he said, she said

yes, it’s true. my fiance is at disneyworld — on a “business trip”! and i’m here at home, alllll byyy myyyseeelf. (sing it with me!) don’t wanna be… alllll byyy myyyseeelf… anymore.

but i’m happy to report that i’ve been very productive while he has been away.

• photographer – check! well, i signed and mailed off the booking contract along with the deposit check. more about our photographer drama later. ARGH!
• marriage prep docs – check! i finally brought our marriage prep docs to father mike (i know, we completed all of that stuff weeks ago, but i’ve been lagging) and he mailed them off to the diocese of honolulu.
• hair stylist – check! i chatted with bonnie, the wedding hair stylist. i’ve been considering wearing my hair down, but bonnie recommended an updo for me because hapuna beach can be very windy. aack! no wonder i see so many photos of hawaii brides with their veils blowing horizontally! it makes for a cool-looking picture, but i think i’d prefer a ceremony in which chairs won’t be rolling around like tumbleweed =P btw, do i really need to have a “hair trial”?

on an unrelated note, my MOH (cheryl) also coincidentally happens to be at disneyworld on a “business trip”. don’t you think that’s a bit fishy?! greg (cheryl’s fiance) and i think so. you’d think that mike and cheryl could come up with a better cover story. sheesh! but greg and i ain’t no suckers — we’ve decided to have a vengeful affair of our own. shhh! don’t tell mike. actually, don’t tell cheryl either, k? thanks.

generally speaking, i am not a fan of buffets. fresh choice? no thanks. todai? rather not. hometown buffet? no way. but that’s because i like food — or, i should say, i like good food. and generally speaking, the food served at buffet style restaurants is not of the same quality and freshness of that found in finer restaurants. buffets tend to favor quantity over quality. buffets consist of mass-produced food that cannot be customized to my liking with an extra twist and half of lemon and a substitution of sauce (on the side, of course). i’ve never considered myself a foodie, but mike insists that i am! fine, i guess i am.

so imagine the surprise on the faces of my fiance, mother, and anyone who has ever dined with me, when i reported my leanings toward having a buffet reception rather than plated dinners! crazy, huh? but here’s the thing — weddings are the exception to the buffet rule! weddings are almost always at fancy venues where the food is of high quality, so why not provide our guests with options?

here’s a great example. alisa and steve got married last year at the ihilani resort on oahu. they had a buffet dinner reception which included prime rib, ahi poke, a huge spread of other entree choices and sides, and a vast spread of beautiful desserts. in addition to sides, salads, and dessert, mike ate three servings of prime rib. i, on the other hand, ate two heaping platefuls of poke, and nothing else. i’m not joking. the servers kept trying to clear my mountain of poke away to make room for prime rib or some other slab of meat, but i kept slapping their hands away. i ate all of that poke and more! now just imagine if we had plated dinners. my slice of prime rib would have been wasted (since i don’t eat things with eyelashes). the same goes for the other side dishes and desserts. and i would only have gotten a little bitty appetizer-sized serving of poke — probably just enough to fit on a little fried wonton. with the lack of nourishment, i wouldn’t have had enough energy to dance the night away!

bottom line is that a buffet allows me to eat more of the things i like and not waste the things that i don’t like. i recognize that i’m about as finicky as they come when it comes to food, so maybe more normal people don’t have the same issues that i do =P my mom is worried that if we have a buffet, nobody will pay attention to our toasts or first dance or other agenda items because they will be milling around the food table all night! mike believes that a plated meal is classier than a buffet. eh, i dunno about that. he also thought that a buffet would be cheap, but no way jose! it turns out that a nice buffet with good food is far more expensive than a plated meal — i guess they have to plan for people like me who regularly eat 3x the normal “serving size”.

buffet or plated (with choice of steak/fish/veggie) — whaddya think?