Ao dai for Engagement

Whew! Ordered the ao dai last week for the engagement ceremony. They assure me it'll come by the last week of October. I got them online at aodaivinh. They're really good. Just email them with any questions and they answer back. You can ask them to change the neckline on any dress too.

I ordered these two. Hopefully one will work ok. Mommy didn't like any of the ones I already had. Real pictures will come after the ceremony!

Oh yea, I guess I never explained the ceremony. Well, in my culture, I guess in most Asian cultures, traditionally, the engagement is planned by both sets of parents, hence an engagement is "scheduled." Typically, the date is selected based on time of year and horoscope stuff I don't get. But anywho, so, the groom's parents bring "gifts" to present to the bride's family. The gifts typically are champagne, tea, biscuits, and other sweets, all wrapped in cellophane. So, the groom's family brings this to the bride's family and asks for the engagement. When my parents accept, they call me down from my room and then he "proposes" which actually is just him giving me the ring. Then we serve tea and champagne (we have Moet Chandon on slate. I'm very excited). Then, in true family fashion, we eat, drink and party hardy.

We're wrapping the gifts this weekend, so I'll post them next time. They'll go in the cute pink bags I made.

Engagement gift bags and napkins

I decided to DYI the gift bags instead of ordering them pre-printed. It saves a ton of money. I ordered paper bags with the roped handles from Paper Mart online. I highly recommend this website. You can find tons of other supplies, such as boxes, tissue paper and ribbons pretty inexpensively.

Here's what my bags look like. I made the sticker myself using photoshop. I put the date of the engagement party at the very bottom. Hard to see in the picture. I ran the label through a Xyron 510 machine (you can get much larger ones, but this one fits a max of 5 inches). The Xyron can do stickers, laminated stickers and magnets. The ones I did are laminated. You'll need like 2 cartridges for 50 4x4 labels.

I also ordered cocktail napkins from thediscountprinter.com. I found the best price for monogrammed napkins on this site. They came in pretty good. I'm satisfied with them. I might also order them for the wedding.

Wedding website

So, to add to my list of "not updating very often" is now our official wedding website. Please visit it at mai-linhandanthony.weddings.com. I will "update" it as new information emerges.