Ring continued!

Awhile ago, my friend asked me to give a lowdown on michelle's ring so i emailed him this long email from stones to metals. So i'm going to post it here and share it with you all to add on to michelle's post. Hope it helps future grooms!


I got my ring at a store named Blumenthal jewelers located in the village at La Mesa. You can google them. Michelle's ring is made of platinum. i choose platinum over white gold for the metal. Platinum had dropped in price when i bought the ring and its softer so more malleable. For example when you dent it, platinum doesn't chip, the metal just gets moved around whereas white gold will chip and you actually lose metal when you dent it. The downside of platinum is because its softer it does change shape easier verses white gold which is harder so doesn't dent as easily but for white gold you do have to get it replated because its a mixture of metals verses a pure metal. I spent most of the money on the setting as opposed to the rock.

For the rock, i choose to stay away from diamonds because of the moral issues surrounding diamonds. Good article i found is http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/198202/diamond. It was written in the 1980's and people have been much more alert about the issues surrounding diamonds but the practice is still there. There are conflict-free diamonds but who really knows? They say they are certified and I'm sure there are many that are legit but it really cost a fortune to buy one of those. For those moral reasons plus the unreasonable cost of buying a diamond, I choose to stay away from the diamond. I also asked myself these questions

Why I wanted to buy a diamond?
Does Michelle want a diamond?
Is it social pressure to buy diamond?


I also asked one of my friends about this whole diamond thing and i'll post his reply here

• even though you can get conflict-free stones, the mechanisms to verify it can be easily forged. consider the mechanism is "regulated" by the diamond industry, its not in their interest to be vigorous in this. though there are definitely conflict-free stones, there's no guarantee you can get one. ah, you could go canadian diamonds, which seem to be more legit, but no guarantees either
• i made the argument of my decision NOT getting a diamond ring having zero effect on the industry. i.e. boycotting diamonds has zero effect on eliminating the slave trade. the rationale i finally landed on is that i choose not to not because it will have an adversed effect on the industry, but to deliberately choose not to support it. what we buy and what we purchase reflects what we value, unfortunately there is no such thing as a neutral purchase.
• more than any other wedding tradition, getting a diamond ring was a "need" that was marketed into existence by debeers diamond company. and with that, the whole perception that a man's value was tied to the size of the diamond he could get and a woman's value of how big of a diamond ring her man got her. as people who follow jesus, we have to ask hard questions about WHY we're getting diamond rings, just as we need to ask why we end up spending our money on anything else. is getting this honoring to jesus? this is one of the harder questions i had to grapple with. why was it important for me to get a diamond ring?
• tied to the previous one, i realized that there's a lot of public pressure to get a diamond ring. its interesting, with any other product -- if you knew that it came from child labor and oppressive conditions, you wouldn't think twice about not buying it. but with diamonds, we hem and haw because of perceived public expectations. reveals a lot about our hearts :). anyway, this is was the biggest thing that pushed me over. the biggest reason why i wasn't getting it was fear of what others would think. that's something i had to really wrestle with the Lord about.

Anyways I choose to go with Moissanite (a synthetic stone). Michelle really wanted a rock that was white and so the other alternatives other than diamond were synthetic stones or white sapphire. White sapphire doesn't have that same fire and cubic zironia is just cheap glass. Moissanites have a gorgerous fire and it sparkles like crazy. I also like it a lot because when it reflects it gives a rainbow color where as diamonds dont have that. Moissanites are also harder than most stones at a Moh's scale of 9.2 (Diamond being 10). So I didn't have to worry too much about Michelle scratching the rock either.

So in the end I'm really pleased with choosing Moissanites and everyone compliments her ring when they see it. I love the reflection and the color it shoots out. I thing I do caution is to say that when I choose moissanites I made it clear to everyone that saw the ring that it was moissanite. i don't want people to think that its a diamond wannabe because its not. Its a unique rock in itself and it deserves its glory too :)

the ring!

Ah yes, the ring. I have received a few inquiries about why there is absolutely nothing about the ring on the website! well..

TA DA!

SPARKLEYYY! its a driving hazard! i always want to stare at it haha =)

Gary and I both agreed that we did not want a diamond as we do not support the industry. =) so what is this super sparkley gem??

A mossanite! on a platinum band. So what is that exactly? well, Its a meteorite! hehe which is extremely rare and practically impossible to find in nature, so of course its chemical grown in the lab, and modeled after a "falling star" that fell 50 thousand years ago. hehe =) Its chemical composition: SiC (silicone carbide)

It has a radiance dispersion of: 0.104 (which is 2.4 times that of a diamonds) and refractive index of 2.69 approx (10% more brilliant than a diamond) Basically meaning much sparkelier! haha =) And its harder than emeralds, rubys or sapphires.

Gary and Joann had it designed and made from Bluemental Jewlers. They picked out a simliar rign they liked, and took out the things they didn't like and added a few things they did like. Few days later! They were sent this computer generated prototype for my pretty ring!

The a wax mold was made! and then the final product! =) =)

I definitely would encourage future engagies wanting a beautiful sparkley clear stone to look more in to this gem, and the issues surrounding diamonds. I know theres alot of social pressure and commercial brainwash to buy the "girls best friend." (you'll feel it the moment you walk into any chain jewlery store)

Totally feel free to ask me or gary any questions about our choice! ^_^

tuxedos

tuxs!

First off i just arbitrarily decided on Mens warehouse as our rental since not all the guys were in SD and Mens warehouse allows guys to get measured at any of their stores which makes things easier. The hard part was finding the right colors to match with the girl's peony dresses. the first time we went to MW (with steve and dlui) we literally looked through all of their color swatches and decided that a pink/ red would be a good. We picked out tuxes and ended up going home with a swatch color guide to think about it more.

Dan hom came down couple weeks later and we went to MW to get him sized and to setup our group account. Again we went through literally all the color swatches they had and finally decided on a magenta colored tie and a off white vest. Got our group setup and let the rest of the guys know about the group

MW's ability to setup groups for the guys is really cool.

It just so happened that michelle was not with me both times i was at MW and so she had no idea what the colors looked like. It also happened that MW was opening a MW Tux store front and we saw it at the Orange mall. So i took the opportunity to go show michelle the colors we picked. Now I really recommend MW Tux storefronts over regular MW stores because the people are nice and they actually have full on vest/ ties for you to try on rather than color swatches. With michelle's help we finally picked a great color combination which ended up being a darker pink color tie and a solid white vest which she really liked a lot. So with that we're set with the colors!

Yum Yum Dim Sum Video Blog!

This Saturday we drove over to Pearl to treat our Bridal party to some yummy dim sum so we could visit the reception and the ceremony site! ^_^ This day was mostly filled with videos! hehe so have fun watching =)

here's a fun video we took while we we were at Pearl.




Seems like everyone liked the reception site huh!? hehe the outside is very very pretty! We took a few pictures here and there.

We more or less inhaled all of our dim sum in less than half an hour haha ^^ afterwards we headed over to Starbucks to hang out a bit before our appointment with Gloria (the ceremony site coordinator) at the Rancho Bernardo Inn.

The strangest thing happens! an elderly lady walks in through the door, and stuffs a plate of chow mein under jeanna's nose and tells her to smell it. hahaha She then explained to us that she cooked it and wanted us chinese to approve. hahah!! The best part is on our way out to our cars, Daniel Lui managed to charm them into feeding most of us some of their chow mein! it was actually quite good!

I managed to whip out my handy dandy camera in time to catch Daniels charming skills as they feed him the delicious chow mein





Then off we went with happy stomachs to the Rancho Bernardo Inn! We were still a bit early for our appointment, so we ended up taking a look at one of the rooms we were thinking about renting one of the rooms overlooking the ceremony site the night before so we could get my dress and such all transported there ^_^ Also it might be a nice area for photographers to camp out as well! Then we headed down and checked out the cermony site as well

Heres a video:




pretty huh?? ^______________^


Over all a very very productive visit! We were able to visit the hospitality room where me and the bridesmaids will be getting ready ^_^ the room was huge! and lovely! Gloria said she would be providing us with tables and chairs and 2 full length mirrors (initially she had said one.. but haha with 6 bridesmaids and 2 mothers i wasn't sure if it would be a good idea hehe) Also! we were able to find possible tea ceremony locations in this garden by the fountain. Pretty huh??


Till our next adventure!

~Michelle

Favor boxes adventure =P

This past weekend weekend me and gary drove up to LA to buy these super cute favor boxes that were supposedly $16 for 100! (super sweet deal right? haha. I thought so too)

So we get to the store, and one of the first things we notice is a bold sign that says "CASH ONLY" and realize.. neither of us had nearly enough cash. Epp! The store manager told us there was a ATM right next door, but being the Asians we were, we didn't want to get charged those extra 3 dollars for using a non-bank ATM. Luck for us! i had my GPS with me, so we put it on "pedestrian mode" and went on adventure to find our respective Bank ATMs. The closest one we found was supposedly in a Building about 2 blocks away from us. But when we got there the security guard told us, yes there is a BOA ATM, but it gets shut down for the weekend. POOP! So we went on our way to the next closest ATM, a wells fargo one. and Oh MAN.. it lead us to the strangest places, we must have walked at least.. 10 blocks around in circles, and still no ATM anywhere in site! hahah. We end up walking around to the other side if the 1st building we were at with the BOA atm, and we peek inside, and see the BOA atm's totally ON and WORKING! LOL. So we walk all the way around back to the entrance (this building is HUMUNGOUS, surrounded by 4 streets, and for some reason you can only get in one way) we don't bother asking the security guard, and just go straight to the ATM. and it was totally on!! We were so happy!! that is untill.. i look in my purse.. and realize.. i didn't have my ATM card. T_T oh man. lol. So Gary ends up sticking in his bank card, and we get charged the extra $3 dollar fee anyways.

When we finally get back to the store. I asked the manager about the $16 for 100 boxes, and she seemed almost horrified haha she said there was no way she had quoted that price, and that it was $16 for 100 ribbons. lol! (peresonalized) So the actual price was about $45 dollars for 100 boxes. haha Needless to say, we did not take out enough money from the ATM to purchase the boxes, and we realized we were totally late for marriage counseling! haha so we scraped the idea and zoomed off (well as fast as we could through LA traffic)

We ended up at marriage counseling about an hour late. haha but it was still okay =) I guess the most amazing thing about this trip was that despite everything going very wrong, me and gary managed to have a lot of fun.

We took a mini video while we were lost in LA but i can't get it to upload right! haha >_< hehe oh well!

Michelle n gary DOT COM! woo!

Our website is officially done and up and runn'in! woohoo! =)

www.michellengary.com

Hope you guys enjoy it! Please do sign our guest book ^_^


Thanks you soOOo much to Jason Ting and Crystal Yang, for helping us get it all put together =) =)

Also to Tiffany Liu and Brandy Fujiyama for proofreading it all for us ^__^

Invitation Making party

Believe it or not! this party consisted mainly of groomsmen who did a totally fabulous job! i'm so impressed =) haha

Me and Gary stayed up till 2 am the night before finalizing and printing out the design of the inserts. I have to say I'm an super happy with how they turned out!

Step 1: Cut Cut Cut!
10:00 am Saturday

Daniel Lui arrives 1st! with a delicious box of donuts yum! We all start out on a cutting fest, we printed 4 per sheet and thanks to the very thin green border around each insert.. we all had to cut very slowly and carefully! haha to a point where I think many of our thumbs began to ache! But the guys dared not admit it ^_^













Step 2: Break and Eat!
1:00pm
Gary bought in-and-out lunch for everyone to eat! yum!

Step 3: Cut more!
Here Mike Gary and Howard teamed up to cut/exacto knife out the 18x18 paper into 1 inch strips to create the pseudo ribbon on the outside of the card













Step 4: Pokey flower power time
We started sticking the flowers together with sticky tape, Guys liked to dub each other "flower boy" when passed the job haha. While Joy poked cleverly used the crack our dining table to poke perfect holes into our pseudo ribbon and flowers!













Step 5: Flower boy/Brad man time We starting forming an assembly line and each job was dubbed a fun name: flower boy, brad man, tape man, leaf man, the cutting club lol. We carefully use the Heart brads to attach the flower to the psuedo ribbon, and secure it with a tiny piece of tape in the back, forming what looked like a beautiful bouquet of white flowers on long paper stems haha =)













Step 6: Glue tape it all together
THANK GOODNESS for glue tape, we tried glue stick, and it sucked.

Step 7: Glue down the silver dots
this was by far one of the more tedious task. Extra tricky, because the paper was so delicate. It may look like a ribbon with silver dots, but actually it was originally a piece of scrap book paper that Dan Lui and Mike cut strip by strip with a paper cutter. Luckily Lisa-anne stopped by with a friend just in time to help us with the gluing! ^_^

Step 8: Leaf'in time
We stuck on all the leaves under the flowers, which was a lot of fun. We had one person who would put glue on the leaf, and another who would physically stick the leaf on. haha Steve was the official leaf puncher, believe it or not, I only gave him 2 pieces of green paper. haha and i dunno how he did it, but he somehow got ~400 leaves out of them! We had so many extra leaves in the end, on a whim I stuck one on the back of one of the invitations, liked how it looked, and then we stuck it on all the rest of the invitations haha =D













Step 9: stuff em!
we stuffed the cards! and now they're ready to get addressed and sent out =)

Remember to send us your address! ^_^

I hope my breakdown will be helpful for future brides =) Key is to have lots of fun and lots of help =)

Materials:
White tossing flowers
18x18 card stock paper: cream/swan (found in Martha Stewart section in Michaels)
12x12 paper: green (Michaels scrapbooking section)
leaf craft punch: (found in Martha Stewart section in Michaels)
A7 pocket-folds: strawberry (paper source)
A7 envelopes: strawberry (paper source)
Poking needle thingie (card making kit)
Mini Heart Brads (Beverly Fabric and Crafts)
8.5 x 11 Card stock: white (Staples)
Glue tape (Staples/office depot--We used ALOT! we went through 12+ rolls and gary had to go to the store twice to buy more)

Thanks you so much Ihui, Joy, Daniel, Steve, Mike, Howard, Jamie and Lisa-anne for all your help ^_^