wedding thoughts

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Hybrid Wedding Traditions

I've mentioned before that I am of mixed ethnicity. I am Filipino and White. My fiance is Japanese. I grew up in Japan on military bases and moved to Hawaii during my senior year of high school. I now teach seniors in high school. My fiance was born and raised on Kauai. When talking about what kinds of things we'd like to include in our ceremony and reception, a blend of customs come up.

We are having a non-denominational ceremony. We aren't writing our own vows or having any special readings. My fiance hates to be the center of attention, so the plan is to get up and get down as fast as possible. We are incorporating mostly Western wedding traditions, including a sit-down meal, a first dance, the garter/bouquet toss, dancing with a DJ.

We are also incorporating some Japanese (or Hawaiian-Japanese) elements into the wedding as well. For example, my dress is made by designer Anne Namba. She creates wedding gowns out of vintage wedding kimono.

In addition, I've folded and had arranged 1,001 gold cranes to give our marriage good fortune.

For my Filipino side, we're incorporating the dollar dance. Basically, the bride and groom have to dance, and all of the wedding guests place money all over them using safety pins or just tucking it in. In some cases the bride or the groom have to remove the money from each other's bodies with their mouths, and then deposit the money into collecting baskets.

My fiance will be wearing a maile lei during the event. It is tradition in Hawaii that lei is given for all important life events, especially birthdays, graduations, weddings, and funerals. Our parents will likely wear leis throughout the day, as well. Typically at local weddings, people don't usually give gifts; it is expected that everyone will give money in a card.

The types of food served are slightly cultural as well. A lot of people serve ahi (tuna) or sushi because ahi symbolizes good fortune (and apparently is delicious!). There will probably be a Bonzai! toast as well. My FFIL is really good at this toast, and gives it at other events as well, even though it's meant for weddings. Banzai means 10,000 years. Here is what the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii says about it:

The word banzai literally means “10,000 years” and is associated with long life. Banzai cheers are given at joyous occasions, banquets and gatherings, to express congratulations, encouragement, or celebration. Traditionally, the participants shout the word “banzai” three times in unison, raising their hands in the air each time.

It is customary to deliver two separate banzai cheers at weddings. The first, “Shinro shimpu, banzai!” means “long life and happiness to the bride and groom.” The second banzai is: “Raihin shoku, banzai!” or, more politely, “Raihin no minasama, banzai!” This banzai cheer means “Long life and happiness to all the guests!” In Hawaii, these wedding banzai cheers are often given as a special toast, with participants raising their glasses with each shout of “banzai!”

I'm sure there are other things that are going to crop up as well that I don't realize is outside of the norm, but if I think of anything I'll keep you posted.

Pre-Wedding Honeymoon

Is a honeymoon really a honeymoon if it doesn't take place after the wedding?

Due to budget restrictions and a giant spring break opportunity, we are having a pre-wedding honeymoon.

What does this mean for us? It means that instead of going on a sick vacation after the wedding, we'll be doing it three months beforehand. This makes me wonder if it is taking away from all of the wedding festivities, but after looking at other wedding blog posts, I don't think so. Some people don't even take their honeymoon for months after the wedding, so oh well. I'm also wondering if we're jinxing ourselves for the wedding, but we've been together for almost six years already (he's making an honest woman out of me!), I can't imagine one vacation breaking us apart.

Why did we make this decision? Because New Zealand's seasons are opposite of ours, if we went after the wedding it would be the dead of winter there (did I mention it snows there?). Also, we are building our first home this year so we will be pretty strapped for cash. In addition, a big gap in my school year opened up: a little over two weeks.

What are we going to do? AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE! Because we're in Hawaii, the time difference is very minimal, it's about one hour behind tomorrow so I don't forsee us being jetlagged at all. We are landing in Auckland, grabbing a campervan, and touring both the North and South Islands. We will be spending five days up north and about nine days down south. I know you're super interested in our itinerary, so I will give you the quick run down:

Day 1: Land in Auckland, pick up campervan, go to Waitomo Glow Worm Caves

Day 2: Check out Rotorua (geothermal area plus Zorbing)

Day 3: Hike the Tongariro Crossing, weather permitting

Day 4: Bike ride to a bunch of vineyards in Hawke's Bay

Day 5: Cruise in Wellington, check out the Te Papa museum

Day 6: Take the inter-island ferry from Wellington to Picton and begin heading south to Christchurch so we can catch a rugby match that begins at 7:35 PM

Day 7: Head across Arthur's Pass towards the glaciers

Day 8: Spend the day checking out the glaciers, then drive to Queenstown

Day 9-10: Head over to Te Anau and the Milford Sound areas

Day 11: Head back to Queenstown

Day 12: Check out Lake Tekapo and Mount Cook

Day 13: Head back to Christchurch to return the campervan and fly back to Auckland
Day 14: Fly out of Auckland back home!

My mission when I travel is to come home exhausted. Do I think we'll see everything there is to see? No, absolutely not. There's no way you can experience an entire country in two weeks. However, we'll be able to have one last big trip before we finally become grown ups.

Race Relations

Growing up overseas on military bases and living in Hawaii have really affected the way I see interracial couples. In the military lifestyle. I saw a ton of interracial couples (usually, but not always, a white father with an Asian mother [I know Asia is not an ethnicity, but neither is white, so hah!]). Most of my friends, including myself, were half-and-half. I thought we were a very progressive community. Then we moved to Hawaii.

In Hawaii, many people are more than two ethnicities. In fact, some people are five or more ethnicities combined. It comes from the plantation history of the islands, in which people from many other countries (mostly Asian) were brought to the islands to work in the sugar fields. The town I currently live in is famous for having the first sugar plantation on the island. I was blown away when I found out that you could be more than two ethnicities. Who had ever heard of such a thing? How many generations back would ethnic groups have to begin mixing to have children who were six different ethnicities? Crazy! And there is another phenomenon that happens here, too, which is the opposite end of the spectrum: People who keep the "bloodline strong." Essentially people who are ethnically pure. My fiance is ethnically pure. He is a fourth-generation plantation Japanese.

I, myself, am not. I have half white (maybe French/German, but I have no idea), and half Filipino (mostly Spanish due to the Spanish occupation, but possibly some indigenous as well). I have come to dilute the bloodline! Our children will be of three ethnicities! Of course in this day and age, especially in Hawaii, people don't really care about that kind of stuff... or do they? There are bumper stickers throughout the islands claiming "Bloodline," and people have made comments to us about the dilution of his bloodline. It's almost like we're dog breeds. The thought of diluting Chad's bloodline makes me a little sad, because one day, in the far future, a completely pure bloodline will be very hard to find. However, the thought of our future, super-cute kids makes me feel happier.

Using a coordinator

As stated in a previous post. I am a super planner. I am a high school English teacher, and planning and organization are essential to my sanity in the classroom. I have 160 seniors and juniors who literally pop in and out of class every day during recess and lunch in order to bombard me with requests to make up work, get missing work, tell me about their lives, etc. etc. If I am not able to keep up with their very distinct personalities and needs, my career would be in serious jeopardy.

I love planning things. Three weeks ago, I found out that the week after spring break we only had a two day work week due to two furlough days (thanks a lot, state budget cuts) and Good Friday, so essentially this March I will have kind of a two week spring break! I decided as soon as I found out that we would go to New Zealand as a pre-wedding honeymoon (we will have absolutely no money later this year due to the wedding and building our first home, and this is a great time of year to visit NZ). I had our entire fifteen day itinerary with flights and transportation planned in two days. TWO DAYS! BECAUSE I AM CRAZY! And also because I like to plan things out.

What does this have to do with using a coordinator? Well, we live on a separate island from our wedding venue. We live on Kauai, and our venue is on Oahu. I lived on Oahu for several years before ~~following Chad~~ moving to Kauai so I feel as if I'm pretty familiar with the island and what it has to offer. However, when planning a wedding there are a lot of things you have to do, contracts you have to sign, meetings and what not to go to, and with airfare being almost $100 each way, doing everything myself just wasn't happening.

Enter coordinator.

Luckily, the venue we chose, Kathy Ireland's Beachfront Oasis World Estate (the venue and company have undergone some recent name changes, so I threw in all the names just in case) has its own coordinator who happens to have been born and raised on Kauai! He was willing to put together a package for us based on our budget and his connections working in the wedding industry. The house is actually licensed to have weddings, which is awesome because the neighbors can't call the cops if the house gets too loud (I think). It's a relief to know that someone else is putting all of the vendors together, and all I we have to do is approve or disapprove. It's also nice to know that all of the vendors are going to fall within our specified budget and I don't have to price a million things. All we have to take care of is cake, alcohol, and photography. My only gripe is I like to have all of my questions answered RIGHT WHEN I ASK THEM, and apparently our coordinator is not awake at 6:30 A.M. like I am, ready and willing to talk all about our event!

Does it bother me that I know I could have done all of this myself and maybe saved some money? Yes
Do I need to let go sometimes? Also, yes (but I'm only letting go because we're planning on getting pregnant, and apparently you can't plan anything with kids involved so I'm ACTUALLY practicing letting go of things [again, crazy]).

I made favors!

Favors are something I have been struggling with since we got engaged. We're on a super tight budget because we have other financial priorities besides getting married (gasp!) and I wanted to budget about a dollar a person. Originally we were planning on inviting 100+ people so I knew whatever it was I purchased would have to be something really cool. I thought back to previous weddings I had been to (which are not too many, actually) and the one favor that really stood out, which wasn't even a favor, was a polaroid picture of myself and Mr. K for a polaroid guestbook the couple had. Our picture had some random friends being crazy in the background so we were allowed to take a second photo for the guestbook and keep the first one. Immediately I went to Amazon and purchased a polaroid camera and 200 pieces of film.

Then our plans changed. Feeding 100+ people happens to be really expensive. We chopped our wedding down to 40 people, including us, and moved it to another island so we would have an excuse to keep it intimate. Now I had a little extra leeway in terms of providing an actual favor.

At this point I am going to let you know that I have an unhealthy obsession with trees. Seriously--I'm obsessed. I try my hand at artwork here and there and it seems every thing I create is tree related. See below:

Anyways, you get the picture. Needless to say I wanted something eco- and budget-friendly to be our favors. I hate hate hate hate hate favors that are completely useless. After some time googling and looking through various wedding blogs, I found THIS at favorscreative.com. If you're too lazy to click, it is basically a little grow your own herb kit. It includes a little biodegradable pot, soil pellet, herb seeds, and instructions--all inside a little box wrapped with ribbon. This company is charging $3.50 per favor. $3.50 was still $2.50 over my budget so I did a little shopping around and created something very similar myself.

1) I purchased two packages of peat pots, 23 pots per package, which were 2 and a quarter inches tall from Amazon for about $2 per package.

2) At Home Depot I purchased about 50 peat pellets for $4. I also purchased herb seeds for about $1.50 per seed packet.

3) The favorscreative boxes are made out of recycled cardboard, which I didn't have. However, I did have a whole lot of cardstock I had picked up at Walmart in the reams of paper aisle. It looks just like a ream of paper, except with cardstock inside. Using my Martha Stewart Scoring Board and Fiskars Paper Trimmer, I made 3x3x2 little boxes. I was really careful with the way I cut the paper, however.

4) I tried to utilize each sheet of cardstock as much as possible. To make a 3x3x2 box, you need pieces of cardstock that are 7"x7" for both the lid and the box. When using 8.5x11 cardstock, this meant I would need to use 80 pieces of cardstock in order to make 40 boxes. I made sure for each of those 80 pieces of paper, I cut it in a particular way in order to make the most of the paper:

THEN I still had to cut 7x7 pieces for the bottoms which was actually more simple:

5) After cutting everything out, I scored the tops and bottoms using the scoring board and went ahead and assembled the bottoms of the boxes. I highly recommend the Martha Stewart Scoring Board for this. I am not artsy by ANY MEANS. I just pretend. I had no idea all of the things you can make with paper, but the scoring board is cool if you want to make cards, envelopes, or boxes yourself.

6) I separated out my seeds into 10-15 seeds per packet and made little origami packets out of the 4x4 piece of cardstock. Instructions can be seen here. Actually, that packet at the link is cuter than mine because it is a trapezoid and mine is just a square. I then stamped the name of the herb seeds on the packet with letter stamps.

7) I stamped a tree on all of the lids and then assembled the lids.

8) I put everything in the boxes, including the instructions, pot, pellet, and seeds, then put the lids on. Note: I did have to cut the little pots down a bit because they were 2 and 1/4 inch when I only could fit 2" pots inside.

9) Using yarn I made a bow using this tutorial from youtube.

In the bottom right corner of the box, I'll be stamping our last name in kanji (Mr. K is a 4th generation plantation Japanese); unfortunately, my FFIL has misplaced the stamp.

Also, you may have noticed that on the bottom template it says I was using a piece for guestbook mad libs. I saw some really cute madlibs on Etsy and shamelessly plagarized them and printed them out myself (**don't tell!**)

Sincerely,

Ms. Koloa

I made a flow chart!

I totally saw this flow chart save the date here and decided I had to have one of my own. Unfortunately, I am not skilled at creating but am extremely skilled at copying! I decided my flowcharts would be 8.5x5.5 so I could just slice a bunch of 8.5x11 cardstock in half in order to print them. Of course I changed the colors here and there to fit our color scheme and my fonts are not exactly the same because, again, I was copying it. It took me about two hours to figure it out and arrange. If you're interested in making a flow chart here is what you would do (in Pages):

1) Decide your flow chart size and use Page Setup so that your "canvas" is already prepped to size.

2) Using Shapes you can decide what type of shapes you want to grace your flow chart. I just stuck with rectangles and circles because I liked the look of the original.

3) Double click your shape to type inside. Using the Inspector, click on the Wrap tab and make sure that you have selected "Floating (doesn't move with text)" and unselected "Object causes wrap" for each shape. Using the Text tab, you can select spacing and alignment of your text.

4) Click Insert > Shape > Line or Line with Arrowhead in order to begin drawing the flow of the flow chart. I used the Metrics tab on the Inspector to make sure everything was at a 0 or 90 degree angle and sometimes to make sure my lines matched up at the corners. If you wanted a dashed line, you need to click on the Graphic tab on the Inspector and selected the dashed line. You can also select lines like crayon or marker. You can even change the color of the lines. Using the Graphic tab lets you change the color or fill of your shapes as well.

5) Arrange everything to your liking!

Anyways, here is the original:

and here is my copy (and I am warning you, it is a blatant copy):

Enjoy!

Sincerely,

Ms. Koloa

How he proposed

My version of what happened:

I knew it was going to happen. I am like a detective, and I collect clues until everything adds up. I hate surprises, so I do my best to ruin them.

Background Information:

On August 1, 2007, Chad asked me to be his girlfriend on a psuedo-hike. He took me to the St. Louis Heights' Air Chair, overlooking Manoa Valley.

Last year (2011), early summer time, my mom started a wedding account in my name to begin saving money for a wedding in the event that I ever got married. By October, there was about $2,000 in there (the maximum was going to be $5,000). In October, my family flew to California to celebrate my brother's Marine Corps Boot Camp graduation. Some kind of strange, explosive chemistry happens when my parents and I get together, and I ended up arguing with my mom about something, and she asked for her $2,000 dollars back.

Clue 1: For my birthday this year, Chad didn't have a gift for me. He said it was coming in the mail. I wasn't upset, seeing as how I received my Christmas gift about three weeks late.

Clue 2: My mom called on my birthday to see if I wanted to open back up that wedding account. I told her no. I later told Chad about the conversation and he did not sound completely adverse to the idea. Then he started saying pre-nuptual a lot, because he likes Kanye West's lyric "We want pre-nup!"

Clue 3: The night before he asked, I was having dinner for a friend's birthday. Chad gave me his obligatory, work-night 8:30 P.M. phone call and informed me that I had better not get too drunk because we are definitely going hiking tomorrow. The reason this phone call was a red flag is because Chad never makes plans a day in advance. He is that much of a commitment-phobe. He is always concerned about the weather, how tired he'll be, craigslisting, the wind speed and direction, surfing--in short, he has a million excuses as to why he can't do something the next day, so I knew something was up.

Clue 4: When he came home in the morning, I decided to test my theory. I knew he would never, ever, propose to me in front of anyone--he is just that shy with his emotions--so I began to ask him if we could invite pretty much every single couple I knew to go hiking with us. He had an excuse for everyone (I don't know what to talk about with him, I don't think she likes hiking, I don't want him to feel like a third-wheel) and at one point, just repeatedDon't invite anyone! over and over and over again.

So we went hiking, just us and the baby. We had been wanting to do Honopu Ridge Trail after a friend suggested it, and because it was "visually stunning" according to the internet. After about two hours, we reached the cliff-side view of the Na Pali Coast. He was waiting there for me, petting Koko's neck. As I approached, he stood straight up and said, "I have your birthday present."

I said, "Then give it to me."

"First of all, it's not real. Second of all, you have to promise me you won't go crazy. Third of all, don't over do it."

Of course by now, I had seen what was in his hand and would have promised to turn myself inside out if it meant I would get that ring, so you could say I wasn't really listening. I did hear the it's not real part, though. He had Koko carry the ring to propose with down the ridge but he wanted me to later go pick a ring that I'd like better. Then he got down on both knees and asked if I would marry him, and I asked him if he was sure he wanted to do this, and he said yes, so I said yes. Then we hugged and kissed and I thought I would cry but I didn't, so I laid down on the ground and looked at the sky because that seemed like the second most romantic thing I could have done at that moment.

Then we ate apples and crackers and hiked back to the top. I began talking non-stop about the wedding, and doing all those things he made me promise not to do like go crazy and over-doing it etc, and he began to immediately regret his decision.

Chad's Version (I am sure this is what he is thinking):

She wore me down.