Memories for a lifetime.

I have serious doubts.  Doubts about whether I’ll make it through this post without getting teary-eyed, if not shedding tears.  It won’t be a very grammatically correct or structured post, but it possibly will be one of the most important posts I’ve written so far.  Because it’s going to have all the little (and big) details of Zach and my wedding day.  I hope Zach will forgive me, for a lot of them are memories of his reactions.  And I can’t ever forget them…so here they are.  Get in the mood, play the music while you read through them.

• Spending the night before ironing my dress for what seemed like hours and hours, as Jessi and I tugged it back and forth on the ironing board.
• Getting ready with the girls at Gene Juarez and watching as each of them, already beautiful women in my life, came out of hair and makeup looking like movie stars.
• Seeing our bouquets for the first time; for all my claims that I didn’t care about flowers, I was so happy with my bridal bouquet.
• Our first look:  Seeing Zach for the first time in his suit from Bolivia as I walked across a busy Seattle street from the Courtyard to him; his reaction purely genuine as we both cried in each other’s arms.  He called me beautiful and said that he couldn’t have asked for anything more.
• Before Zach saw me, looking behind me at the hotel and seeing our entire bridal party with their faces pressed to the glass to watch our first look.  Makes me smile and laugh when I think about all 8 of them crowding to see.
• An impromptu picture as Laura prompted 4 sailors who were walking by in uniform to pick me up for a picture. (Who they saw later at 88 Keys, I guess?)
• Walking through downtown Seattle as the streets filled with Sounders fans, wearing the same rave green similar to our wedding green. People – perfect strangers – cheering and congratulating us.
• Getting to the venue and seeing all my little DIY projects set up on the tables: our Jones soda bottles, the straws with the marriage quotes, the green “Eat, Drink, and be Married” beverage napkins, the black lanterns.
• Giving my dad a handkerchief that said, “”Of all the walks we have taken together, this one is my favorite.  As the first man I have ever loved, when you give me away, know I will always be your little girl.”  He sobbed I think as soon as he read the first line.
• Sitting upstairs in an office with the girls, trying to hold it together.  I was SO nervous, they gave me paper clips and told me to make a chain out of them.
• Taking a “shot” of tequila from my dad’s flask as we got ready to walk the aisle.  Mine was probably a good deal less than a shot.  I didn’t want to stumble.
• My dad turning to me right before we walked the aisle together, and said, “I Love You.”
• Seeing Zach at the end of the aisle, I think he was teary-eyed.  I don’t remember seeing anyone else at the end…
• Being surprised at how little I cried during the ceremony.  I had decided once I got up there that I was simply excited and I didn’t want to cry.
• The long pause before Zach was able to start his vows and telling him it’s okay.
• Every once in a while, glancing at all of you, our guests and smiling to see so many who love us who came to celebrate.
• Getting up to the room to sign our marriage license and just staring dumbfounded at each other as we realized, we’d done it!
• Zach leaning back into the couch there and shedding the sweetest tears as he pulled me in to hold me.  That quiet moment was the best…
• Celebrating with Jessi, Joey, Hank, and Evan with glasses of champagne as we signed the marriage license.
• Having Zach make his Thank You toast and hearing him thank his ‘beautiful wife,’ and wondering for a split second who that was before I realized that ‘that’s me!’
• Hearing people ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ as our whole roasted pig made it’s debut through to the dining area.
• Watching the slideshow/Proposal video and seeing people laugh, smile, and even cry during it.
  • I will always get teary-eyed as the guitar riff and first line of Train’s Marry Me plays.
  • Smiling the whole slideshow and then losing it when it showed this picture of my grandfather and I:
    
•  Trying to hold it together during our Father-Daughter dance as we listened to Leona Lewis’ Footprints in the Sand; my dad said it was a good song.  We joked during it, in order to not cry.
• Trying to hold it together during Zach and my First Dance together, which is the song you hopefully listened to at the beginning of the post.
• Having the money dance go completely awry as people just handed me dollars and slipped them in the folds of my dress.  I had been hoping to dance longer with each person, but it was crazy!
• Cutting the cake and not being wussies about it: we smashed into each other.
• Zach rapping his own version of Bruno Mars’ “Nothing on You” to me.  Total surprise since he’d said no every time I begged him to sing to me at our wedding.  Which just made my heart melt:  this man will truly give me whatever I want.

• Throwing the bouquet and watching as all the girls lifted Alissa up to catch it
• The dancing.  So much fun!
  • Including dancing with my mom at one point probably to a Black Eyed Peas (a shared band we love.)
  • Dancing to a Gaga song and doing the dance moves for my brother. (I think it was Judas).
  • Definitely having a dance circle happen; best thing ever.
• Seeing how beautiful our venue looked with all the lit candles and lights in the trees.
  
• Looking at all of our family and friends holding sparklers at the send-off, smiling and laughing and just feeling such love and happiness for all of you for sharing in our special day.

I’m sure as I think of more, I will add them to this post.  We would LOVE to hear any of your favorite memories of the day, please share them in a comment!

Less than a week!

Spring has sprung! Look at this sun through the leaves I took today!

I love bokeh (the blurry effect).

I can only hope that this weather continues or at least comes back again on Saturday!  There are SEVERAL weather sources saying that Saturday is going to be “Partly Cloudy, with a high of low 60s”  that sounds pretty great to me for Seattle weather in the spring!  So I’m taking any and all prayers for the weather to be as good as it has been for the past couple of days.

So here we are, down to less than a week away from the wedding.  Our apartment is finally starting to get more organized as we pack away the necessary things for decorating and the ceremony.  Just within the last day, after 16 months of planning, I suddenly felt this feeling come over me that wasn’t stress or worry to get something done:  Excitement.   I can actually feel excited without the “To-Do List” overshadowing my happiness.  Sure, there’s still things left to do, but they’re small and easily accomplished.

I’m also so excited to see everyone!  MOH Jessi is here in town:

Brides-to-be!

And congratulations to her and her fiance, John!  They were engaged last month and so she’s trying to multi-task in planning her own wedding and being in mine!

I had a hair trial last week that didn’t go so well and so I had to switch hair salons barely a week before the wedding.  Thankfully, my mom and Jessi were so supportive and encouraged me to go wherever I felt would give me good customer service and give me the look I want.  I have another hair trial at Gene Juarez tomorrow; hopefully it goes better.  I’m really excited for the day of festivities, I know it will go so fast and I wish there would be a way to slow it down so I could just absorb it all.

Unfortunately, Zach is working a lot this week, so we won’t get to see each other.  Which is hard, but may make the wedding even more exciting.  We can’t wait to see all of you soon!  Let’s all think sunny weather!!

~L

A Day to Remember

Today is officially TWO weeks away from the wedding! What?! It’s going to so fast now and I feel like I’m being swept away. I was watching ‘My Fair Wedding’ with David Tutera a couple of nights ago and as I watched the bride getting ready before the ceremony, I realized, “That’s gonna be me soon!!!” it’s really starting to hit me now. How exciting!

Unfortunately, today is a day for a different celebration, a celebration of a life well lived. Back in December, I lost my grandfather to a long drawn-out battle with cancer. Today, my family was on our way to Eastern Washington to his memorial.

This man was my absolute best friend for the first 13 years of my life. Every summer, I spent my free time with him going swimming and on cattle drives. He taught me my love and compassion for animals. He supported me in EVERYTHING I wanted to take on: drawing, a martial arts yellow belt (in 3 months at that!), and most importantly, my passion to become a nurse.

At my nursing pinning ceremony - he had the most impeccable sense of style!

I don’t think I’ve ever been as loved and supported unconditionally by any other man other than my father (and now Zach).  How blessed I was to have such a person to support me and set such an example for me.  Even in his retirement, he was a reserve police officer, volunteer firefighter, and volunteer EMT.  Yes, ALL of those.  He was amazing.

Today was a hard day as friends and neighbors all spoke of his nature: “being there for people.”  In his last days, I had so few words I could say to him, and I can only hope that my being there with him showed him how much he meant to me.

I Love You, Grandpa.

I hope you listen to this song.  It’s very beautiful and made me think of him.

 

Thank you to everyone for their love and support as my family goes through this hard time.

~L

Bridal Showers make for a Blessed Bride!

I have no idea where this new title alliteration trend came from…I can’t promise it’ll be the last one either.  In any case, I know I absolutely missed the one month away mark!  We’ve been busy with work and days off are also somehow busy too!  But that means this will be a big post with lots of updates!  Have I used enough exclamation marks?!

First:

Thank you, to my wonderful family –  future and present –  and friends for your love and support.  Really, I feel so blessed to have all of you!

Now onto the pictures!  I have had a total of THREE bridal showers and two of them were just last month (the first one was hosted back in August by MOH Jessi).  The second one was hosted by MIL Barb along with CIL Emily and Christy:

An Asian-themed shower! So awesome!

Gorgeous orchids for shower game prizes!

Pretty streamer kissing balls by Emily!

I LOVE SUSHI! (Thanks Rebecca!)

I thought it was a risque book, but it's the InterCourses Cookbook from Sally!

Future Sister-in-Law Rebecca! (Have you seen her baby?! Don't worry, pictures down below!)

So many wonderful and generous people!

Sally always makes me laugh

Rebecca, Annabelle, and Emily and Christy.

And now a gratuitous amount of pictures with Annabelle the Flower Baby!

Sooooo cute!

Best Flower Baby ever!

Being serenaded by Grandpa and cuddled by Grandma!

And now for bridal shower #3!  My mom hosted it just this past weekend; lots of Filipino ladies and lots of Filipino food.

My wonderful loving mother!

The decorations were amazing! Green everywhere!

Ube (purple yam) flavored cake with green frosting!

Starting the festivities!

Game #1; Using an eggplant and hip thrusts to roll the egg across the finish line.

Game #2: Using a wooden dowel held with the legs, to put into a toilet paper roll held by someone else.

Game #3: Bride has to guess which undie belongs to who. Picture of me and the panty owners.

I had so much fun at both bridal showers and I was literally showered with gifts and love.  Zach and I also hit a major milestone the other day when we went to go get our marriage license.  It’s crazy how many different “rules” for the marriage license there are:

"Do you fit the eligibility stated within the sign?"

We did it! (Well, almost...still need the whole marriage ceremony thing)

There’s the official license! I think one of the coolest memories of that day will be right after we took this picture: a woman and her older daughter were getting into their car in the parking lot behind the camera (which Zach had set up on a ledge with the timer to take the picture).  After the picture was taken, they honked their horn and yelled out their window, “Congratulations and good luck!”  How fun!  It made the day really happy and real.

We’re getting really close now, and Zach and I were just discussing today that we both have about a week off, then cram in some work, and then it’s the wedding already! Wow.  This 16-month engagement has just FLOWN by, so I just know the next 19 days will be a blur.  Hopefully, we get a chance to savor our last days as an unmarried couple in the midst of all the rushing around to accomplish things.

~L

Fears, Favors, and the Fray!

I woke up today with probably the 8th wedding nightmare I’ve had since being engaged.  The majority of them have consisted of me being HOURS late and still not even ready for the wedding.  Like…6 of them.  The 7th one I think I actually was ready and beautiful, and I specifically remember the portion of the dream where I was standing outside the wedding venue  and watching it burn.  Awesome.

This morning, I woke up from the disaster that was our catering menu.  I don’t remember all what was in the dream menu, but it amounted to crackers and spread.  WHAT?!  In the real world, we are having some difficulties communicating with our caterer, which I guess shouldn’t be a surprise considering the Yelp reviews we’ve read.  Zach is – as per his usual role in our relationship – the stable rock in this situation.  I’ve turned over most of the communication between our caterer and us over to Zach, so it leaves me free to mutter in frustrated tones under my breath on the other side of the couch.  But never fear my dear wedding guests!  It’s very likely we’ll be eating more than just cake.  We’re getting closer to agreeing upon a menu!

We also picked up our favors the other day, which are now making our apartment look like a warehouse:

Sooo many boxes (more than just those 4)

 

We're almost famous!

We’re hitting crunch time with less than 2 months to go until the wedding (1 month 21 days 1 hour and 45minutes).  And Zach has been great with stepping up and helping me get things done, especially my procrastinator projects like the centerpieces.  Helllooo Ikea!

Someone got an ice cream for being good.

We’re not all work and no play!  For my Valentine’s Day gift, Zach bought me two tickets to go see the Fray, one of my favorite bands!  I think it’s the 4th concert I’ve ever been to.  It was REALLY easy to get starstruck in such a small venue and even though it was crowded beyond what would probably be safe for fire regulations, we were still able to see Isaac Slade croon.

*Swoon* Croon away!

Crystal Ballroom is a really amazing place!

Thank you to my honey for a wonderful time!

I’m very excited to see friends and family at the bridal shower next weekend.  Getting closer and closer to the big day!

~L

Bolivia and a Baby!!

Well, we are a couple days from being officially 2 months away.  A fact which make me want to vomit.  From stress.  Not really, but maybe a mental vomit.

We have had a VERY exciting start to the year, which just goes to show that even if the world does end this year, at least it’ll totally be worth it!

First things first:  our trip to Bolivia!  If there’s one thing that Zach and I really have in common, it has to be this absolute urge to travel and explore the world together!  Rather spontaneously and with the extremely generous help of Zach’s brother and sister-in-law, the opportunity arose that we could go to Bolivia and visit.

The last real vacation Zach and I had been on was our trip to Victoria BC at the very beginning of our relationship, almost 2 years ago!  So this was very exciting for us.  And of course, I want to share pictures with you!

Jack the Travelling Bear on his first adventure since he was born!

 

A little background on Jack:  we got him on our trip to Victoria, when I mentioned to Zach that I wanted to make a tradition of a stuffed animal that we bring with us on our travels and take pictures of in different countries.  Zach was kind and humored me; we found a Build-a-Bear shop where you got to pick the bear’s lifeless body, a wish, and a “soul” and then he was placed on a rod and moved rapidly  back and forth as he was filled with stuffing.  O.O  Wow.  So he is named Jack, and we took a picture of him in Victoria and now in Bolivia, so I’m glad we’ve continued with our tradition.  Next stop: Mexico and then hopefully to Denmark!

Amaaaaazing!

‘Wow’ was not a word we could use enough to describe the different landscapes and things we saw in Bolivia.  Just look at that valley on the way to the Tiahuanacu Ruins!  While Zach and I are not extremely vocal about God in our day-to-day lives, I think we both agreed at how awesome and creative He is in making the world.

Zach also had a CUSTOM suit and shoes handmade for him in Bolivia and I have to say he looks VERY sharp.  I’ll try not to sprint down the aisle to him ;-P.

After Hank left us to come back to the US for the birth of his baby (more on that later), we booked a trip to go to what everyone in La Paz seemed to call “The Jungle.”

Tired, but in awe at the fact we just swam with pink dolphins

As foreboding as “The Jungle” sounded (what with the tales of dinner-plate sized spiders and anaconda hunting), it was an experience neither of us has ever had, nor do we regret!  We saw SO much wildlife and even got to swim with pink dolphins.  It was pretty amazing and totally worth it, despite the initial hesitations I had had at spending the extra unplanned money so close to the wedding.  I’m really glad we did it.

We took a tiny 20-person plane from La Paz to a Rurrenabaque, then a grueling 3-hour bus ride to where the boats and river was, then a river boat trip about an hour long to where our campsite was.  It was great experience being 3 days in the jungle, even if we did get eaten alive by the mosquitoes.

Beautiful La Paz.

 

After we got back from Bolivia, Zach and I attempted to get back in the swing of work, which is EXTREMELY hard when you have a new baby in the family!!!

Welcome to the world Annabelle Ophelia!

Isn’t she just the sweetest?!  I see babies at work ALL the time, but I definitely got teary-eyed when I first got to see Annabelle.  Zach and I are totally the proud Auntie and Uncle:

Our new niece and flower baby!

Oh she’s too cute.  Also, we decided to make Annabelle our “flower baby,” so now we can show off and involve all of our nephews and niece in the ceremony at the wedding.

We’ve been getting some RSVPs in; hopefully the process hasn’t been too confusing and if you forgot where to go to RSVP:  zachandlarissa.wordpress.com/rsvp/  or just click the RSVP link at the top.  We love you all and updates are likely to happen more and more often as we draw closer to THE DAY (replay the chipmunk video above for the proper sound effect).

~L

 

A Quarter Century of Love

This post is a dedication to my wonderful, amazing parents:  Happy 25th Anniversary!

I want to smile like that on my wedding day.

Here are my parents on their wedding day.  My mother in her tiny white dress (which I’ve tried to wear by the way. impossible to fit into.) and my dad rockin’ a tan suit jacket?  Well it was the 80s, and he’s never claimed to have a fashion sense

I never realized all the traditional anniversary gifts:

Year	Traditional (U.S.)	Traditional (UK)	Modern (U.S.)
1st	Paper	Cotton	Clocks
2nd	Cotton	Paper	China
3rd	Leather		Crystal, glass
4th	Linen, silk	Fruit and flowers	Appliances
5th	Wood		Silverware
6th	Iron	Sugar	Wood objects
7th	Wool, copper	Woollen	Desk sets
8th	Bronze	Salt	Linens, lace
9th	Pottery	Copper	Leather goods
10th	Tin/Aluminium		Diamond
11th	Steel		Fashion jewelry
12th	Silk	Silk and fine linen	Pearls, colored gems
13th	Lace		Textiles, furs
14th	Ivory		Gold jewelry
15th	Crystal		Watches
16th			Silver holloware
17th			Furniture
18th			Porcelain
19th			Bronze
20th	China		Platinum
21st			Brass, nickel
22nd			Copper
23rd			Silver plate
24th			Musical instruments
25th	Silver
26th			Original pictures
27th			Sculpture
28th			Orchids
29th			New furniture
30th	Pearl		Diamond
31st			Timepieces
32nd			Conveyances (e.g., automobiles)
33rd			Amethyst
34th			Opal
35th	Coral, jade	Coral	Jade
36th			Bone china
37th			Alabaster
38th			Beryl, tourmaline
39th			Lace
40th	Ruby
41st			Land
42nd			Improved real estate
43rd			Travel
44th			Groceries
45th	Sapphire
46th			Original poetry tribute
47th			Books
48th			Optical goods (e.g., telescope, microscope)
49th			Luxuries, any kind
50th	Gold
55th	Emerald		Emerald
60th	Diamond
65th		Blue sapphire	Blue spinel
70th		Platinum
75th	Diamond, gold		Diamond, gold
80th		Oak	Diamond, pearl
85th		Wine	Diamond, sapphire
90th		Stone (granite)	Diamond, emerald
95th			Diamond, ruby
100th			10-carat diamond

10 carat diamond?!?!! I can’t WAIT for our 100th anniversary!  :)

Both Zach and I come from families in which our parents are still together, even after all of these years, and it’s such a rare thing to see, especially these days.  I know that marriage is definitely not all rainbows and love letters (we’re not married yet and I already don’t get love letters? Looking forward to the wedding vow he’ll write, that counts yeah? ***)  I think it says and means a lot to have parents who have traveled through life’s hardships together, and come out the other side still loving each other.  To me, it’s a way of winning at life.  For all the doom and gloom that life can be sometimes, having an enduring relationship/marriage seems to be the one thing that we can try to control to laugh in the face of all of that.  Marriage is hard, but from what I understand, that is when you cling the most to your significant other.

So thank you: Lisa and Duain, and also Barbara and Harry, for giving us such beautiful examples of the endurance of love over the years.

~L

***This is a disclaimer that while I haven’t received a love letter in a while, I AM currently staring at a beautiful bouquet of flowers he bought me, “just because.”