one year from today...

the double d's will be getting married! :) can't you just feel the excitement? i sure can...

i've been a a blogging hiatus for quite some time now due to various reasons. first, i'm enjoying my summer way too much! secondly, david and i kept going back and forth between where and when to have our wedding. due to the house hunt we had to put wedding plans on hold, and were seriously considering having a destination wedding in hawaii (hence, the pictures in the previous post). we have so many friends and family we want to share our day with, but on a limited budget we couldn't justify inviting everyone we wanted to. we thought that the only way to save money would be to have a small wedding outside the bay area.

after doing some research, we found that while getting married in hawaii may be cheaper for us, our guests would have to pay a whopping $700+ to go at this time of the year. that's double what we paid a few years ago. now, that figure may not be so bad for some families, but for ours, it's a little steep. some of our closest family members seemed hesitant when we told them. it's not that they didn't want to go, but they have families and responsibilities of their own. plus, logistically it would be extremely difficult to plan a wedding without being able to check out the venue and various vendors. i also started having flashbacks of what it was like to travel to vegas with a big family in tow...yikes.

so, on a random day we set out to see if maybe, just maybe, we could afford to have our wedding in a nice venue close-by. we knew that our guest list was going to be cut in half, and that we needed a venue with a reasonable minimum revenue for the day we chose. our previous hotel's minimum revenue was $30K...no matter how many people you choose to invite. that's just for food and beverages, people! luckily, we happen to stumble upon a hotel that we drive by nearly every week -- a hotel that for some reason never made the list. and, it was there that we found our venue.

Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport

when we first walked in, we were impressed by the atrium and its grandness.

we were directed promptly to the catering manager who asked us several questions about our event. after determining the number of guests we would be expecting, she led us to the Poolside Pavilion, which is actually a permanent tent outdoors, alongside their pool! we walked in and really fell in love with the space.





the tent is fully equipped with A/C (though, who really uses that in the bay?!) and a heater. they allow the cocktail reception to take place by the pool area. what really sold it was david's reaction to the place. he was impressed by the manager that was showing us around (perhaps even more so due to the fact that 20 minutes beforehand i told him about another hotel lady that laughed at me when i requested to see their ballroom this far in advance of our wedding. your loss, lady!) who was extremely professional and knowledgeable, and he really felt like the outdoor tent was unique and beautiful. it has an "outdoorsy" vibe without feeling like you're in the country. plus, their minimum revenue wasn't all that bad, especially since we are having it on a Friday to save us a few grand. david and i both walked away from the hotel with our decision already made. alleluia.

so, with the church booked already, the signing of our venue contract next week, and a meeting with our prospective photographer also next week, things are slowly starting to become real.

are you getting excited yet?

the most expensive day...

a couple weeks ago, david and i met with our first (potential) vendor for our wedding: Sofitel San Francisco Bay. we've known for quite some time that we wanted this hotel for our reception, and we've been in casual contact with the catering manager over there since our engagement. we finally had a formal meeting together where we discussed some questions we had about the facilities and banquet options. at some point we realized that we severely underbudgeted for our reception...by like, almost 50%. we were working off the prices from their regular reception menu not knowing that they had a wedding reception menu that listed totally different prices. sadly, we left the hotel feeling somewhat unaccomplished and, once again, trying to figure out how we are going to pay for the most expensive day of our lives.

see, we've tentatively decided to go through with trying to purchase a home sometime in the near future. the market right now is really good for buyers, and in trying to take advantage of that we're running into a few problems. i know that david and i will eventually figure this all out -- it's just a matter of readjusting everything and reworking the numbers. in the meantime, i've been trying to figure out ways to cut down the cost of our wedding. here's what i came up with:

1. hiring just a videographer that can freeze video shots and turn them into photos instead of hiring a photographer. we'd have my cousin (a photographer just entering the wedding world) take photographs.
2. forget about the chivari chairs i would kill to have. ($8-$10/chair)
3. have my wedding dress made instead of buying it.
4. have a family friend do the flowers (i'm not so into her style of design, but she won't charge us for labor, just the flowers)
5. rethink our initial desire of paying for all 14 of our wedding party's attire (sorry guys...=( )
6. forgetting about our honeymoon
7. cutting down our guestlist

the latter 2 i really hope we don't have to do, but those 2 options are probably the ones that are going to save us the most money, especially cutting down our guestlist. i've spoken to so many people that wished they could have invited more guests to their wedding. every part of me just wants all the people that have touched our lives in some way to be able to celebrate with us, after all community is something david and i identify so greatly with. i guess we'll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it.

big decisions

since our first option was out of the question, david and i embarked on a search for another church for our wedding ceremony. yes, i am fully aware that as catholics we are not supposed to search for churches for our wedding day, but given that we know we are going to have lots of guests from out-of-town, we thought it would be nice to have get married in a church that had historical significance to san francisco. about a week-and-a-half ago we made an appoint with the secretary and put our names down to get married at st. patrick's catholic church in the city.



the excerpt at the bottom of their bulletin reads,

St. Patrick's is uniquely a sign of God's loving presence. It was here when the miners left for the gold county, it served the Irish immigrants, withstood the great fire and earthquake of 1906, continued to serve the Irish, then the Spanish-speaking, now the Filipino community, the numerous tourists and conventioneers and always the business world by which it is surrounded. Now it exists in a neighborhood undergoing redevelopment. Unchanged in the midst of change, it still repeats for all the message of Him who is the resurrection and the life.

my aunt and uncle were married in this church over 15 years ago as well, so it does have some family significance. we're ecstatic that we've already booked a date for our wedding, which still seems so far off from now. everyone keeps saying that it'll go by fast, but i'm not so sure about that.

as for our reception venue, we did do a bit of researching for that. there are so many awesome places to have a reception in the bay area -- hotels are in abundance, outdoor weddings by the beach are definitely doable, and receptions in the wine country are quite common. price wise, your options may be limited if you are on a strict budget. after looking around and making a few quick decisions, we've narrowed it down to Hotel Sofitel in Redwood City. this hotel is outside of SF, but still accessible and fitting to our needs. my cousin, stephanie, had her 18th birthday there and i worked closely with their event coordinator, who is willing to give me a good deal for the reception.



i've had dreams about having my reception here, here, here, and here. but, alas, our nurse-teacher budget does not allow for those kinds of lavish environments. a girl can dream, right?