John and Catherine's Wedding

We have a place!!

So Catherine and I went to the Fragrant Hills Hotel on Saturday to check it out as a location, and knew as soon as we saw it that it was where we wanted to have our wedding.

We went back on Sunday with Jane (Ma Jing) to meet with the manager, and left having confirmed a reservation for the 22nd of August.

The hotel is actually inside the Fragrant Hills Park, and was designed by I.M. Pei. It's not kept up as well as it should be, but is still a beautiful place. We're hoping to have both the ceremony and the banquet outside in the back garden.

The hotel's website is here. There's a link to an "English" version of the website, but it leads to nowhere. There's only one picture of the hotel (a distance shot) on the website, so we've taken some pictures and posted them here.

We're so excited to have a location!! There are still a lot of details to work out, but everything's going according to schedule. Next up is confirming the hotel that guests will stay at.

Right now we have a place that, as long as we reserve five rooms or more, will give us four-star double rooms for 300RMB/night (about 36USD). We haven't gone to check it out yet, though, so we can't confirm anything. The hotel's in a great location convenient to the subway.

1/3?

Looks like we've found our location! More later... ;)

Updated "In Beijing"

I updated the "In Beijing" section of the website with more information about how expensive it is to travel in Beijing, and added a section on Weather (not much there yet, but it should be expanding in the future). Catherine and I spent the day looking for apartments to rent.

Labor Day Wedding Planning Extravaganza

Catherine and I had three goals heading into this May 1st Labor Day holiday, which lasts for the first seven days of May:

1. Decide on a place to have the wedding
2. Find an apartment to rent
3. Find and apartment to buy

So far we've accomplished none of the three, but tomorrow we're checking out apartments and Saturday will take us out to the Fragrant Hills to a possible wedding location. For apartments, we're looking for a place near Beijing University, where Catherine works. The location we're checking out for the wedding is the Xiang Shan (Fragrant Hills) Hotel, apparently designed by I.M. Pei. We're looking for a place where we can have both the ceremony and the reception, thereby minimizing the amount of travel on the wedding. So far, the Xiang Shan hotel sounds promising.

We'll let you know how the visit goes!

Health, safety, immunizations, and money

I just finished updating the Getting to Beijing page with information on health, safety, immunizations and money in China.