Wedding Magazines

I had a year and half to plan the wedding and it became almost a forced habit to pick up a new wedding magazine when I was in stores.  This is absolutely one of the Pass It Down item from bride to bride.  Candace my dear friend gave me a really good selections of them and I passed them down to Meghan after our wedding.  I only kept a few that actually inspired me for our wedding.  For example, the floral style, the dress style, wedding favors and vendors.  I actually found our florist from one of the magazine - Ceremony Magazine.  Oh, you saw that there was a book called "Idiot's Guide for Wedding" yea? That's right.  Some of the stuff were hilarious to read. But it was pretty handy when you were looking for traditional ceremony customs or some must-known tips.  Just thought I posted it here to remember that I used to have piles and piles of wedding magazine in my room!

Music - Ceremony

Can't believe that it's been a year already.  We just pasted our 1st anniversary and yet the memory is still vivid.  I always like to play a telepathical game with my hubby called: "Guess which song is in my head?"  And in these days it was "I see the light" from Tangled, which is one of the music during our ceremony when we were lighting the marriage candles. I love this song especially after hearing the piano cover on youtube from this talented young man:

The process of selecting music in our ceremony is surprisingly time consuming.  But we were all super happy with our final list.  It's all about putting personal thoughts into it.  I scrubbed a bunch of music list from all kinds of online sources, make a 1st round list.  Each of us listened to every one of them and ranked them seperately.  Picked out the top 20 as our 2nd round winner.  After our prilimilary list came out, queuing them together and play each of them back to back to see if the transition is smooth enough.  I bet that not many people really noticed what music eventually was played in the ceremony but music is definitely something that could easily bring you back to your childhood when you were riding the it's-a-small-world ride, to your high school prom of your last dance, to the miserable summer that you have to cram for your exam.  Like how I remember those sweet moments at Wayfarer's Chapel.

Here's our final list of music in ceremony.  They were all played in piano by our musician from the chapel.  One thing that we definitely noticed that we picked mostly classics.  Like your love with each other that shall last forever.

Prelude

“Greensleeves by Vaughan Williams”

          “Air on a G String by Johann Sebastian Bach”

“Amazing Grace by John Newton”

Seating of the Parents

”Moon River by Henry Mancini”

Processional of the Bridal Party

”Can’t Help Falling in Love from Elvis Presley”

Processional of the Bride

"Canon in D by Johann  Pachelbel"

Lighting the Marriage Candle

          “I See the Light from Tangled”

Recessional

"Traditional Wedding March by Felix Mendelssohn"

APERTURA - Ray Soemarsono

I meant to introduce the photographer that we booked long time ago since both of us were very excited about it.  But call me superstitious, after the original makeup artist canceled on me I wasn't feeling losing our photographer by jinxing it. Everything went well after all and we're about to get our album pretty soon. We're very excited about it!

Photographer is one of the most important elements of our wedding day since pictures are probably the only souvenior from the big day(alright, besides the happily ever after part).  We spent quite some time doing research, comparing various of photographers' portfolio, ranking them individually and contacting them one by one.

How did I find Apertura?  Surprisingly not from the normal wedding websites like ProjectWedding or WeddingWire.  I actually read about them on one of the Taiwanese wedding forum - VeryWed where some people mentioned that they are very good and worth to check them out.  It's rare to see recommendation of LA vendors on the Taiwanese wedding website, with that bit of the curiosity I looked them up, 

When looking through their portfolio, one thing that was the major deciding factor was that I could feel the moment of those weddings.  I felt the love and was moved by them.  One really impressive one was he shot a wedding that was just the couple themselves. No guests, no fancy party, no all those typical glamorous decoration.  Probably two witnesses at the court? But that was it.  The story was beautifully told through his lenses.  Ray said when he was showing me his work: "I don't discriminate the size of the wedding.  Big or small."  Why does this quality stand out? Because what truly matters is if the photographer was really thinking about the customers and understand what really matters to the couple.

Call it fate if you believe me.  We've had hundreds of emails exchanging between all our photography candidates,  in July I had an opportunity to go to LA, and I tried to contact as many vendors as I could.  Ray was the first photographer to meet.  I have to drive 1+ hour east from Pasadena in the horrifying LA traffic.  After the first meeting, he went over the day with me and explained his working style.  Besides loving his work, Ray's warm personality and professionalism gained a lot of trust from me.  However,  the price point was way beyond our budget so we decided to keep looking.

Another 3 months flew by,  after looking through another 50+ other photographer's portfolio, contacting them,  Ray was still top of the list.  It was not because they were expensive so we got lured into the pitfall of the pricier the better.  In fact, there were a lot more photographers who were way more expensive, and yet we didn't like their work as much.  Some of them were probably famed with celebrities but it was hard to tell(from our non-professional eye) if those pretty pictures were consist of fancy flowers and colorful lighting or if the photographers know what they were doing.  One major decision was about to make,  Chris said he need to talk to Ray himself.  We had a 3 way conference call and asked a whole lot of questions, raised our concerns, understand how everything worked.  Allow me to use some Intel jargon. "Customer orientation" ended up to be our biggest compliment to Ray.  Afterwards, Chris and I had some serious financial budget discussion since it was still in early stage of the planning.  We'll have to rethink the rest of the elements around a tight budget.  It was a big stretch, but we decided to give ourselves a lifetime wedding gift.

Advice for future newly wed?  Put together a simple spreadsheet, list a good 20~30 final candidates.  Rank them base on your very SUBJECTIVE preference without knowing the cost.  After all you're the one who's going to own these sweet memories.  The rest of the decision process would fall into places naturally.  Also my friend has recommended a good website http://www.wpja.com/ to check out some really talented photographers work.  There you could see a wide spectrum of different wedding photography and gain some sense of what you might be looking for.


Here's our online gallery and slideshow and we very much want to share with everyone!

http://www.aperturaphoto.com/janet_chris/

Oh please comment on this blog entry if you like the photos!

http://www.aperturaphoto.com/blog/2011/08/wayfarers-chapel-disney-concert-hall-wedding/


Finally here's our review on Project Wedding for Ray:

We had our wedding in LA on June 18th 2011 and Ray from Apertura was our photographer. Ray is an absolutely talented photographer and you could tell from his work without us further stressing the point. The very first time we found Apertura was from the recommendation of a wedding website. The first impression of seeing their portfolio was simply "wow". Looking into their work, we love not just their amazing skills of interesting composition, lighting and unique point of view, but most importantly, the quality that really stood out for us was how they beautifully told the story with their unique ways of capturing moment and documenting the big day. It was an amazing art work that carefully crafted upon your most important day. They are extremely creative. For example, we had macaron as one of our wedding favor, Ray improvised on the day by placing our rings on three different color macarons and created really fun memories. We were really pleased when we saw pictures like that afterwards and glad that we had him as our photographer. Of course you could tell how amazing their work is already by seeing their portfolio, but another very important factor is how Ray was very customer oriented. The very first impression of meeting Ray was that Ray was extremely friendly. He was very responsive the entire time. Since we were out of town, my husband and I had a phone conference with him to sort out details and met with him in LA before the wedding. His understanding and professionalism made us very comfortable and confident that we could let him document our big day. On the day of, Ray text'd me that he was very excited shooting our wedding before he arrived, that certainly made me feel very good. Following us running around for the 12-hour day, Ray was all very professional, cheerful and he directed you very well during wedding portrait and you won't feel uneasy at all. Another important thing is, Ray delivered our online gallery within 2 months of our wedding which reminded us of all those sweet memories just in time. At the end, we feel like we made a really good friend on top of having a great memory of our big day. Thank you Ray! We're looking forward to our album.

The Ultimate Venue - Walt Disney Concert Hall

Walt Disney Concert Hall a.k.a WDCH located at downtown Los Angeles just diagonally cross the street of MOCA, was completed in Fall 2003. It was the year when I came to US and started my grad school in USC.  The breathtaking and unique shaped concert hall was designed by my favorite architect - Frank Gehry.  People who's familiar with downtown Los Angeles would know that downtown is normally deserted after 6pm.  The extravagant concert hall created an odd beauty standing alone in the quiet lonely city.  There was a vivid memory of my strolling around that area alone after dark after one of my mid-term. It was an impulsive visit that I simply just went there to check it out and took the humongous scene all in.  It never occurred to me that I would host my wedding reception here in this contemporary and beautiful place.

Fast forward to 2010, I happily found out that WDCH is one of our wedding venue options.  Patina Group is the proprietary catering company for WDCH.  Patina Restaurant originally located at Melrose Ave. Beverley Hills.  It has been known for their extraordinary French cuisine.  Their flagship restaurant moved to WDCH and the reputation remains.

Jill Halferty was the sales person who showed us around and became the primary contact for us through out the year.  She was engaged before our wedding!! So congratulations Jill!  She showed us both WDCH and the music center cross the street on the 5th floor. The music center was also very nice as it has a fantastic view but of course we were more drawn to the WDCH itself.

BP Hall is the primary space to host the reception.  It claimed to be able to host 300 guests. However, with the dance floor scoped out in the center, to host 100+ people it wouldn't make the space look too empty.  The natural light shining through top ceiling down to BP Hall set the space itself apart from most of the regular ball rooms which are normally a confined space. Of course the non-square hall makes everything so much more interesting.


BP Hall

Bar Area

2nd floor where the stairway leads to was the Bar Area that we could potentially rent as a cocktail hour or to place the bar of reception.  If you had 300+ guests for your event, I'd say it being a good idea.  However, firstly we were having our cocktail hour at the Blue Ribbon Garden, which costed only $1 to rent and for our wedding day in June, the outdoor garden should be beautifully decorated by all the natural flowers and plants in the garden.


BP Hall closer look

 

Skylight

Blue Ribbon Garden

Pretty amazing venue huh? We couldn't be more happier!

After visiting, we went to couple more places like Cafe Pinot and Il Cielo.



Cafe Pinot



Il Cielo 1





Il Cielo 2



It came down to WDCH and Il Cielo restaurant at Beverly Hills, which is a completely different style that we were deciding. It wasn't a 3 second decision like the Wayfarers Chapel.  Overall we tried our best to do pros and cons analysis. (A complete nerdy well trained engineer couple would do.)  I kept saying that the ideal wedding would be "Simple and Elegant".  WDCH is like a white canvas that we could do anything we want with it or leave it as it is and it'd still be fabulous.  It is however at the edge of being affordable and out of our reach.  I remembered it was on our way home back from Costco, in the car we agreed with each other that WDCH is the one.  It represented our personalities, it suites us best! We couldn't be happier.

And there, we had our ultimate wedding at the amazing Walt Disney Concert Hall.
 



The Quest of Reception Site - Part II

First of all... Happy 2 months!

The most common question we got during this time was "How's married life?"  Well, we don't instantly become super matured and grown up base on the fact that my hubby is right now indulging in playing Starcraft II with his buddies. Marriage life has been great!  We finally had couple laid back weekends just to wander around and enjoy the summer.  The easy breezy normal life is a good start. 

Alright, to celebrate the two-month milestone, here we are to continue the part II of the journey of reception site hunting.

My grandparents live in Pasadena for 30+ years and it's a really beautiful city.  Second day in LA we started with The Langham Huntington Hotel in Pasadena.  It's a truly grand and historical place.  I loved the overall royal feeling and the exterior look.  It was serene while standing on the hill overlooking the picturesque San Marino.

The Langham Huntington Hotel, Pasadena

If we were hosting our ceremony here it would be a wonderful candidate.  However, we need a space for reception.  They provided the indoor ballrooms which fell into the same category of all the hotels we've checked so far.  At the same time, it's definitely at the pricey side considered it being a 5 star historical hotel.

Moving on we met up with my good friends Simon and Maggie at the Wayfarers Chapel which I've mentioned in Wayfarers Chapel.  After we checked out the chapel, we started driving around the neighborhood of Palos Verdes to see what options we have.  I'll fast forward a little bit since the first three were not that impressive.

Double Tree Hotel

Some Yacht House

Ports O Call



Chris actually liked the Ports O Call a lot since the price was absolutely reasonable and the restaurant was right next to the water with decent view.  Ports' O Call did stay on our decision spreadsheet from the beginning to the end.  The price and the ocean view was a big drawn but the atmosphere was not quite what I was looking for. 

We started driving towards north of the chapel and the first stop was the La Venta Inn. It located 5 mins away from the Chapel. On top of the hill overlooking pacific coast line, I immediately fell in love with the old school boutique style hotel.

The Entry

Outside the patio overlooking the beautiful coast line

This would be the gazebo if we were hosting the ceremony. However it'd be perfect for guests to just hang out here.

The dance floor.  Now you could smell antique style of the building.

 

Dinner space.





Another view of dinner space.



It seemed to be really cohesive with the chapel in terms of the style.  It was 5 mins from the chapel. I definitely loved it.  However, the price was insanely high.  And that was a definite realization that we picked the most popular time in the year to get married - Saturday in June.  There was no way that the space would not be occupied and therefore the minimum cost was sky-high.  Granted their caterer was New York Food Company which is top notch fine dining wedding catering company.  The menu was exquisite.  But that really put us in a tough spot. Regardless of how much we like it, there was no room of negotiation especially we had no definite guest count yet. It was hard to gauge at such an early point when we've got nothing else booked.  Saying yes to the crazy high minimum cost was not as easy as walking into the Costco and grab a thousand dollar laptop home.  I was honestly disappointed.  Of course now I looked back, I would give you hundreds of reasons of why it was meant to be and how I shouldn't host the reception there.  Again, hindsight view.  We left the La Venta Inn with my great disappointment and I started being resentful about how ridiculous the wedding business was.  It took me a while to go back to my rationality to think hard of what the wedding really mean to us, my family and friends and what represented us as a couple and what we could afford to make that final decision.  At the mean time we were battling with what we called in Chinese: spending money on the critical point.  We wouldn't want to spend $10K and put together something we don't like at all.  If we want to do something, we want to do it right. 

We drove up to Redondo Beach and then all the way to Manhattan Beach.  We checked out Crown Plaza, Cheesecake Factory (Yes, it actually became our baseline in the final decision process. -> Would you rather dine here or would you rather dine in Cheesecake Factory.) And many other non-impressive places that I left off from boring you.

Crown Plaza Hotel, Redondo Beach

Some random spot.

Shade Hotel

Shade Hotel 2

Shade Hotel was the last place we checked at the end of the day and was worth being mentioned.  It's a very modernized hotel at Manhattan Beach.  We could vision our guests enjoying the sunshine at Southern California beach.  The rooftop pool was also a perk that we could host our after party there by the pool side.  It was very casual and lovely.  The minimum cost was again an easy reason for us to not even consider it at all.

I guess we hit a lot of places that I still haven't finished the story of entire journey!!!
I should say Happy Two Months!!!
We'll come back to the last day of the ultimate quest of reception site.

The Quest of Reception Site - Part I

This is probably all hindsight view now to recall our quest of reception site hunting.  Being able to host our reception at Walt Disney Concert Hall (WDCH) was a perfect decision and I wouldn't change my mind if we started all over. But still, it was quite a journey to get there, so we'll start from the beginning.

After proudly booking the Wayfarers Chapel in such a swift manner, the mission of flying down to LA in March for scouting was a logical next step.  We got some tip from friends that good sites are normally booked at least a year in advance.  Having that in mind, we started the mission.  I searched through various of websites: wedding wire, the knots, project wedding, ... etc, all the popular and non popular ones. Also just went to google map, zoom to the big LA area and search for "wedding reception".  Kudos to Google, a lot of great ones came up.  As organized as I am (okay, that was a joke.), here's the proof of the map with all the candidates that I filtered down to.  (I'm not giving Chris any credit for this and he'd agree.) We already had WDCH on the list and I was in love with it for a long time. But at that moment we both had the assumption that we wouldn't be able to afford it.

View Wedding Reception Candidates in a larger map

Two and half days we covered a lot of ground in big Los Angeles area.  Everyday was at least a 100 miles drive.  We started off right at one of the Patina Group restaurants called Leatherby's Cafe Rouge in Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall.  It locates in Costa Mesa and the stunning building was the key thing that drew us there.  Now you see that we have a thing with funky looking places.



It wasn't open on that day (my bad on not doing the homework!). So we simply walked around the building and left.

Continue on with a beautiful sunny day we headed to Huntington Beach, just about 30 miles south of Palos Verdes but the drive would take up to almost an hour because the only way to reach there is via Highway #1.  The plan was to start from there then drive down along the coast to Newport and then Laguna Beach. 

The coast was beautiful as usual SoCal, the hotels had typical 5 star resort atmosphere. The ballrooms were okay.  We were not particularly thrilled by any one of them and yet the minimum cost was definitely OMG-California high. 

Hyatt Regency at Hungtington Beach - 1

Hyatt Regency at Hungtington Beach - 2

Going back in time, it seemed that everyone but me and my betrothed by default knew how much a wedding could cost or how huge the whole wedding business in U.S is.  We didn't learn that till the very moment when the event sales handed us their beautifully binded brochure.  While digesting the humongus cost estimate, the standard ballroom didn't impress us enough.

Hilton at Huntington Beach

Marriot at Newport Beach - 1

Marriott at Newport Beach

Moving on with some financial shock wave in mind,  we came all the way to a place that I was very excited about and actually had quite some conversation with them prior to the visit.  Seven Degrees.

Their reviews online were all 5 stars, the wedding pictures that people had were amazing looking.  I was almost certain that this one might work out.  It wasn't easy to find this place as it stood among all the neighborhood buildings despite the unique looking itself.

Seven Degrees - Outside

Inside the building, the space was big enough for approx. 130 people and all the professional lighting, sound equipment were all built in already.  We visited right before another wedding's ceremony, so we could see their setup.  It was definitely clean and elegant.

Seven Degrees - Reception Room

Since we've already had some conversation over emails beforehand, we took quite some time there to talk about details with the owner.  She gave us some price break for the whole package and definitely seemed to be passionate about hosting wedding events (kinda basic attitude you'd think right? Actually you'd be surprised that a lot of places didn't give you that vibe.).  Now here's the thing, we both could imagine ourselves hosting event there but none of us said: This is it! Frankly speaking, my excitement was slightly diminished since I was concerned that the place was buried among other random buildings and the surrounding neighborhood was simply odd. Well, it was still early in the game.  Nothing was set in stone yet.  However, it was definitely on our list.

The first day was quite productive but we were still putting hopes on the 2nd day which was Rancho Palos Verdes itself, Redondo Beach and Manhattan Beach at the north side. (To Be Continued.)

Wayfarers Chapel

It's been 18 days since our wedding and I always wanted to write down more about the whole process so we could remember everything years later.  So let me start with the holy place where we vowed to be with each other for richer or for poor - Wayfarers Chapel.

People thought that it might have taken us forever to decide on where to get married but we booked the Wayfarers within 5 days after our engagement. We saw this chapel on one of my favorite TV show: The O.C.  and both of us fell in love with the chapel instantly.  We joked about how we're going to get married there even before the engagement.  To quote myself back then it was "If I ended up marrying anyone (so there's no pressure!), I'd get married at this beautiful place!" It was a no brainer after the engagement for us to make a decision.  Chris remembered it.  We set the date and then we booked the chapel without personally ever been there at all.



The chapel locates at the tip of Rancho Palo Verdes, California, overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  It was designed by Lloyd Wright who is the son of the famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright.  The chapel is also called the Glass Chapel as its roof and walls are made with glasses which is the contemporary theme that we tried to infuse through out our wedding.  As the warm sun shining through the glasses into the chapel, surrounded by flowers, trees and the ocean breeze, together with the chapel bell ringing signaling you that this is the moment, everyone there couldn't help but indulge in the atmosphere of happiness.

We made it down to LA 3 months after engagement for scouting our reception place and also visiting the Wayfarers Chapel. Our good friends Simon and Maggie went with us and thanks for their pictures that you see here.  As soon as we arrived, we knew we made the right decision. (It's not like we could backout at all. =P)  The view was just breathtaking. It was a clear day too. As you could see in the picture, even it wasn't at Spring time, it was just purely gorgeous.  Bathing under the sun, the serenity simply crawled into mind while walking in the chapel.  It was perfect.

The contribution to the chapel was $2500 and tax deductable but could not transferred from one couple to another. (So you'd better be sure!)  I didn't know that $2500 for a ceremony facility rental is considered above average till much later. However, a little advice for future bride is, all the cost should be budgeted as a whole instead of individually.  In our case, the chapel provided the reverend, musician and coordinator for the 2-hour event. Since it's so beautiful by itself, any extra floral decoration would just ruin it.  Therefore, we didn't have to spend money on musician, reverend and floral decoration at ceremony which made the overal cost fairly reasonable.  The ceremony usually won't take more than 20-25 minutes, so 2 hours is considered to be enough. However, as much as we love taking photos, it was very tight for us to do some wedding portrait, family photos and such on the day of.  But quite frankly the wedding day itself is usually packed already no matter where you hold your ceremony/reception.  I think it went pretty well for our day eventually.

Our guests already knew that we ended up choosing the reception place a little bit far from here.  The story is worth another blog post so you'll know about it later.  However, everyone made it! That's the most important part.

I want another different post about the actual wedding day. So we'll save the part about the actual ceremony for later.