Here is our wedding day story told in pictures (photos from our talented photographer Jason Q. Tran)

Part 1- Getting Ready and First Look

Our Wedding Day Story- Part 2

Adventure we go-- To the Observatory                                                                            &nb sp;                      

The Ceremony

While our guests were enjoying cocktail hour, we were able to steal away and take some pictures together...

G asked for my hand in marriage at our favorite hiking area in San Diego in May 2008...and a year later we married.

Jason our photographer was kind enough to trek down to our engagement site to take our engagement pictures.  Though it was windy and very cold, it was still a breathtaking day.

I can't describe with words what such a great artist Jason is.  I really love his work and not only that, he has such a great personality.  The things he sees through those lenses are just incredible. If you don't believe me from some of the pictures I've posted below from our engagement shoot, go onto his site to see with your own eyes: http://www.jasonqtranblog.com or read the reviews on pw: http://www.projectwedding.com/vendor/show/jason-q-tran-photography

G had been working on my ring for awhile.  He had perused online websites for inspiration and he finally found one he truly liked (and which I loved when my eyes fell upon it when I got engaged).

Once he found the pix, he ordered the diamonds on Blue Nile.  We highly recommend purchasing the diamond at Blue Nile since you will be getting high quality diamonds at wholesale prices. 

He then took the diamonds and picture into Leo Hammel and the rest was history.  A beautiful custom made ring was created.  My man has impeccable tastes!

Sarah and big sis created the logo for us and the logo became the theme of the wedding.  It is comprised of 4 light pink hearts and 4 hot pink hearts which put together looks like a flower.  The logo was replicated after a brooch I wanted to use for my flower bouquet.  Our initials were then put on top of the hearts.

My big sister and friend Sarah helped me make the wedding invitations.

Since our colors were brown, various shades of pink, and ivory, we ordered bazzill cardstock in brown.  My first inital order came from Scrappin Attack store in San Diego.  The family owned shop was very helpful and got me my paper in time so I could make my own invitations.  However, if I had known I was going to need lots of paper, I should have ordered online which I did later.  I ordered from CreateForLess later since I needed the same cardstock from my invitations so that I could use for nameplates.  CreateForLess.com was much cheaper.

I also purchased beige and pink cardstock from KellyPaper. 

I purchased pink vellum envelopes online but I do not have the vendor information right now.

The thin pink ribbons, thicker pink ribbons, and velcro buttons were purchased from Michaels. 

I used the small xyron permanent sticker maker to fasten the thicker ribbon on the outside of the invitation.

Though I used glue sticks and clear glue gel to glue the invitations together, I would recommend using the larger xyron permanent sticker maker to glue the items together.  I had issues with the items sticking and it would have looked more professional if I had used the xyron sticker maker.

Since I had a Chinese Banquet, I put a Double Happiness embossed stamp in the front of my invitation.  The stamp I purchased from PaperSource and the stamp pad was purchased from Scrappin Attack and the bronze glitter was purchased from Scrapbook Your Life.

I printed out the invites at Kinkos.  I suggest trying to fit two invitations and directions on one page of paper to save money.  I also recommend putting the map of your ceremony/reception on the other side of the paper to save money.  It is better to have a Kinko's representative to print out the paper since when I printed out my wedding ceremony programs later myself, the quality was not as good.  Also, the Kinko's representative helped make sure that the directions and maps were printed correctly.

If you have the time, make your own invitations like I did.  It took my sister and friend a week to put the wedding template together and it took me about 3 weeks to put 120 invitations together.  A good resource to use is Paper Source.

Since we were having a Chinese Banquet, a friend suggested fortune cookies as our favors and I thought it was a wonderful suggestion.

I wanted to put the fortune cookies in little takeout boxes and so, I looked for take out boxes I liked.  I found the white and chocolate takeout boxes at Paper Source and the good thing was the white takeout boxes were half off.

I decided to dress up my takeout boxes with an embossed stamp.  I found the stamp at PaperSource and I used pink glitter which I purchased from Scrapbook Your Life.  Both white and chocolate boxes were embossed with pink stamps.  The white boxes were embossed with 3 stamps while I kept the chocolate box simply embossed with one stamp.  Each box also had a sticker of our logo and the chocolate box had a pink ribbon while the white box had a chocolate with pink edging ribbon. 

Each box had a chocolate dipped fortune cookie with pink hearts and it sayed you helped to make our day complete, Now please enjoy this little treat..  It also had either a white chocolate dipped fortune cookie with pink hearts or pink strawberry flavored fortune cookie with white sprinkles and on these cookies it had our names and date of wedding.

The fortune cookies were purchased from chocolatefortunes.com and they were big and scrumptious.  The vendor was also very easy to work with and they gave us extra cookies on top of the ones we ordered.  Also, they had mailed us samples to try.  Super yummy!

So prior to the ceremony and the reception, we decided to take a short trip to Griffith Park Observatory to take a few pictures.  I booked the limo for three and half hours but ended up only needing it for less than two hours since it took awhile to get ready.  I could have saved costs or perhaps gotten a bigger limo if I had known (or thought logically that it would take awhile to get to the limo!).  It was such a tight squeeze in the limo.  We squeezed 12 adults and 2 kids (the whole wedding party) in that little limo but it made for a fun and somewhat dizzy trip.  One of the floral balloons we brought along even popped because it got so hot and stuffy in there with that many people.  I liked using Crown Limo Services (hummerlimola.com) because the driver was professional, kind, on time, provided complimentary drinks, and was able to get us to Griffith Park and back to our ceremony and reception site in one piece!

One of the things I was looking forward to was eating our cake!  My sister had recommended Pastries by Nancy since she had the cake at a wedding and she thought it was super scrumtious since they put bananas in the chocolate cake. 

So of course, I had to sample it.  It tasted so good; they even had red velvet cake which I love.  However for our wedding cake we chose the white cake with bavarian cream and strawberries, second layer was chocolate with chocolate mousse and bananas, and third layer was marble with bavarian cream and strawberries. 

We enjoyed the white cake with bavarian cream and strawberries after our wedding since we didn't have time to eat much of it during the ceremony.  We didn't have a chance to eat the chocolate cake with chocolate mousse and bananas; however, we will get to because I plan on buying one on our year old anniversary!

We did have the marble cake with bavarian cream and strawberries when we returned from our honeymoon.  I have to say, I liked the white cake more.

Here's a picture of our cake.  I loved how the cake came out.  I wanted to make it simple yet elegant.  Hopefully I achieved this!  As for the cake table, I wished I had gotten a cake platter to hold the cake and I wished the two plates and napkins were not on the table.  I much rather have the bouquet of flowers showing.  I didn't have a chance to see the ceremony room before the ceremony started since we were taking pictures.  I loved our monogram cake toppers.  I think I got both of them for $60 total in downtown Los Angeles. 

Organza Chair Sashes:

I searched many online websites in order to find the best deal for chair sashes.  I ordered from efavormart.com and weddinglinens.com.  Though I liked the chocolate color sashes from efavormart.com more, I opted for weddinlinens.com since the sashes cost $1.49 each at efavormart.com while weddinglinens.com had each sash at $0.69.  The sashes came out really great at the reception and I have to thank my friend Julie for this!  If you decide to get your own sashes, make sure to find a friend who knows how to make great bows.

Menu Tents:

So I got lazy and decided that I make one menu tent for each table as opposed to one menu card for each person; it also saved on costs.  I purchased 2 packages of chocolate covered table tents from the Paper Source (and since I had purchased the take out boxes from Paper Source, the colors for both the take out boxes and table tents matched).  They come ten to a pack and for $8 a pack.  I also purchased glossy pink cardstock from Kelly Paper.  I printed the menu items on the glossy pink cardstock at Kinko's.  I also purchased really cute chocolate ribbons with the phrase "We Tied the Knot" in pink from Michael's; I only needed about one or two packages.  My friends, big sister, and I worked on putting the table tents together the day before and on the day of the wedding.  We cut out the pink cardstock so that it would be the appropriate size for the tent and glued it on the tent and punched out two holes to put the ribbon through.  I think it came out pretty well.