'Twas the Night Before Wedding

"I don't care if Monday's blue

Tuesday's grey and Wednesday too

Thursday I don't care about you

It's Friday, I'm in love"

(The Cure)

Your wedding, I had been told, is always a blur, filled with activity, responsibility, photography, and if you're lucky, a quiet moment to try to remember to take it all in. Knowing that, I was glad to spend extra time with our families the evening before the wedding, eventful as that also was with our rehearsal, rehearsal dinner, and Korean pehbaek ceremony. (The first 3 images below are from my camera, the rest are by Don Hwang Photography.)

Church Ceremony Rehearsal

On Friday, May 25, 2012, our parents, immediate families, bridesmaids, groomsmen, flower girls, and ring bearers rehearsed the ceremony proceedings, led by our pastor and officiant, Jonah So. I carried a paper bouquet made by my bridesmaid Christine as my father and I practiced walking down the aisle -- the part of the wedding that had me the most nervous! -- and Sam and I practiced getting married.

 

Rehearsal Dinner

After running through the main points of the ceremony twice, we met with our extended families and close friends for a Korean dinner at Dae Dong Manor in Flushing, Queens. The tables were decorated with pretty table linens and beautiful flowers, there was a lot of good food, and my friend Brian brought some balloons to entertain the kids with his impressive creations.

Korean Pehbaek Ceremony

We performed a Korean wedding ritual called pehbaek (commonly spelled "paebaek" or "pehbeck") in a separate room. Pehbaek is a colorful tradition that represents the joining of 2 families, and allows the bride and groom to honor their parents and elders, who can offer advice, words of wisdom, and gifts. It involves a lot of deep, respectful bowing -- we bowed to Sam's mother, elder relatives and close family, to my parents and immediate family, and to each other -- as well as the pouring of rice wine or tea; the catching of chestnuts and dates or figs, to represent the number of boys and girls they would like us to have; and a piggyback ride.

I borrowed my bridesmaid Leslie's hanbok, and wore a long topcoat with an embroidered white apron draped over my hands, red dots on my cheeks, and a ceremonial headdress. Sam also wore a borrowed hanbok -- my brother-in-law Dave's, which had my grandfather's jade buttons from when Dave married my sister -- with a topcoat, hat, and boots. Our hanboks were not visible underneath all of the other layers.

 

Why does Sam's mother look so pleased?

...Because we caught 7 chestnuts and dates she had tossed!

Why is everyone laughing?

...Because my parents tossed handfuls of chestnuts and dates but only 3 were caught. That's still plenty!

To conclude the ceremony, Sam gave me a piggyback ride around the table as a gesture of his ability to support me as my husband.

I wish I could enlarge the photos more but it seems complicated. For now, you can just click on any image to make it appear larger.

Wedding Week

"Details create the big picture."

(Sanford I. Weill)

Rewind to before the wedding: Things were under control and I was not feeling stressed, but there was a lot that needed to get done in the final days before the big day. Even though we had a special event for work, my colleagues talked me into taking the week off and I'm so glad I did.

During that time, my then-fiancé and I met with some vendors; put together the favors and escort cards, welcome bags for out of town hotel guests, and gifts for our wedding party and parents; and printed the ceremony programs, menus and reception programs, among other tasks.

Favors and Escort Cards

 I knew that I wanted edible favors. My favorite candies are gummies and sour gummies, and I almost always buy Sour Patch Watermelons at movie theaters, so those seemed like the perfect option to kick-off Memorial Day Weekend's unofficial start of summer. I ordered several 5-pound bulk bags online, and filled clear boxes purchased at Paper Presentation, one of my favorite stores in NYC.

We still have 1.5 bulk bags of Sour Patch Watermelons left, so we sneak in
ziplock baggies to the movies!

I also knew that I wanted favors to double as escort cards, so I printed and affixed labels with guest names, and instead of standard table numbers, titles of movies we have seen together in the theater or on DVD, which seemed to fit with the idea behind the Sour Patch Watermelons.

Front and back of candy boxes

Escort card table (Image: Don Hwang Photography)

One of our personalized reception table cards (Image: Don Hwang Photography)

Welcome Bags

For out of town guests staying at the hotel where we had reserved rooms, I ordered customized tote bags from the Wedding Chicks, and filled them with a plethora of Korean candies, cookies, crackers, pastries, clementines, and water bottles. It was our first and only time so far at the new H Mart in Hartsdale, but I know it won't be the last!



Korean snacks, water, and clementines

Customized tote bags to hold goodies

Gifts for Wedding Party and Parents

For our youngest bridal attendants, I made personalized Precious Moments coloring books and bound them with leftover ribbon I had cut and heat-sealed for our invitation suite. I also gave our ring bearers -- my nephew, Peter and Sam's nephew, Isaiah -- little bus tote bags with their names on them, and black gingham bow ties by Wee Little Bee to wear for their walk down the aisle.
  

Ring bearers' coloring books, personalized totes, and gingham bow ties

I gave our flower girls -- Sam's niece, Christina and his cousin's daughter, Abigail -- personalized hankies to keep as their own "something old" in the future, and ivory silk floral head wreaths with organza and satin ribbons from Sooty's Dress-Up Friends.

Flower girls' coloring books, "something old" hankies, and
floral head wreaths

I gave our mothers ivory lace handkerchiefs that were each embroidered with the words, "To our mother for our wedding, with love from Sharon and Sam, May 26, 2012." For my father, it was a handkerchief simply embroidered with "Father," which he used as a pocket square for the wedding. There was nothing I could buy for my parents or Sam's mother to adequately express our gratitude for a lifetime of sacrifice and support.

Parents' embroidered handkerchiefs

I wanted to give my bridesmaids pretty yet practical gifts as a small token of my appreciation. I decided to go with simple pearl pendants on sterling silver chains to wear on the wedding day, placed inside colorful Korean fabric pouches, as well as oval silver jewelry boxes inscribed with their first names.

I don't have a separate photo of the groomsmen gifts, but they were black ties and silver tie clips worn for the wedding. And there are still a few other gifts we had not accounted for originally.

Bridesmaids' pearl and sterling necklaces, and silver engraved
jewelry boxes

Ceremony Programs

I bought the paper for our ceremony programs (and menus and reception programs, further below) from Paper Presentation. I used pre-scored trifold cardstock, each panel with dimensions of 4 ¼” x 5 ½”. Using a photo I had taken of our church that I transformed into a sketch for the cover, I designed and laid out the panels and text as I wanted them to appear, and Sam formatted our hymn, Great Is Thy Faithfulness, which I dropped into the program.

This was done months in advance, but I had to wait until a day or so before the wedding to print the programs after finalizing everything with our pastor, and in case of any changes. I wanted our programs to contain every detail while being very simple and portable, and not require effort to put together. After the very time-consuming task of printing them -- which was the hardest part -- they just needed to be folded.



I'll have to take clearer photos of our program pages

I'm glad they turned out the way I had envisioned (Image: Don Hwang Photography)

Menus and Reception Programs

Another file I created and saved in advance was for a double-sided length of cardstock for our dinner menus and reception programs. Again, formatting these to print correctly, manually feeding them little by little through the printer tray, and waiting for them all to print a couple of days before the wedding was the difficult part of this project, but with my sister's help and printer, I was able to see it through.

For sentimental value, I loved having a printed menu and the order of events at our reception, including the songs that I had mostly chosen; I handled reception music while Sam had free reign with ceremony music. Like the favors and escort cards, our menus and reception programs performed double-duty being on a single card.



Double-sided card for each place setting

Menu side at reception (Image: Don Hwang Photography)

Reception program side (Image: Don Hwang Photography)


We received our professional digital wedding proofs over the weekend, and I hope you don't mind if I share a few more in upcoming posts. Thank you for reading and commenting!

The Big Move

"We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths."
(Walt Disney)

At the beginning of June, shortly after the wedding, we moved into our new home, a 510-square-foot 1-bedroom 3rd floor walk-up apartment in Brooklyn's Park Slope. We have been residing here for over a month now and the settling in process has been slow and steady. On top of the whole getting-married-and-merging-lives, it was a pretty significant move for both of us since my new husband was coming from Michigan by way of Grenada, and I had been living with my parents since last August; still, neither of us brought a lot of personal things and we started with little besides a lot of kitchen items.

We needed everything else: sofa, coffee table, dining set, bed frame, mattress, bookcases, wardrobe units, side tables, TV stand, lamps, rugs, and additional storage pieces since we have just 2 small closets in the entire apartment. Crate & Barrel, IKEA, Bed Bath & Beyond, Target, and Home Depot have played a large part in our lives over the past several weeks.

Following are some photos of our apartment.

Before the Move

The bedroom is fairly small but fine for us, same with the bathroom, and the kitchen is too small, but the living room is bright and sectioned off which gives us more flexibility, as you will see below. (The first photo was actually taken more recently, since the plants and planters were not voted on until after we moved in.)

4-floor walk-up building

Apartment door and hallway

Bedroom

Bathroom

Living room and dining area

Kitchen

After the Move

Moving was a multi-day process, but thankfully, several friends and family members helped us on the first day. Without them, I don't know if we would have made it through!



Helping to assemble some furniture

Plugging up holes near bedroom flooring

Afterwards, toasting to our new mess

Where do we put everything?

Dining area

Living room

Boxes and trash everywhere

Furniture by Room

The collages below show our major furnishings thus far. Everything is pretty neutral, not girlie but also not too masculine. The white dining set is meant to stand out in the center surrounded by the darker pieces, while the white in both the bedroom and bathroom is meant to blend into the walls. The only thing we could add to our tiny kitchen is a wall-mounted pot rack, which is why we bought the buffet and hutch.

{Crate & Barrel: Union Coffee Table, Stowe Chocolate Leather Storage Ottoman /

IKEA: EKTORP Vellinge Beige Loveseat & Chaise Lounge, HEMNES Black-Brown TV Unit}

{Crate & Barrel: Cabria II Dark Buffet with Hutch Top, Walnut Folding Bookcases /

IKEA: LIATORP White Dining Table, INGOLF White Chairs with ADMETE Natural Chair Pads, HEMNES Black-Brown Nightstand}

{Crate & Barrel: Pastis Nesting Side Tables /

IKEA: VANVIK Blekinge White Queen Bed Frame, PAX White Corner Wardrobe with VIKEDAL Mirror Glass Door, PAX White Wardrobe with 2 BIRKELAND Doors}

{Home Depot: Zenith Collette White Wall Cabinet /

Target: White Set of 3 Wall Shelves}

I'll wait to share more photos of the apartment, as there is still a good deal of organizing and decorating to do in the midst of Sam studying, me working, and us going on our honeymoon later this month!

Greetings From the Other Side... and Brooklyn!

It's been almost 2 months since my last post, and a lot has happened: our rehearsal, Korean pehbaek ceremony, and wedding, a short road trip, a big move, a change of seasons, and 2 major American holidays, just to name a few things.

I have many recaps and updates to share coming up, but for now, below are some photos from tonight, our first Independence Day ever together, and first holiday in Brooklyn.


Carlton Park farm-to-table restaurant

Watching the chef prepare our courses

Goat cheese ravioli & crispy chicken

Strawberry ice cream sandwich

Outside of our new home

Right now, we're watching the Macy's 4th of July Fireworks Spectacular. Whether your day has been low-key like ours, or full of gatherings with friends and family, I hope you've enjoyed the holiday!