Entries tagged 'wedding'

actually, today is the anniversary of the best day ever: four years ago, celia and i got married.

yesterday we got back from ten days in hawaii. the first weekend was in kauai, where we attended a wedding. (yes, i’m posting pictures from another wedding before ours.)

after that, it was back to the island of oahu to spend time with family, and to show me around the island because i had never been to hawaii. we ate lots of shave ice, ted’s pies, zippy’s, and kalua pork, and more. it was rainy on the day we drove around oahu, so we didn’t spend any time at the beaches, we just went from eating to eating. (and using the restroom at the mormon temple.)

i’m sure there’s more stories to tell, but i’m tired. maybe later.

now that we’re about two weeks away from the wedding, it seemed like a good time to get around to booking our honeymoon. we tried to book a trip to the maldives through a travel agent, but after a week of back-and-forth, it turns out the resort they steered us towards wasn’t available. (and, in fact, would not have any openings until march. thanks!)

so we took a step back, regrouped, and realized that while we want to visit the maldives before it disappears, we could get much more bang for our buck elsewhere at this late date. so i looked into booking a trip through cathay pacific, where we might have the connections to score a free upgrade. after a lot of time spent in their vacation package system scoping out destinations and hotels, we finally put together a nice trip to thailand and hong kong which was several thousand dollars cheaper than the maldives trip that the travel agent had tried to book.

only now i can’t book it because the travel agent has a pending charge against my credit card that they did not clear up, even though i asked them to do so when i told them we would be making alternative arrangements.

i’m sure it will all work out, but it means that the “book honeymoon” item on my wedding todo list is unchecked again.

one thing i’ve noticed as we prepare for our wedding is how none of the web-based wedding services seem to have two people in mind. here’s a quote from the help of one online wedding site’s guest list manager:

You can allow your fiance and others access to your online guest list by having them log in to The Knot using your email address and password. Please remind them to log out when they are done, so you'll be able to access your account.

apparently having one list that is accessible by two people would be far too much rocket science.

i wrote our own tool for managing the guest list. it has its own little quirks, but at least when there’s something it doesn’t do, i can fix it. i also hooked up the online rsvp handling to the same database, so for those that choose to rsvp online instead of using the reply card, that information will automatically be linked to our invite list.

and speaking of invitations, the first batch finally went in the mail yesterday. we still have at least one more batch to go, but we really needed to get the out-of-state (and country!) invitations out ages ago now.

for our wedding, we’re looking for a jazz band with chinese vocalist and not having much luck so far. listen to some of the samples from the album “shanghai jazz: musical seductions from china’s age of decadence” and you’ll get the idea of what we really want.

we’re also looking into more traditional jazz bands as a fallback.

dropsend is a web-based service for sending large files. carson systems, who created and run the service, are in the process of selling it. they’re blogging the process.

it is sometimes hard to not feel like i am wasting my time (again) in a company where i hold a very small equity stake. (technically, not even that. just options on a very small stake.)

but there are more important things: two months, four days.