Relax...

The picture above is exactly how I feel! Aside from the budget, as I worked on the spreadsheet this weekend and realized how much we are paying for this wedding and how much debt we will incur, everything else is pure bliss as far as the wedding goes. Why so? Because we have officially booked all our vendors and we can relax for a few months. There will be some minor details to work with along the way (i.e. favors, sending out invitations, figuring out the table charting, etc.), but the grunt work of searching and comparing vendors is out of the way and it will be 6 months until the wedding! I am really surprised with myself - I didn't have much stress and actually have found it fun through this whole process. I am actually organized, making spreadsheets and folders on my computer to sort through wedding info (to anyone who knows me well, I usually am very unorganized and a master procrastinator). So a pat on the back to Ernesto and me! We've worked long and hard and we hope our efforts will show on August 15, 2009!

Erwin goes black...

Black Belt that is. This past Saturday Kris and I attended Erwin's Black Belt test at the Aikido Aibukan School in Chula Vista. I was supposed to attend a cake tasting with Allison, but I had already told Erwin I'd be there before I knew about the tasting. Plus, being the Great friend I am, I wanted to support my long time friend. Erwin and I actually joined this school together years back, but my time abruptly ended because I decided to go back to school to pursue a career change. Erwin decided to stay and dedicate himself to the martial art of Aikido. In case you have no idea what Aikido is, go down to your nearest Blockbuster video and rent any Steven Seagal movie and it should give you an idea of what the art is all about. Otherwise you can Google it. Anyhow, after two hours of being tossed, punched, kicked, being put into submission, and facing up to 3 established Black Belt opponents at one time, Erwin was promoted to Black Belt. I have to admit, the test was a grueling process and although Erwin got his ass kicked, he deserved the promotion. I never doubted that after all the years he dedicated himself to Aikido that he would be where he is today. If anything, all the beatings he's taken from me probably kept him motivated. Unfortunately for Erwin, some things never change. haha. Anyways, here you go Erwin...you've made our blog. Congratulations Puto!

Valentines Day - what's not to love??? It may be over-commercialized and over-marketed leading it to be an overrated day, but Ernesto and I still find it enjoyable to celebrate Valentine's Day. We haven't been into the whole gift-giving idea for some time now - I think mainly in part because our wedding is coming up and spending money on the wedding is more important than getting a gift from each other right now and also because we both don't really need much from each other that we can't get on a normal day. So we decided to do a typical movie and dinner Valentines.

We woke up rather late for a Saturday afternoon and I decided to check show times for Bride Wars. I was supposed to watch this with my sisters, but I ended up watching He's Just Not That Into You with them this past Thursday. Bride Wars has been out in theaters since January 9 and there were limited showings - I really wanted to watch this movie before it's no longer in theaters so I asked Ernesto and he was willing to go. When we got to Fashion Valley Mall, it was ridiculously crowded - it was more crowded than going on Christmas Eve. We ran into Lorenzo Neal when we got there and he was really cool and down to earth. When we got to the theaters, the line was super long and we just made it right when the movie started. Bride Wars got bad reviews, but I honestly love these types of movies and I happened to love Bride Wars. Ernesto said he liked it too


Later that night, we headed to Oceanside for a new restaurant by the Cohn Group (creators of The Prado, Gaslamp Strip Club, Kemo Sabe, etc.) called 333 Pacific. They had just opened ths year and I was excited to try it out. I made reservations last month and I am glad I did! They were fully packed and reserved all night. 333 Pacific is named after it's address: 333 N. Pacific. It is adjacent to the Oceanside Pier and has a beautiful view of the ocean. I scored on parking right in front of the restaurant. Our dining experience was beyond superb which I will soon yelp about! The service was great and the food was excellent. They are known for their extensive vodka list and had great martini choices - I am a martini girl so that's a plus for me! I love, love, loved this place. Ernesto equally enjoyed it and said he would also give this place 5/5 stars. Was it worth the price: most definitely! This is one of my favorite places to dine in San Diego/Oceanside. Plus downtown Oceanside is so cute - it reminds me of an upcale PB with great restaurants and boutiques. And what's more beautiful than being right next to the ocean and enjoying some fresh, clean air and the beautiful view (with the person I will soon be married to!)

Weekend Wrap-Up

It was a busy weekend due to school exams, cake tastings, vendor meetings, family time, and of course, eating good food!

Friday, I headed down to San Diego to meet Ernesto so that we could head out for Tin Tin's 22nd birthday party - Alan had a surprise party for her at the Courtyard Marriott Downtown.

Saturday, Ernesto and I met with Irene Gonzalez of A Perfect Table to consult with her regarding linens and chair covers. She was fantastic and mentioned "buzz" words that sold Ernesto, such as "discount" and "discount on top of a discount." She was great - so great we ended up telling her the following day that we wanted to go with her! Initially, the chair covers were going to be white with a gold sash, but I thought to ask her if she had the chair covers in gold - and she said she would have her covers dyed to gold at no additional charge and also threw in a discount and then on top of that another discount! We could not ask for more - she was great and she had done a Charger themed wedding in the past! After our linen meeting, we had time to kill before a cake tasting. Ern and I ate at Latin Chef off Garnet Ave. in Pacific Beach.

We still had time to kill and were already in close proximity to the French Gourmet where the cake tasting was to take place so we decided to walk around Garnet (for those who haven't been, there are a bunch of bars, shops, and stores) but it looked like it was going to rain again. So we drove to the French Gourmet and took a nap until our cake tasting. The cake tasting at the French Gourmet was highly anticipated because everytime they are at the Bridal Bazaar I tend to be drawn to them and they quoted us good deals. But when we got there, the price was going to be in the $1000+ category for a 3 or 4 tier cake and for a simple design. Back to the drawing board....

That Saturday night, Jackie made reservations for her, Arnold, Ernesto, me, Roxan, and Pam at Humphrey's By the Bay for their $24.95 3-course pre-fixe. It was a fun night full of food and laughter with some of my favorite people in the world and also with food, wine, and frozen yogurt!!!











Sunday, Ernesto and I had another cake tasting with Sumi from Sumi's Oven. Her strawberry cake and chocolate macadamia nut cake were delicious.
(i didn't take this picture - i found it on google. But it was a
better picture than mine since mine was taken after we had destroyed it)

Here is the aftermath:

(this picture i actually took and we made a mess of it!)
We really liked her and her rates were excellent. Not to mention, her portfolio was excellent. We really liked her and so far she is our #1 candidate for cakes. Here is a link to her website: http://www.sumisoven.com/

We have 1 more appointment this coming Saturday with Allison (such a pretty name!) of Cakes by Allison (www.cakesbyallison.com). After this appointment, we will determine which cake vendor to book and we will be finished with all our vendors!! That is, unless we decide to add extra stuff like favors, photo booths, etc. - I am not good at arts and crafts and prefer someone else do the work than myself!

Ernesto found out the Kat Von D would be at the Borders in Mission Valley for her book signing tour and was able to make it yesterday! He was anticipating this event because LA Ink no longer takes casting calls and Ernesto really wants a tat done by Kat! Unfortunately, I was unable to attend due to my exciting life - I had to be at school for 8 hours.


But Ernesto thought of me and had her include me in the signing of our new Kat Von D book since he and I have followed Kat on Miami Ink and now LA Ink... If you have a facebook and Ernesto is your friend, he posted up more pictures for you to view!

As far as the wedding, no news or updates at this time. However, I sent out an email to my bridesmaids a week ago asking for their help in finding any good pictures to use for the montage. I had some digital files on Ernesto's computer and Ernesto was able to fix my dad's old computer hard drive to find some more pictures. But I knew there were better pictures out there that other people had. I was able to salvage a few non-digital pictures (yes, when I was in high school and a few years into college, we still took 35mm pictures since digital was either not developed yet or not in our budget) but a lot were lost when my dad was remodeling their house a few years back and he had put all my stuff in the backyard to be lost in a pile of rubbish. Well, I just opened m e-mail a few minutes ago and Ria had sent me scanned pictures of our high school crew (OQP) - I think we took the picture in the 9th grade.



It was hilarious to see these pictures because I seem to have misplaced my copies. For some reason, at the time we took these pictures, we thought we were cool by not smiling and by all coordintating in red along with a red backdrop. Now you look at it and we look like a bunch of wanna-bes! But that's the beauty of pictures. It puts you back to the time, place, and event of the picture and it shows how much we've changed!

Tomorrow's posting will be about cakes! I thought of it right now, but I got sleepy and decided to put it aside until tomorrow!

I have been following Melanie Montoya's work since right after getting engaged last year and we had been in the works of scheduling an appointment at that time, but we did not get to meet Melanie until yesterday - I was recently looking at her website and thought to try to reconnect and see if she was still available for same-day coordination.

We met with Melanie yesterday at her office in Mira Mesa and found her to be well-organized, detail-oriented, friendly yet business-saavy, and her rates were ideal with our budget. Initially, my friend and ex-coworker, Sheri Brown, offered as a gift to do our coordination. But it wasn't realistic to impose such a task on a friend and I pitched the idea of hiring a coordinator to Ernesto. I thought he would be hesitant, but immediately after we left her office, he was just as excited as I was and said that he wanted to book her as a vendor and agreed with me on all aspects of why we needed her on board!

So, as soon as I buy black ink for my printer, I plan to fill out the contract and mail it out and we will officially have a wedding coordinator!

Check out her work; it impresses me how much detail and quality she puts in all facets of her business:

http://www.melmontoyaweddings.com/
http://www.freshinvitationstudio.com/

Weekend Gathering

This past Friday, Rhianna and Eugene hosted a party at their house for Roxan passing her stateboard, Jon passing Part I of the RRT exam, and Joey getting engaged. It's been a while since we had all hung out and it was a blast getting together!

I had clinicals that day from 7am-7:30pm and Ernesto drove all the way up to Rancho Cucamonga to pick me up just to go to the party. He is truly the best! He knew i would be too tired to drive and he insisted that he wanted to do this and not to worry about gas or money.

Saturday was Genna's 2nd Birthday party at Marie and Gene's House. We enjoyed plenty of food, desserts, and An American Gladiator Style Astro-Jump (Arnold, Jackie, Roxan, Ernesto, and I were having relay races up the slide portion of the astro jump)