Tom and Amy's Wedding

We've been planning to get married for a couple years, and our lives had finally come together so we were able to start our plans.

We booked the reception site and the church, and we had been looking at rings so I was sure to have exactly the ring I wanted.

I found a beautiful ring setting online that reminded me of my mother's antique engagement ring. Tom ordered it in October and it arrived just after Thanksgiving. It came in a beautiful porcelain egg, but unfortunately I was home when it arrived. I remarked that 'too bad, it would have been a really cool way to propose to me'. Tom then took it to get a diamond for it, and I didn't know when I'd be getting it back, or how.

Fast forward a few weeks... Tom and I had been running around the weekend before Christmas at birthday and Christmas parties, last minute shopping, etc.

Saturday morning while Tom was out I set up his new flat-screen monitor, and then we went out shopping together for a new winter coat for me.

Finally, Sunday evening, December 18 we came home from dinner with my friends from grad school and we settled in for the evening.

Tom gave me a little package and said that he wanted to give me a wrapped present for Christmas. I opened it up and it was my porcelain egg. I was a little confused, but opened it up and inside was a note that read, 'ha ha fooled you, your present is in the bedroom'.

I finally found this huge box under the bed. Inside was a smaller wrapped box, 2 Snoopys (we went to the Schultz Museum early in our relationship and have a 'Snoopy thing'), and a note which read, 'I never knew it was you...', that had a framed pic of me at age 7 in a heart magnet (from our fridge) and 2 chocolate roses.

The second box had another smaller wrapped box, and another note that read 'I have been searching for all my life', and pictures of Tom hiking Yosemite, running marathons, etc.

At this point I had an idea of what was going on....

Inside the next box was an even smaller wrapped box, and a ton of chocolate gold coins, and a note that read, 'What a treasure I have found!'

The smallest box was the ring box, and inside was a note that read, 'Will you be my wife?'

It wasn't until later that I realized it was a poem!

I was crying and gave him a huge hug and he said, put it on, and I said no, you! So he got on his knee and asked me to marry him and put the ring on, anad I said of course of course!

Wow, what a weekend. I've been so busy, so I apologize. I know you all are dying for the details of the weekend!

When I scheduled this dress shopping weekend, I didn't realize it was the same weekend as Stitches, a yearly knitting convention where I had already signed up for classes. So a busy weekend got that much busier. You can hear all about my fibery expedition on my other blog.

All the ladies met at Bay Area Bridal on Saturday afternoon. I'd already picked out a ton of dresses to show them, so this was less of a hunt for a dress than a fashion show where we picked the winner. I came out in the first dress, and everyone oohed and aahed that I was in a wedding dress, how pretty. But when I put on the second dress, everyone stopped and said, oh, this is so you. (yes, this is the one Suzi thinks looks like a barber pole - I promise you, it's prettier in person). See pics of me in the dress: dress front dress back I went through a series of other dresses, both corset-back and not, organza-y and satin-y, and we kept coming back to the 2nd dress.

Until.

I came out in the dress that I thought was THE dress. Mom said she could tell by the look on my face. It's not this dress, but close. Oh, it's so pretty. Hmm. Now we can't decide. Go put on the other dress again. So Sandy, the attendant, helped me back out of the last dress and into the 2nd dress again. Ohh, it's so pretty. Now we really can't decide. We need to see them both together. Can someone else put the dress on? So I look around the room. Aunt Ceil? I don't think so. Reri or Yuan? teeny little Asian ladies look nothing like me. Danna? She's also much smaller than me. Mom? Yep, it's gotta be Mom!

This was priceless. We begged Sandy to let us take some pictures, so we got a few of me in the barber-pole dress, plus Mom in the wedding dress. Don't look too closely, you can't see which dress it is! Mom didn't have a crinoline, so she wore her jeans and Tivas - fabulous look, dahling.... hee hee... After much laughter and discussion, I decided that the dress Mom was wearing was, in fact, THE dress.

Both of us in our dresses I am not posting the link to the dress. I want you all to be surprised. I also didn't post any pics of me in any dresses, in case Tom doesn't want to see, but click on the links and you'll see them. If you look at all the dresses I've tried on, you've got a pretty good idea about what I'm getting. I am about to order the dress, however I realized that it also comes with blue and champagne beading/applique, rather than it being all diamond white. So now I am on a hunt to find at least a swatch of the blue/champagne to see if I like it better, since I am using blue in my wedding colors. I found a place that has a swatch, so I'm gonna check it out and then place the order this weekend.

Mom and Yuan and I also looked at bridesmaid dresses. Mom found one she loves, and Yuan likes 2 of the ones I like. The 'maids might all be the same, they might be different, we're working all of that out.

Sunday Tom and I are checking out the Maxwell Hotel and going to a bridal faire. The plan is to have hotel info finalized by the end of the month.

Tom and I headed up to San Francisco on Saturday to look at a hotel that had been featured on the radio, and that I had contacted about group rates for all the guests on the wedding weekend. We stayed at the Hotel Mark Twain, on Taylor between O'Farrell and Eddy, around the corner from Glide Memorial Church.

O'Farrell, you say? That should have been my first clue. One block further West, and the neighborhood is suddenly more "upscale". One block further North, and things don't look so shady. The hotel itself is very nice, it's been remodeled recently, and I don't feel like our guests would be mugged if they went outside at night, but it's still not the best part of town. We did feel safe walking back to our hotel at 11pm, and it's about 4 blocks from the Powell Cable Car turnaround and BART, and about 3 blocks to Union Square. Very walkable!

Our room was very cute, remodeled since they took the pictures on the website. We had a nice tour of the hotel by Kevin, the Sales Manager, who is offering us rates of $99/night - almost unheard of in downtown San Francisco! So here's my dilemma: find a hotel in a little nicer neighborhood for $25-$50 more per night, or take this one, in a fairly decent although not fancy neighborhood?

Tom and I did some scouting around later in the day on Saturday and I have a couple more options I'm inquiring about: the Cartwright Hotel, which is in a nicer part of town but 5 blocks from the cable car line and transit, but only a block off Union Square - rack rates start at $135 so I might be able to get close to $100/night, and the Maxwell Hotel, which is upstairs from Max's On the Square (Mom and Dad and I go there whenever they're in town for a conference) and is 1 block from Union Square and 4 blocks from the cable car and transit - rack rates there start at $127/night. Please let me know what you think! I've made inquiries to the sales manager at those 2 hotels, and I hope to get a room block reserved by the end of February.

Just so you know, we are trying to help our guests reduce their costs by making sure you don't need a car for the weekend. Parking in SF is very very expensive ($30/night on average), and SF is small enough that you don't really need a car to get around to the touristy areas. Our plans for the weekend include a picnic in Golden Gate Park on Saturday afternoon, and there is a city bus that goes from Market & Powell straight to the meadow. Chinatown is within a couple blocks of Union Square, and you can easily get to Pier 39 and Fisherman's Wharf via the cable car. For the day of the wedding, we are planning on renting a tour bus to shuttle our guests from the hotel to the wedding, and then to the reception in Sausalito and back to the hotel. I don't want anyone who's had "a really good time" at the reception trying to drive back across the Golden Gate Bridge, which has no center divide.

Back to our weekend - Saturday evening we took BART across town to Tom's dad and stepmom's house, where we had dinner with them and Tom's half brother, Connor. It was good to see them and celebrate the engagement - we hadn't seen them since the weekend before we got engaged!

The only really bad part of our weekend was the crank calls. We got called at 3:00, 3:15, and 5:00 am and nobody was on the line. Tom called the front desk but nobody was there, so he left the phone off the hook the rest of the night. We couldn't find the thermostat either, so Tom got really hot and then really cold during the night.

Sunday we slept in, had breakfast at a great little hole-in-the-wall diner next door to the hotel, got our car out of the garage and went to Fisherman's Wharf where we played tourist, went to a couple museums, and had dinner at Pier 39 to celebrate Valentine's Day. I took a couple pics of the sunset with my new camera.

Since I'm counting down the days, I figured some of you might be, too. I found this nifty toolbar that will keep track for us. It'll stay at the top of the blog as I add new posts.

I've been busy finding a hotel for everyone to stay in and ordering save-the-date cards. I should have the cards in about a week and then we'll start sending them out, and we're staying overnight at the potential hotel this weekend so if all goes well we can make that announcement soon as well.

Other than that, I've been working too hard and too many long hours, going to the gym when I have any spare energy, and not sleeping enough. I'm really looking forward to dress shopping weekend so I can put those tasks behind me and start focusing on the photographer, music, flowers, transportation, etc. etc. etc.

PS I had set up my blog to email me if someone posts a comment to the blog, but I guess that only works if you have a blogger account. I'm trying to go back and read comments from time to time, but please don't be offended if I haven't responded to any of your comments - I may not have read it yet.