The Bridemaids Party - Basking In Gratefulness

whereabouts: in my bed, laying with Mary Arnold (one of my wonderful bridesmaids) and experiencing complete exhaustion

food craving: iced water

song suggestion: What About Your Friends by TLC & Lean On Me (i’m in a big friend mode right about now)

okay,

so this entry won’t be long to spare both your attention span and my fatigue, but i have to write briefly about this incredible evening. my bridesmaids went above and beyond to throw this spectacular wedding party for jon and me earlier tonight! (my eyes are seriously closing as i’m writing this as mary just pointed out to me!!!) i’ll elaborate further on  the party later, including pictures of course, but just like my title states…i’m simply sitting here in my bed basking in gratefulness for the people in our lives and how well they’ve loved us.

being engaged is SUCH a wonderful experience. i can’t wait to return the favor and shower my closest friends with  acts of service, gifts and time.

thank you so much mary, desiree, emily, katie, julie, bethany and christine for such a BEAUTIFUL, FUN, MEMORABLE night. you guys love on us too well. & there are million more thank yous to come!

 what have we done to receive blessings of this magnitude?

 nothing…

Praise God for the sincere joy we are privileged to experience although we’ve done nothing to deserve it….

 one more shower tomorrow to go! WOOHOO!

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Photos so good they make me want to almost cuss….

whereabouts: my comfy bed

food craving: masala wok…nuff said

song suggestion: the beatles cover by T.V. Carpio “I want to hold your hand”

is jon serious with that post about our latest photos? let me REALLY fill y’all in! when andrew first showed the preview collages of our engagement photos all i could say in response was:

“I @$@$^@&#*^@&*$&*@^%&$@& love them!”

haha & i promised him that i would write about how the photographs were so good it nearly made me want to cuss….that’s pretty dang good! admittedly, jon and i feel like we look kinda…..ehhh…in some of them just b/c we’re critical of ourselves but our photographers are clearly two brilliant and talented souls.

part of what was SO fun about our practically half day shoot was not really knowing how the photographs would come out. i mean, we obviously loved the sites they chose to capture us at, but we seriously had no idea that they would come out looking as crisp, picturesque, creative & beautiful as they did. i think that’s a good word for how i would describe them…beautiful….

our pictures tell a beautiful story of the relationship jon and i have

not to mention the perfectly fit description andrew wrote to introduce us! i loved it!

“I finally met these two goof balls after Jason had been talking about them for quite some time.”

- Andrew Chan

(son of jackie chan…not THE jackie chan, but seriously his dad’s name is jackie chan and nobody ever believes him! here’s our shout out to andrew that jon & i certainly believe you & we say that you have a blackbelt in keepin’ it real andrew!)

thank you again and again andrew & jason & your wonderful table4photography company! jon and i could not be more grateful for the pictures you’ve given us and the way you genuinely love to capture your clients with such an artistic, original and striking way. i feel so fortunate to have found y’all at an early stage in your career because y’all will clearly gain momentum in no time! not to mention they just love hanging out. jon actually plays basketball with jason and some of his friends on tuesday nights so if y’all ever wanna ball it up w/them just drop us a line!

i’ve plastered it everywhere i can think of but just in case you missed it, their website is:

www.table4photography.com

& it’s FINALLY running now! so go check it out…..right now!

love you all: viv

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more engagement photos!

here are a couple more previews of our engagement pictures! we love them and can’t wait to get even more, hope you enjoy!

click to see them larger, or click here for a slide show!

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photography for lovers

WE ABSOLUTELY LOVE OUR PHOTOGRAPHERS!

table4photography is incredible and has two talented photographers named Jason Huang & Andrew Chan (who i’ve “secretly” nicknamed lucy lui and zhang ziyi!).

we were so fortunate to receive a 9 1/2 hour engagement session with them.

THAT’S RIGHT! i said 9 and a 1/2 hours.

-was jon miserable? of course, during certain points in the day. but he eventually got over it and enjoyed himself, which wasn’t too difficult around jason & andrew and their contagious laid back attitudes and goofy demeanors.

-why did it last that long? well we began the day at 3pm and went from

• downtown Dallas to
• deep ellum to
• frisco, where supposedly there lies some hay bails but we never found them…hahaha! but we did find some wicked awesome railroad tracks
• and lastly to the Moon house! the brilliant moon house where we spent the last three and a half hours of the shoot because it’s simply an awesome house and jason and andrew completely surprised us by taking photographs late at night and lighting them up fantastically!

don’t get me wrong. no engagement session is necessarily supposed to last this long…we were simply……fortunate! & we’re definitely grateful for everything they’ve done and offered to do so willingly and awesomely! i’ll give you all (all 4 of you) more details later! oh and i’ll end my post with what i normally begin it with:

whereabouts: houston, tx! visiting jon’s parents for his little brother, jay’s, 14th birthday!

food craving: vanilla coke

song suggestion: carl thomas “i wish” throwin’ a tribute to some good ol’ R&B

much love: viv

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i’m SUCH a slacker!

whereabouts: my comfy bed

food craving: SWEETS…but i gave them up for lent

song choice: can i suggest “Somewhere Only We Know” by Keane again? i just REALLY love that song

i am FINALLY at the point where i am asking my bridesmaids to be in my wedding! i’ve asked five out of the seven and it’s SO-OOO much fun! i thought of this cute idea that i wanted to do for each of them that i can’t share quite yet because there’re still two “unknowing” girls i have to ask but so far they all love it! i’m going to have two maids of honor, Emily Hoffman and Julie Pham, and i finally asked them this weekend. thankfully they were ecstatic! ^_^ i just wanted to give a quick update of where we’re at thus far. jon has asked two out of his seven and i kind of spoiled the good news for one eager lad but of course jon has forgiven me and hugged and kissed me with his unconditional love. he’s going to be SUCH a great husband! i can’t wait! we’re on a roll now and we ain’t stoppin’ fo’ nuttin’. yahmean? haha, that was purely for david jones.

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the ring

about a month before i began to seriously look for a ring, i came across this article on National Geographic’s website about conflict or “blood” diamonds. reading this article made me do some more research to find out more about how i can avoid inadvertently supporting African war-lords who use the diamond trade to fund their destruction.

after running this idea by vivien, she was more than on-board and was excited that she would one day wear a beautiful, conflict-free diamond ring! i started to look at a few different jewelers in Dallas and i soon realized that these diamonds are more difficult to come by than i first thought. i eventually realized that i would have to buy the ring online if i wanted to make sure it was conflict free.

the two best websites i came across were:

bluenile.com (canadian diamonds and kimberly process diamonds)
and

brilliantearth.com (canadian diamonds only)

the only real ways to know if your diamond is conflict-free is by tracking it all the way from the mine to you. the kimberly process, started by a coalition of diamond traders in africa, forces participating nations to track all of their diamonds from the mine to the re-seller. this process has a weakness that you can read more about here if you would like. the other (best) way to ensure that you have a conflict-free ring is by buying diamonds from canada (eh). these diamonds are all tracked from the mine to the re-seller as well. and let’s face it, there are no war-lords in canada. they’re all too busy staying healthy and living productive lives with their universal healthcare.

all that to say, i had a blast picking out the ring. i went with one of the canadian diamonds at bluenile.com and spent a lot of time mixing and matching diamonds and bands and finally came out with one that i (and vivien) loved!

i would highly reccommend ordering from either of these websites. i had phone and email conversations with both of them and they are extremely helpful!

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