Our Memorable Moments

Today’s another productive Saturday for us. We started our day with visiting the Ralston Hall Mansion bright and early in the morning. A registered National Historic Landmark, it is a beautiful Victorian mansion with a very rich history. The mansion, now owned by Notre Dame de Namur Unirversity, has somewhat fell into ill repair, but one can definitely imagine how grand it used to be.

Then, we went to Ruby Hill Golf Club after lunch. It is a little out of the way since it’s in Pleasanton, but it’s a lot more than what we expected. A friend of ours just briefly mentioned it during dinner one day. Who would have guessed it’s now our top, and most likely final, choice of venue! :)

We rushed to Fay Ton’s wedding in Fremont as soon as the appointment with the catering manager of Ruby Hill ended. It’s a nice little house inside a senior rehabilitation complex. I didn’t expect it to be so chilly in April, so I ended up freezing my butt off. But, I enjoyed the evening nonetheless because Fay Ton and Denise were very sweet and affectionate to each other.

Mark has found two more houses for us today. This time, in Santa Clara. The houses are beautiful, and the prices are relatively affordable. But, from being in the area for just five to ten minutes, we’ve learned that houses in the airport noise zone are simply not acceptable for us – even with triple-paned windows.

We went on our first house shopping tour with Mark today. His professionalism really astonished us. No only did he manage to find ten quality houses to show us, but he had planned out the entire route and created a bounded booklet with all the necessary information for us. We had shopping around for houses for a couple of weeks on our own, but having a realtor who know what he’s doing really makes all the difference in the world. After seeing houses in both Sunnyvale and Milpitas, we decided, of the two cities, Milpitas fits our needs and wants more.

We continued with our hotel-search and went to six hotels on Saturday. Five in SF downtown (i.e. Nikko, Marines’ Memorial Club and Hotel, Pan Pacific, Palace Hotel, and Westin St. Francis), one in Redwood Shores (i.e. Sofitel). Sofitel was one of our top choices because we had really enjoyed Florence’s reception and banquet there. However, the hotel is being renovated right now, and there’s no telling if the look and feel of the hotel in the future will fit our taste. Also, we didn’t like the possibility of being cooped up in the corridor in ballroom area during reception. So, unless we like what we see when the renovation is done, it’s out of consideration.

Of the SF downtown hotels, we liked the Westin St. Francis the best. If we were to have our reception and banquet there, we’d have the entire Imperial floor to ourselves. (That floor is used exclusively for functions and is not accessible to non-invited guests.) The Garden Court of the Palace Hotel is gorgeous, but we didn’t feel it’s worth the price the hotel is asking for rental. The ballrooms of Marines’ Memorial Club and Hotel are pretty, but the hotel itself is too small. Also, we didn’t feel comfortable with the venue having such a strong affiliation with the military. The lobby of Pan Pacific is descent, but the ballroom isn’t impressive at all. And, finally, Nikko looks more like an office building than a hotel, so needless to say, we won’t consider the Nikko either.

We went to two places for potential wedding banquet location. First we went to Chenery House. It was a very interesting building. The owner had a large collection of paintings and objects, which made it a private museum. It also had a indoor pool. However, the inside was kind of old and it didn't have a large single ballroom. Then we visited Omni Hotel in downtown. It was very new and classy, and the price was reasonable. But the ballroom was too crowded for about 150 people. That night we went to Euborn's new place in Brisbane for a house warming party.

Alice hosted a music party at her place. A lot of people from VOV went and either played musical instruments or sang. They also showed their talents in cooking and brought all kinds of snacks.

We had lunch with Ruth and had the ring resized to fit your finger in San Francisco. We also got change to take a look at our potential wedding rings. Seems eternity style would be our first choice.

We started our house hunting. We just wanted to look around during Saturday afternoon, but after visiting a couple open houses, we ended up in at a townhouse in Milpitas, and we wanted to place a bid on it. Your Aunt helped us to put up the offer, and we visited that place again the next day, deciding it wasn't that good. However, after looking around in that area, we found another single family house which we liked, and we wanted to bid on that one. After some careful thoughts, finally that evening we decided to restrain ourselves a bit and not to bid on anything until we had time to do more research on the market. Thus ending a very dramatic and exhuasive 2-days. We almost bought two houses.