After evaluating my 11 goals for 2011, I’ve realized that I really need to work on following through with these “resolutions” as I’ve really only completed 2 out of 10 goals. Everything else was either a “nice try” or “epic failure.”

So here’s the game plan for the new year. But instead of just a list of different goals, I’m  setting specific metrics that will determine whether or not I am successful at the end of the year.

• Keep myself accountable – At work, there’s a big emphasis on setting goals, tracking how you did and evaluating what was winning and what was an epic failure. I think that in order to be more successful this year, I’m just going to have to take work home and make myself more accountable and keep better tabs on how I’m doing outside of work. Metric: Write 1 blog post x month to evaluate how I’m doing on each of these goals.

• Live long and thrive – I don’t have a big event (like a wedding) that I need to look good for; however, my sloth-like ways have got to stop. I probably won’t undergo another round of the South Beach diet, but I do want to make a concerted effort to improve my health and fitness. Where I’ll be living soon is a little gym. My goal is to go almost every day and do something for more than 15 minutes. (Don’t worry, I figure out a more structured workout plan for but for now, this is my goal….just get out of the house). Metric: Do some form of physical activity (walking to work/home and from the bus/train does not count) for at least an hour, 3 x week.

• Budget like a rock star – In case you haven’t heard, I have a mortgage now. This means that DL and I really need to get our finances in tip-top shape. I’m going to track every expense and every penny saved starting January 1 once I get my Excel spreadsheet back into shape. Metric: Update my spreadsheet daily. Success will be measured by not having to back track and figure out what I spent/saved in previous months.

• Organize & clean – Now that we have a house, DL and I have more space but that means we need to really make an effort to keep it clean and organized. Metric: Clean my house 1 x week; Success will be measured by how clean my house is.

• Organize and scan photos - I need to pick up where I left off last year and organize all my family photos digitally. Metric: I have no idea how many photos I have in boxes, but the goal is to have everything scanned and sorted by the end of 2012. An added bonus will be creating our wedding and engagement photo books and sending out photo holiday cards.

• Read more – I’m still not an avid reader, but think there are definite a good list of 30 book that I should read in the next two years. Metric: Read and finish 1 new book every two months.

• Make more - Maybe with a new house, I will make time to take craft. I miss this old hobby of mine but finding time to finish unfinished projects is tough. I need to figure this one out and get out of my rut. Metric: It doesn’t matter what I make, but I want to make finish 1 project a month and blog about it.

• Work Smarter – A few weeks ago, I did an exercise at work where I pretty much told my life story to my co-workers. After listening to my story, my boss pointed something out…something that I know to be true but haven’t really addressed in a big way. I have a long history of going hung ho with school or work and then burning out (usually within a 1-2 years). This usually manifests itself in sloppy mistakes, lack of motivation and a lot of naps. I need to curb this patter by having better balance in my life and working smarter, not harder. Metric: This goal is hard to measure so I’ll just have to evaluate based on how I’m feeling about work and life each month. If I am lethargic at home, it’s a bad sign. If I am suddenly a ray of sunshine everywhere I go, then I must be doing something right.

• Travel – I am not getting any younger and there are a number of not-places-where-you-want-to-travel-with-kids that are on my travel bucket list. Now that I have unlimited PTO (with manager okay), I want to take advantage and do some much-needed traveling. Metric: Cross off at least two locations from my travel bucket list this year.

• Learn A New Skill - I’ve been toying with a number of things that I want to learn/relearn – whether it’s a new language, musical instrument, dance or combat – this is the year that I want to make this happen. Metric: Cross off at least one accomplishment or language from my bucket list.

• Cook More - I am by no means a great cook. Most of the food that I make is hit or miss, but what I would like to do is learn a few new recipes this year.Metric: One of DL’s and my favorite restaurants is Thomas Keller’s AdHoc in Yountville, CA. My cousin gave us the official cookbook (along with the official French Laundry cookbook in a set). We’re going to try and make everything in this book by the end of the year and blog about it. Yea, yea, I know. I’m taking a page from Julie & Julia…so what.

• Have a Last Harrah- DL and I plan to start a family one day but not today. It is my hope that we’ll live a little more before we really seattle down.Metric: Complete 50% of this popular bucket list (70 things to do before you have kids) and 50% of this SF specific list (7×7′s 100 things to do in SF before you die).

Since 2009, I’ve been keeping a New Years tradition on this blog where I set goals for the upcoming year and evaluate how I did on last year’s goals. I also make the length of the list match the year (e.g., 11 goals for 2011)…which at some point is probably not a good idea, but for now, what the heck.

So how did I do in 2011? Some goals were met (major wins), some were not (epic failures) and with some, I made a real effort in the beginning but blotched it in the end (nice try). And in case you forgot, here are the goals I set last year.

If I were to pick a theme for the next year — something that I need to keep in mind and  work on constantly, it would be to “follow through.” There were way too many unmet goals and unfinished projects from this past year…though I will say the most important ones were met

1. Become a better blogger – (nice try) I did a good job of blogging frequently about wedding planning in the beginning but let’s just say I got derailed by higher priorities (e.g., the new job, blogging for work and actually planning the wedding). I can honestly say that as much as I would like to have shared all the details of my wedding in real time, I choose sleep and TV over blogging more often than I would like to admit.
2. Live long and thrive – (nice try) I didn’t drop any more weight like I was planning to do at the beginning of 2011, but I did manage to keep the weight I lost in 2010 off until after the wedding. As for what happened after the wedding, let’s just say, I feel like I have traveled back in time to pre-weight loss 2010.
3. A pirate’s life for me – (epic failure) Instead of rebuilding my music collection, I have a great talent for erasing whatever I have by accident. I think for 2012, I’m going to change this to steal whatever DL has and use Pandora.
4. Budget like a rock star – (nice try) Since January 1, I did a good job of tracking every expense and every penny that I saved on Excel…but what I didn’t account for was the monkey wrench that combining my finances with DL’s would cause (not to mention the lack of time as the wedding crept up). I’m still working through the kinks but actually keeping this resolution next year will be super important since DL and I have some major bills to pay now.
5. Organize & clean – (epic failure) Our room is still messy and somehow we are okay with it. I know the cats enjoy it but things are going to change soon….no more living with unfinished laundry, paper vomit and dust/hair.
6. Project photo sort - (nice try) DL and I made a photo slide show for the wedding and we sorted through a bunch of photos (I even made a nice photo book for our parents) but is this project far from done….not by a long shot!
7. Read more – (epic failure) I’m still not an avid reader who prefers to turn to Google News and Wikipedia for almost everything. Though I will say, that I am reading more magazines these days.
8. Make more - (nice try) What I learned is that DL is more crafty than I thought and that I have AWESOME friends and family. For the wedding, we made favor boxes, getaway car decorations, invitations and table cards. Everything turned out great thanks to them
9. Kick ass and take names – (major win) If I did anything right in 2011, it was kicking ass at my new job. I’ve surpassed all my expectations about what I can do and as icing on this cake, I was promoted last month.
10. Get Married - (major win) I got married to my best friend and planned a super kick-ass wedding that super organized and somewhat within budget.
11. Travel –(nice try/epic fail) I’m on the fence between calling this a “nice try” or an “epic fail” because we did not go anywhere on my travel bucket list. We went to Hawaii (how original, right?) — though technically, I’ve never been to Maui…just Oahu and DL’s never been. It wasn’t as exotic as I would have hoped, nor was it place that I was dying to go….but our honeymoon was pretty fantastic. The most memorable things we did were: (1) waking up at 2AM to drive up a dead volcano and watch the sun rise, (2) go snorkeling in the ocean, (3) go on a random road trip to Maui’s cowboy country and rainforest.

Tip #1: Color swatches are your friend, don’t leave home without it. Seriously. And, if all else fails, introduce accent colors to your theme to offset your mismatched colors. 

To kick off my “making the wedding” (i.e., I have too much free time now that I’m not planning a wedding) post-wedding recap series, I’m going to start with our theme and color. Given how this detail pretty much sets the stage for everything else, you would think that I had a clear vision about what our wedding would look and feel like from the get-go. This my friend couldn’t be further from the truth.

You see, this is what happens when you read too many issues of Martha Stewart Wedding and spend too many hours scrolling through wedding blogs. There are just too many great ideas that it feels almost impossible to make a decision. As DL and the people closest to me describe me, I can be frustratingly indecisive when it comes to making decisions for myself. (I’m perfectly okay making decisions at work for my company and my former clients, but there’s just something about being decisive on personal matters that gets me stuck).

So what came first, the color or the theme? For us, it was the color. It had to be some shade of red because it’s (a) a traditional Chinese wedding color, (b) signifies good luck in Chinese tradition and (c) I really didn’t want to hear any “surprise” complaints from certain relatives and/or future relatives about why we didn’t use red. So red it was.

The real question that you should be asking though is — how did you decide on which shade of red to use?

My mom’s not very traditional. She would have loved to see a white wedding, but seeing as how that is a funeral color for most Asian people (you may recall this episode of 30 Rock when Liz Lemon buys a wedding dress), my grandma and MIL probably wouldn’t be very keen on this pick. So instead, her main suggestion to me was: NO CHINESE RED. What is Chinese red? You know that bright, brassy shade used on the flag flown in the P.R. of China that is sometimes borderline orange (see below). Done wrong, it can be really cheesy and downright gaudy if you pair it with the right shade of gold (keep looking below).

Exhibit A: Typical Chinese Wedding Invite in Red & Gold

Exhibit B: Chinese Flag, also Red & Gold

So instead, we (as in me, my mom and DL) decided on a “deep red” to keep it classy. We made this decision official by picking bridesmaid dresses in this color (more on the actual picking of the bridesmaid dress saga later) sometime in September of last year. After that was settled, it was a done deal I thought. I was naive…very naive to think that I had a main color and could easily find other wedding stuff to match. Over the next few months, I painfully learned that “deep red” is a color without a mutually agreed upon name. In some circles, it is “maroon”. In others, it is “burgundy”. For the more creative types, it is called “fig” while others just say “dark red.”

Long story short, I eventually came to terms with the fact that there was no way I could color match everything and get the same shade of deep red. This is when I discovered this gorgeous inspiration board on Head vs. Heart and a light bulb went off in my head. Why stress myself out with a trying to match a single shade of red. Instead, let’s just make our lives easier and declare our color theme to be “mixed berries.” This way, I could integrate more accent colors and allow for different versions of red that were kind of similar, but not really if you looked carefully.

[Fig Inspiration Board by Head vs. Heart]

In case you are one of the handful of people who actually read this failed attempt at a wedding blog, I somehow went from being 70 days out from my big fat Chinese wedding to now being married for a full two weeks. Needless to say, time flew by a bit too quick and it was a pretty perfect day and one better than expected honeymoon (what can I say, was thinking of a more exotic and out of the box location than Hawaii when I drew up my dream vacation list).

So today is my last day of my “I won’t be in the office for the next few weeks, ’cause I’m running off to get hitched to my bestest best friend” vacation. How was it? Well, it kicked off like any other typically Sunday for me. The night before I passed out before showering and brushing my teeth (how unhygienic of me) while DL watched a horror movie (that I didn’t want to watch and decided to wiki the plot so that I know what’s going on but made sure to not look at the TV). This morning, I was rudely awakened around 4AM by my not-so-favorite cat because he wanted breakfast. Note: DL was not disturbed at all, cause this cat is smart and knows that only I will actually wake up. But because I don’t want him to get into a more regular habit of thinking he can manipulate me, I didn’t get out of bed and then proceeded to play this annoying game where I push the cat off the bed multiple times while he keeps hopping back on to walk in circles on my and around my head so that I’ll wake up and feed him. Around 730AM (which to me is a more acceptable meal time), I got up and fed him.

The day has been for the most part, pretty uneventful, which is a nice break from a rather very, very eventful two weeks. And now, for my next trick, I’m going to focus on doing recaps before I forget those nitty-gritty details that I would have loved to share with you at that specific moment when it happened but was a little preoccupied with said task and oh yea, did I mention I have a full-time job and already don’t get much sleep. Let’s see how this goes…..and then I’ll really call this a wrap.

The latest — DL said to me last night, “I checked our website and did you know we’re 70 days out…that means we have 10 more weekends to go.”  Oy! So here’s what’s left on our to-do list now that we’re getting close and well into Phase 6: Details.

Phase 1: The Engagement

• Buy ‘The Ring’ & Get Engaged
• Announce Engagement & Have Engagement Party
•  Create Master Plan

• Take Engagement Photos (Had beautiful shoot at a historic movie theater, beach and park….will share the photos in a later post)
• Book Makeup Artist (Killed two birds with one stone here by doing my makeup & hair trial SUPER EARLY and getting my make up done for the engagement shoot….highly recommended strategy)
• Book Officiant (My awesome cousin – the Internet-ordained minister – will be marrying us! Woo-hoo!)
• Buy Bridesmaid Dresses (More on this in a later post, but in trying to get a good deal, I “rebought” these dresses at least three times because a new sale. The moral of the story is — timing is everything) 

• Design and send Save-the-Dates (STDs) (With my professional illustrator brother’s help, I pretty spent most of my Thanksgiving holiday making our save the dates cards)
• Build and Launch Wedding Website (This project single-handedly held up our save-the-dates since it took me FOREVER to finish )
• Register (Correction, setting up and filling out our registry is actually what held up our save-the-dates. My indecisiveness reached new heights cause asking for gifts can be so awkward)
• Buying Clothes for the Men Folk (Since DL said no to a penguin suit, we settled on suits. So what better day to buy suits than Black Friday at 6AM. More on that later…along with near-impossible to find ties t0 match the specific shade of maroon for the bridesmaid dresses).

• Determine Wedding Colors and Theme (The best way to describe our color & theme is fig, mums and butterflies. Normally, the theme and colors would be settled before you pick the invites but let’s just say the invites pretty much made the decision for us)
• Design, Assemble and Send Invitations (Took us TWO MONTHS to finish this project — from scoping out stationary makers to buying everything form Paper Source and making them ourselves in a factory assembly line for several weekends)
• Book Florist (The moral of the story with this vendor pick is “age before beauty.” In other words, don’t be fooled by the flashy website and fancy office space…20 years of experience and an actual portfolio is sometimes all you need.) 
• Book DJ (This has to be the most typical task that is assigned to the groom. Needless to say, DL booked the DJ and is building out the play list)

• Bridal Shower (Kudos to my wonderful bridesmaids for throwing me an awesome tea party…more photos and stories to come)
• Order Wedding Bands (Technically done…unfortunately, the jeweler ordered the wrong size for David so we’ll need to make another trip back in a month to pick it up)
• Paper Production (With the invitations out of the way, now its time to make the programs, escort cards, table number cards, misc decorations and the ever so important day-of play book)
• Book Ceremony Musician(s) (Scoping out two possible vendors right now…but I’m thinking strings – either acoustic or electric would be great )
• Cake (Oh crap, the cake….how did we forget about the cake until now….)
• Transportation (No, I won’t look sweet on a bicycle built for two….that simply won’t do. We’ll need a bus for 20+ … feel free to send suggestions our way.)
• Ceremony (So what’s this going to look like? I’m not sure….need to think about this some more)