Wedding Invitations and My Famous Bridesmaid

Wedding Invites

Just got in my wedding invites a couple weeks ago– when they arrived, it really did feel like I was getting married. I’m doing all the calligraphy for the invites. Good thing I dorkily have an obsession with calligraphy. Honestly, I don’t know where it came from. I started learning calligraphy in high school and began practicing it on my own over time. In college, I even took a calligraphy class, although it was Chinese calligraphy and was all done with brush strokes! Anyway, we are finalizing our guestlists and gathering addresses, and will hopefully have these out in the next week.

Here are some pics of the invitations and calligraphy I’ve been working on:

The Invite

Tools for calligraphy

Prepping the envelopes

The referenced alphabet

Example of a completed envelope

My Famous Bridesmaid

My bridesmaid Christina Chae was on the Mike and Juliet morning show on FOX! I nominated her to model some bridesmaid dresses from a casting call that was sent out at work, for one of our brands, Wedding Channel.

She came into the office to try on some of the items. Her account of the experience– she woke up very early and was picked up in a towncar at about 6AM. She was brought through the backstage entrance, while there was a long line of fans waiting to get into the show. Then, she was in hair, makeup, wardrobe, and then made her grand appearance on the show!

Christina on Mike and Juliet

My bridesmaid modeling a bridesmaid dress on National TV!

You can see the full video here: http://www.mandjshow.com/videos/always-the-bridesmaid/

I not only referred Christina for the TV spot, but also referred her for a position at The Knot! She currently is an ad trafficking coordinator at NBC, and I referred her for an ad trafficking manager position at my company. She got the offer yesterday and accepted today! I’m so proud of my wonderful friend and bridesmaid.

More updates to come:

• Hair trial with Mia Hendrickson
• Bridesmaid Dresses are In!

Taking Advantage of the Recession

I understand that the title of this post seems a bit ballsy to say, being that no one is really safe from this recession because every day another industry appears to be collapsing. But, one thing that has been benefiting me in my wedding planning and post-wedding planning, is that the recession has been bringing down prices, which therefore helps me keep my budget in check as well as gives me more options.

Prime Example of the Recession Advantage: The Bridesmaid Shoes
I wanted to buy matching shoes for all 7 of my bridesmaids as a little gift since I wasn’t able to buy their dresses for them. Unfortunately, it is not easy to find sizes for all 7 women– two 5.5′s, two 6.5′s, one 8, and two 9′s, all in the same style and for an affordable price. However, after the holidays, I noticed that retailers were slashing prices everywhere! First noticed this at Bloomingdale’s, where I was able to snag a ton of great deals… For one, a $500 Andrew Marc coat for $160! Anyway, I came across some bridesmaid-worthy shoes while at Bloomingdale’s, and found more than half of the sizes, but after trying them on I realized they were too uncomfortable. Unfortunate since they were a mere $20-some dollars down from $80.

After the shopping experience, I decided to try my luck online. Boy was that the right decision. I came across two sales on Bandolino.com and Ninewest.com, identical sales– for 30% off your total purchase plus free shipping for every order over $25. I found a couple of cute gold shoes on each site that had every size for the bridesmaids available, and for under $30 a pair! After the bridesmaids’ feedback, we settled on these:

Bridesmaid Shoes - Nine West Riders

These were on sale for $29.99 down from $79.99, and with 30% off and free shipping, plus another coupon I found online for $10 off the total order, each pair came out to a mere $19.51.. What a steal!

So, my only conclusion for being able to get such a great deal, plus be able to find all of our sizes, and find a style that matches the dresses, is that the recession is making such opportunities available.

The recession does suck, and too many people have lost their jobs and are suffering because of it.. and it does look like there is an impending global economic collapse… so, don’t get me wrong, I am not happy about what is happening out there. But, at least one bride was able to find one benefit from the whole world going upside down, and that is that she was able to embellish her bridesmaids’ feet at an affordable cost.

The Knot Shop Perks

My company, The Knot, has a really great wedding shop full of tons of great goodies for a wedding ceremony, reception, bridal party, bridal shower, bachelorette party, basically anything for a wedding. We had a big blowout sale and a significant employee discount offer this week, so my cousin Mina (who is also getting married, but in March) and I went nuts and bought pretty much almost everything remaining that we need for the day of. I did forget one or two things, but I could always get them later on. We collectively saved over $300! Although.. we did spend about twice that, but still a great deal!

Here are some of the things in my order..

Lenox Unity Candles

Silk Ring Pillow

Silk Flower Girl Basket

Aisle Runner

Pink Wedding Bubbles

Lenox Jubilee Pearl Toasting Flutes

Personalized Lenox Jubilee Pearl Cake Serving Set

Personalized Plantable Card Favors

Personalized Flask Groomsman Gift

Personalized Pocketwatch Groomsman Gift

Personalized Zippo Lighter Groomsman Gift

Personalized Flower Girl Tote

Personalized Train Bank for the Ring Bearer

Wedding Hair and Polyvore

Polyvore is this great inspiration board tool where you can clip images off of various sites and layer them into your own mood boards. It’s easy to use and a lot of fun. Can easily become addictive if you were one of those girls in middle school or high school into making collages, which embarassingly, yes I was one of.

Anyway, my hair stylist wants to see what kind of style I’m going for for the wedding, and wants to see a few pictures of me as well. So, I thought what better way to show this than put together a Polyvore board.

Wedding Hair by ginac0lada

It’s pretty simple, but what a great way to depict a set of images that define something personal to you.

Bridesmaid Dresses

So, I cut the bridesmaid dress thing a little close. It takes about 3 months to get the dresses made and delivered, and I ordered them last week.. Which leaves about 2 months to get them altered after the arrive. I suppose that’s a decent enough lead time. I really wanted to buy all my bridesmaid their dresses, but because I have 7 bridesmaids that would have really affected my budget. But, good thing is I got a good deal on the dresses through Netbride. The retail price of the dresses go for about $200, and I got them for $131 each, $20 for shipping (for all) and no tax.

I was a little wary about buying dresses online, but Netbride got a lot of great reviews, including a nice profile in the book, Bridal Bargains. They’re scheduled to be here by Feb 16th.

The dresses are going to be in fuchsia, with a pale pink sash.

So here’s the dress the bridesmaids will wear:

The Bridesmaid Dress

The Bridesmaid Dress, rendered in the ordered colors

And here’s the maid of honor’s dress (refer to colors above):

The Maid of Honor's Dress

I am thinking about complementing the BM’s dresses with this flower girl dress:

Prospective Flower Girl Dress

And for the groomsmen.. I was originally thinking gray suits with light pink ties.. But now I’m thinking about going more formal (since the BM’s are wearing long dresses and my dress is pretty decked out).. So now I’m thinking black tuxes with light gray vest/ties with a light pink rose or calla lilly for their boutonnieres.

Among other things completed, wedding planning-wise..

• Booked the ceremony/cocktail hour musicians. We’ll be using Anthology Strings. Tommy and I listened to their music and while it was good, we really liked working with Antonia, the head of the group. She’s running her business really well-organized and seems to genuinely enjoy doing wedding music.
• Booked the florist. We will be using Diana Gould Ltd. It was between this florist and Forever in Bloom in Mt. Kisco. The prices and portfolios were pretty comparable, but the deliver/set up cost was significantly lower at Diana Gould, and the woman I worked with seemed a lot more willing to work with our budget.
• Assigned our photographer. Our wedding photographer will Jeff Hutton, who also did our engagement photos. I’m really happy about this because Tommy and I were very pleased with how our engagement photos came out, and we do really like his work, plus it helps that he seems to be a kind and genuine person.
• Booked our officiant. Our officiant will be Pastor Ko, my childhood pastor who also did my brother’s wedding. I’m really happy that he is going to do our wedding because he’s always been so supportive of our family throughout the years. I remember that he was an AT&T customer for the longest time, just because my dad worked for AT&T!

Next things up are.. getting a hair trial (my hair will hopefully be long enough in about another month), finalize the guestlist, get invitations made, book wedding day transportation and hotels for family, and of course, planning our honeymoon. According to all the checklists in all the wedding books and magazines I have floating around, we are in good shape.

Launched! ginaandtommy.com

Please visit our wedding website, which just launched a couple of weeks ago:

http://www.ginaandtommy.com

On this site you can find the following:

– The story about how we met
– Our bridal party and a little bit about our relationship with each bridesmaid/groomsman
– Information about the wedding, registry info, and travel info for out-of-towners
– Pictures from our engagement, our official engagement photos, and family/friend pictures
– Fun widgets like polls and a quiz
– A guestbook for visitors to leave comments

Tommy and I spent the past month and half on this puppy. Tommy was responsible for all graphic design and web development. I was repsonsible for conceptualization, user experience, gathering content, and getting the guestbook/widgets set up for embedding. I think we make a great team!

Our Save-the-Dates also went out, which were magnets. Thanks to my cousin Mina, we got an awesome deal on Vista Print.. 100 magnets for about $75, including 100 custom envelopes. Originally it would have been about double the price, plus more for shipping (we had a free shipping and 50% off coupon codes).

Among other news.. I started working at The Knot about 3 weeks ago. It’s been an adventure. Somewhat of a dichotomy– the atmosphere is laid back and friendly, but the environment is fast paced and can be intense. So much work and responsibility already! But, I’m learning a lot quickly and being challenged in many ways. Carley Roney is amazing to work for, I really look up to her and her husband for being able to run such a successful company and have a beautiful family to go home to.

Bride to be’s dream job

I recently interviewed and got a job at The Knot!

I am so excited about the job, which starts at the end of October (at about the 6 month mark before the wedding). I’m going to be a product manager, which is basically a position of thinking of new ideas and strategies for web tools and products.  More importantly, it reports directly to Carley Roney, who is like the Martha Stewart of the Internet media world.  I already adore her, we got along so well at the interview, and I think she is someone I’ll be able to learn so much from– this is certainly a huge step in my career.  I’m thrilled to have the chance to work for such a well respected, successful WOMAN.  Not only that, how great will it be to be surrounded by all things wedding for 6 months before the wedding? The Knot also owns weddingchannel.com, and thenest.com (a site for newlyweds) and thebump.com (a site for new moms and moms-to-be).

The timing is a little off though, I’m off to Seoul, S. Korea tomorrow for vacation for the next week and half, then back to NY to finish out at FOX, then a few days later, start at The Knot. Korea is going to be a big family trip for both Tommy and me. We both want to meet each other’s grandmas that aren’t going to make it to the wedding next spring. Plus, get our hanboks made.

Hanboks are traditional Korean dress that we will be wearing at our paebek.

Paebek is a traditional Korean wedding ceremony that takes place in front of the groom’s family. We basically have to bow and pay respects to the groom’s family. I believe I’m going to have chestnuts pelted at me which I have to catch with my skirt, the number caught signifying how many children I’ll be having.  Along with other funny things, like Tommy has to carry his mom on his back.. Not sure what it all means but it will be fun to partake in an age old Korean wedding tradition.

A couple of other wedding updates:

• We just ordered our save the dates (will post the design in a future post)
• Tommy is working hard on our wedding website
• We got our first quote back for flowers– a bit steep but its a start!

Engagement Photos

Tommy and I took our engagement photos and video today in the Meatpacking District and West Village. It was such a blast! Jeff Hutton was our engagement photographer, and Edison Lee (owner of Edisonian Studios) was our videographer. It was a beautiful day, perfect weather at about 80 degrees and sunny.

Sunny Jun did my makeup again, she’s so awesome. I drove out to Palisades Park prior to the shoot and had Sunny do my makeup, then afterwards I had my hair done at Kim Sun Young salon on Broad Ave. They did a very quick and good job. Both my hair and makeup have stayed, and its 8 hours later!

My sister, Genie, the MOH, helped out by following around, carrying my stuff, and taking pictures. We went to John’s Pizzeria afterwards to have a video interview with Edison and eat some delicious pizza.. John’s is my favorite in NYC.

These aren’t THE pictures, since Jeff still needs to process them, but here are the ones my sister took.

Makeup Trial#1 with Sunny Jun

Sunny Jun, a friend since my childhood, did my makeup trial back in June. Sunny studied makeup artistry and now works for cosmetics company Noveir. She lives and breathes makeup– not only does she work for a cosmetics company and does wedding makeup jobs, she also teaches makeup application courses.

She did my makeup trial before my birthday party at Ultra Lounge. I was quite impressed by her abilities. I will be doing a second trial with her this month, to see a different style and also to see how it comes out on film since I will be doing a video and photo engagement shoot afterwards..

Before the makeup trial

After the makeup trial

Sporting the makeup out and about

Absent but not forgotten

I haven’t been posting for over a month– the reason being that my computer hard drive failed and I haven’t been able to upload images to show everyone until now.  Making matters worse, I didn’t completely back up my files and I lost half my picture files and ALL of my wedding spreadsheets that I worked so hard on when budgeting our catering/venue costs.. Lesson learned– don’t forget to BACK UP.

I just got my brand new laptop, which is not part of the wedding budget, but will be, I’m sure, very useful in planning. I got a very cute, pink, Dell Studio 15.

Dell Studio Laptops

Anyway, I have a bit of catching up to do on posts. I plan to work on some posts on the road on Saturday. Tommy, my sister, and I will be heading down to Maryland to visit relatives. We’re taking MegaBus — which has cheap tix (only $17 each way), and better yet, FREE wi-fi!

Posts that are sitting in my mind and ready to spill unto virtual pages:

–Makeup Trial #1

–Save the Dates

–Bridesmaid Dress Search

–Wedding Planning and Organizing Tips