We’re having an admittedly untraditional wedding. One of the few traditions that we did want to include is a Filipino favorite called the Money Dance. It’s always been one of my favorites to watch as a kid whenever I went to a Filipino wedding and it wouldn’t be right if I didn’t have it at my own. Since a lot of folks coming to the wedding aren’t Filipino and may be unfamiliar with the tradition, I thought it might be appropriate to describe it here so that people aren’t absolutely confused when it comes around.

There’s several variations, but basically what happens is the bride and groom start dancing to a slow waltz together, and people come up and pin dollar bills to their clothing. In exchange, they can cut in and have the pleasure of dancing with whomever they pinned the money. It’s a way for people to express their best wishes to the couple and to symbolically help them start their life together. Dancing continues until everyone who wants to dance with the couple has had a chance to, and a long dance is considered good luck.

Our only adjustments to the tradition are that we’ll be something in 4/4 time because that’s just such a swingin’ time signature, and we’ll be using tape instead of pins because Bronwyn’s worried about damaging her dress and because I’m weird about getting poked and shedding blood.

We’ve got a lot of really exciting stuff planned for this weekend. One of the things I just had to share to get everyone pumped for the wedding is the evening’s entertainment.

Once upon a time, Bronwyn and I went to an Of Montreal show, one of our all-time favorite bands. Among the opening acts was a DJ set from one DJ Jester the Filipino Fist. His energy was infectious and he blended the most eclectic and fun collection of guilty pleasures and all-out jams that we had ever heard. I danced hard that evening. We picked up one of his CD’s which has been a party playlist staple ever since.

Fast forward to a few months ago to when Bronwyn and I are were deep in the planning of our upcoming nuptials and the grand party that would ensue. On a whim, I checked out DJ Jester’s MySpace page and found at the end of his lengthy “About Me” the words “YES…J e s t e r DOES play weddings”. I could imagine no better way to entertain the entirety of our multi-generational, multi-regional, multi-music-tastey guest list, so I shot him an email. One thing lead to another and we eventually managed to book him.

Folks, bring your dancing shoes.

Here’s a couple of samples off of YouTube of Jester in action.

And here’s a little profile a San Antonio morning show did on him.

It’s the big week and Bronwyn and I are in a mad dash to get everything together for everyone for what promises to be a fun and awesome wedding weekend. After a great day yesterday in Claremont where Bronwyn tried on some makeup and we had lunch with Bronwyn’s parents who got in Saturday, we finished putting together a little map of the area for our out-of-town guests.

Click it for a much bigger version. You can also download a pdf copy of it.

For those who’ve never been to Claremont or haven’t been in a few years, the center of town is referred to as “The Village.” It’s less than a mile away from the Doubletree Hotel where most people will be staying. Roughly south of 4th St. and North of 1st St., it features many shops, restaurants, and banks (WaMu, BofA, and Wells Fargo) lining Yale Ave. primarily. Sine Bronwyn and I graduated, there has been a big Village expansion and many new shops, restaurants, and a Laemmle movie theater have popped up along Indian Hill Blvd. The Laemmle is showing Indana Jones. I hear it’s disappointing, though personally, I don’t know how you could possibly mess up Indy.

For restaurant options in the Village, I’d recommend Walters at Yale and Bonita for tasty lunches and dinners that have an interesting mix of Afghan, American, and Mexican influences. Full of Life, just west on Bonita, is a bakery that offers fresh soups and sandwiches. The Press is a great dinner and cocktails option and is located a bit south on Harvard. If you’re in the mood for pizza and such, you’re in luck because there’s a restaurant called “Pizza and Such” on Yale. For those wanting to eat in the comfort of their own hotel room, there is a Trader Joes grocery store located right next to the Doubletree. Bronwyn’s parents report that there is a breakfast buffet at the Doubletree, though that costs $14.50.

We’re a little more than a week away from the big day and quite excited. I expect that we’ll be spending our Memorial Day weekend working on final wedding projects like programs and table numbers and whatnot.

In case anyone was wondering about the weather for next weekend so they know what to pack, weather.com says it’s going to be nice and sunny with a high of 82 and low of 57. Claremont’s in the desert so nights do get chilly. This is going to be a marked improvement from the weather right now, which looks more or less like this:

I’m not even really kidding.

Bronwyn and I headed to the courthouse today in Beverly Hills to get our marriage license. It is a surprisingly easy process. Really, it comes down to filling out a form and paying $70 and BAM you’ve got yourself a marriage license. We were in and out in half-an-hour. Now we just need to get the license filled out by our officiant and a witness, sign it, mail it in, and we’re married.

In other news, we’re finalizing our guest list for the caterer, so if you haven’t sent in your RSVPs, please do, or expect a phone call from one of our parents soon. We can’t wait to see everybody!

The Honeyfund registry is up and will continue to be updated with more fun things as I continue planning the honeymoon. I’m thinking more delicious dinners and and mountain bike island tours and late afternoon horse rides. I have no idea how to ride horses, and my mountain biking skills are a bit… imperfect*, but we won’t let details like that stand in the way of us enjoying ourselves.

*It’s just a scratch and I should be completely healed up by the wedding and looking good for the photos.

The month of May is finally upon us, which  means we have less than 30 days until The Big One.  We’ll probably be updating the site with greater frequency (especially the “when and where” page) as scheduling details fall into place.  We’ve already put quite a few new things up, so feel free to poke around a bit!  Check back regularly for news as we finalize all those little details.  We can’t wait to see you all soon!

Jon and I just booked our honeymoon flights to Greece!  Thanks to the impending Delta/Northwest merger flights dropped by nearly $400 earlier today.  Good thing that we didn’t jump the gun and buy our flights over the weekend!  This is one of the few instances in which waiting on purchasing an airline ticket actually gets you a better deal.  Now we just need to book our ferry rides between the islands we’ll be visiting, plus our accommodations, and we’ll be all set.  We couldn’t be more excited right now. In Jon’s words (yelled repeatedly from the other room), “Oh baby, we’re going to Greece!” 

Wow, it feels like forever since I’ve updated this thing.  As I’m sure you can all imagine, we’ve been getting busier and busier as our wedding day rapidly approaches.  We actually were able to get a fair amount done over the weekend, which is a relief as I was starting to feel pretty stressed last week (of course I’m sure a lot of that has to work as much as anything else - our Music Director Designate, Gustavo Dudamel, is in town, so it’s all-hands-on-deck here for two weeks straight.  I’m exhausted).  But on Saturday night we visited our caterer for a menu tasting, and it was fantastic!  I don’t want to give too much away or raise expectations to unbeatable heights, but suffice it to say that we were very pleased with our options.  Hopefully we’ll actually have time to eat some of it at the wedding!

We’ve also started planning the honeymoon, which is mucho exciting.  We can’t finalize too many plans until a few other things fall into place, but we’ve started researching places to stay and formulating a rough itinerary, which is at least a start.  I also spent far too much time and money at REI this weekend trying to find things to pack for the trip.  Gotta love REI, but sure has a tendency to suck the life out of my bank account without me even realizing it.  So even though we haven’t gotten the whole thing mapped out just yet, the little details we’ve started on so far have me really pumped.  I’ve never been to Europe before (spend all my time in Japan instead!), so I’ve been looking forward to this for a really long time.  Oh, and speaking of the honeymoon, we’re also going to start setting up our honeyfund as soon as we figure a few more things out.  So for those who have inquired about the registry, we hope to have it up and running very soon.  Keeping checking the website for updates!

We sent out most of the invitations two Saturdays ago and have been getting a fair amount of RSVPs back. Tomorrow we’ll be sending out the last batch. Hopefully they all go through; I know a surprising number of Save the Dates didn’t make it to their intended destination for whatever reason.I was talking to my Dad today on the phone today, and I mentioned how I might need to get more glue for this last batch of invitations. “Glue?” He sounded surprised. “Yeah,” I replied, “to assemble a few more invites.” He thought Bronwyn and I had them made. I guess that’s a pretty good compliment. In fact it was arts and crafts time in the Jonwyn household. I designed the invites (though I can’t take credit for the illustration, that was done by this artist), then we printed them on our home printer, cut, glued, stamped, Bronwyn hand wrote all the names, tied a ribbon around it and voila! Invitations.

No time no post. Sorry. Anyways, I’m happy to report that this last Sunday, Bronwyn and I had our engagement shoot with Allana, our totally awesome wedding photographer. We spent a few hours wondering around downtown in the Grand Central Market, the Bradbury Building, the Biltmore Hotel, Pershing Square, and a bit of Echo Park. She just posted the results and they’re absolutely fantastic!Check out her blog or the online gallery to see more.In other news, official invitations should be going out very soon. I just need to find a few spare hours to finish up the design, hunt around for envelopes and what not, then cut and paste them together. It’ll be like arts and crafts time!Also, I said I’d post photos of the Save the Dates. If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve already received one, but just in case you haven’t and you’re curious, here’s a pic. Click to biggify.