inspired

and I can not wait for our wedding!!!!

When it rains, it pours.

Today. October 19, 2010

Mondays. geesh.

Since our engagement, everyone has told me, "Don't sweat the small stuff." Even I have been at fault for telling my friends and clients this ridiculous statement. Well, I guess the statement is not entirely ridiculous. It is true. Brides should relax and not panic when something small creeps up in the last month before the wedding day. Brides should take deep breaths when dealing with all things. They should. It is not what we tend to do.

The desire to plan a perfect wedding with no flaws actually seems like a fausible thing to do. But that is the insanity talking. That is the lack of sleep. That is the desire to please everyone including yourself. Ah! Silly things that take over when you are a bride to be. Honestly, I am a better bridesmaid. I am better at having someone tell me all the little details and try to actively help HER find a remedy. I, being the bride, am awful at asking for help. I just pile everything on my plate and do it. It is hard to have 8 bridesmaids at my disposal (not including countless family and friends) and ask for them to help me in my time of panic. Instead, I go go go until I am too tired and then in my sleep deprivity I cry... or I obsess.
I am telling you it's not a good look on me.

This weekend, I cried on the way to pick up the groomen's bowties. My bottom lip quivered and then tears just streamed from my eyes... and in 10 minutes I was fine. I am not sure why. Geoff looked at me, and said "are you really crying!" after shaking my head and giving him puppy dog eyes, I sheepishly admitted I was. Then in a couple minutes, I was fine. I am not sure what stopped me from crying. and I am not sure what started it all.
This weekend, I swore that ONE rsvp card was missing. ONE. And after twenty minutes of frantically searching, I realized the "card" I thought I saw was the tag on their wedding gift.

Weddings. geez!

Today, was better. No crying. No obsessing. and then a girl at the office shares with our staff that her Cancer has come back.

I don't know how I could EVEN think of freaking out over such small things when SUCH A HUGE AND SAD thing could happen in an instant! I felt so guilty.
Guilty for being so "lucky" to be planning a wedding and have the opportunity to be soo happy but I chose something else. I chose to let my situation get the better of me. :(

Mondays are not for the faint of heart I guess. I am taking this news as a sign...
"DON'T STRESS THE SMALL STUFF!"

With this ring.... I thee wed

I picked up Geoffrey's wedding ring today and as I held the 6 mm white gold wedding band in my hand I got a teennnnssyyyyy weeeeensssssy bit teary eyed. I couldn't believe that "with this ring I thee wed" my best friend... Geoffrey Patrick Arai!

There is so much significance that goes into that little ring, a circle being endless and timeless. Never ending. It will be a symbol to everyone that we are one. That Geoff and I are forever.

My Nana used to always say that the wedding ring is worn on the Left hand and on the third finger because that finger is a direct line to your heart. Geoff's 13.5 Ring finger is his direct connection to his heart and then to me. :) I have had the honor to look at my wedding ring for the last 2 years of our engagement and with the ring, there has been a lot of emotion. Some days, I was so flustered with our relationship, I took my ring off and left it at home. Some days, my heart was so scared about growing up, I would twist it on my hand and pray for us. Most days, I look at it and smile. I like to think that when it sparkles back at me, Geoff is thinking of me.

I am so excited to give him his ring on our wedding day!

I even had it enscribed "Forever mine and Forever Yours" Geoff gave me a beautiful locket for Christmas last year and he enscribed that saying onto my locket. It sits at my chest. Touching my heart all day. I am keeping the ring and the engraving a secret so that he can be surprised. :)

I am so excited to say "with this ring, I thee wed!"

No flash photograhy.

I am completly bummed. :(
I just recieved confirmation from our church coordinator that there is

NO FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY ONCE THE SERVICE HAS STARTED!

:( boo.
The photographer in me is so worried about getting all the shots I want! I hate when I can't shoot with flash. It worries me. What if Bridesmaid X walks too fast and I miss her walking down the aisle? Whenever I go to weddings, and I miss that shot, I always feel safe knowing that the photographer got the shot! But now... our photographers can't use flash! :( I know I shouldn't be worried about such a small detail. THat is for Max and John to worry about, but what if? Photographers aren't cheap! I don't want to be disapointed when my parents are spending that kind of money on a detail that can't be just perfect :(
It just burdened my Monday. Honestly, I was dreading hearing those words, so I wanted to put it off but Mom just had to ask! I am glad she did though, this gives the photographers ample time to pracice their quick shots.
I will have to remind everyone to walllllkkkkk slloooooowwwllllyyyyyy.

do ra me fa so la te do

I love MUSIC. It simply touches my heart. For the wedding I wanted sooo many songs but I just wasn't sure which ones. I KNEW I wanted "The Prayer" by Josh Groban. I knew that I had to find any way possible to have it in our wedding.

I am so blessed to have a cousin who is INCREDIBLY talented!!!! Ashley Zerillo is FANTASTIC! We knew she would do an ammmmmmazing job for our wedding, and since she is a music major at Vanguard University she has an orchestra of people at her fingertips. Sooo here is OUR MUSIC TEAM and OUR SONG!!!! :) I am beeeeyyyyyyoooooooonnnnnnnd exctatic to have this song be a part of the wedding day! Not simply because it SOUNDS amazing but because of the WORDS! AH! I love it! so Sit back and enjoy and get ready

coming to a mailbox near you

It is official. The invitations are OUT!

6 months later.....

Where has the time gone!? It literally FLEW BY! I can not believe all of the things that have happened in the last 6 months or so. Even though time runs through our fingers, I am grateful for friendships that last forever. Regardless of the ever present ticking clock. Corinna, thank you for encouraging me to write an update. I love expressing my heart. Thank you also for being such a great friend even though time and distance separates us. I miss you so much and can not WAIT until we are reunited again!!!

Soooo 6 months ago ? Hmmm......

Well, Since that last post in March? Geoff and I have graduated from CSULA, We bought a home, I had a 25th birthday, weddings and birthdays galore, Rachel came home for my bridal shower, we worked and worked on the home, We bought the cutest kitties, and lots of wedding details are getting checked off! I am sure there is so much that I am missing, but that is a brief overview! so here is the recap in pictures!
I had to include a picture of Bella and Mia. They are just the cutest! We got them in January and Febuary. I don't know why I haven't posted anything about them before.

Geoff and I graduated from CSULA and I turned 25!!! How wild is that!??! Mom was so soooo good to us and threw us an intimate celebration with our dearest family and friends. I am in love with this cake. It is a beautiful design from Cake Divas. The people that are designing our wedding cake! It is filled with Sweet potatoe cake and brown sugar cream cheese frosting! yummmm! I am so excited to taste our wedding cake!!! I can't WAIT!!!!!! :) My sister Rachel is just the BEST! She is studying for her Masters in Missouri but came ALL the way home for my Wedding shower! She is SUCH A GREAT maid of honor! I am blessed to have such a great sister and friend. We went to Cowboy Country in Long Beach. Rachel and Esther put their thinking caps on and we had a great time! I am such a blessed bride! Kira made us all these wonderful shirts! The girls shirts said "Bride Entourage" and mine said "I said YES!" aw. I love my big wonderful bridal party! :)
We were house hunting for a long time and finally in June we found OUR home, and early June we closed Escrow. phew! It was a loooooong emotional journey but finally it is ours! Geoff and I are so happy to have our own home. We know we will have to work very hard to keep it but it is something we WANT to do. Here is the finished product, but SOOO many little details went into this beautiful home on Cerise Blvd. My parents, my papa, and my brother have definatley earned their keep at our house! THey have worked countless hours and devotion into our home. We are SOOOO blessed to have them in our life! When we bought our home, it had tile in the living room. That is all I will say about the tile. :) It wasn't a favorite, but when it came down to it we were just going to "deal with it." Mom didn't like that. So we did a little investegating. There was hard wood floor underneath!!!! Papa so diligently removed each tile!!!! In our living room AND kitchen!

This was Geoff and I's biggest project. Unfortunatley, during this house fixing up process, we worked quite a bit so we weren't around to help with the tile or the grass. Things like that. So we got to lacker the fence! on both sides! Our side was easy. just tedious. However, the neighbor behind us literally has a forest on his side, so that was quite hard to accomplish. There were lots of dead spiders, and crushed bugs in our efforts but at least we accomplished our job! Geoff and I are a great team and it was fun having a project with him like this! :)Dad is the expert painter in the family so he had the job of painting the walls (interior and exterior) the fixtures and so much more! Dad enlisted his trusty intern and son to follow in his footsteps! Josh did a wonderful job helping and basically listening to whatever Dad told him to do. He learned painting techniques and I believe he really enjoyed himself! :)

Oh! They also sanded and primed ALL of the walls too! Since our house was a Bank owned property, the bank quickly painted everything with a fresh coat of paint so it would look great to sellers. Well, haha it did look good to us and we bought it. After we were in the house for some time, we noticed the paint peeling off the walls!!! That meant we had a lot of hard work to do! Sooo we got to peeling, sanding, priming and then EVENTUALLY painting. Everytime I went to the house, I wanted to paint but it was never the time! sooo Mom and I got to paint the shutters outside. We had fun painting these becuase they were going to add so much accent to the outside of our home. :)

Literally every INCH of our home has been touched with LOVE. Literally every part of our home has been blessed by my parents, my family, and of course the Lord's blessings. I pray for the house everytime we leave and return and I KNOW that we are protected inside and outside. The Lord is good. ALL the time. My mom carved this outside of our bedroom window. Isn't she the cutest?! I put the leaf there for a fall touch! :)

We will be forever working on our home... and there is so much that has been done. The next project for our Cerise home is... our bedroom set! It will be delivered by the end of October! :)

These precious kitties are the newest additon to our hectic lives! :) They calm us though. It is fun to play with them, watch them sleep and cuddle them. They were a complete accident. Mom took Bella and Mia to the Animal hospital for their shots etc and while she was there the staff informed her that someone dropped off a box of kittens the night before! These precious kitties got their shots and everything from the vet and were ready to be adopted. Mom sent me a picture of their brother, an orange tabby cat, and I instantly fell in love! I called Geoff and told him and he wanted to check them out. He was not opposed to having a kitty. So we went to look. After holding Lucy (on the bottom) in our hands, we were falling in LOVE! Geoff asked, do you have any more? The lady responded, well yeah, there were 10 altogether! So she went and got us another little girl who just got her shots. (Lily on top). Done deal. Geoff said "we'll take 'em both" and like that we were out the door. From there we headed to the pet store to buy all the essentials. They are the cutest kitties and we are blessed to have them!

Well now that I have briefly updated the last 6 months of my life, I will try to update more often as the wedding comes MUCH CLOSER! I haven't even briefed about the wedding. Well here is one update I will give as I am at my new job and shouldn't be playing on Blogspot for too long!

These are my wedding heels! They are burgundy (go figure!) and oh so cute! I got them from Nordstrom during their anniversary sale! I wanted to get my dress hemmed in my tallest shoes (that I will wear for our 1st dance) so I know I wouldn't trip! I love love love them! and Geoff and I practiced dancing in them last night and they are comfy! I will be rather tall on the wedding day! sooo all of you shorties. beware! haha :)

I will update soon with wedding things! There are so so so many details that are still on our lists but they are slowly getting checked off and that is soooo very exciting!

Ciao Ciao

not entirely wedding related

I went to the LA marathon this Sunday and it was amazing! Out of 250, 000 people running I was lucky enough to see my 3 friends actually run in the race! It was more than a race it was empowering. It was an incredible blessing to be there for people as they ran and completed such a monumental task. I received this letter in my facebook inbox this morning, 

"dear crystal,

i just wanted to thank you soooo much for being there around mile 18 yesterday. i was in so much pain and having such a hard time and seeing your face and your words of inspiration really helped give me that push to not give up. it was especially meaningful because you were the only person on the whole course who I knew that was cheering for me! (other than my husband at the beginning and end, of course). I know you had two other friends running also, but you didn't have to wait for me, and I want you to know how much I really appreciate it. I might not have made it to the end without you!"

wow. honestly, this almost made me cry. For starters, she is right, we were at that mile marker waiting for Esther. We didn't know if Esther had passed us or if she was still on her way. As we waited, we cheered on a lot of people and in the middle of the crowd, here comes Lessa. WOW! I was so relieved to see her! She looked tired and beaten down and I hugged her and told her how proud I was! I had no idea how much seeing me would mean to her. As she walked past me, I felt relieved and then anxious to see Esther! As it turned out, we actually missed Esther crossing the finish line. As soon as we arrived to mile 18, Esther had JUST passed and by the time we realized it was too late. The traffic was too thick and we were too far. We missed her and thirty minutes after she finished Todd was finally able to see her! it was anti-climatic as some would say and that made me sad. However, when I got this message, I knew that we were there for a reason! I knew that us waiting was significant. I am so glad I was able to cheer Lessa on in her moment of weakness. That moment will mean ALOT to me for the rest of my life. 

I know what it is like to be down and I know what it is like to have that one person cheer you on! Lately, wedding things have been rather.... tense BUT I know that I have one person cheering me on NO MATTER WHAT and saying "I am here for yoU!" 

God is good ALL THE TIME. in a literal running marathon or in life marathon. I am glad God gave me a human example of what it means to always have a friend in Him. 

and with that....

I will say goodnight. 

xoxo

Save the Date

November 20, 2010 

has a special place reserved for you!!!

We are getting married on this very special day and we can not wait!!

Here is our wedding website

http://www.eWedding.com/sites/CantyArai2010/

Day 268

AHHHHH! the count down ensues! 

It has been quite a while since I have posted anything so I thought today would be a good reason to say hello. :) Geoff and I have been doing soooo well lately and I am soooo very excited to marry my best friend! We have a ways to go still but we are holding on even though it's been tough. 

Anyway, we have registered at Crate and Barrel and we have a couple places left on our register list. um lets see.... we have our save the dates and will be mailing them in a matter of days! 

We are getting a lot of random details written down so they can EVENTUALLY be completed. 

We are just really excited! well I might be REALLY REALLY and he is really excited! ahha

anyway here are some random pictures of life so far

Us on Valentine's Day! I loooooove him! xoxox

Meet our bridal party! Annette, Esther, Kristi, Crysta, Carissa, Kira and Summer Rae

and Rachel and Laura are missing because they are traveling and living far away! ha

I love my girls! xoxo

and here are the kids we are gonna have as our flower girl numba 2 and our ring boy! :) They are Geoff's 2nd cousins! aren't they cute and spunky!? 

And here is Geoff registering.... he had SO much fun! :)

289

we got our save the date magnets today! :) 

thats all really. 

I haven't posted for a while but I thought today was a good day for a quick hello.

I am getting sooooooo ansy to be married! AH! 

At work, there are all these girls that are getting married and its driving me crazy! 

I love my job-I do--really! but when the girls come in they get to talk about all their planning and all their exciting stuff but its not really my place to talk about MY wedding... ya know? I obviously do if they ask but in those moments it is THEIR time to shine. THEY get to be in the spot light. AND I REALLY AM HAPPY FOR THEM! but sometimes I just want my wedding to be here! ha I need to visit my dress ASAP! I really miss it! IS that funny to say? oh well. Anyway... its getting late and  I have to wake up early to sell more wedding dresses!

REEEEEEALLLLLLLY counting down the days!!!!!!!

hello again. day 313

Hi again.

Its been a while. SInce Thanksgiving and Christmas and NEw years I guess 

I have been a little preoccupied. SOrry. Well.... we all have successfully finished our first week in 2010! 

Not a whole lot has happened recently. Don't worry....

but some things have... so here are some. 

LEts see...... we got some measurements for the bridesmaids 

 and I to try on my dress AGAIN! Whoo hoo! :)  [no pictures though]

I figured out that my dress is a 2008 model and that made me smile cause that was the year that Geoff and I got engaged! IT was like MEANT to be! :) haha

Dont worry this isn't my dress! MIne is MUCH prettier! hahah

Mom and I also went to OUR first Bridal Expo! and as we walked through the many vendors we realized we have almost EVERYTHING taken care of alreadY! IT was such a great relief to see that we are 98% successful on planning November 20. I got to wear a sticker that said BRIDE! IT made me smile! :)

ummmmm what else!??! ah! I don't know! there is soooooooo much to do! 

oh lets see... We counted guests and We have ..... drumrollll please?!?!?! 440 guests! I don't know WHAT we are going to do! THe CHurch holds 400 MAX! and then what.... 

OH I AM AN OFFICIAL WEDDING CONSULTANT AT LA SOIE! I got hired today! and start work tomorrow!!! yay!!!! ok that is all for now. 

xoxo