Sun Moon Stars Girl )-(

Welcome to my little place to vent…

Well, actually Moorea - the French Polynesian island next to Tahiti, which is a bit more romantic and a bit less commercialized. Plans are set for a 10-day honeymoon vacation in heaven!

Let me back up - I haven’t even mentioned here that Kris and I decided a while back on Tahiti for sure. We had all those brochures and ideas about Hawaii, Mexico, Europe, Australia, and Tahiti back in October, but eventually crossed the all the other places off our list for the following reasons:

1) They were places where there was TOO much to do tourist-y wise, which also means traveling around quite a bit once we got there - Mexico, Hawaii, and Europe.
2) They were places that weren’t ideal to “just” sit on the beach - Mexico and Europe.
3) They were places that host a round of the WRC (World Rally Championship), so why go there for our honeymoon if we’d like to eventually go there to see the WRC (Europe, Australia, New Zealand, etc).
4) We figured it would be wise to take advantage of an area that is “closer” to California, so that we could make a round trip to NJ, then a round-trip to Hawaii or Tahiti. This is instead of a trip to NJ, then a round-trip out of NY/NJ, then back to CA. This obviously ruled out Europe and Mexico (on the Caribbean side).
5) We want to go on our honeymoon DIRECTLY after our wedding - no mini-moon (although the idea is great for other people, it’s just not what we wanted to do) - and no waiting months to go somewhere nicer because we have to save up the money to be able to go. Thank you parents! (All four of you!)
6) The weather was a HUGE deciding factor. Since we were planning on going on the honeymoon directly after the wedding, we had to pick a place that would be seasonally nice in August. This ruled out Mexico, and the rest of the Caribbean, as this is the start of hurricane season in the area. We absolutely did NOT want weather to ruin our trip.

So this week we started calling travel agents, looking up deals, flights, and hotels online, and getting some quotes. After quite a few quotes that came back and sounded very unreasonable (at almost $10,000 for just 5 nights!), I knew there had to be a better way of doing things. I remembered my grad school friend Julie telling me about her honeymoon in Tahiti a couple years ago, so I gave her a call. She gave me the info for a local travel agency that she and her now-husband, Ben, had used to book their honeymoon, and brought me the travel brochures from their trip.

Today Kris and I spent our day off (Go crazy CA holidays - Cesar Chavez Day!) with Rosemary and Dudley Hall from Enchanting Honeymoons in Huntington Beach. They gave us some great information about the best hotels to stay in and what to do in French Polynesia. After calling about quite a few different deals, we ended up booking the very first one we’d gotten information about.

I couldn’t believe how high some of the quoted prices went. I know it’s mainly because August is the “high season” and also because it’s an island things are very expensive there in general. In trying to arrange the flights, we found out it would cost less then extra nights in the hotel to come back a few days later, which is why our trip is going to be so long. We’d much rather spend the money on a few extra days in paradise than come back early and waste it on an expensive plane ticket! So we booked the flights and hotel, and included a few meals as well to save costs later. It’s a good thing we decided to spend the time researching and eventually that we had to make our reservations on Friday. We found out that every flight before August 9th was completely sold out, and actually ended up getting the last two seats on the plane coming back to CA! Now we have to figure out what, if any, of the activities we want to do while there (an island circle tour, a Tiki village dinner show), so we can have them reserved when we get there.

We’ll be staying the majority of the trip in a garden/beach-type bungalow, with the last few days in one of the lovely overwater bungalows which Tahiti is famous for (and you can see in these pictures). I also LOVE the romantic canopy-type drapes over the bed in this last picture. I can’t wait to bring back some fabulous pictures of our own to share of this lovely island!

You might recall my earlier post, complaining about not being able to register for ACTUAL Tupperware ™ at any store, let alone Target, where I’d thought we’d be able to. Well, my mom gave me a link a few days ago to the Tupperware website, where you can register online for their now-limited catalog. Kris and I found a few things we would really like (the spaghetti dispenser, the cake and pie “taker”) and a couple other things, although there’s not really a huge range of colors, so we were a bit disappointed about that. The other thing we were disappointed about was that we couldn’t register for any square rounds - and we really want a couple of them! So, if you can get them from a “local dealer” (with blue or green lids) that would be a really nice surprise of something we didn’t actually register for, but would like.

I also re-arranged the links on the left column of this blog. Everything that is a wedding-related link is now under “Wedding” - including easy links to our registries. Below is the link to the newest one!

Tupperware Registry (you have to search for us, sorry no direct link available!)

A couple weeks ago, Kris’s parents sent us a beautiful painting his mom had done, along with a design for the wedding invitation/announcement card. Unfortunately the layout was not what we wanted at all!

Last week, they sent us a couple examples of just the fonts, and we all agreed on the font and type spacing. The next step was to get some sketches or paintings again, and I was sure exactly what we want would be just around the corner. And it was! They sent us the revised invitation with some beautiful new artwork! We need to talk to them a bit about the exact sizing and placement of the painting, but I think the basic shape is in place, and we’re getting a lot closer to the final version!

Last Saturday, Amy had showed me her invitations, and told me she and Erik had gone to Paper Source. I looked them up and found that there’s one right nearby in Costa Mesa! Kris and I took a few minutes last week to go check the store out, and we bought a few samples of the envelopes and cards we are going to mount the invitation and reception cards on.

I’m excited to get some color into our invitations, but I was kinda bummed because they don’t have periwinkle as one of their main colors. So we had to compromise with violet and bluebell envelopes, and silver and violet cards.

The last big thing we have to do for the invitations is draw some icons, and get some stamps! I am not sure when we’re going to get the stamps, though, because I want to get the NEW “Our Wedding” stamps, but they have not been released yet, AND I’m know the postage rate is going up on May 14th!!! This sits exactly between the time I wanted to send out our invitations and when everyone would be sending their RSVP cards in. So, basically either we have to get the OLD (2006 - the green and purple bird stamps, see below in the middle), and put extra postage on the RSVP cards (BOO!!!), or we have to wait until May 14th (Also BOO!!!) - as I’m sure they’re not going to release the new “Our Wedding” stamps until then! - to get the new stamps (2007 - the purple and pink vine heart stamps, see below to the left).

© 2006 USPS. All Rights Reserved. (I was required by federal, yes federal, law to write that - because the postal service is federally regulated! In case you didn’t know! )

The rally gals always talk about how we should hang out outside of rally - see each other in “normal” clothes, all cleaned up, and without helmet hair. A couple weeks ago, when Kris and I were at the Seed9 Rally, we got a chance to chat with Erik and Amy, who we knew were engaged. They’re getting married on March 31st, so we both thought it would be a great idea to celebrate our upcoming nuptials together. We also chatted about how our birthdays are both in March (actually Erik’s is too!). Our friend Jen was kind enough to organize what I am fondly calling our “Rally Gal Birthday/Bachelorette Bash!”

First of all, thanks again to Jen! Also thanks to Amy, who was gracious enough to not only let me come over early, but also let the other 5 of us stay over for the evening!

After I got to Amy’s last night, she helped me decide what to wear, which was basically what I had planned on, but it was nice not to have to wear my nice pants for an hour or two in traffic on the way up. Amy and Erik let me park in their garage, which is a 3-4 garage. I was so jealous of them to have a garage actually right below their apartment! Amy was also kind enough to show me how she and Erik made their invitations, and gave me some great ideas about lots of things for Kris and my wedding. We shared our websites with one another while waiting for her friend Diane to arrive.

Once we met up with Diane, the three of us drove over to the parking lot where we met up with Jen and Renata. We got their cars safely parked, then piled into Diane’s Jetta and headed down to Hermosa Beach. First we had a light dinner at El Cantina Real, a Mexican restuarant. Then we walked around looking for a bar/club to drink and dance. We decided on Blue 32 (because there was no cover, always a plus!), which when we got inside was still serving dinner, so we had no place to sit. We only had to wait a few minutes for the lights to turn down and the music to get going. Bristol joined us for the drinking and dancing, and once she arrived, Jen surprised me and Amy with the cutest shiny “wedding” blue purses, which contained kazoos, a ring-pop, and beads to designate the “brides to be.” She also had candy bracelets for everyone!

This was the first time I’ve ever gone out that I didn’t have to pay for any of my own drinks! It was really nice of the other girls to pay for them! Since there wasn’t a lot of dancing actually going on, we decided to check out another place called Sangria. However, that place had a REALLY long line, and a ridiculous cover charge, so we decided not to go in and to head back to Amy’s to chat.

We had a great time hanging out in Hermosa Beach; I think we had an even better time with the “girl talk” a little later on. Bristol had a really cute card and some nice bath products for me. She used some rally terms to describe what would be upcoming in my life - ‘Engagement “tightens” to marriage’ etc. It was cute and funny!

Thanks again to all the girls that came out, and for making my birthday a great one, as well as thanks for throwing a fabulous bachelorette bash! I hope we all get to hang out again soon, outside OR inside a rally!