Sunday, September 4, 2011

A Dirty Thirty Birthday Celebration in San Diego

Planning a 30th birthday party for my aunt was just the beginning of my journey!

My aunt loves pink and naturally, we went with a pink and purple theme for the girly girl that she is! We had a $250 budget for cake, decor and snacks to keep it simple since the suite at the Hilton Hotel in SD wasn't that big.

Here are few pictures from her birthday! I know you'll love the cake we designed!





Happy 30th Birthday Stephanie!

Friday, September 2, 2011

Cindy & Jeffrey Chen: My First Wedding!

Cindy & Jeffrey has been together for over 15 years and they finally tied the knot on August 20, 2011 at Kenyon Estate, Vallejo Ca. It was an Asian Contemporary inspired theme with orange and grey colors.

This was my first wedding and first big test! I was nervous but definitely more excited to help my cousins make their dream wedding come to life!

Not only was I asked to be Cindy's maid of honor, I became her wedding planner! For this wedding, I really listened to the bride and groom for ideas. For the couple who didn't have much time to plan for a wedding because of their work schedules, I put a powerpoint of ideas together for them and they loved it and said "Can I purchase that plan???"! I called it my "Asian Contemporary".

For the "do it yourself" bride and groom, they did not have the diy skills! I offered to design and set up their dessert bar which required me to take several trips to LA to get wholesale candies and several trips to Ross and TJMax to find the perfect sets of plates and jars for the display. While the trips were tedious, I was able to do their dessert bar for about $300! That's a steal! The dessert bar included various orange/peach candies, minimal silver/grey because they were hard to find-surprisingly. Her sister made mini cookies and I enlisted the help of my friend Jen from Make It Pop Sweets http://makeitpopsweets.blogspot.com/ to help me with the cakepops! A great and easy way for me to display the cakepops was to cut the styrofoam to fit into a square bowl and then fill the top with crystals! It looked great!

Additionally, I enlisted the help of my sister and cousin to make the fan program pages. Those were a pain and I will probably never do it again. However, the end result was perfect for their outdoor summer ceremony to help the guests stay cool while they took shade under orange parasol umbrellas; which we placed randomly on each row. The orange parasol umbrellas was a simple yet clever piece to have. It really brought the ceremony to life!

We also ordered 8 inch lanterns to hang at the end of each chair during the ceremony and the one idea that I absolutely love that came to life were the 3 inch lantern placecards! Those were unique and definitely tied the Asian Contemporary theme together at the reception tables.

On the day of the wedding, it was hectic because the vendors were late. I was actually the official-unofficial wedding planner because they had hired the day coordinator when they booked the estate. To say the least, I don't think they did a great job because I was running the show for them! But all in all, without everyone's help, the wedding wouldn't have looked as fantastic as it did.

Here are a few pictures from the wedding!






















"To Make One, There Must Be Two" -W.H. Auden


I found this simple yet eloquently stated quote by W.H Auden while I was trying to find the perfect title for this blog. I love the quote! It was in reference to marriage and of course, everything about marriage, pre and  post I completely LOVE! I am a hopeless romantic at heart! I wish for the fairy tale life with my love and like all girls dream, we dream of the fairy tale wedding.

This blog is dedicated to my journey as a wedding/event planner! Event planning has always been in me but I have never taken "planning" serious. But as I grew older and earned degrees in which I thought I wanted, I found that I am actually really good at organizing and planning events and making someone's vision come to life!

I am excited to share with you my ideas, concepts and results!