Finally my last name change is official. I took off work a bit early last week to head down to the social security office. There was a line, but the wait wasn't too bad, about 15-20 minutes. I thought it would be worst than that. Last time I went there during lunch time, there was a line looping back and forth in a waiting room. I bet people first waited there, then they'd be called upstair and wait some more. I left right away, knowing that the line would move at the speed of a snail and it was probably true. Anyway, the more agonizing wait was the check in at the door. This MTA guy was taking at least 10 minutes to take off his jacket and zillion other metal things he carried with him before going through the metal detector. I was getting annoyed when he had to keep going back and forth to get his metal accessories that set off the detector. I was afraid the office would close soon and didn't want to come back again. I guess finally he noticed my annoyance and said to let the rest of the people go through first. It's ridiculous how someone could carry so much metal craps. Then it's interesting how 99% of the line was all women. They probably all went there for the same reason as mine. What I don't understand is how they refused to process my name change when I sent in the form. I thought they needed to see my ID or something, but when I got there, they didn't even ask for it. The guy just typed typed typed on the keyboard, looked at the marriage certificate and then printed out a confirmation of the request. The whole thing took about 5 minutes. Why was my presence there so important? I could very well be someone else and requested for it. It's not like they have my photo on the social security card that can identify me. And I think this is just required for brooklyn residents only too. I'm glad that it's done.

http://www.nyc-architecture.com/index.html

can't believe it's already 3 months since you know when. Time has truly flown by quickly. There's been many attempts on my part to get an early dip in the cake top we preserved from the wedding. I didn't even know about this good old tradition about preserving wedding cake for the one year anniversary for good luck. But my thought is what if it didn't preserve well enough for that one year, that 6 inch yummy cake will be wasted. I tried to convince John to have a piece every month, but he's holding it pretty strong. He said maybe when we move to a new place. Let's hope the move will happen soon...

NYC is known to be an exciting city. Last year, we had a blackout that forced people to walk miles to get home. I still remember hearing people partying out that night in the middle of the dark and drinking beers. It was like a blast. And over the past three days, it's like dejavu again, people are walking on bridges all over the city again. Thanks to the MTA and TWU for procastinating their contract negotiation!! Surprisingly, people generally didn't seem to mind the walk to work, despite the frigid weather, because new yorkers are hard core. We endure whatever we face and we survive. I guess I am not as strong, the first day I chicken out, I didn't go into work, but I wasn't prepared enough. My carpool plan blew up in my face last minute that day. The good thing was I get to stay in and not having to wait on line in the cold for the train or carpooling. After seeing people packing the carpool staging area and stations to catch a ride to and from home, I wasn't about to be a part of the mess. I decided to take a new challenge that I never thought of doing, biking to work from brooklyn to downtown manhattan. Apparently nyc.gov has a map of bike route, I never give any thought of its existence, I guess it makes sense to have one. My first route was to bike southward along the river on the brooklyn side and tried to find my way to Brooklyn Bridge. Half way from home to the bridge, I almost gave up. My leg was starting to cramp up or frozen, I wasn't sure what it was. I only knew I was about to lose control of it. Surprisely, it was just the left leg, I guess that's my lazy leg. Then I thought I needed to try harder, but I could have done it without the wind swooshing above my head . Biking through the industrial area of williamsburg was strange. The road was bumpy at time and it was like a wasteland, there is not much around, not much cars or people. I finally saw this condo building facing the river that is advertised for a ridiculous asking price. Boy, how suck would it be to live there, that building is surrounded by a bunch of warehouses and it isn't even next to the river, it's facing another warehouse of some kind. Only suckers would fall for this kind of advertisement.

Anyway, back to my bike ride, when I eventually got to brooklyn bridge, it was a relief. Now I knew my destination was not much further. As I got off the bike to piggy back my bike, my legs were kind of numb, I think from bending while peddling. I felt my joint was going to snap when straightening my legs, especially they were probably 75% frozen. It was exciting to see other bikers. It was like I belonged to a special club Everyone else was just walking. It was really impossible to bike, there was just too many people on the bridge to bike along. It was a nice walk! I've walked across it with John. I've run across it during high school track practice. Now I was biking across it for work. How much of this bridge is a part of my life!! No wonder, we picked this place to shoot our prewedding shot.

Then once I got off the bridge, it was like a smack in the face with all these news channel lights. They were all crowded around the foot of the bridge for their transit strike coverage, I guess. The ride around there was unpleasant, people were all over the place, I could only try to find less crowded streets. Then, finally I got to my building. They were nice enough to let me bring the bike up to my floor. Everyone thought it was a cool idea to bike to work. It was cool, but by then my butt was aching by this time. So this 6-mile bike ride took about 1.5 hours, not too impressive, but I made it there considering I've been so lazy with the gym. That was my workout highlight in the last few months.

Well, there was no way I would go through that 1.5 mile on my way home. So I decided to take a different route by going through chinatown, bike northward toward the williamsburg bridge and was hoping that the bridge won't be as crowded. The ride was much better and much more manageable and made it back home within the hour. The bike ride was actually fun as I took this same route to work the second day, rolling down that williamsburg bridge on the bike was sweet! It took no energy to just wind through the walking people and it was like a blink that I was on the other side of the bridge. The irony of it was I got to work much faster than taking the subway. I probably would do it again, but maybe during the summer and after my butt recovered from the rough bouncing through the bumps on the bridge and streets. Finally, after 3 days of subway-less, we should be back to the way things were, hopefully in another 10-12 hours, and get back on track with the madness of christmas shopping. The bike ride was a lot of fun and an exciting experience. This is the kind of things that can spice up our routine life. Woohoooo!!

I've been slacking off with my blog entries, maybe still trying to recover from exhaustion of wedding planning Today our subway line made the Times, front page of the Metro section. It's the only line in nyc that doesn't go through Manhattan, the line that alot who lives in ny might not even know about, because it doesn't run through Manhattan. And how did it make the headline? of the Times? because it's so bad, now MTA decided that no one cares enough if they made it the worst line there is. A long while ago, they decide to cut the train by half, from 8 cars to 4 cars I think. Imagine you are about to get underground for this train, and you heard that it is pulling in the station, you better run like there is no tomorrow to catch that train, especially during the night. Not only it retardedly stops midway on the platform, it may come very infrequently once it hits 9pm. In some days if I were wearing heals, I know I have no chance of catching the train if it just pulled in as I swipe the metrocard through the turnstile. The best luck I can get is to hope that there are at least 2 persons ahead of me as the train pulls in, then they would start running, it would be like a track relay, they'd reach the train ahead just in time to delay the train for maybe 3 seconds. If the conductor was nice enough, he would notice there is another person and me running our lives out to catch the train, he would hold it there as we sprint passed him and start panting entering into the crowded car. You need a second person between you and the train because it would seem to him that you are not that far away. And somehow I always notice the conductor having a smile, he probably realizes how ridiculous it is that we have to sprint our way to work. Anyway, going back to this silly train making its once-in-a-century headline, MTA decides to remove the conductor from the train, who is straphangers' only reliable train break on this line. How much more pain can MTA put on the G rider!! To be fair though, the G is not all bad, it definitely motivate us to get the hell from this line, inspire us to get a place where we can see more of the floor and less of our stuff stacking on top of each other after we tried to squeeze two persons stuff into a place that's meant for one. I'm starting to get good at walking around house avoiding to hit into things that are stacked without tipping it over and if I happened to bump into something and lost balance, my reflect to regain balance has been much sharper now, happeee condo hunting

yay! we made it passed one month without killing each other Nothing much has changed really, except I find myself reminiscing the wedding looking at the pictures. Life has definitely moved on though. I guess being married is like boarding a forever waiting train that finally arrives, you can move on and toward your goals and destinations, or maybe like water constantly splashing against a dam and then finally breaks through and flows back to the ocean...don't know, something like that, hehe.

I think the addressing for married women need to be changed. After you got married, all of a sudden, your name disappear from all the addressings. Your name reduced to nothing, but just "Mrs." I've been getting question lately about whether it feels different to be married, I've been responding no, but I think I have one - the existence of my name just fell off the face of the earth after I got married! Wouldn't it be nice to get some kind of acknowledgement, after all, we all identify ourselves by our names.

posted some pics from the trip...
http://john-n-alice.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=5

Wow, the wedding day flew by so fast and yet so memorable. I'm just glad that we pulled it off. It was very satisfying to plan every aspect of it ourselves, from getting the photographer to getting the Pratt Mansion to host the reception to laboring our printer the many hours of printing the ceremony programs. The feeling of getting it done was just so overwhelming. We pat each other on the back for making this happened. I don't think I would have changed any of it, if we were to do it again. I don't want to do it again anyway, it was just surprising in a way, we planned this with our envision of what we wanted for our special day, but we didn't know if things will turn out the way we planned, but everything really did come together pretty perfectly. Along the way, we were nervous whether we made the right decisions with who we went with. We were just extremely happy to have everyone there supporting and celebrating our day, from our families to our friends to people who we worked with to make our envision happened. The wedding day really couldn't have been as perfect without our friends and families enjoying themselves, dancing the night away.

I have to admit though, there was time during the day that was nerve wrecking. First, i was having a hard time dragging myself out of bed, even though it wasn't an early start, but i didn't go to bed until just a few hours before that. Then I was afraid I'd forget to bring all the dresses, I didn't want to forget my shoes or something. And because of the darn city traffic, I got to my hair appointment late, but they did a good job putting me right on schedule when I told them when I needed to be out of there. I think I had the best hair up-do. They helped me put the tiara on, I felt funny at first, but I got used to it looking at the mirror while waiting for John to pick me up. People there at the salon was complimenting on it, which really helped whether or not they were just saying it. Then, as we were trying to get to the Pratt Mansion to get ready, fifth avenue was blocked off for some reason, at first we weren't sure how to bypass the blockage, but after explaining to the city's finest that we were getting married, they let us through right away. "Getting married" is really some powerful words. Also, having the tiara on me already just helped convinced them. And thereafter, once our family explained the same thing to the cops, they acknowledged it right away and let them through.

Having the rehearsal at the church was nice to know what to expect, but there was absolutely nothing that could prepare me for the moment before and during the walk down the aisle. As I was waiting outside the church, I can hear the familiar music for the procession. I knew the bridesmaids and the flower girl were walking down the aisle on the other side of the door. I wanted to see them, I wanted to see how great they looked and how cute Phynia was holding the floral ball. I was really nervous, I can remember myself being shaken up a bit and trying to shake off the nervousness and the anticipation of what was about to come, but the feeling was just getting more intensed. I just felt super nervous walking down the aisle, I had worried that I'd pass out or something. But once I started walking down, I saw all these familiar faces, I started calming down right away, I can feel a smile came over my face and I was thinking to myself, "whew, this isn't so bad, I don't think i will pass out after all." The entire ceremony went by pretty quickly too. That nervousness before the walk down the aisle came over me again as John and I were facing each other and saying the vows. I think I blanked out for a half a second and couldn't seem to utter the words after hearing the vow from John, but then I recovered and didn't mess up the vow too much

Then it was cool walking out of the church with all of our guests waiting and blowing bubble at us. I hope we didn't make them waiting too long, I felt kind of bad about that, but we wanted to get some shoots of the beautiful church. After we made our exit, we hopped on the 1969 checkered cab, which we kept as a surprise. I hope it was a surprise! Our cab driver, Peter, cranked up the music and played "Anyway You Want It" by Journey as we pulled away. We were laughing to ourselves, that was GREAT!

I feel like i'm writing a novel here...more detail later, after I relaxing my cramping fingers.

Let me do the honor ...11 days!!

I might be pulling an all nighter to tie some loose ends. Just need to put a couple of things together. Feel like i'm working at a sweatshop. Here i am in the bedroom with just the fan on in this hot summer night, typing it away on the laptop, which is about to run out of battery. The arm rest area on the laptop has started burning my arms a long while ago, I guess I keep ignoring it probably b/c I can feel this force field of heat has already surrounded me. Thank god I haven't started sweating like I just came out of a shower. Darn, low battery! Gotta recharge.

Okay, where was I...everything is pretty much all set. Hm...no, still missing my third dress. I guess it's optional. I've been waiting to get in perfect shape to get it and to my fault, I've been slacking off at going to the gym. So I have 10 days of intensive exercising, which is still do-able. My eyes are starting to hurt now. I guess i'm running low in brain power too. Counting down to be continued tomorrow...

Well for the next 2 weeks anyway. Had a very nice and tasteful party with my friends and groomsmen. Nothing but class all the way. No pictures to show and I have nothing more to say about the event. Thank you all and good night.

I just notice I've used alot of exclamation marks in the blog title. It reminds me of this Seinfeld episode when Elaine broke up with her bf b/c he didn't use an exclamation mark in the phone message he wrote downn for her about her friend having a baby. He was like, I was just taking messages for you, I didn't know I have to capture the mooood TOO...haha...funny, I love that show. I guess I wanted to capture my mood in the title

I was finally reunited with my gown. Oh, that sounds a bit dramatic. I should say I finally picked up my gown on Saturday. It was as if it wasn't meant for me to get it back. I waited for the train for over 30 minutes and when it finally came, it just went passed the station w/o stopping. How annoying! Hate it when they do that. Instead of getting to the tailor place in 30 minutes, I was far from being there after that long. Finally, I found an alternate route to get uptown to pick up the dress. I was on the bus, spacing out and almost missed the stop. Good thing was the tailor store wasn't too busy. The dress was done just right. I didn't think I was anxious about getting the dress. I was more anxious about bringing it back home and trying it on with other accessories. Finally, I got home all sweaty, the bag I used to carry has ripped up and started to fall apart the minute I stepped in thehouse. It was a relief to take that load off my shoulder. So at last, I had everything, the veil, the tiara, just the whole nine yard, ...wow, I look like a bride and wow, I'm going to wear that REAL soon! And wow, I'm nervous!!!! I'm speechless now...it's only 19 days away!

I can't believe it's September already. My little brother keeps telling me that I always complains the time goes by so quickly. For some reason, this summer has gone by in a flash. I did so much and yet I felt like I didn't do enough. 24 more days to go!! Wow, that's cutting close. I can't believe it. I'm starting to get this butterfly in my stomach kind of feeling each time I think about the number of days until the wedding.

Oh right, the shower!! The girls threw me a surprised shower this past Sunday. It was sooo surprising! I was trying to send John to spy on Jennifer and the bridal party. Turned out he was already recruited by them to spy on me. He totally threw me off. He was talking about getting Yankees tickets for that afternoon. Then he sent me this email that someone was throwing a surprised engagement party for a couple of friends of ours. I didn't even put much thought to it and agreed we should go. Turned out he faked the whole email. It was a pretty good trick! I would never have believed it even if someone told me. It was just flawless.

Anyway, enough of his trick, the bridal party got some friends together and surprised me at the Niles Restaurant near the Madison Square Garden. It's a nice restaurant, pretty comtemporary. So as John already booked me for that afternoon for the supposingly "engagement party". I even went back to work for a little bit before that and met up with him near the restaurant. As we were walking into the restaurant, he just asked for our friends' party and the guy just knew right away who he meant. Still couldn't put it together. The restaurant was kind of empty, so I supposed it was not too hard to recognize who we were coming for. I followed John to the back and there was a cozy room to the left. As I just caught a glimpse of the interior of the room, a sudden feeling of amazement came over me. I heard everyone said *surprise*. For a millionth of a second, I wasn't sure why b/c i only expected to see probably strangers there. But all I saw was familiar faces. Everyone was there! I couldn't believe it! I was laughing silly at myself and pushing John off for playing such good trick. The room was beautiful. Jennifer put together these red roses & orange and cream carnation boutique, just so pleasant to look at. Oh, I love that table on the table by the room entrance. There was one of those asian umbrellas and a small lace one, shading a pair of bride & groom mittens and an apron with everyone's autograph on it. So nice! After much silly laughing, we all took our seats and started brunch. Brunch was good. Everyone put so much thought into it, even the menu was customized. It was just so nice seeing everyone. There were alot of gift opening when the cake came out. The cake was good, I wish I had a bigger piece As I was opening the gift, Diana taped the bow on a plate, which I later wore for kodak moments! Hm...is this part of the tradition. I never know people do this with gift bows, but looked pretty funny in pictures. Everyone got such great gifts for us. The feeling of having such thoughtful people is just overwhelming. I was pretty much speechless of how much I appreciated everyone put the effort into the shower. I didn't think I would miss out on much without having one, but now I realized I was really wrong. A shower is so much fun. Now that the shower is over, i still can't imagine how overwhelming the wedding will be. The only thing I'm sure of is I'll have even more fun there because all of our friends and family will be there, hopefully having alot of fun and a memorable day!

WOW!!!!! let me pull myself together first. I can't believe what I just saw. Absolutely stunning! Oh yeah, I am talking about the dress that finally arrived today. I ordered a traditional chinese dress, known as cheongsam or qi-pao, about 2 weeks ago. It arrived about a week ago, but the UPS guy just wouldn't leave it in the building. I had to go through the hassle of redirecting it to work. Before it arrived, I also have another UPS package that was redirected to work, but got sent back to the sender for no reason. What a pain!! why can't they just leave it! Anyway, I didn't want the dress to get sent back like the other package, so I called UPS again and tried to have it held at their center and I would go pick it up. They said they would hold it, but to my surprise, it got delivered to me some time before lunch. I was relieved that I got it. I was so excited from then on. I really wanted to see how it looks, the material is real nice and soft. And of couse it should, it's 100% silk. I waited and waited. I was tempted to take it into the bathroom and try it on, but I didn't think it was a good idea. So I waited some more until the end of the day and went straight home. I unwrapped the thin layer of paper they use to protect the dress, as if it would. Wow, it is sooooo beautiful!! The hand embroidery is some excellent stiches. Bright red silk is really nice looking. It has a beautiful cut with two slits on the side. I couldn't wait to put it on. Standing in front of the mirror, I swear I thought I felt my jaw dropped down the floor. Ok ok, that was way too exaggerated...but it looks soooo stunning. Wow, I didn't believe what I saw...spin around, walk back and forth, i was speechless...buying that dress was the best decision I've made, of course also with the help from John. It was worth every second of waiting. I guess product coming from the expert is best there is. It came all the way from Shanghai, China, the origin of this kind of dress. I heard people purposely go there to get it in person. Thanks to our good ol' internet, I just ordered it online. I'm very impressed with the quality of the material and the tailor skill. I was afraid they would use cheap material b/c it was ordered oversea. The store in chinatown actually tried to scam their fellow new yorkers. As far as I can tell, they make a big chunk of fortune out of their shoppers.

I can't wait for John to see it and watch his eyes popped out

We went for a wedding cake consultation today in upper east side...wow...the cakes were absolutely delicious!! I thought we would just be looking at pictures and a long list of available fillings. No no...they only have 4 fillings, a relatively short list of choices, but they are all so good. One of them were really really good...rich coffee, butter cream and ganache...Mmmmm, soo yummy!! The other was rich chocolate with raspberry...that was too rich. The other was lemon with raspberry, which tasted surprising refreshing, like the fresh mint gum that leaves your mouth winter fresh.

The place is a pastry shop and a restaurant, so they have a coffee area where they have little tables to sit down. It seems like a popular place. They setup a plate of 4 different pieces of cake, gave us an album of their cake design and left us alone. We enjoyed the cakes, they were really rich. I felt like I gained 10lbs afterward. I should have skipped lunch. Cake tasting is great, but how am I going to lose the thousand calories I took in today!!!

Alice has been busy posting new pictures to our gallery. You can be sure there will be more to come. Luckily I have access and can remove any I deem embarrassing or less than flattering to yours truly.
Be sure to let me know which ones need to be thrown on the digital dung heap.
Check em out and enjoy!

ahh! only 66 days to go! I'm starting to feel the big day is coming near. Seems like everything is accelerating all of a sudden. The weather seems alot hotter. The days go by much quicker, especially with the new job...i stayed at work for 9 hrs and barely feel it. I wish there were a slow mo button to slow things down. Everything is coming together, but time is running out by the minute. I can't say i'm freaking out just yet, but getting there

I just brought my wedding dress for tailoring. Can't wait to see the new style I have envisioned!!! Tailoring is a good business to be in, I tell you, actually the whole bridal business is something good to consider. It's definitely a big money business. Everyone wants a piece of it. My bridesmaids have started ordering the dress. Not to give away anything, the dress should be a surprising style to most people, ok...i'll reveal some hints...red with some gold pattern. The style is to be announced at the wedding I still have to order two more dresses for myself, just to follow the chinese tradition of wearing more than one dress on wedding day.

We just went registry shopping today. My feet are really barking, we had some sushi and i'm too full to even sit up straight. John had a lot of fun with registry gun though. Registry is all new to me, i guess we are starting a new beginning, having all the new stuff would make it more complete. I need to pick flowers. I'm going with the fall color, gotta love that orange color, so bright and cheerful

Hello and welcome to our site and the beginning of this blog. Yeah... so we have a blog... what's the big deal? Everyone else has one so why can't we? Being the young and hip couple that we are it seemed like the thing to do. Anyway, look to here for new developments and to keep tabs on the craziness that takes over our lives as the big day draws near. Feel free to leave comments and let us know you're out there and that someone is actually reading this stuff. And if you are reading this then we hope to see you come September. If you can't make it (for one lame reason or another ) then you can live vicariously through this site and watch the magic. Seriously though, we look forward to seeing all of you and will greatly miss those that aren't able to attend. OK... less than 3 months to go... insanity starting....NOW!