Save The Date! Vancouver Edition

since both roy and i have lived in Vancouver for almost a decade, we thought it'd be nice to have a little celebration in Vancouver after our wedding in Hong Kong to share the special moment of our life with our dear friends in Vancouver so please save the date for our celebration! and we will keep you posted about this event (invitation to follow).

image credit to Jamie Delaine Photography

Save The Date!

gosh! i couldnt quite believe that it's already mid September! this past summer was so much busier than i had anticipated and before i knew it, it's almost to it's end. lots had happened this summer - 3 of my good friends left Vancouver, i changed jobs, worked like crazy with the wedding planning & crafting, and worked even crazier with my two part time jobs ... phew ... glad it's almost over. so sorry for not keeping up with the blog for an entire month, but don't you worry, i am still working on the planning and had not gave up any tiny bit of my DIYs for my wedding. just can't believe it's only a bit over 6 month left till we are forever man & wife - make sure you save the MOST important date in the year for US! (invitation to follow)

image credited to Jamie Delaine Photography.

The Proposal

almost 2 years ago in late september 2009, roy surprised me by showing up and picked me up at work when he should have been back at UBC studying for his upcoming exam. we then went for grocery shopping and went back to his house for dinner. i usually kept my rings on my finger as i prepare for dinner (at that time i had two rings on each of my middle fingers, the one on my left hand is a custom ring with a seal that said "forget me not" and roy had the same seal as necklace, and the ring my right hand is a promise ring roy gave me after we got back together a year ago from that day), but because i had ground pork for one of my dish, i took both rings off and put them on the side table in roy's living room.

after about an hour of prepping and cooking, it was finally dinner time and not until half way through dinner i remembered that my rings were off and my hand suddenly felt naked! too tired to get up from my seat and walk over to the side table to get my rings so i asked roy to get them for me. at first he refused to get them for me but after a few minutes of whining roy gave in, but when he came back with my rings, they weren't the rings that i put down, it was a ring that i had been dreaming of for a long time - a diamond ring - the Tiffant Legacy from Tiffany & Co..

because roy could only fit a coffee table in his living/dinning room so we sat on the floor as we eat and so he was not on one knee as he said to me he had found the person who he would like to spend the rest of his life with and asked me if i would like to be that person. and to be honest, i think i must have sat there blanked for a good ten seconds or so after i saw the ring in his hand because all i had in my mind at the time was three words - OMG! but of cause i said yes in the end, otherwise we wouldn't have been planning this whole wedding today!

though it wasn't the most exciting proposal story, and it's probably wouldn't get much hoo and ahhh and awww's, and it was not how i had imagine it would have been. but it was the perfect little intimate proposal that's just perfect for us.

The Past Six Years

For the past six years, as busy as the two of us were, we tried our best to spend time with one another. Road trips (Victoria, Seattle, Portland), I met his family and he met mine, we're each other's only guest at our University grad (well my families were there for mine too), fancy dinners, special events (Festival of Lights, Beauty and the Beast at the Stanley Theater, Romeo and Juliet at the Brad on the Beach, Christmas Carols at the Queen Elizabeth Theater etc.), and we spend hours, I mean HOURS on the mountain of snow. Most of the 6 years were full of fun and happiness and we thought it would be nice to share our happy memories.

The Sparks & The Beginning

It was not until one day when we went on a “date” that I started to think about our “relationship”. One summer afternoon back in 2003, after that one time we went to Star Wars, we quickly made plans to go see another movie together. At first it was just a simple plan to go out to a movie then dinner after a game of basketball, but it turned out to be a date! Neither of us took the step forward to make the friendship into a relationship after that date because we didn’t know how the other feels and neither of us wanted to ruin our friendship. We continued to hang out and we stay close to each other but something had started to change between us – our feelings for one another. Then on June 23rd 2003, everything changed because of one kiss. Roy often said, things will never work out the way you hope if you didn’t even try and so he kissed me, and it worked out just as he hope it would. Thinking back, I am very glad that he had the courage to do what he did, because otherwise, I wouldn’t be marrying my best friend six years and nine months later. We’ve gone through ups and downs in our relationship plus two break ups, but each step we took we grew closer and closer to one another and I just can’t wait to finally be Husband & Wife.

The Start of Our Friendship

Learning from his “mistake” Roy asked for my MSN account after lunch that day and since then we started talking on MSN once in a while. For the next few months, we hanged out with the same group of friends and at first, though we chatted and hanged out we still wasn’t that close until the May long weekend of 2005.

I remembered that that long weekend was the opening weekend of the last Star War movie and because everyone had already made plans but the two of us, we decided to go to the movies together. We spend the whole afternoon chatting while waiting in line for the movie (seriously, we waited for about 3 hours! And we weren’t even the first bunch in the line!), then after the movie we went for dinner and chatted some more.

Since that day, we became real close. We would see each other almost every other day and spend hours chatting over the phone, yet we were just still “close friends”.

That summer, he rushed home from work to be there on my 20th birthday, he was at my side when I was going through a bad break up, he drove me around looking at houses when my mom and step-dad moved to Vancouver, he made me smile again when my grandfather passed away. Roy was (and still is) a caring and supportive friend.

To be continue …

Fate

After that brief encounter in the cafeteria, over the summer, we kept running into each other on campus. It was especially strange to me for not only I’ve never, ever in the three years of Langara had I ever run into anyone I know out of class time, but it was also strange that whenever we cross path, I was always running late for class or exam. So even though we sort of “see” each other a lot, our friendship did not bloom until much later.

After that summer in 2004, Roy was transferred to SFU and I continued on with my 2nd year in Langara. With no contact at all, half a year passed by and it was already 2005.

Then during the 04’-05’ Christmas break from school, we met again.

It was the day when I finally came out to lunch with Veronique, a girl friend of mine. We had planned to have lunch with just the two of us, but another friend of her at the time, who is now Veronique’s boyfriend and a friend of mine, Chris, insisted to tag along. Thinking back, I’m actually glad that Chris had came that day, because it was him who brought so many people into my life, and it was because of a phone call he made that we met again.

While having lunch, Chris asked if we had plans later for the afternoon and when either Veronique and I had anything in mind, Chris started calling people and making plans – for the rest of the day!

“Yo man! What you doing this afternoon?” Chris asked his friend on the other end.
“Nothing, just having lunch with Veronique and her friend by Cambie Bridge. You wanna join?”
“It’s okay la, you can just sit. We are going to karaoke after lunch.”
“You can sign half the time and the other half ask Ricky to come loh.”
“What friend? I don’t know, I just met her today, her name is Gloria, oh and she knows Connie too.”
“You know her? Oh that’s good. K, see you in half an hour then.”
Chris got off the phone and turned to us and said that a friend of his was coming to join us for lunch and then go karaoke after. Then he said that this friend of his, Roy, knows me!

I started thinking, “Roy? Do I know a ‘Roy’?” I really couldn’t figure out who this “Roy” was until he walked into the restaurant. And the first thing that I recall of him was, “the guy who got my number but never called!”

To be continue …

The First Time We Met

7 years ago on a summer afternoon, as I was walking down the hallway outside of the Langara College cafeteria, my cell phone rang and I picked up.

“What the hell are you doing on campus this time of the day?”
“Well I know I never stay on campus after class for the fact that I live right across the street from Langara, but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t be around, could I?” I looked around trying to locate my friend
“I’m sitting in the cafeteria waiting for class to start, wanna come keep me company?”

I had nothing planned for the afternoon so I walked in to find my friend and saw that she was sitting with a guy chatting and laughing. And that’s the first time we met.

If someone asked me what my first impression on Roy was, I really wouldn’t know how to answer. Seriously, it’s been 7 years and it was definitely NOT love at first sight so I really couldn’t remember what my first impression was, but he, for sure was one of the few people that make me feel comfortable being around. It didn’t feel like the first time we met, that afternoon, it felt more like hanging out, chatting with an old friend that I’d known for a long time. Then just before they had to leave for class, he asked me for my phone number!

“Why do you need my number?” I asked in a somewhat defensive way.
“I just felt that you are a funny person and I think I would like to hang out with you some other time in the future, that’s all.”
I stared at him hard in the eyes and eventually gave in and gave him my number.

To be continue …