ippudo

We received the most amazing wedding gift last week… a ramen care package from our friends Derek and Naomi (whom you’ll remember from our trip to Japan last year!)  During one of my recent “famous” food tours to New York, we paid a visit to Ippudo and I fell in love with the magical food that is ramen.  Oh how I gushed and gushed about it.. here in the blog (post here) but also in person, on facebook, by wire, by train plane and automobile… I shouted it from the rooftops!  Ippudo ramen is MAGICAL.

Well, our wonderful friends Derek and Naomi heeded the call — they visited Ippudo in Yokohama where they now live, and gathered up a treasure chest of bounty to send to us as a gift to celebrate our wedding… I was completely floored when we opened the package.

Fresh ramen kits, a collection of ramen spoons, and a nifty head kerchief like everyone in Japan wears!  The red kerchief is the same one worn by Ippudo staff, and the owner of Ippudo in Yokohama gave it to Derek to give to me.  Their ichiban fan!  I may frame this thing..

Well a meal is best enjoyed with friends, and so we gathered up some special folks to share our bounty with.  Joe who was our travel partner in Japan when we went to visit Derek, and Kiran who is my best foodie buddy (new spin on the ubiquitous BFF) as well as my co-food-tour-organizer.. Kiran is also the person I fell in love with Ippudo alongside, so I could not possibly partake in this ramen love without him.  By the way, it’s purely coincidental that our dinner guests are both brown.  We like and appreciate both brown and non-brown people of either gender and any variety of sexual orientation equally.  Besides, we needed some skilled labor in the kitchen to help us out with the cooking:

Oh relax, I’m just kidding.  We fed them didn’t we??  Besides, look.. Kiran is clearly drinking on the job, what a bum.

So I gathered up some fixins that seemed ramen-worthy by my best guess… spinach leaves, enoki mushrooms, roast pork, scallions.. the ramen packet came with some pickled mustard greens and sesame seeds as well.  We puzzled over how to soft boil an egg properly, so this was an educational experience as well!  How do you think we did?

OURS

THEIRS
Ippudo’s “Akamaru Modern” ramen
tonkatsu noodle soup with pork belly chashu

And then, just because we are who we are:

Note the head-wear.  We had to look the part of course, otherwise how would people know what we’re doing?  More pics of our evening found here if you haven’t had enough of us yet Derek and Naomi, thank you so much for your wonderful gift and we miss you so much… we had a really fun evening of ramen goodness, and I can’t wait until we can all hang out together again.  Perhaps over a bowl of ramen!  But until then, I may be sad but you know what cures sadness?  RAMEN.  IT FIXES EVERYTHING.

post-wedding

OHAI! It’s the GREENES here!!  We both fell completely off the grid for a while because there were ah.. post-wedding matters to attend to

Life for the most part went back to the usual after the wedding.  I was back shooting weddings no less than five days after our own — my bride and I compared our French manicures and oohed and ahhed over one another’s rings…  Speaking of rings, here is a picture I took shortly after the wedding — look, our hands are all dressed up!  Our rings of course are the ones that we made ourselves from a single piece of platinum several months ago.  That watch on Doug’s wrist is my wedding gift to him, timeless (har HAR god I love puns) and he has a mandate to wear it at our 50th wedding anniversary.

Our hands weren’t the only thing that were all dressed up!  Our groomsmen were really rocking some hot tuxedo socks… their feet were all dressed up!!!  Observe:

Dunno what’s going on with the rest of Joe’s attire there.  I can only assume the rest of his tuxedo went missing some time during the night, oh my.

There are entirely too many special little details and things to share about our wedding day… I can’t possibly do it all in one little blog post, so it will likely be a separate page and section on this website in future days.  I’ve written down an account of the day, those moments and feelings that I’ll forget years from now.  Will publish it later on when it’s finished, but here is an excerpt:

It’s 4pm Friday afternoon. We are checking into the W Hotel. I don’t match the hotel at all, I look like a trucker checking into the YMCA. I’m wearing daisy dukes, flip flops, and a Hooters cap with my wedding veil plonked atop my head. Is the receptionist judging me? Maybe a little. She sounds like she’s from Australia. Our bridal suite is amazing — a three-room corner suite with a killer view of the Washington Monument and an enormous round purple couch. Oh! That’s what everyone says as soon as they walk in the door. Oh! Ooooh!!

It’s 5pm Friday afternoon. The entire bridal party is in our suite putting things together and being helpful in general. I still haven’t showered. I have cards to write. “Dear Mimi…” I write, as Mimi sits two feet away talking at me about the rehearsal. It’s time to go to the rehearsal. We are practicing our entry and the ceremony. Doug’s father, who is our officiant, is reading through the entire ceremony and I can see Doug beginning to get a little red around the eyes. I am squeezing his hand and telling him to knock it off, and I look over at our bridal party. Andrew has his very serious face on, which is also his very sexy face (it’s hard to tell what he’s going for sometimes). I can tell he’s about to cry. I don’t look at him again for the rest of the rehearsal, just in case.

It’s 7pm Friday evening. We are walking down the block to an Italian restaurant for our rehearsal dinner. It’s warm out, the sun is just starting to set. Doug and I are holding hands. Doug says the first thing on our itinerary for the weekend is over already, so fast, too fast. He’s right.

We keep saying it over and over again, but we had an amazing weekend and we are so incredibly grateful for all of our friends and family who supported us with the process along the way, who offered to help and kept us sane when things got hectic, who traveled long distances to come celebrate with us… to that end, a special shoutout to Jen and SiHeng who flew all the way from Vietnam to come to our wedding (you’ll remember them from our visit to Vietnam and Thailand last year!)  I seriously start getting teary-eyed when I think about it, so don’t even bring it up around me.  Thanks guys, we’re really humbled.

I especially want to give two thumbs up (make that four, I’m throwing Doug’s thumbs into the mix too) to our awesome bridal party:

We chose them because we love them and they’re important to us of course, but as a group we couldn’t have possibly engineered a more well-balanced combination of FUN and CAPABLE if we tried!  These guys moved together like professionals to keep things running and kept us in stitches the entire time.  Oh and future brides…. it is tremendously helpful when your “maid of honor” is not a maiden at all.. my Dude of Honor (Kevin) was hard at work and running all around town on our behalf while we girls were stuck in the chair getting the whole hair and makeup thing taken care of.  Thanks all of you.. you really made our day extra special and we couldn’t have done any of it without you.  Ok stop it, I’m starting to get all sentimental again.  Blah.

The above photo was taken at our one and only bridal-party-only rehearsal.. for what you ask?  For this:

Totally fun!  The above vid was taken by my cousin Aaron, and here is another video taken by our friend Thomson from a different angle.

It was really upsetting to me to not be allowed to hold a camera, even a crappy little one, for the entire day.. and then to have zero pictures to look at the next day!  We can’t wait to see our pro’s pics and share them with you, but in the meantime our friends have generously shared their snaps with us … you can see them all here if you feel so inclined, or eventually I will put my favorites on our wedding page and you can just see them there.  There are of course, the hilarious photobooth pictures as seen here (click on the picture to see more):

And to wrap up, I leave you with a snap I took at the DC courthouse where we went to go pick up our marriage license (I totally got yelled at for taking the picture too):

What do they know that I don’t know???  Hmmmmm…..

bye july

The last month has seriously been a whirlwind….  A roll call:

GOOD: Our fabulous bridal party took us to a lake house in Deep Creek where we ate and drank and hot-tubbed and merrymaked (??  merrymook!) for several days.  I’m constantly amazed at how wonderful and generous our friends are!  We are grateful and undeserving.  Here are some of the folks, I think a bunch or people are missing from this picture though.. it’s really hard to round these people up   I’m the big mouth in the center of the photo.

Kevin, my “dude of honor” is front and center, and played a huge role in getting everyone organized and fed and very very drunk.  He’s a special kind of awesome.  I’ll write an ode to Kevin after the wedding is over, but I am fairly certain that after he has now seen me through the “behind the scenes” of the wedding planning process and undertaken (undertook?  what is wrong with me tonight) a lot of wedding-related tasks as my right-hand man… he’s just never going to get married, ever.  Sorry, single ladies of the world… I put the last nail in that coffin.   Hoo-rah.

It was a VIP party.  More specifically, a Justin Bieber VIP party.

For the record, no one made him kiss the Biebs.  He did that all on his own.  Many other pics which may or may not be posted at a later date — just a general word of advice, it’s against your best interest to be the first to fall asleep at a bachelorette party

BAD: Apparently someone (hopefully unknowingly) brought the Plague to the party with them.  Upon returning home from the weekend, more than half of the able-bodied adults became violently ill, including one Justin-Bieber-loving bachelor.  I sealed Doug in the bedroom and stuffed an iPad and DVDs and very flat foods under the door, fearful that I would become infected by mere association with this toilet-hugging man.  Praying fervently, I was certain to my core that the Plague was lying dormant in my body, waiting for the most inopportune moment to release itself… I had an exit strategy everywhere I went that week, eyeing every dark corner or wastebasket as a potential place to empty my stomach should the need arise…. luckily, I survived and never became ill, but that was a hard week.  I know what the people in Final Destination must feel like now.

GOOD: I resigned my position in the corporate world and have decided to follow my longtime dream of becoming a full-time photographer.  This decision has been a long time coming (and several years’ worth of preparation), and it’s gratifying (and terrifying) to finally yank that plug.  What’s more gratifying is that when I told friends about it, I was not met with shock or alarm or friends worrying about my ability to feed myself…. instead, I heard whoops of joy and many variations on “it’s about time!”  Yay for friends that believe in you!  I haven’t really had a lot of time to consider this move yet because of the wedding and everything else — but saying goodbye to my coworkers was surprisingly difficult, and as I left the office for the very last time… I had a moment of fear and self-doubt so strong that I considered going back and telling everyone I had made a terrible mistake in quitting.  Lots of people say that they wish they didn’t have to work or could be their own boss, but when the time comes to leave the safety of a regular paycheck……. well, I was not prepared for how afraid I would actually feel when the moment came.  I liken the situation to leaving a (very rich) boyfriend who doesn’t make you happy and isn’t right for you… yet you stay with him for all the wrong reasons.  Wow, I am so deep.

BAD: I had not even reveled in my freedom for 24 hours yet when we found out that my little beagle Maddy had cancer and needed immediate surgery

Here she is several hours after surgery, with a shaved armpit (she’s a lady after all) and hate-filled zombie eyes.  Just kidding, she’s just groggy and grumpy in this picture, but who can blame her.  You can see the gaggle of pills that I’m trying to sort through here.. as if making the dog recover from being cut open isn’t enough, we also had to shove handfuls of pills down her throat for a week after.  And then we had to put this terrible little t-shirt on her (ok it was adorable, not terrible) to keep her from suicidally ripping her own stitches out — Doug chose a shirt that said “Mommy’s Favorite”.  But all it did was teach my baby Maddy how to unclothe herself more efficiently.  That little slut

But the surgery was a good thing in the long run, she’ll be with us for several more years yet, and since recovering from the surgery she’s perked up quite a bit — she probably wasn’t feeling well for a while and didn’t know how to tell us.

Side note.  Did you know that the backrest pillow thingy in the picture is called a Husband?  Doug told me this; I had no idea.  WHY IS IT CALLED THAT??  What is husbandy about it?  I guess.. maybe it sits around and does nothing?  I don’t know if the inventors were that funny though.  My husband is black, by the way.

GOOD: Soooooo Obama responded to our wedding invitation!  In classic politician style, he neither accepted nor declined, but wrote a loving note (by hand, I’m certain of it) wishing us a happy marriage and so on and so forth.  I think he might have cried a little too, I detected some wrinkly spots on the note that are surely teardrops.  Anyway, he didn’t say he wasn’t coming, so maybe we’ll see him there after all.  I AM right next door.. he could just pop over and have a beer or something.  I should have mentioned beer in my invitation hmmm.

All joking aside, this envelope *was* actually hand-addressed.  Which means it’s somebody’s job somewhere, to address these silly envelopes all day long, every day.  I wonder how much money they make….

Ok, I’ve skipped over a whole bunch of stuff but there’s no more time to blog… I have things to do today!  I’m getting married!!  I’m going Greene baby

jeff & beth

Ahhh…. we are one week away from our wedding day and so so much has happened in the last month, both good and bad.  I will find the time this week for a full and proper post!  But before too much time passed, I did want to send a big public hug to the new Stricker family.  Jeff and Beth got engaged several weeks before us and just last week had themselves a gorgeous wedding in historic Williamsburg.  Here we are with them — not quite two married couples yet… I’m still considering making a run for it.

They love to play games (board games?  mind games?  both?) so the theme was everything-games!  Guests played wedding madlibs and taboo and pictionary instead of signing a traditional guestbook, and the placecards and centerpieces were cleverly made with Jenga sets.  A set of enormous king and queen chess pieces adorned the wedding cake — although perhaps a queen and a pawn would have been a funny twist haha.  Regretfully, I did not take many pictures as I had injured my back and my feet shooting a wedding the week before and I just didn’t have any hustle left in me, but I’m certain their photographers did a bangup job.  My injuries did not stop me from performing a detailed examination of Beth’s GORGEOUS wedding dress though…. so pretty!

And Jeff very cleverly built his own photobooth set, which of course drew me like a fly to a honeypot.  His pictures have not been posted anywhere yet (perhaps thankfully), but this snap was taken at some point in the evening… Doug would have smiled for the camera but he was busy battling a mustached pirate in defense of my honor.  It was a very serious matter.

Congratulations Jeff and Beth!  We wish you a long and happy life together (and many many fat and smushy babies for me to play with!!!)

engagement pics

Hooray!  We received some pics back from our photographers for the engagement shoot.  God bless them, they found a way to make me not look like an alien  Please visit their blog and see their full blog post of our session here.  Thank you for a fun afternoon, Michele and Andy!  We’re looking forward to seeing you again on our wedding day, and making some great images!  No aliens allowed!

engagement weekend!

Less than 60 days away now, and I finally feel like it’s real.  We’re getting married!

This weekend, Doug’s family friends threw us a wonderful engagement party, and I found myself in a house filled with warm-hearted people who have watched Doug grow up and have known his quirks since he was a young silly boy.  Everyone was excited for the wedding celebration, but it was especially moving to hear everyone’s heartfelt (and sometimes learned-the-hard-way) advice for the days ahead of us after the wedding is over… the highs and lows of marriage, the need to stay together but still grow separately, and the reminders that we are surrounded by layers upon layers of people that love us and won’t let us fail.  It’s a funny thing — when I was growing up, my parents always told me that marriage is hard work.  Of course I was a ninny-headed dreamer and never believed them (you get married because you’re in love, right???)  But now that I’m a little older and have seen more of life, I think it’s pretty near miraculous when a couple can stay happily married for 20-30-40+ years.  I think Doug and I are really blessed to have so many great people in our lives that will be there for us when the tough times come, and I think I’m pretty blessed that on the good days, Doug’s the one that I get to spend them with  *cheeeeeeeeeeese*

Thank you to Anne and Ray, and Katie and Skeet, for our lovely engagement party.  How did you know exactly what my heart needed to prepare for marriage?  (PS I have a tendency to cry a lot, so cut it out )

We also headed to Chicago this weekend for our engagement photos with Misha Media Photography — I can’t wait to see the results, but I’m kind of afraid too.  The photographers, Michele and Andy, were exasperated with our (unintentionally) funny faces and variety of expressions that were apparently anything but loving.  They kept fruitlessly instructing “look loving!  look like YOU’RE IN LOVE!!!  AHHHHHH!!!!”, to which we’d look at each other and burst into laughter.  This should be interesting.  Michele and Andy, sorry we have weird faces!  Be kind to us please…!

Despite spending two full days in Chicago, I have zero pictures to show for it except for these, taken with my phone as we sat on the tarmac in Chicago.  See what our poor photographers had to work with?

Lastly for our engagement weekend, we mailed out the wedding invitations!  I’ve been cautioned against posting too many of the wedding details on our blog or facebook to avoid visits from wedding crashers (do people really do that?), so I can’t post pictures of our invitations until after it’s all over…. but this seems safe enough to post.  We invited a few high profile guests, one of which is right next door!  Think he’ll come?

We also invited the Pope and the Queen.  They don’t have anything important to do, right?

ethan

ethan samuel chen
nee 4.29.2011 9:27pm
7 lbs 3 oz

Welcome to the world, little guy!  Congratulations to Eric and Angela for welcoming a healthy and beautiful baby boy into the world.  Angie is amazing and I’m actually a little scared of her… she went to work and got a haircut while having contractions, and then pushed this baby out in a matter of 20 minutes.  Ethan, I have no worries that between supermom Angela and superdad Eric, you’ll be just fine growing up!

In other news.. 

We went on a weeklong cruise out of Miami on the incredible Norwegian Epic, with about a dozen of good friends, a few gallons of sunblock, and stretchy pants.  I’ll have to dedicate a future posting to it, since at first glance none of the pictures taken are appropriate for family sharing   I’ll add it to the list of trips I’m backlogged on blogging about, look for it some time this summer.

Doug threw his back out doing nothing, and has been flopping around the house with tremendous style while he heals up.  For three whole days, he wasn’t even able to rise to his feet, instead crawling around on all fours and confusing my already-neurotic dog.  Why are you crawling?  Playtime??  Wait areyoumakingfunofme?  Has an enemy entered the house???  Maybe I should hide.  By the way, are you hiding anything up your butt?  Omg lemme check…  Today, Doug is better and able to walk, although somewhat lopsidedly.

Many folks have asked me about wedding planning.  It’s going fine…. the truth is that I’m having some trouble making decisions.  We are 75 days away from The Big Day and there is no dress, no flowers, no cake, no…. what else does one need?  Eh.  I probably don’t have it.  Since I work in the wedding industry and am a very frequent and exacting party planner, I always thought I’d be the kind of bride to know exactly what I want, but I guess there’s no predicting these things.  I mean, it took me how many years to choose my forever-guy… in a matter of months, how am I supposed to pick my “the only dress that matters for the rest of my life” and my “you-only-get-one-chance-at-this” flowers and my “immortalized-forever-in-photos” cake, and so on and so forth?  I can’t possibly.  Eh it’s okay, I’m certain it will all work out fine in the end   The truth is that while the details are paralyzing, they really are irrelevant.  The one thing that I really want and care about is that we spend the day with people we love, and that we party like it’s the greatest day of our lives.

Finally, these are two of my favorite people in the world, who showed up at dinner the other night wearing the same shirt (unplanned).  THEYARESOCUTE.  God, I love them.

sleeping with maddy

Our dog Maddy is many things.. adorable.. emotional…. Machiavellian.  In recent months she has craftily discovered how to climb onto our bed unassisted, and does so often with great enthusiasm.  If we’re not home, she’ll do it to check out if I’ve left a glass of water out on my bedside table… or a piece of chicken <– hasn’t happened yet but who says dogs can’t have hopes and dreams.  If we have turned in for the night, she’ll lie in her own doggy bed for a little while before figuring we’ve fallen asleep, and then climb up to squish her way into the family bed.  I can almost hear the thoughts in her little furry head: one mississippi.. two mississippi….

Allow me to introduce what these nights are like.

First, this is what I call the H Formation:

The very tall and oblivious one is Doug, and I am the suffering one being pushed off of the bed.  The happy one in the middle is of course, Maddy.  I wasn’t sure how a stick dog was going to translate but I think it seems okay — it looks like a dog, right?  The H Formation begins innocently enough… Maddy climbs up into the bed and lies down between us.  She settles down happily and all is well.  Later on , only after I’ve reached the deepest of sleep, do the machinations truly begin.  She methodically moves each end of herself about four degrees at a time.  Okay move the head down two centimeters.. wait…. enemy appears to still be asleep hahah those idiots!  Move the butt up two centimeters.. pause… pretend to be asleep….  Okay keep going, move the head again..

At some point in the night, I wake up and find that Doug and I are about two feet further apart then when we started and I am being shoved off of the bed by a 17 lb. dog who has her snoring (read: rumbling) face planted firmly in my hip.

Note that her butt is also positioned to kill one of us outright in an unannounced chemical attack.  This hasn’t happenned yet, but it’s a big fear of mine.

Second formation is what I call Losing Ground: 

So this one starts out happily enough, with everyone taking up an appropriate amount of space on the bed.  All is peaceful, until one of us (usually me) turns on our side.  Usually when people do this, they don’t mean for it to be a permanent move, right?  Well if you share a bed with Maddy, it’s per-ma-nent — the only way to get out of the formation is to leave it entirely.  She perks right up when I begin to turn, and then in two shakes of a tail she’s occupied the large swath of bed that is left uncovered by where my legs were but a moment ago.  She then presses herself up against the back of my legs (because she loves me) and falls immediately back to sleep.  And then I’m stuck there for the rest of the night, cramped back and restless legs and everything.

By the way, what do you think of the fat non-stick drawing of the dog?  It looks a bit like a bug.  Haha, nonstick dog.  Like teflon.  Haha.

Lastly, this isn’t so much a formation as just an illustration of what happens if you get up in the middle of the night to use the restroom:

Note my nonstick dog’s expression of pure glee AND proximity to Doug’s mouth.  I shoo her away when I return to bed, but it’s a hollow victory when I have to lay my head down where she was just resting her ass.  I don’t believe anyone actually wins here.

Oh, but we love her so….

alex

Something else we did this weekend.. Mimi and I threw a surprise birthday party for Alex.  The 80s came back in full force for one day

We plastered the house with 80s posters (Goonies, ET, Breakfast Club, Iron Maiden, Bon Jovi, etc…), as well as lots of pictures of Alex in the 80s heheh.  And we laid out an assortment of 80s food… Hamburger Helper, Jello jigglers, Pop Rocks, Sunny D-lite… Lord, I have no idea how we all ate like that in the 80s and survived.  Alex was lured to my house with the promise of a small quiet dinner, and he looked like he was going to have a heart attack when we all suddenly start pouring out of various rooms, screaming and lookin a fool.  He was quite a sport though, donning the 80s getup laid out by his wife and proceeding to drink heavily and rock out at his birthday party!  It was indeed legendary.

Here he is, in his present-day awesomeness (and my pride-and-joy poster of the night, image provided by Mimi):

Dude, he was like an Asian MacGyver in the 80s, no?

Everyone was rocking some serious 80s-wear; We had old school rappers, Miami Vice-rs, acid-washed jeans, blue eyeshadow, and neon legwarmers galore.  I’m not posting any other pictures of folks here to save them any embarassment (you can see the pictures here, I didn’t take very many), but here is a snap of Doug and myself:

So at the end of the night, I got to thinking about how different the 80s were from today, and what my life will be like in 20 years.  By then I will be far older than Alex is today, but in 20 years I hope that I will have as much joy in my life as I do today, and a group of friends that love to get together and do silly things like this.  I also hope to be blessed with healthy children and to never lose the guiding hand of Mimi in my life (I think this is Alex’s real secret)    And even though he’s only a few years older than me, I look up to and admire Alex greatly as a family man and a person of integrity and honor.  I hope in 20 years to be half as awesome as he is now, and that he’ll always be around to be my “big brother”.

After the party is over, this is what real joy looks like:

Happy birthday, Alex!  Wishing you many more.

wedding rings

Wedding planning has been on the back burner lately with all of our travels and friends’ special dates and milestones (all happy things), but this weekend we did something that was just for us, and very special.  We made our own wedding rings.

We visited Master Jeweler Stephen James Clarke at his studio and he guided us through the process of making each other’s wedding rings.  Stephen is an amazing artisan, trained in the old ways of craftsman apprenticeship from another Master Jeweler before him.. he makes custom pieces for many organizations including the NBA, NFL, and NHL, has worked on Marie Antoinette’s crown, and was even asked to remove and reset the Hope Diamond.  Aside from being a complete rockstar in the world of jewelcraft, it turns out that he’s also an amazingly nice guy, patiently guiding us and letting us amateur-ly fumble our way around his studio.  He didn’t mind me screaming every once in a while also, when I thought I messed the ring up or when I almost set his bench on fire.  Sometimes people mind these things.

Our two wedding rings were made from one single piece of platinum, which I think carries a lovely symbolism to it.

After lots of steps, and some almost-setting-things-on-fire, and some muscle (yesihavemuscle!), the blob of metal begins to resemble two pieces of jewelry…

Here is Doug, worriedly examining my ring to see if he goofed. (He didn’t.)   There are pictures of me doing this too, but I have to look through them all before posting… I’m alternately crying and laughing hysterically in the pictures, neither of which looks very loving or romantic.

Several hours later, we had lovely matching platinum wedding rings.  In case you’re wondering why my ring looks so big, I chose a wide band to suit my personal taste in jewelry — I prefer large chunky pieces of jewelry, and my wedding ring will be no exception!  Luckily for me, as big as my hands are Doug’s are even bigger, which allows me to still feel like a petite lady

All in all, we had an amazing day with Stephen creating these memories, and we now have our wedding rings created with our own hands!  And tears, and possibly some blood   Trying on the rings was a real moment for me.  God, I love this man and I can’t wait to marry him <3

I will post a full set of pictures that show the full process at a later date!