site” and maybe we’ll even toss in a few that aren’t cos we’re just that kind of people;)
2007 was an incredible year for the two of us…we got engaged over Memorial Day weekend up in a little town called, Little River, just South of Mendocino, CA. Our engagement was nothing short of the most romantic and perfect engagement imaginable (for those of you who know me, you know that’s really saying something:) Then we started looking for our house pretty much immediately thereafter as we wanted some bigger and better digs than the 1 bedroom basement apartment we were sharing in the very colorful “Tendernob” district of SF.
Matt and I sometimes miss the ole neighborhood “charm” and the characters that we would see on our streets like “the sniffing guy” and “pancake”…ask us about them when you see us next;) But we certainly don’t miss the “fight to the death” mindsets of the neighborhood denizen looking for parking or the carbon raining down on us daily from all of the traffic driving through that neighborhood (Tendernob is adjacent to Union Square and downtown SF).
After being ridiculously outbid a number of times, (the 1st house we bid on got 16 other bids!), we lucked out on a 3 bedroom house in the quiet and slightly upscale Golden Gate Heights neighborhood of San Francisco. But trust me, we’re nowhere near the full-tilt upscale like the Pacific Heights or the Sea Cliff neighborhoods;) And Ladies and Gentlemen, the housing market in San Francisco proper is alive and well unlike much of the country in this subprime crisis.
Our new house is on a hill with a petite view of the Bay out of our living room windows and there’s a great park, appropriately named the “Golden Gate Heights Park” about 2 blocks further up the hill from us. The park is quite beautiful and has a great green lawn that our dog, Coho, amongst many other neighborhood canines loves to run and play in. And as a native San Franciscan, I have to say the air quality up at the park is the best I’ve ever inhaled in the city and there are panoramic views of the Southwestern part of SF and the Pacific Ocean if you venture off the main trails just a little bit. But truly, the best thing about our neighborhood is that there is ample street parking…yes, places like this do actually exist in San Francisco:)
Back to the house…it is a fairly spacious home, for SF anyway;) and needed a little TLC as it had stood vacant for almost 10 years before we moved in on 10/27/07. So we ambitiously or foolishly decided to remodel a home and plan a wedding in less than a year. It’s been quite an experience, especially with our contractors and sub-contractors…an experience so rich with moments of wanting to, well, shake them to their senses so that they would actually do something right the first time;) It didn’t work by the way *sigh* But the good news is, after delay after delay, we finally got our FINAL inspection signed off by the city the 2nd week of the new year so we’re pretty much done with the exception of a couple of things that I won’t go into here;)
So please be patient with us as we continue to update this site, as we’re still crazy busy with the wedding planning, and keep coming back soon for more information related to our wedding. But if you have any questions in the meantime for us, please don’t hesitate to email us at:
Judy Miu (that’s me, the blushing or flushing bride-to-be, depending on the day): jmiu@yahoo.com
Matt Smith (that’s my most fantabulous fiance who can pretty much do anything and will try to): matt@shockstone.com
We look forward to hearing from you and of course, seeing all of your happy, shiny faces at the end of March in the City By the Bay!
Love,
Judy and Matt