judyonthenet

We survived our two week journey through Fiji and New Zealand and got back home Monday evening. We’re organizing our pictures and video so we can thoroughly bore you guys to death, so check back in a couple days.

New thing I learned today: In addition to the fruit, the word “kiwi” can refer to the bird, a New Zealander, or the New Zealand dollar. In New Zealand, the fruit is primarily called “kiwifruit” instead of “kiwi”.

There won’t be any posts for a while, since we’re officially on our way to our honeymoon. The only flights to Fiji are from LAX, so we’re kicking it in the City of Angels at Sandra’s place for a day. (Thanks for taking us around and letting us sleep over, Sandra!) I’m super excited, though not exactly super prepared… might try to do some last minute shopping in LA. Anyway, a basic map of some places we’re planning to go to:

I’m unsure about internet access during our trip or if I’ll have time to post, so I’ll have to see y’all in December! :)

New thing I learned today: In New Zealand driving, “Yield” is instead called “Give Way”.

In my effort to show my fiance how much I love him along with trying to get linked in a gaming blog (ZOMG KOTAKU LOOK CAKE), I decided to spend quite a bit of cash to get Kelvin a surprise groom’s cake that was video game related. I know his favorite game of all-time is either The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past or Super Metroid (I forgot the order already), so I wanted to do one of those. I’ve already seen some pretty awesome Zelda cakes, so I’d figure I’d go for something Super Metroid related. The only Metroid-related dessert I’ve ever seen that was any good was some super-cute gelatinous metroid, so I was curious what something would look in the realm of cake. For this task, I enlisted the highly-Yelped cake artisan Debbie Goard of Debbie Does Cakes.

My first instinct was to go for Samus’ helmet, but then I thought that maybe it’d be weird to pretty much be eating Samus’ head. So I originally sent a request to make a cake looking like Samus’ gunship, based off this First 4 Figures statue. Oftentimes, her ship shares a lot of similarities with her helmet, so I thought it’d be a good substitute. But after some thinking (and consultation with other folks who’ve played Metroid), I went back to the helmet because it was more recognizable, even to gamers who haven’t played Metroid games. (For the Metroid nerds that suggested I do metroids or Mother Brain… come on, there’s a bunch of non-gamer old people at the wedding…)

I sent Debbie links to another First 4 Figures statue page and the Metroid Database, but she was still having a hard time deriving the shape. What I ended up doing was, when Kelvin wasn’t home, busting out Super Smash Bros. Brawl, going to the trophies section, and taking video of relevant Samus trophies, zooming in and rotating so that the helmet could be seen at all angles. I even went through the effort of beating Classic Mode to get another trophy for more reference. I made the videos flv and sent links of the videos to her.

Debbie was cool with the idea, despite being a non-gamer and having no clue as to what Metroid is. All communication was through email, though once the payment, reference links, and order form was sent and all details were finalized, I didn’t hear from her ever again. I never got a preview of the cake (though it seems like she posted it on her flickr the day before my wedding), but based on her past work, I was fairly comfortable she could pull something together. And indeed she did. The final product at the reception:

Awesome. I didn’t get to see Kelvin’s expression seeing the cake since he ditched the bridal party to hang out in the reception area prior to the official bridal party entrance, but I’m told by groomsmen and other nerdboys that he was pleased to see the cake. Kelvin told me that, before he saw it, people kept asking him about what the cake was, and he had no idea what they were talking about. Ever wondered what the inside of Samus’ head looks like? Well, here ya go:

Samus brains = chocolate cake with chocolate chips and mint buttercream. Kelvin’s a fan of mint chip stuff, so this was best closest custom flavor I could get with Debbie’s repertoire of flavors. The cake is a bit on the sweet and heavy side for me, especially in comparison to the main wedding cake from La Patisserie, but it wasn’t bad at all. You can see from the cake slice some sort of weird sugary clay stuff used for sculpting the front. (It’s the yellowy stuff in the slice picture. It tastes like… sugary clay.)

Overall, I’m pretty stoked with the final product. The restaurant originally thought it was the wedding cake, so it hogged the wedding cake table spot until the real wedding cake people arrived and had to convince the restaurant otherwise. Too bad I didn’t maximize my nerd cred by having a Metroid wedding cake as well. Yeah, too bad.

Note: I’ll add more pics from other people (from pro photog, different angles) when I get them.

Picture yoinked from Debbie Does Cakes’ flickr, prior
to exposure to high humidity (it POURED that day)

Edited 11/11 to add: Apparently a couple people have discovered the cake through Debbie’s flickr, including Geekologie and Metroid Quarantine, with the latter getting on Kotaku, and then GoNintendo and back to Metroid Database (we’ve come full circle!).

Debbie told Metroid Quarantine:

The cake was a mint chip cake hand carved from round cakes, stacked, and iced in buttercream and then covered in fondant. The metallic parts were made of belgian modelling chocolate and painted with silver highlighter dust. The entire cake was airbrushed to add color and dimension to the metallic parts as well. The cake was a surprise for the Groom, he and the bride are huge fans of the game.

And yeah, all the parts that were neither cake nor buttercream didn’t taste too good. (Fondant in general is quite nasty.) I don’t remember how the modelling chocolate tasted, but I still have half of the helmet in my freezer, so I’ll have to make note of how it tastes later.

New thing I learned today: The idea of a groom’s cake originated in the South. It’s a cake separate from the frilly main wedding cake that often reflects the groom’s interest. The legend surrounding the groom’s cake is that if a single woman takes a slice of the cake and puts it under her pillow the night she receives it, she will dream of her future husband.

And freaking exhausted! What a day yesterday, with the whole getting married, seeing a bunch of people I haven’t seen in a while, and massive rainstorm. Overall, it was a great day. The whole thing was an interesting experience, so expect a lot of blog posts coming up. Especially since now I actually have some frickin’ time!

Well, technically, not necessarily mentally. Kelvin and I went to the county clerk-recorder office (located near SJ Japantown) to pick up our marriage license, something I’ve been told is kinda important for getting married. To get a marriage license, you need to bring yourself, your future spouse, a filled-out application, IDs, and $79 and go wait in line. If you’ve got another $80 to blow and are in a rush, you can get actually get married while you’re at it. Rings and cameras just an additional $10 each!

It wasn’t very busy at 1:30 on a Friday afternoon. I saw a two or three people go up to windows alone, which was curious since I thought you needed two people to get anything done. There were also two lesbian couples in front of us, probably moving things along with the upcoming vote on Proposition 8. (Interestingly enough, there was also a sticker against prop 8 stuck under the “Line begins here” sign. I wonder if the clerk knew about that. btw, PLEASE VOTE! Especially NO on prop 8.) The wait wasn’t too long, especially since some people in the line didn’t have their applications ready and had to go to the back of the line and fill it out. I don’t really get why they put the applications in the front of the line and not towards the back, but whatever.

When it got to our turn, we gave the clerk lady at the window our application, which she typed onto the marriage license. She gave us some information sheets, including a fun health pamphlet called “Your Future Together” which talks about all the possible ways your new life together can bring you misery (i.e. domestic violence, STDs, genetic disorders). We paid the $79 fee and got a receipt (you know, for returns or exchanges :P ). We had to raise our right hand and confirm the application information was correct. Then we were told to sign the marriage license, at which point she recommended that we take pictures since it’s the only time we’d sign anything.

Kelvin signs…

And then I sign. I broke their “stay-inside-the-box” rule…
hopefully my marriage will still be valid :P

And we were done! I was surprised at how easy it is to get a marriage license; you don’t even need to give your social security number. Now we just need to find a witness and somebody who’s ordained, and then we’re REALLY done.

New thing I learned today: You can pay an extra $4 to get a confidential marriage license, where the record is not public and only the people getting married can get copy of the marriage certificate (except by court order). For a confidential license, you can only get married at the clerk recorder’s office, and both parties must already be living together.

You people know who you are :P Whether or not you’re actually coming, please RSVP ASAP. Or at least let me know when you will know for sure. It’ll make our lives a lot easier.

In case you can’t tell from my complete lack of posting, we’re majorly busy. Bleh, tired.

We finally, FINALLY finished invitations this weekend. A lot of good that Monday off did me; I’m like almost a week behind schedule. It’s okay tho, as I believe we’re still within the traditional timeframe of 6-8 weeks. We sent our first batch Friday to friends and relatives that are either further away or we don’t see as often, and today we sent the last of them. (With the exception of three invitations of people who really need to give us their addresses. *ahem*ERIC*cough*) I’ll go into greater detail about invitations once more people have had a chance to receive them. I’m quite happy with them.

The last batch of invites, including the bundles heading for Taiwan

I’m not off the hook yet tho. I have quite a few of things I still need to work on for the wedding (ceremony music, name cards, accessories, booze), with the most urgent being the working on my wedding webpage. And I’m not going to link it yet since it’s still majorly under construction, but the website is at least functional, with the most important functional function being the RSVP feature. I am so, SO grateful that someone has already developed a Wordpress plugin for RSVPs. It’s called the Google Docs RSVP Guestlist Plugin, and it uses a Google Docs spreadsheet, which I thought was interesting. The plugin could still use more features and allow more customization, but at the moment, it seems quite functional. The fact it uses Google spreadsheets makes it easy to tally the attendance and edit people’s entries. I had to modify it a little bit to fit our needs, so we’ll see up to the wedding if anything breaks. So far tho, it has been a great timesaver. We even got our first RSVP today! (Yay! ONE guest!) I guess the wedding’s officially on now. Scary!

Now that invites are out and we’ve got hits on the wedding website, Kelvin and I checked out Bed, Bath & Beyond today to attempt to fill out the registry. I could do without a registry, but I’ve been told that sometimes traditional American guests are totally lost without one. We ran around with the scan gun and managed to find some items, but it’s still iffy, especially with the stuff Kelvin was putting on there. (1000-thread count sheets… I mean, really?) At least it’s more than 4 items now.

Kelvin with the scan gun at BB&B a couple months ago,
when we only managed to scan two flatware sets

Anyway, with invites done, I should have more time to post again. Apologies for the lack of content the last couple weeks.

New thing I learned today: The higher the thread count for the down comforter, the more dense the fabric is and the less likely down feathers will pop out of the comforter. Also, many down comforters come with warranties that range from 10-years to lifetime.