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Oregon 2011 - Day 1

When I relocated to the Boston area about 4.5 years ago, I told myself that I would visit home every 6 months. Well, unfortunately, I've been averaging once a year. This year, we didn't think that we would make it to Oregon at all. It didn't make sense for us to fly West in late spring/early summer and then have my friends and family fly East a couple of months later.

Enter fast thinking. We changed things up and decided to visit my family for Chinese New Year. Chinese New Year is like Christmas to you guys. Family all around, food up to your eyeballs, and instead of presents, you get lucky red envelopes filled with money. Great idea, I hadn't spent New Years with the fam since I moved here.

Enter slow to book tickets. Jake and some of the guys have started a annual ritual of heading to Florida around February for weekend of golf and bridge. Originally, they had planned to go during Valentine's weekend. But one of the significant others veto'd it. The weekend of Chinese New Year was decided upon and tickets were booked immediately.

So instead, we went two weeks after New Years, just for a couple of days (as opposed to a full week). It was a bittersweet trip. Usually, we run around like chickens with our heads cut off. This time around we just enjoyed what little time we had with family, friends, and each other.

Day 1 - Other than my appointment with the dentist, we had ZERO plans. (Yes, I still see my dentist back home.) We started the day with breakfast at a local chain called Biscuits Cafe. YUM.



Breakfast at Biscuits Cafe.


After breakfast, I visited my dentist while Jake napped in the car. We followed that up with a stop at Jamba Juice. Seriously Boston, get on the Jamba Juice wagon! And without hesitation, shopping at my beloved Nordstrom Rack ensued. There's a Rack here in MA, but it's not the same; the shoe selection just isn't good. I walked away with a beautiful pair of Tory Burch pumps at 50% off. We also made a pit stop at Tiffany & Co. to look for my wedding band.

For dinner, I really wanted to show Jake, McMenamin's Kennedy School. McMenamin's is a local brewpub chain that I HAVE to eat each time I'm home. The Kennedy School is an old school that they took over. Some of the class rooms are individual bars. There's a full service family restaurant on site and a movie theater.

That water fountain is just too cute!

Stay tuned for Day 2.

(All photos were taken by me.)

JetBlue: PDX --> BOS

I think I'm more excited about this for myself than I am for our family and friends. JetBlue has added new flights to their schedule, and not just any flights. They will soon (beginning May 29) fly direct between Portland (OR) and Boston!

I love Alaska, but you have to bring your own entertainment.

Honorable mention

Last week I was interviewed by the Boston Herald. One of their journalist was doing a story about online save-the-dates or invites, more specifically, a video.

For those of you who are not trolling wedding blogs and websites on a daily business, one of the latest trends to take the wedding business by storm are video announcements. I've seen everything from real live movie to stop motion clips where a bunch of still photos are strung together.

I spent about 30 minutes talking to Carley, the journalist, about our save-the-dates, our reasons for sending them out via email, and what not. Now I bet you want to know why we emailed them. Here goes:

1. I'm going to be completely honest, I'm cheap. I probably saved us at $50 in raw materials cost (printing, paper, envelopes, postage). I don't even know how much it would have cost to have someone else design it, maybe in the $100 range for a graphic designers time?
2. I grew up during the big tech boom and I work in the tech industry. I embrace technology with open arms and will use it to my advantage.
3. Just about everyone we know has email. We only had to print and mail three physical save the dates and they were all for those in our grandparents generation. We had to print out 4 others and hand them out because I didn't have their email addresses.
4. It's green. Save a tree people. Yes, I'm a tree hugger. What? I'm from Oregon, it's only natural.
5. We don't know if EVERYONE wants to slap pictures of Jake and I up on their fridge for a better part of the year. If they want to, they have the option of printing it out and doing just that.

Carley and I talked about a lot of things. Including how they were received. Our guests (you!) fall into two categories:

1. Excited! Most people loved them. Many thought the pictures of us as youngen's were super adorable.
2. Confused. Haha, yea it never dawned on me that people wouldn't know what they were. But it happened. I blame cultural and generation gaps. Chinese people have zero clue when it comes to new fangled western traditions. Chinese weddings are all very cookie cutter. Similar invitation, similar decor, similar food, and etc. (I've been meaning to do a post on this stuff). So when I handed them out to my "extended" family (they aren't blood relatives, but I've known them all my life and call them aunty and uncle) they were all very confused and just assumed it was the invite. Let's talk about the generation gap. We also handed one to Grandma, to whom we had to explain that it was not the invitation. I can't blame her, STDs are a trend only from the last couple of years.

Anyways, back to the article. I thought that we'd get more of the spotlight in the article. I thought that our AWESOME save-the-dates would be published in the paper along with it. Such was not the case. We were only briefly mentioned, but it sure beats nothing at all.

Oh I bet you are wondering how she knew we sent them out via email...Paula told her! I haven't a slightest clue how she got in touch with Paula, but it's not important.

Now for the article: Boston Herald: Brides take a shot with video invites - Carley Thornell

Enclosure for printed and mailed STDs. You'll note that "Save our Date" and "August 20, 2011" are nice and big for those that may miss it in the smallish photos. I printed the STDs a tad smaller than I should have.

Contest fail!

We totally failed at attempting to win our planners' Facebook contest.

A very short lived contest in which the winners received $150 off their current planning package was kicked off on 3/1 and was open for submissions up until 12pm (EST) on March 5. In order to win, we were to try and get as many friends and family to "like" Marrero Weddings and Events on Facebook AND to post "Marrero Weddings and Events is Celia and Jake's wedding planner."

I'm not sure if it was just a lack of communication to our friends or what. I refrained from spamming peoples email with a request in hopes that folks would see it on Facebook, either on our pages or via a friends page. No such luck. When Thursday rolled around, I decided to beg for help via both my blogs. It helped some, but we were so far out of the running that any efforts, while valiant, were futile.

Oh well, it just was not meant to be. Maybe we will win a bigger prize somewhere else.

A big THANKS to all those that did try to help us. Your efforts were heroic and did not go unnoticed. Thank you! Thank you!