i love framing
I’m a photographer so of course I love to frame things; not just in a wooden rectangle with a glass in front of it but also thru my camera lense. Thru my lenses i frame images hoping someday it will be framed on my clients’ walls and homes. Me loving to frame so much (in both contexts) you will naturally see A LOT of it…at the bridal shower and at the wedding–as decor and as gifts and of course in our home.
At last weekend’s Bridal Shower, guests were gifted oval blinged placecard frames. Oval in shape and oval bling to match my ring, of course!
The ladies were also gifted with black 4″ x 6″ frames to mark the occasion.
As far as frames that will be seen at the wedding day itself, you’ll have to wait and see!
To give you an even better idea of my love for frames–Rob and I have a tradition of purchasing a frame on every trip we go on. It usually represents the country, state, city, or location we’re visiting. We never know what frame we’ll end up getting so throughout the trip we shoot photos both in landscape and portrait view; just to ensure that we have a variety of images to choose from to go with the orientation of the frame we end up purchasing.
Check out our current collection. To name off a few locations: Seattle, Dallas, New York, Cabo San Lucas, Yosemite, Catalina Island, and Lake Tahoe.
Our next frame purchase will be of Tahiti. Hoping to find one in Bora Bora or Moorea on our honeymoon. The only problem is choosing the 1 image to go in it. There will be so many great photo ops I’m not sure if one frame will be enough. Perhaps we should get 2? or 3 (one of each island)? Hahaha…our frame shelf will end up filling up way too quick. We have our entire lives left to travel and acquire more frames so I’ll try my very best to be good and get just one. We shall see if I can resist my urge.
Filed under Blog | Comments (2)the bachelor party
Ahhh Cancun! What would you expect 15 guys to do in one of the biggest party destinations in the world? Well I will fill you in on some of the activities: we spent a lot of time at the pool, went to the library to read books, went to church almost daily, volunteered at the local orphanage, and walked around the resort to pick up trash. Riiiiiiight.
Thursday morning everyone is packed and ready to go on our 4-day trip to The Royal in Cancun. Well before we actually get on the plane, we decide to get the party started at LAX and I am not talking about the exclusive nightclub in Los Angeles. We actually hit up the airport bar for a few rounds before we were ready to board. David decides he wants to charge the bill and guess what? DECLINED! This was right before he realized he “lost” his passport. Too awesome.
Most of us were bunched up towards the middle of the plane, you could imagine how obnoxious we probably were. Dan requested to be moved near us, but the flight attendant said, “you don’t want to sit next to those guys.” So he decided to do a little partying of his own from his seat. The drink cart (portable bar) came around 3 times and on the 3rd round Dan was actually cut-off, as in, he was not allowed to order any additional alcoholic beverages.
It was a long flight, so we had to find out how to entertain ourselves. Tony (with the help of Jen) made a black mamba sock. Too bad he got attacked by his own creation.
Now let’s see what kind of trouble can we get ourselves into at this 5-star, all inclusive, adult only resort.
We get to the resort and it is amazing. In room jacuzzi.
Swim Up Pool
24 Hour Self-Serve Bar
Later that night we played Ring of Fire
Day 2
We did a group shotgun
David does a 2x piña colada w/ 3 shots of Johnnie Walker in a beer bong
Beertender Richard struts his stuff
Thanhimal enjoying the ocean water
Starting to get tipsy
Done @ 7pm
Or Am I? Yeah I am (and it’s only 10pm)! I had Duy escort me back to his room
Day 3
This is our big drinking day, we start at 10am and do not finish until 7am the next morning. That’s 21 hours of drinking for those of you who don’t have a digital watch.
Everyone got a 10am beer bong wake up call, here is Dennis doing it from his bed.
Duy captured some really nice group shots, sorry no shirts
Quang Chillaxing
Kevin gazing out to the cool blue ocean
The boys dumping beer on me like I just won male stripper of the year
It is lunch and time to feed Shamu
And now for some extreme beer bonging… Eric carries David on his shoulders
Shamu beer bong
Tony’s underwater beer bong
Dan gets choke slammed by Elvis and does beer bong
Not to be outdone by Duy’s choke slam from Eric after finishing a beer bong
Day 4
It’s checkout time!
After checkout, some of us go to mass at the hotel next door. Great view!
What a great weekend, we are now on our way home…
Thanks to Dan, Darren, David, Dennis, Duy, Elvis, Eric, John, Kevin, Quang, Richard, Thanh, Tony and Tyrone for making this all possible. I had a really nice time and can’t wait for the next bachelor to have his turn.
Filed under Blog | Comments (7)the silhouette artist
For our wedding we’ve commissioned a premiere artist of a very rare art of silhouette cutting. Karl Johnson of Cut Arts will be at our wedding for only 2 hours to cut silhouettes of us and our guests. We’ve really enjoyed and respected this art form since our days working at Disneyland and thought it’d be a great treat to have for our guests.
Taking a snippet of his bio from his website:
Karl learned this unique skill as a young boy from his father who had been taught many years earlier by a long time friend of the family.
Karl took to this unusual art form extremely well. Something he attributes, in part, to having vision in only one eye. Karl was born being able to see only from his right eye. Not having binocular vision forces Karl to judge the distance and shape of an object by examining its shadow. This allows Karl to capture an image in shadow in an uncanny way.
Recently he was commissioned by Marc Anthony to cut an image of his wife, Jennifer Lopez, for her 40th birthday and also appeared at the party to cut silhouettes for guests. Karl was also commissioned by the new Hong Kong Disney Park to create all the silhouette portraits to be displayed in the silhouette studio on Main Street.
Starting when he was only ten years old and now forty four, Karl estimates that he has freehand cut hundreds of thousands of silhouette images so far in his career.
We’re so excited to have Karl apart of our celebration that day and hope our guests will arrive on time during cocktail hour to have a silhouette made by such a prestigious artist. He will also be available for an additional hour during dinner to cut images for anyone who was missed during cocktail. I guess if he’s a big enough hit we’ll have to keep him there for an hour longer than we had commissioned.
Here’s a silhouette of Rob and I when we worked at Disneyland together in 1998–12 years ago! As you can see…Rob wore glasses back then. Can’t wait to see what Karl cuts of us that day.
40 days to go…
time has definitely flown by since our first blog post on this site. eventhough i’ve done my very best to get as many things done as far in advance as possible, there’s still a ton of things left on the to do list.
one very important thing: our first dance. we start lessons in 2 days and only have 38 days to perfect a 3 min song. if you know us, you know we both don’t dance much but i promise you we’ll try our very best to put on a great show. any advice? wish us luck!
Filed under Blog | Comment (1)the wedding invitation
One of the top things I am most excited to unveil about the wedding are the invitations. We really had no idea what we were in store for when we met with Jenny Tran of Beautiful & Creative Weddings back in January. A loss for words does not begin to describe our reactions when she showed us her samples of hardback invitations. Never had we seen anything like it–an actual hardback covering, exactly like a book, for an invitation. It was simply AMAZING!
Rob, as most of you know, is in the design and print business so paper is his thing. Naturally this type of print material greatly impressed him and was important to him to have if we can at all possibly have such a thing for our invitations (since they are outrageously expensive). With a bit of bartering on my behalf we were able to get these for $0 out of pocket…but hours of service out of my end to shoot Jenny’s sister’s wedding in November. To me that was a no-brainer deal to lock in. We get the most awesome invitations while Duy and I shoot a wedding to pay for it. (Thanks, Duy! You’re the best partner ever. Rob sends his love and appreciation too.)
The boxes the invitations came in. It was like even better than Christmas and birthday gifts.
An aerial view of the stack. Yup–the envelope is about a 1/4″ thick. I especially love how the design wraps over the top and continues onto the back flap.
The front cover. Embossed names, birds, and circles. Debossed swirls and date. The date is also stamped in gold foil.
The back cover has our website url debossed in chocolate.
The invite can freestand on it’s own. Many have suggested we turn it into a photo holder.
We actually had an English and Vietnamese version made. The birds, circles, and our names are also embossed here while the swirls are debossed (love how it mimics wind in that way). Our names are embossed in gold foil.
The inside flap holds the RSVP card, reception invite, and directions card all staggered so the titles can easily be seen/read. Titles are embossed.
We chose the purple flower LOVE stamps over the other designs since we will have some purple flowers in our wedding anyway. Cost $1.73 to send.
Our great friend, Stephanie, graciously volunteered to handwrite out all our invitations. Here’s a sample of one that we hand delivered.
Here’s a few samples of ones that were addressed out. Isn’t her writing just so beautiful?!?
The workshop of invitation handlers hard at work putting things together to be sent out.
We’ve gotten well over a ton of compliments on the invitations. So many people refused to open it upon receiving it. Saying such things as “this is like a chocolate bar” or “it’s too nice and perfect, I can’t mess with it and open it” or “you open yours and I’ll see what’s inside”. The most flattering are pictured below–where 2 of our guests have RSVP’ed in very unique, odd ways. They love the invitation so much that they want to keep it as a keepsake in an entire package.
Mary actually photocopied the response card, marked on it, then took a photo of it and emailed it to me.
Laura took a photo of the response card, used Paint software to mark in the X’s, and uploaded the image to Flickr to RSVP.
Duc’s happy with his invite!
The photos I pictured above do not do it much justice. Seeing it with your own eyes and getting to touch it and feel it makes the experience more complete. I am still in awe of it myself and I’ve seen it, touched it quite a few times already. It still gives me the same effect every time.
Jenny did a fabulous job incorporating our wedding theme into the invitation. We went thru many rounds of changes to choose font, wording, directions, and design elements, but she was just so patient thru it all and quick to send revisions. A fantastic person to work with!
Screenshots of the PDF proofs so you can get a better feel/look for it all.
We also had thin versions made of the Vietnamese invitation–just in case our parents forgot some miscellaneous guests. They look just as nice but are not hardback and a lot cheaper to send! Good thing we did order them b/c they ended up using almost all the extras.
