Too much of a good thing?

P only had 3 things he required at our wedding. 1) No tuxedo for him. He wanted to wear the traditional Filipino Barong Tagalog 2) A "short, fat" cake and 3) an Open Bar.

That's right my dear darling husband required 7 hours of an open bar at our wedding reception or he could not possibly get married. Which I thought was a great idea but our parents were completely horrified by. P claims he never has fun at weddings that are sans alcohol or that you have to pay for your own drinks. To him it was a matter of being a good host. To his folks it was an accident waiting to happen. I trusted our friends to know their limits and everything turned out just fine although I know that my in-laws thought all the guests were going to end up like this guy!!



Thanks Bio BM for this ridiculous video. According to her it reminded her of "a guy from my building the other night. I was doing my laundry when he came into the garage walking in an S, so wasted, ran into the wall, fell over, tried to make his way to the door and fell going up a ramp onto a bike. It was bad news." She also claimed it was "funny but so not funny".

Bar Signs

Cute Signs that we made for the Bar(s). So now because we have so many people crashing...er, attending our wedding we have 35 tables instead of 20. And also we now have a bar upstairs and a bar downstairs. Signs say Cheers, Salud (Spanish), and Mabuhay (In Filipino)!






Photo of P and I from Bakey BM's epic wedding reception dinner at Jardiniere.

Table numbers, they're Eco baby.

Meet the cute table numbers. They are useful because they are legible and clear, I tried really hard to find a font that was easy to read. I hate it when you are looking for 11 but it looks like 22! They are fun because the backing is the cute yellow and orange plaid of our invitations and they continue that bright theme to the table decor. They are Eco because they are our leftover invitation sleeves! No waste for us.

Porange DIY Boxes

Adorable Porange Boxes provided by Sissy BM. Two of these towers will grace our gift table so people are directed to leave our gifts (Which I still can't believe that people are going to get us stuff, awesome!)





One of the boxes has been turned into our envelope box. P's mom has apparently told all of her family to give us money instead of gifts. I thought it was hysterical that P's uncle called her and told her he had bought a gift for us and she told him to go and return it and write us a check instead!



These Chinese take out boxes are a quart each and are to be used to take home candy from the candy bar table. They have a P on one side and an R on the other, the font is the cutest font that Bakey BM found.

Huge necklace for reception?

With only a month left to go the details have become super important. During the ceremony I have decided to wear a bolero jacket, I just don't feel like God and the rest of the church needs to see by buxomy self. But at the reception all bets are off, and while I was originally thinking about changing into a short dress now I really like my dress and want to enjoy it the entire night. Plus my Mantra right now is, "Keep it Simple!". So, one dress it is.

I do love this picture from Banana Republic, and I think that I want to change into no jacket and a large piece of (fuchsia?) jewelry for the reception part of the night.

Pinwheels as namecards?

Bakey BM has the dubious honor of being my resident go to person when it comes to all things DIY. (Or in this case, Do It Someone Else) Naturally I sent her a Martha Stewart inspiration project email featuring pinwheels. I really like the look of them, its a fun way to further incorporate our colors and they feel playful and low key, hopefully fitting in with the rest of our wedding.

Bakey BM exhibited her genius by coming up with the idea of instead of using sticks to put the dowels in, the handle of the pinwheel could be a pencil with our names on it! CUTE! And useful! And know I saw this picture and think it might be a good way to use the pinwheels as escort name cards. Hot or not?

Back me up.

Thank you, Bio BM for suggesting these kids as back up dancers for the BM dance that is a pipe dream for me. Please fly these kids over so we can have entertainment, please! Now that I think of it, most all of the BM's are pretty good dancers although Bakey BM and GRE BM are the only "formally" trained ones. Even with my lack of coordination and dance ability, I am looking forward to busting a move at the wedding.

Sarah Maren Photos of a wedding reception in our space.

Sarah Maren is a photographer in Sacramento, and I recently found some beautiful pictures of a wedding in our Venue, the Library Galleria in downtown Sacramento. Her website features a nice mix of urban and traditional photos. Since one of the defining features of our reception space is the incredibly high cieling and an interesting balcony most Photographer seem to want to use thier fish eye lens to capture it. PS> I am a fan of the fish eye, it always reminds me of the Busta Ryhymes video from way back when. You know the one.

So, also in these pictures you can see the very black granite floors and the very dark nature of the space in general. This influenced our bright Porange scheme, because 1, we want it to be happy and bright and 2, why not?

Flip Flop around the dance floor.

There is really nothing new under the sun and this is especially true when it comes to wedding planning. Every cool idea that you can think of has been done and probably better than you can execute it. But that doesnt dissuade me from stealing the cutest and more useful ideas I have spotted.


From weddingbee.com Gallery.

I bought my sandals in hot fuschia and orange...aka Porange. And I cant wait to put them in a cute basket on my dance floor for people to partake of when thier tootsies get tired.

Escort Card Ideas

From theknot.com, these Escort cards (in PORANGE) ensured that guests got lucky - or hoped to – thanks to each card being wrapped around scratch off lottery ticket.



I am really into this idea although it might not be the most diplomatic idea for my wedding. My future SIL really wanted my MIL to give Lotto Tickets for her favors at their Hawaii Wedding. My MIL chose to go in a totally different directions and make semi wacked out puff painted bottles instead. Suffice it to say this is still a bone of contention in the family and therefore might be better left alone by me. But, still such a cute idea right?

Stuff I want for the wedding reception.

1. Personalized labels for the wine bottles.



2. Cute menus describing yummy food, including 4 roast pigs.




3. A fun midnight snack for when we are drunken tiger mode (I mean slightly tipsy....) and need to refuel.



There are lot's more Im sure, but these are all I can think of for right now. xoxo

Almost Legal.

I could go get my marriage license right now. If I wanted to. Which I don't really, not in SF. Because I'm going to do it in Sutter County where it is like $80 cheaper. But if I wanted to, this is the day, baby. 90 days out and counting.



I'm getting excited to marry P. And have a party where we serve pork products.

This weekend I am going to go to Chris K's house to worship at the shrine of all things wedding. The wedding video and photos are back from the fabulouse Auberge wedding. I love you Friday.

Location, Location, Location!

I often think that P and I are super lucky or have good karma (this I am attributing 100% to him, I get too riled up and threaten too many shop clerks to accumulate much) and this has been evident so far in our wedding planning. Our wedding reception venue is one of the things that just fell into place. The venue is the Tsakapolous Library Galleria in downtown Sacramento, CA. It’s quite perfect for us for several reasons, where it is, what it is, and what it represents.

We try in our everyday life to be eco-conscious, deliberate in our choices and mindful of our spending. Sacramento is a great town for us to have our wedding in because unlike a destination no one will have to board a jet plane and many of our Bay area friends can car pool or even take the train! It’s close to most of our family and a hidden treasure of a town, and probably where we will end up settling down once we have the city out of our system. P and I also met in Sacramento so it’s fitting that we get married there too.

The Library Galleria itself is fabulous. Neither of us had been there before although it’s in a prominent location downtown, next to the courthouse and Cesar Chavez Park. It’s a 5 story atrium that can fit 500, although we expect about half that number. It is part of the Sacramento Library System and we also feel excited that our money goes to support the Public Library System and not the faceless Hilton’s of the world. It has black granite floors and commissioned sculptures and art that is native to Northern California.

I found myself a few months ago looking for museums and art galleries in Sacramento on the web and discovered the website for our venue www.library galleria.com The pictures are misleading since it’s hard to get a real feel for the space and sometimes it tends to look cheesy from the outside. One weekend when we were visiting family P and I made an appointment to peek at the space on a Saturday. We drove up on Friday evening and cased the joint – we walked around the Library at night and tried to imagine a raging party. I promptly decided that we shouldn’t even show up the next morning. It looked dark and cavernous and not like an awesome dance-until-you-drop location. P had more faith and dragged me to the appointment the next morning where we A) promptly proceeded to fall in love with the vaulted ceilings and spacious dance floor B) fell in love with the wedding coordinator and C) write that woman a check to reserve our date!

Definitely a pretty painless endeavor, our first wedding reception venue visited was the right one for us. I hope the rest of our planning goes as smoothly!