happy halloween!

this is our first halloween as married folks. hence the finery:

oh, and casey had his 30th birthday extravaganza! it was c-themed in honour of his caseyness and we had a lot of fun.

p.s. can you guess what we are? perhaps more information might be helpful/neat/aren't you jealous of our fabulous sense of theatricality?

our awesome wedding coordinator talks about us!

and we love it when she does that! our best wedding coordinator in the world, nancy park of so happi together, said the nicest things about Casey and I, our engagement shoot, our wedding trailer and our awesome vendors. we are so happy with how everything turned out and so thankful for everyone's hard work! check out her blog- especially the part about us!

our wedding trailer is online!

hi guys! take a look at our awesomeness that happens to be rendered in a form known to you as a trailer:

squee!

hope you enjoy it as much as we have!!

we're back!

and we had so much fun in hawaii! we were lucky enough to visit maui and o'ahu for two glorious weeks. things we liked included but-were-not-limited-to:

the sunshine/warm weather

sunsets

waterfalls

leis

tahitian dancers/dancing/grass tutus

new zealand

crazy delicious pineapple marshmallows

things we did not enjoy so much for various reasons:

the average speed limit on the islands was 35 FREAKING MILES AN HOUR

hiking in and then back out of a huge volcano who's ground consistency resembles that of a beach

getting caught in sudden downpours (split decision on this one- can you guess which of us liked it?)

having to stay hydrated all the time due to the heat

so there you have it. the good outweighed the bad, obviously. and to finish this post, i give you comatose kittehs from o'ahu:

as promised...

our engagment shoot was published! *cue wild applause*

green wedding shoes did a great feature on our engagement shoot, so check it out!

http://greenweddingshoes.com/vintage-circus-engagement-photos/

we had such a fun time dressing up and running around Dorton's, which had all those great costumes and props!

enjoy!

yeah, so that just happenend

so, people, we are married. ten years of knowing each other. nine years of dating. two years of engagement-goodness. all finally resulting in us getting married. we know, it felt like this too:

that was an ordeal

we're off to our honeymoon in hawaii, but i promise to post a bunch of good stuff that happened in the weeks pre-wedding. soon. you know, in between swimming with dolphins and hiking into volcanoes.

also / p.s. / *squeal*: our engagement shoot is getting published online! we'll show you all of that awesomeness as soon as it goes up. and it was some awesomness, believe you me. and casey. and brandon. and kristin. and nancy.

and the award for most interesting reply goes to...

this guy:

dear person who sent this:

1. thank you for the heartfelt reply
2. the line in which you so carefully wrote 'sorry' is actually where you're supposed to put your name
3. we still don't know who you are, seeing that you didn't put a return address on the envelope either
4. we're 'sorry' you can't attend either

so. you can shoot either casey or me an email so that we know who you are, if you'd like. seeing that you aren't coming to the wedding, it might not be that big of a deal.

and in closing, thank you, interesting responder, for giving us a smile.

xoxo,

janine and casey

so projects are fun...

except when you have to share your workspace with a messy janel. behold the evidence(!):


and in comparison, here is the workspace of a more well-organized person. like me, for instance:

i might add here (pun intended), that probably i'm working with 30% of the table. note my poor mouse had to live on the laptop when not in use. janel, janel's elbow and her fluff slowly increased in volume as the day went on, p.s. now i'm not a mathematician, or even an expert in the breeding practices of feathers, but i'm sure that is a) not fair and b) not possible since feathers can't multiply. unless janel is a witch. in that case, burn the witch! (a joke, people. i'm not actually advocating burning janel alive.)

so anyway. projects going well. stuff getting done. three weeks or so to go until the wedding. yay wedding!

p.p.s. THERE ARE FEATHERS EVERYWHERE IN MY APARTMENT. HOPE YOU ARE HAPPY, MESSY JANEL!!!1!1

guess what today is?

well, first of all/very important: it's bastille day, so yay france; allons enfants de la patrie! le jour de gloir est arrive!

second of all: we have a month to go until the wedding.

!!! commencing freak out in 3...2...1 !!!


BUT third of all, today will also go into the history books for this:


it's our wedding certificate! today we went to the courthouse in beverly hills and they handed us a piece of paper stating that we can get married! yipee!

just a little reminder...

...that all rsvp's are due by this friday! we've only received about half the rsvps people! again, make sure that the addresses are legible on the front- you may have sent the card, but it might not have reached us over here at wedding central!

and by the by, thanks to those who are writing such sweet notes on the cards- we love getting them!

and to entertain the masses, here is a picture of abject drinking during the recent 4th of july:

this is a post about hats

~we interrupt some boring wedding technical stuff with something more decidedly fun~

now you might be thinking, what does a post about hats belong in a wedding blog? well, the answer to that is, i was thinking that it'd be pretty neat to wear a hat to my wedding. not just any hat, mind you, but a fabulous and obviously elegant TOP HAT!

*crickets*

yeah, that was pretty much the reaction i got from the few people with which i have shared this little guilty secret of mine. but no matter, i was determined to at least try a hat to see if this whole experiment was going to work. i dutifully searched my go-to website for weird, etsy.com. and stumbled upon these beauties:

(couldn't find source)

(source)

these hats are beyond cool. i had to have them, but not so much at a 175+ dollar price tag. so next best thing- i decide to make them. i'm sure you know by now that i have learned absolutely nothing from my silk-screening journey and thought i could make a hat that is just as rad as the examples i showed you previously. or shewed you previously. (i'm reading jane austin right now.) but i digress. cue the music of my heart upon finding out there is a hat making class not too much more than a mile away from where i live: hands on 3rd!

so i signed up for that immediately. and insisted that both janel and debbie join me. they not-so-reluctantly agreed and off we went to make hats!

me trying to convey the appropriate angle of super-hat-in-the-making to our awesome teacher.

janel amidst a mess of hat materials.

don't let the smile fool you: i'm secretly pissed at the hat for not conforming to my wishes.

so after three classes and a couple of days afterwards swearing up and down at my hat, i present you with a close-approximation-but-not-quite-top(ish)-of-a-HAT:

i know, i think it's awesome too.

so yeah, i freakin' love it. and while it is not a top hat per se, i'm going with english riding hat. or something like that. it's victorian, all right?!?! and i love it!

more hat pr0n on the way:

and of course, i would be remiss if i didn't include janel's creation as well:

so where does this leave us with the wedding? well, not sure if the hat will make an appearance. i haven't tried it on with the most awesome dress in the world, but it's still a possibility. perhaps if time could conveniently stop or at least grow another week or two between now and the wedding, i could have time to make a second attempt on a bridal top hat. but we will have to see what happens!

what to do with the kiddies

it must be a red-letter week since you're getting two posts from me!

anywho, with regards to those nifty rsvp cards that you will be forwarding to casa wedding AND if you have children: just add the little ones on the name line but do not choose an entree for them as they will be getting a kids dinner. i believe it's chicken nuggets or something equally as appealling to the young'uns.

also! i know it's tempting, but if you are over the age of fifteen, you may not choose chicken nuggets as your meal, no matter how delicious smooshy mysterious chicken parts deep-fried in oil sounds to you. i'm talking to you, orion. must choose from the big boy menu, mmmkay?

we have had a steady trickle of rsvp envelopes find their way to us already, so keep it up, people! rah rah and all that! i might share with you that one of us squeals like a twelve year-old girl in the presence of rpatz whenever an envelope shows up in our mailbox. it may or may not be casey. i'm just sayin'.

Important PSA!! (number two)

hi all! it's been a while but i swear i have a good reason this time: invitations!! that's right, by now, most of you have received your invitations in the mail and while they weren't the juggernaut of the save-the-dates by any stretch of the imagination, they still took up a big chunk of my time.

but i digress. it's time for the psa part of our talk.

it has come to my attention that the post office finds our rsvp envelope stamp a wee bit hard to make out. as a result, some of them are being returned to sender. casey and i think it's because the numbers are a little too close together, resulting in a confusing glob. so. i implore you, dear wedding guest, to take a gander over the rsvp envelope and decide if it may or may not get to me in the mail. the address number should be 465 and the apartment number should read 102. if those seem unclear, would you do us the tinest of favours and either go over it with a label or find some way to make it legible? kthanxbye.

if you do send it and are worried if it made it to wedding central over here, then please email me to make sure.

and more posts to come. promise!

if you're looking for a hotel in the area...

then you can just look right over here

<-----------------

or maybe a little bit down from over there, keep going, yep below that goofy picture of us...in any case, you will see a link for the Marriott Residence Inn LAX/El Segundo in the left hand column of this little ol' blog. we blocked rooms here for you to stay in during our wedding weekend. there are a few rules, though, so i'm going to walk you through them.

• the dates with the shiny 'n' special wedding room rate are only for friday, august 13th and saturday, august 14th. if you want to say longer, you have to make a separate reservation, which you can do through the marriott main website (top link) or you can call them. i was told that if it was for one extra day or so, they might extend the wedding rate for that, so it might behoove you to call if you are thinking of adding just one extra day
  
• there are four links to the left, one for the marriott main site and three others describing a specific room type

1. studio: has one king-sized bed and one sofa bed; has a living/sitting area as well as a dining area and kitchen
   
2. one-bedroom: has one queen-sized bed and one sofa bed; bedroom is separate from the living room/kitchen
3. two-bedroom: has two queen-sized beds and one sofa bed; bedrooms are separate from the living room/kitchen

• clicking on whichever room type you are interested in will take you to that reservation page for that room type only.
• there are a limited number of rooms allotted to us at the wedding rate. if you find that you cannot book a specific room any longer please contact me (janine) and i can call the marriott and get a couple of extra rooms assigned to us.

hopefully this is easy enough to follow! let me know if you have any questions, need more rooms, etc. and we'll see you in august!

the creation/evolution/aggravation of our save-the-dates

by now, almost all of you have received a handmade/blood-sweat-and-tears-stained/smudgy/several-random-shades-of-purple/awesome save-the-date from us. we worked hard on those bad boys. like two months worth. and they almost didn't happen. but let me take you on a journey, dear reader...a journey of insanity that only casey and i would be game to try and complete amidst the other deadlines of wedding-related stuff and life-related stuff.

basically, it all started with this:

(source- i have no idea who made this. i will worship at your feet forever, though, o creative god)

i was surfing the net in the early days of our engagement and happened upon the above image. and i fell in love. and i fell HARD. i mean, look at it! it's pretty and unique and so very them. i feel like i already know this couple. they have a dog! and they like music!

so, like any well-meaning person, i blatantly ripped them off. after several iterations, the result was this:
i dug it. i liked the colours, the boxes, the eye-popping graphic nature of the whole damn thing. a circus tent for me, a video game console for casey, gears for the theme...it was/is magic. some things i didn't like- the books in the center of the page did not read to me like books (no pun intended) and for the life of me, i could not fill in that film strip in the upper right-hand corner with anything interesting enough.

so after discussion with others and lots of personal time agonizing over the decision, i chopped that sucker in half. and it resulted in more or less what you have in your hand today. with some gold accents for pop.

now. casey and i could have gone to a printer to have this made for you. it would have been slick, clean, pristine, if you will. but we didn't want that. we wanted gritty, distressed, handmade goodness to explode all over that page. so we made the (right?) decision to silk screen all of the posters. when silk screening, you cannot print an entire poster out at one time. you must separate all the colours into several passes and print them one at a time. that means, people, for each save-the-date, we had to pass over it four times!!

here's the breakdown/ ATTEND:

see all that work? and trust me, it didn't go as smoothly as what was just described to you. we had to do a lot of other passes to correct mistakes, to make some colours darker, etc.

casey lines up the screen with the print.

i apply the ink.

the half-finished posters take over our living room for about two months.

yes, you read that right. we spent two months getting these posters as good as they could be. and we had issues. things like getting the ink the colour we wanted. we often had to resort to mixing the colours ourselves. then the ink would dry in the screen and we'd have to wash it out and wait for it to dry and try again. about halfway through i decided that we weren't going to print them ourselves and started looking at printers to do it for us, only to persevere and barely get through the last two passes. casey was a saint, btw. kept me from chucking the whole project off the top of our building.

i point out problems with the almost-finished posters to janel.

but in the end, we were happy with what you got. mostly because we finished the whole project. definitely because it reflects who we are. it's not perfect, or clean, or even legible in some areas, but we think it gets casey+janine across just fine.



p.s. and because i can't leave well enough alone, here is a cute picture of janel graciously stamping the backs of our save-the-dates. note her patented stacking method.

as promised, the post about our coordinator

it seems strange, i know, but please take my word for it that our coordinator, nancy park, is awesome. i have seen it firsthand. as has casey. and janel, for that matter. three out of three janine/casey/janels agree: she is awesome.

but i get ahead of myself. let me share with you why we hired her. ready?

...


...


...


she. likes. robots.


!!!


yes, i know what you're thinking: who in their right minds would hire someone based solely on their penchant for robots? the answer: we would! how utterly steampunk and neat and somehow a lot like us. did i mention she was wearing a robot necklace when we first met? yeah, it was meant to be.

yes, she's qualified and has had plenty of experience. yep, she has an eye for detail and also for crafting. case-in-point- she gocco'd her own invitations, programs and favour envelopes! AND she quills paper! take a look!!

p.s. gocco = just like silk-screening except much smaller area to work with and much much easier!
p.p.s. quilling = awesome magic with thin strips of paper. seriously, take a look!

so all of that was just icing on the cake (heehee) but we really really like her.

she sends updated wedding lists for us to cross off projects we've completed. she introduced us to our florist, and then in the meeting with him made sure that we were getting exactly what we wanted. she offered to call a potential engagement shoot location for us just because she thought it would be a great location. she knows and therefore will get along with our rad photographer. and she knew who our videography team was despite them being from san diego and not really mainstream yet.

we are so happi (lord, i'm on fire today) to have nancy as our coordinator.

check out some cute pictures of nancy here!

Food...Redux!

Hi all,

This is Casey. Remember the 'To Be Continued.." thing I mentioned back in September?* Well this is it. It's happening. The continuing is going on right here and now people!

The 2nd installment of our food journey took us to Taste in West Hollywood. It is a very cute bistro like restaurant that makes food. I'm gonna call it 'new American' food since they seem to mix a number of ethnic things and I heard that on TV somewhere so it seems like it fits.

Janine and I were once again joined by her mom Anna and her uncle Frank. As an appetizer I got the white truffle oil and mushroom mac and cheese. It was amazing and I don't even like mushrooms. The cheese was thick and creamy and browned on top to give it some crispness. The pasta was nice and soft without being mushy. And there was truffle oil in it as well, apparently. Also we all shared the Calamari fritti with Chipotle Aioli whch was also excellent. And we have had a lot of calamari the world over to compare it to. This was very light and not greasy in the slightest. Also the aioli was very airy and the chipotle gave just a hint of smokiness and warmth without being hot.

All in all a very auspicious start.

For the main course I had the Kobe beef burger and Janine had the lasagna. I hadn't actually had Kobe beef before and found that (not surprisingly with all the hype), it was very good. Maybe not worth the price of paying a Japanese guy to massage a cow everyday and feed it beer but hey to each his own, right?

Janine got the lasagna which was also great, though in my opinion it is hard to go wrong with lasagna. I believe Frank got the skirt steak salad and Anna got the ravioli, both of which they enjoyed very much.

In the end everything was excellent, the setting is cute and I would go back or recommend it to anyone, but for the rehersal dinner it is a little small and it has more of a bistro feel than a restaurant. So the hunt continues!

*I didn't say it was going to be continued soon!

a lesson on steampunk

so, as you may or may not have noticed by now, we have bit of an eccentricity regarding our wedding. a certain quirk or two to be entwined into our nuptials. a drop of the obscure soaked into our reception. we're calling it steampunk.

what is steampunk, you ask? well, i could just show you, a la my gripe about the dress:

(source)

but do you really get it? perhaps not. so, in an effort to educate you, dear reader, let me explain.

just today, casey and i received an email (thanks shannon!) of a cool article detailing the aesthetic appeal of steam power. the author, stefany anne golberg, writes:

The aesthetic movement Steampunk wants to bring the wonder back into
our relationship with machines. Its tack is to fully embrace (and affect) an
Edwardian orientation to the world.

i, of course, would argue that the style is more victorian than edwardian, with a touch of western-ness thrown in there, but i digress.

Steampunk tries to capture that Edwardian moment when steam power
still ruled and the romance of technology lay precisely in the line it toed
between destruction and possibility. Equally fascinated by flying machines
and trench warfare, Steampunk is both optimistic and nihilistic...

It is the 21st-century answer to 20th-century loss via a nostalgic 19th-century
sensibility. Is this a reactionary nostalgia? I don't think so. By creating works for
the world of tomorrow of yesterday—anachronistic and utterly contemporary
and usually useless — Steampunk sidesteps the worry about whether technologies
will become obsolete, and takes joy in the plain fact that they will. We can
choose to feel alienated by this, or enjoy being engulfed in the exciting mystery
of steam. Exploring the relationship between obsolescence and wonder is what
makes Steampunk works tick.

so there you have it. to read the whole article in it's fabulosity, please go ahead. and while that's great and all from a completely scholastic point of view, you have to admit it's all in the fashion for us here on the ground.


now don't worry, there won't be people dressed like this showing up to the wedding (though i'm watching you, blake). think of it more as inspired by steampunk. a steampunk-ness or steampunkesque. whatever you call it, rest assured that it will be awesome.

omg shoes!

so. shoes have been presenting a tiny problem in that i want purple shoes. a certain shade of purple, with some bling on it and not giant heels, since casey and i are almost the same height and i will not tower over my own husband-to-be on our wedding day. that's not to say that i don't have trouble walking in heels over 3 inches. because i do.

(source)

case-in-point: excellent colour, but the 4-inch heels = deal breaker

the moms has been diligently searching for shoes for me, with some mixed results. some shoes were too high, some were fuzzy (i will not wear fuzzy shoes if i can help it. also, the wedding is in august), and some were just not the right colour. colour seemed to be the biggest factor, as i am picky in my choices of purple, as mentioned above. the closest we've gotten to finding the shoes are these babies from nine west:

(source)

super cute, right? not crazy about the colour, though. and since i haven't seen them in person, can make no guesses on how i'd be able to handle the 3 3/4" heel. also didn't want to wear heels that tall, as you already know.

so. major dilemma here. that is, until janel and i decided to walk to a nearby bridesmaid dress store that we promptly walked out of (she refused to try on any ANY! of the dresses, despite the fact they looked like they were designed for cracked-out high schoolers trolling the streets) and right past this vintage store. upset with our futile efforts of dress shopping, we walked inside upon where we discovered MY FREAKING SHOES:

(personal rad photo)

yeah we saw those and i thought, 'oh they won't be my size'. GUESS WHAT!?!

done and done. purchased by the best moh evar, janel!

omg shoes

important PSA!!

We have less than six months to go, people!

(source)

ok, it's not that bad. hey, it's even fun.


that cat is cute, though, huh?

save-the-dates are coming soon...

so that means it's time for a hint! (anyone detecting a theme with this current round of posts, yet?)

feast your eyes upon one tiny bit of save-the-date that may or may not be printed this weekend, depending on time/energy/alcohol:

pretty, n'est-ce pas?

so yes, it's gears and anyone who is a family member or close friend will be aware that gears are a predominant theme in our wedding. and yes, purple also makes a big splash too. but, dear reader, don't think that the square shape is a hint, because it is not!

disregard squares!
(really in all aspects of life)

i have a dress...but i can't show it to you.

so for some reason in the WIC (that's the wedding industry complex to you noobs), the bride just cannot go parading her dress for all the world to see. as my uncle puts it, "it has to be surprise". he was adamant that no one see the dress, even in pictures, especially not casey. (that did not work out, btw, and he likes the dress which is probably the most important thing about it.)

anyway. about this "surprise": 1. this is silly. 2. people ask if i have bought a dress yet and i say yes. then they ask what it looks like. why describe it when i can whip out a photo of it? 3. my whole wedding party already knows about the dress i chose, since half of them were there with me and the other half i sent the link to. 4. i will be wearing said secret dress before the wedding. casey and about half of the guests will be seeing me before the wedding. surprise nullified.

it doesn't matter one bit to me whether everyone and their cousin's boyfriend's puppy knows the dress i'm going to wear for the wedding. because there is a difference between seeing it and then seeing it on me, all done up, surrounded by the awesomeness of our venues and flowers and stuff.

a couple of friends have asked me about my dress, but then asked me to "not describe it too well, because they want to be surprised on the wedding day". *delicate cough* does that seem weird to anyone else out there? *crickets* also, how do i do that?

ok perhaps it's just me. but, to buck tradition just enough to prove i don't subscribe to the WIC without actually pissing anyone off, allow me to throw at you a sneak peek of the dress:

consider this to be it until the wedding, peeps!

we live to document stuff...

...so that meant we spent a long and arduous journey to find our awesome photographer and videographers. because they had to be just right to our discerning and film-school-degreed eyes. if you can imagine, it went something like this:

(source)

yeah, so the battle was epic, as you might imagine from the illustration above. but don't fret, dear reader, our journey was successful, and we returned victorious, procuring some wonderful and talented people for our wedding.

BEHOLD!

so who is this conjurer with a camera? it is Brandon Kidd, of Brandon Kidd Photography and he is magic, people. go to his website, or his blog and experience the spellbinding nature of his work. plus: he is nice. like super nice and i imagine that we'll have great fun running around being silly on our wedding day. plus, he hooked us up with our fab coordinator, Nancy, who will get her own post at some point before we're married.

ok, one more:this may or may not have been the photo that sealed the deal for me. would you look at that freakin' light!?!?

so okay. we have a kick-ass photographer. now we need an equally awesome videographer to match him...

OBSERVE!

what's that you say? oh, here, try another one...huh, it's still grainy and slightly out of focus? well, that's because it was shot in Super8mm film! that's right people, no need to adjust your television set because this is not from the 70s. (acutally, it's straight out of awesometown. don't believe me? go here.)

the lovely people behind these two cool shots that i snagged from their site is Modern8Films, or Ted and Alanna, as they are individually referred. anyways, we love them and we love 8mm film so they were a perfect match. run, don't walk to their website and watch all that grainy goodness unfold.

so. a tired casey and janine finally booked them both for our wedding and they are ours now and we are happy. we are less happy about things like flowers or shoes, but i suspect we'll get over that soon.