Monday, June 14, 2010

Honeymoon!

We couldn't have picked a better place for our honeymoon here is Costa Rica. The hotel has much more than we expected and we had an amazing time.
Sunday morning, after waking up late, given that our wedding was amazing and it ended kinda late, we decided to take our time and rest. We then got ready for the 5 hour drive ahead of us, and thank God the weather was looking pretty good. Actually during our whole honeymoon we had an amazing weather and time.
The wonderful view we had from our room.

El hotel! The hotel!

Walking by the beach

Hahah my "american" hubby playing volleyball!
Our lovely rings!

Another day with sunny skies!!

Drinking some coctails by the pool!

Hehehe my hubby all sunburned!

And the lovely weather we had on our way back home... it was until we drove back home that it started to rain!!!

May 29th 2010

Our big day started bright and early, haha or at least for me. For some weird reason my body and mind did not wanted to rest the days prior to the wedding, thinking of all the possible things that we could or "would" forget and needed not to forget. Funny cause I could have woken up late, but instead I was already up at 3am.

My schedule for the morning was:
10am - Hair appointment
12pm - Make up appointment - By my lovely cousin!
1pm - Be at my mom's to get ready.

I do have to say that I did followed all of my appointments on time, and even had time to log unto de internet while waiting for my cousin.

But while I was doing all these, my aunts and uncles gave us the best gift ever a bride and groom to be would have ever imagined. Ale and I have no words to describe how greatful and thankful we are for the work, dedication and love each one of them "put" while decorating and organizing our wedding and ceremony. Since 7am and until a few minutes before the ceremony (yes! some of them actually changed clothes at the venue) my aunts and uncles worked really hard to make the place shine and look picture perfect! And gave us something that we will always remember. I was just amazing to see everyone's faces at the venue, and see all my expectations and dreams come true. I'm very bless to have such an amazing family! Not only were my expectations fulfilled but all of our guests were WOW by our amazing decoration and wedding uniqueness!

We did encountered a few problems, that I was awared of.....since probably some were not mentioned to me...
1. Our baker was supposed to be at the site at no later than 11am. Well, she got lost or something....cause it was almost 1pm and no one knew where she was. Fortunately my lovely groom went out and look for her, and also drove her to our venue.
2. Our lawyer would not answer her phone which did worried me a bit cause I was afraid she would get lost and be late for our civil ceremony. And I was right, she was late, not too much thankfully, but still she caused some stress on me hehehe.
My hair and makeup were fast and perfect. And I was soon at my mom's having lunch and waiting to get ready. Our photographer came right up it time, and started taking pictures of all my accessories before taking pics of me getting ready.

It was soon 3.30pm and we were on our way to the venue. Time flies when you are having fun!!


We got to the venue, waited for a few minutes for our lawyer and once she was there, I could here my aunt calling everyone in so we could start the ceremony.
I have to say that I was very nervous....but seriously excited. I was about to married the man of my dreams, by better half! And soon my entry song/music started to play - Only Hope (Soundtrack of "A Walk to Remember"). In Costa Rica, only catholics are able to be married only by the priest. For other religions you would need both a lawyer and an officiant in order to have an official/legal wedding.
Initially we had planned to only have a civil ceremony. But in the last week before the wedding decided to changed our plans. I was a bit disappointed by our lawyer, but very thankful that my wonderful groom wanted a religious ceremony. Her presentation and outfit could have been better, but at the end all that matter was that she performed her part and we completed the legal part for our wedding. Soon our real ceremony started and I loved every part of it. It was a beautiful sermon, with wonderful traditional vows. Just the way we wanted it.

And after we were pronounce husband and wife, while our guest found their tables, we were off to our take some pictures. We had a beautiful venue with charm and lovely scenery so we took that advantage and got some really cool pics of just the two of us. I was surprised that even when we had planned for it to be less than 1 hour, it tooks us almost 1 hour and a half for us to get back to our reception.
Back at the reception everything was perfect! All our centerpieces were lighted up. All our paper lantters looked beautiful, our tables looked perfect, it all looked amazing! We opened with our first dance, then I danced with my father. We later opened the food buffet, which the food was amazing and delicious!

After everyone was done eating we took some pictures with all of our guests. And then it was time for me to toss the bouquet, and the garter. My plan was to continue with a latin tradition, which is the "Carnaval" with hats, colorful masks and other accesories while dancing to awesome party music. Well before that, and with a beutiful venue and open, clear skies, everyone was asked to go outside for everyone to watch for a few minutes the amazing fireworks show that my lovely groom had for me.
We had a blast with family and friends, danced til our feet got tired and there was no more food, just coffee! It was amazing that everything we had planned came out so perfectly (thanks to my wonderful family) and that we got to enjoy every part of it!!

Thursday, April 29, 2010

My Grandma is now resting in peace

Its been quite a month for my dad's family. And its been quite a few weeks for my sister and I. But last Saturday after her doctor came to check on her, he recommended that we would let her now rest and disconnect her from all machines. She was in a lot of pain, and every 5 hours of morphine was not enough to ease her pain.
Sunday afternoon, my sister and my cousin had my bridal shower planned, so we had planned to go there, and then go straight to my grandmas. Well, we got just in time to her house, cause exactly a minute after we got to her home she passed away.
My two aunts and I cleaned her one more time and dressed her, while my sister put some make up on her. The whole family came in to say goodbye one more time before the funeral people would come to get her.
It was a sad monday and tuesday for our family since we were to buried her on tuesday afternoon. Please keep all of us in your prayers, cause our family is hurting a lot at this moment.

Monday, April 5, 2010

Please Pray for my Dad's Family!

Last June my Grandfather lost his battle to cancer. I've been very blessed to have and enjoy all my 2 sets of grandparents, until last June. My grandpa had been battling cancer for a few months now, and he passed away on June. My Dads family was devasted, but little did they knew that their mom would be very sick, very soon.

Six months after my grandpa passed away, his wife was diagnosed with pancreas cancer. No one saw it coming, and sadly this is a very "fast" cancer. For the last 4 months she's been at the hospital from time to time, but overall we been getting good news all along. But last week she got really sick. And my dad's family had to take her inmediately to the hospital.

My dad just called because there were some complications this morning, and they have now moved her to ICU. Please pray for his family, for strength, hope and wisdom. Its not even a year since they all lost their father, and now, they may be losing their mother as well.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

2 Months away from our Wedding!!

Its crazy!!! but times fly by so fast, we are only 2 months away from the wedding!!
And we have so much stuff left to do. It seems that even when we are doing so much, still it is not enough.

We got 2 big things done this weekend. We went in and got our wedding bands, which will be ready in 2 weeks tops. And we went to look for wedding favors. FI had this idea for favors, which are kinda expensive, and not budget friendly, but he also figured out a way to get all 100 favor in less than $20, so we went ahead and bought them.

We are still missing a bunch of things, which is freaking me out, but we still have 2 months to complete it all.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Our Wedding So Far!!

Since I've been doing so bad at actually posting stuff here, I've been doing just updates and I thought it was time to update everyone a little more on our wedding stuff so far...

I have been looking for unique ways to make this wedding extra special; looking around I found some lovely earrings from Anthropology, which I love and think they will look awesome with my wedding gown.

I should also say that the most important budget we had planned and saved for was for our honeymoon. Even when it's every bride's dream to have the most divine wedding in the planet, I've alwasy been realistic about wanting to have a much better honeymoon than wedding. So a few weeks ago, after lots of debating and considering of our future plans, we booked our honeymoon!! Its an all inclusive hotel, and is at this moment rated as a 5 star hotel!

As I've commented on previous posts, my little sis with her amazing talent and tasta has been in charge of designing all stationary related (wedding invites, bridal invites, escort cards, table numbers, menus, programs, calligraphy, etc.)
Since mid january we've (well, I provide some ideas and she makes them a realitu, heheh) been working on the whole wedding concept.
With less than 75 days to go til the wedding we are making some progress, but still need to work on some small details, get some samples, and hopefully a month before the wedding everything paper related will be ready.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Update: Edit!

A couple of weeks I posted about the things we were still missing, and since I been leaving this blog on the limbo for some time I thought to update all on our recent completed items

- Cake: We met with our baker a week ago. She is so sweet and makes awesome cakes. Because we already had a wedding cake picture we liked we gave it to her and she made said she could make the same one for us. She gave us the total price for it, and we've already schedule a date for going in and doing some tasting.

- Music: Well, not only did we find a DJ for our wedding but the same vendor has an option for Karaoke!! I'm a huge fan of karaokes and as part of my family's tradition I wanted to have a wedding with both music we can dance to and sing!! This vendor also offered the best price out there, so we booked him right away.

- Wedding Bands: This past weekend we also ventured out to look for our wedding bands. My engagement ring has a lovely band, that I wanted to keep the same throughout our wedding bands. We went in to the same jewelry that made my engagement ring and order our wedding bands!!

- Wedding Shoes: there was this huge drama going on, because people are so used to traditional weddings. My whole family flipped out when I mentioned I wanted purple wedding shoes for our wedding day... Every comment has been how a wedding should be white, cream, silver, or gold themed, so of course my wedding shoes should be of a similar color. Well, since I'm the bride and I been planning the whole wedding...I decided I would pick the color and buy the shoes I wanted. Thankfully I have an amazing friend that walked with me for more than 3 hours and into every single shoes store, looking for the right wedding shoes until I got what I wanted.

At this moment we are missing just a few more big things, and a few little things...

My mom and I are going to get my dress fitted with my actual wedding shoes, because my dress is way too long and now that I have my shoes it definitely has to get fix.
We are also going to be doing some pre wedding make up and hair appointments before the wedding, where my mom is also going to come along with me.