I'm getting married...!!!

Aloha everyone! It's been a while since I last posted. Well let's get to the big announcement.... I'm getting married!!! Some of my friends already know, but Chang and I had not made a formal announcement to everyone yet... We have been engaged for more than a few months now, but we decided to respect our families and hold off telling everyone until we were able to tell them first in person... and because we lived 3000 miles from each other, this was rather difficult to do....

Happily, our families have received the news well. :)

Chang is now in California. He moved here on June 11th and started working that following week. I'm so happy to have him here. No more seeing each other only once every two or three weeks!

Last week, we finally kicked off the wedding planning! We don't have a date set yet, but we hope to have it end of April or early May 2007. It'll be in Sacramento -- home of my parents. Originally, we toyed with the idea of a wedding in Napa's wine county (which is a little more than an hour from Sacramento) -- but I think it woulda be too difficult to pull off. I will have about 40 people or more from my family alone (estimating about 150 to 200 guests total) and I don't want to think about bussing them back and forth and them whining that it's getting late and a long way back home (esp. my old aunts and young cousins/nephews). So Sacramento it is. And I'm happy with the decision. At this point, I realize the importance of making things as stress free as possible.... especially on my wedding day....

Before I share with you some photos of a particular place we liked, let me describe what kind of site we are looking for:

• We love outdoors. But Chang prefers that we have the ceremony indoors. I would also prefer an indoor ceremony -- however the perfect ceremony location would be an indoor place that possibly opens to the outdoors... am I asking too much? (I once saw in a magazine, a ceremony that was held indoors. Behind the couple were french doors that opened to a garden and a fountain. Beautiful.).
• If it's going to be an enclosed indoor ceremony -- it'd be nice if it's a church. However, the ceremony and the reception needs to be in one location because we will have many out of towners and I want to make it simple for them.... and I really really .... REALLY don't want to have the reception in the church cafeteria (like many Korean weddings I've been to / heard of --though it is true it's a cost saver and yes you can always make the best of it.).
• I also like settings that benefit from beautiful architecture. I think this could lend especially well to wedding photos.
  
• If it's going to be an outdoor ceremony, I really don't want it to be just greens and some trees here and there. I would like some type of setting (or "enhanced/augmented" is fine) not some random just average scenery.
• While the reception is important and I want to make it beautiful (within our budget), I want to put emphasis on the ceremony........ :-)

Anyway, so last week, we started checking out some wedding sites. We title last weekend as "Round 1 -- Golf courses and country clubs". We visited 5, all near Sacramento. While most of them were so-so, there was one that we particularly liked: Lincoln Hills in Auburn (40 min from my parents' place). We didn't get a formal tour, because my dad took us there (he golfs there). We both really like this place! And my dad says the food is also very good. The ceremony site overlooks the golf course greens. Directly behind the ceremony area is a small lake/pond with a fountain and a tiny waterfall to the side. The guests will be seated on wooden white chairs. The area where the chairs are placed are slightly elevated and surround the ceremony area in a semi-amphitheatre fashion. Behind the ceremony site is the country club, where the reception would be held (in a ball room, but it'd be so great if it could be in that restaurant of theirs that overlooks the greens). Everything was gorgeous and it was easy to imagine our wedding here:

The wedding party will walk down the path shown in the picture. I am imagining placing flowers on the little pedestool things, and lining the pathway with little candles or lanterns........?? On the wooden gazebo thing (what would you call this?), I would decorate with flowers and vines, and maybe also think about chifon type curtains..................?? We will also need to design some kind of altar for the candle lighting part of the ceremony (come on Grace, ideas!!).

Chang and I... and here are my parents (aren't they so cute?):

Here they are walking up to the club:

....I am very happy and excited!!!