It's like you wake up in the morning on a regular working day, go to the office, have lunch, meet people, do stuff, go back home, cook, read, do whatever... and then hug Steve Wozniak, one of the Pirates of the Silicon Valley... the CO-FOUNDER of APPLE :D
My husband Musss' (Tik) is a huuuu~ge fun of Apple iDevices so we couldn't but join Armcomedy Narek, Tik's oldest friend, in his great initiative to go to the airport to meet Woz, arriving to Armenia to receive the Global Award of the President of the RA for Outstanding Contribution to Humanity through IT 2011.
So 2 hours before the arrival we started the preparation process, we made a poster with the Apple logo in tricolor to properly welcome the man to our country, put on the T-shirts with Apple logo, took the iPods with "WE ♥ WOZ" quotes and were off to go when the idea just PUNCHED my head: "OMG, I need to take some REAL Apples!!!!" :D
We arrived at the airport 9 minutes before the landing and there
was NO BODY in the beautiful, newly constructed arrivals terminal of the airport... (here
when I say no body, I mean absolutely NO BODY!!!). So we were standing
there waiting joking how happy Woz was going to be to have someone to
meet him, it's pretty strange that there was no one there to meet him.
We were even thinking that we would take Steve Wozniak to the hotel in
OUR CAR :D
All 5 of us were pretty sure that we were at the right place, on the
right time waiting for the right person to arrive...especially after meeting
Raffi Hovhannisian there :D... thinking who would take WOZ to the old VIP
arrival hall when there is this beautiful newly constructed NON-VIP ternimal ?! :D ... and with this though in our minds we waited there for 30 minutes
if not more.
waiting for Woz at the airport new terminal
happily tweeting :D
guys looking for Woz Yerevan Check-ins or tweet :D
Musss' <3 Apple :D
On the 20th minute of waiting for Woz we started to doubt the right place, right time and right person thing :D
looking for tweets, check-in, mentions, info... anything about his arrival
Arpik: "mmm :) by boss is more than sure that he is in the arrivals VIP Hall" :D
Ruuun Forest, Ruuuuuuuun!!! to the VIP hall :D
and we actually CAUGHT HIM!!!! ... Woz at first sight/first reactions :D"
Woz was giving an interview to MediaMax, I guess, when we arrived
Woz's wife was the first to get impressed about the tricolor logo poster :D
and then Woz and everybody else noticed us :D
guys moment of fame :D
Woz takes out the iphone to take a shot of the guys :)))
he looks quite impressed, doesn't he :D
the moment :D
Guys posing for the shot :D
and of course he joined them for a group pic :D
time to sign the iPods :D
signing
Musss's ipod is signed :D
Woz: "Hold on, I'll take a pic of you all :) ... I noticed all your phones are black and mine is white :D"
Thanks everybody, now we have to go :)
Did I mention that I was the camera man of the day ?! So I was
taking pictures and everyone (almost) had a picture with Woz. By the time I
thought my friend Aprik and I should also have a pics with him... he
was already about to leave. I called Arpik to come up, rushed to him,
took an apple from the Camera bag handed it to him saying "This is for
you" and...
... leaving
no pic, but a hug instead :-)
On the way back home we all were really really excited and happy. My husband even remembered that it was actually also our 2nd month wedding anniversary that day and said "Musss'ik, this was my present to you" :D
The day was super exciting and not yet over... my photos were going to be published on Pan.ARMENIAN.net... I was soooo nervous and worried to be able to provide at least not bed shots among all the beautiful shots that PanARMENIAN.net super cool photographers do daily... So here I can't help but send a HUGE THANK-YOU to Vahan Stepanyan - Head of Photo agency at PanARMENIAN Media for improving the shots as best as they could possibly be :)))
So here they are "Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is welcomed at Zvartnots Airport "
p.s. Can I have a HUG from BRAD PITT as the 3rd month wedding anniversary present?! :D
Wedding is magical, and saying this I not only mean the wedding day but the whole preparation
process as well. Sometimes the magic disappears, when one gets too
much into the administrative-messy-fussy logistics, but here is my moto for the
weddings “If you want magic, create magic”.
So this is how it worked for us too.
Not to say that I am not goal oriented, but I have always given more
significance to the making-of process rather than final goal. I mean, of course
I cared that the wedding day (as a goal) went smoothly and happily for all wedding participants, but at the same time, I didn’t want to be a regular
exhausted bride looking forwards to the wedding just dreaming of having some rest
after.
So I created the Magical making-of process myself.
Of course the most important magic component is the wedding dress…~the
Bridal Gown~… so I started with it 10 months before the wedding. Yes,
exactly… 10 MONTHS.
And of course, never married before and never been really much into the wedding
things, I started with wedding salons :)
I remember one cold winter day I entered the first wedding salon for the first time in
my life… I walked around, saw some dresses, wedding accessories, etc and all of
the sudden I had my first bridal moment… yes I started crying…I was like “I
can’t believe, I am a bride?!... Is this really happening, am I
that grown?!... aaaaaaa I want my childhood back!!!” … and I rushed out of the
salon, and this was the last time I ever visited any wedding salon :) … but not because of the
emotions but rather about the dresses… softly saying…I found nothing to my
taste or anything close to what I wanted, so here I decided to spent my time not on the visits to wedding salons, but on creating my dress. I
totally loved that process and I had time for really making a lot of
experiments, researching on designers, drawing-redrawing dresses for a month,
than the design of the dress was created.
Making-of the Bridal Gown
Here, of course, I would like to extend my full-hearted words of gratitude to
Ellie Saab for the inspiration I got from his divine creations while creating the design of my dress.
#1 Tip
Here I would like to share a piece of advice/recommendation/whatever you want
to call it with you girls:
The wedding dress is FAR NOT the cheapest thing in the wedding, so if you
eventually decided to make a wedding dress on your own, you do not
necessarily turn to one of the local famous and great designers for making it,
but a good tailor could be fine too :))
that was what I did, I was the designer of the dress and my tailor just
perfectly implemented all my ideas on the dress and it worked out as I wanted
in every small detail :) #2 Tip
Start the dress making of process not less than 6 months earlier before the BIG
day, for you to feel on the safe side about the time and if something doesn’t
work out the way you wanted you still have time to change it.
The next stop in the preparation process was the …~Wedding Invitations~… we
actually started elaborating the idea of the invitation 4 months earlier, as we
knew we would have some guests to our wedding from abroad, we
wanted to send them invitations earlier so that they could proceed with
planning their trips.
We came up with the idea that we definitely wanted to have a special postcard
with our photo to pass the word of our wedding to people and they would definitely keep photo/postcard as a good memory of a special event.
So we started having photo-sessions with some of our friends, and eventually we
selected the photo that met all our expectations and made the postcard with it.
NOTE: here I say WE because when you are together and when you are doing things
together there is no ME any more :) …
but on the other hand, HONESTLY men are not really that much into hand-making
things (you know what I mean ;))), don’t get disappointed here girls, just
make sure you have enough time for creating things on your own. Yes!creating hand-made things is pleasant, special, beautiful and NOT expensive,
but it takes a loooot of time.
So here is what I did eventually did with the invitations.
I printed the photo, made a cover of it with parchment paper, fixed the cover
with a hand-made, little, purple flower and wrote the inviting text on the back of the cover
with grey pen :)
Invitations making-of
#1 Tip
Yes, you can do all the above mentioned stuff but also let me tell you that
it’s quite OK just to have an online invitation with nice/funny text and disseminate it through mails. It
saves a lot of time and energy, believe me.
We actually decided to have only online invitations, but I was so inspired by my
friend’s hand-made beautiful wedding invitations that I couldn't help creating one
for us. According to Armenian traditions, by the end of each
wedding the bride and groom should give small wedding presents to the guests
called …~ TAROSIK/Տարոսիկ ~… to
pass the best wishes to all the single guests and wish them
the soonest marriage. Actually according to the tradition there should be
something sweet in the gifts in order to pass the sweetest wishes to the guest :) … (I will not go
further with it, just Google it for more information :)
So I decided to create them with ceramics as a souvenir with our graphical sketches on it and our love formula: T+L=<3 for people to hang on
the wall.
Tarosiks making-of
Here I can not help but SHOUT OUT LOUD ~THAAAANK YOU~
to Nana Tarracota, the most beautiful, cute, hard-working ceramics teacher
of mine who gave me ceramics classes every day being on the last month of
pregnancy :))
and guess what, once we were done with all the Tarosiks, little Argishti was
born right on the next day :)))
The creation of Tarosiks was such a big inspiration to me, that I am definitely
going back to ceramics right after my Honey Week :)
#1 Tip
If you want to create hand-made wedding gifts, start doing it
earlier than planned. Don’t leave anything for the last month. As I mentioned before, creating hand-made things takes a lot of time. #2 Tip
Well, according to the tradition, Tarosiks should be given only to single
ladies wishing them the soonest appearance of the prince in their life, but
it’s very nice when every family or a couple present at the wedding has one as
a good memory of the day. It’s very optional, up to you to decide, but it’s
really nice to have a small present to give to every couple, family or person
present at your wedding.
...Here let me pass on to sharing general organizational
tips with you...
#1 Tip
Wedding should have a style
Retro, funky, modern, traditional, etc. Think of the style that fits you the
best and apply it to the whole wedding. The thing here to remember is that the
style you create should be applied not only to the wedding gowns of the bride and
groom but can easily be applied on the dress codes of the guests and all the
small details of the wedding. Everything should be done
in ONE manner, ONE language and ONE way.
We were more of the Retro style, we were dressed so, had a Retro Car and
corresponding music in our weddng.
Yerevan 1965
Chaika
NOTE:It’s important that the style of the wedding fits to your guests as well or
they feel comfortable with that, otherwise it might not work, or might work but
not in a positive way. (You know what I mean)
#2 Tip
The photographer and the camera man are as important as the Bridal Gown
…and I totally mean it. Very subjective and very personal opinion but… “Why to
have a good wedding if you don’t have good photos afterwards?!”
#3 Tip
Subscribe to Wedding Newsletters
You know when you are in the wedding preparation process you can’t help but
read wedding blogs, view wedding collections, etc… so here I decided to
subscribe to my favorite Vera Wang online newsletter and was getting nice
wedding tips, ideas, recommendations on weekly basis in my mail box. You can always find something useful there.
#4 Tip
Have Detailed and WRITTEN Budget with action plan of the day
This is the part when you really need to sit down together, talk and put down to
paper everything you talk about. I have to say this was the hardest to
manage in our case, because we both were really busy and could hardly ever manage to
meet to talk about planning. Every time we met, we couldn’t
help but enjoy each other’s company and nothing more than that. As for the
planning, the Planning of the Planning was always planned for “TOMORROW” :)
But here comes the 21 certury’s advancements in the technology: Thanks to the
Google online working tools we actually had a very effective and detailed
planning of the budget, action plan/to-so lists, day plan/agenda, guests
names and their tables allocation, transportation and even the playlist ONLINE.
So don’t put off anything for tomorrow if you can do it today. And DO IT today
ONLINE and/or OFFLINE.
#5 Tip
You are THE BRIDE and not a HIRED wedding organizer!!!!
whatever doesn’t work out, IMPROVISE!!!!
Nothing in life goes smoothly all the time, and neither does the organization
of the wedding. There might be moments of despair, exhaustion, over pressure,
things wouldn't work out the way they should… LET IT GO… and moreover have some time for
yourself, do whatever makes you feel good (yoga, swimming, massage, etc). If
you don’t want to be an exhausted and stressed bride on your own wedding,
better don't be :))
For example, the wedding first dance was a TOTAL improvisation in our case… not
because we never practiced it before, WE DID…but we never practiced the dance WITH
the Bridal Gown… so this is how we improvised it :D
#6 Tip
Music insures the mood of the day
Music is the main key of each party, so if you are making a playlist of your
wedding, better that you take into account the preferences of the majority of the
participants about the music. I mean people of older generation might not like to listen to rock, house, etc all the time, so if you care that they also
enjoy their time at your wedding, make sure you have music corresponding to
their preferences as well. If you don’t really care how they feel, better not inviting
them at all :)
#7 Tip
Say proper goodbye to you single life
I am very lucky to have friends I have and to have had the most awesome
bridesmaid of all times :) So
they prepared the Girls-Only PARTY of my life with tons of cute, little, sexy
present and a little bit of extreme. Guess what... I had my first RIDE on the MOTOR BIKE!!!!! YES!!!!
The moment I felt absolutely free (strange feeling to have right before
the wedding but it had it :))) That was THE DAY of my life... :* LOVE YOU GIRLS for making my day and Special thanks to Areg for the beautiful ride I had :)))) !!!! ~ UNFORGETTABLE~
the best possible Hens-Party
10 more seconds and I'll have my first ever bike, EXCITEEED
#8 Tip
Be Motivating, Encouraging and Inspiring
We ladies are very emotional and we are lucky to be able to express our feelings openly...
shout, cry, laugh, scream… whatever… unlike our gentlemen, so really be motivating and
encouraging so that they feel your support.
#9 Tip
Do something memorable I am lucky to have my friends and I am even luckier that they were with me on my special day. All of us at some point were involved in the AIESEC International Youth Organization and got friends within that organization. Of course, on such an AIESEC wedding, we couldn't help but perform our most favorite AIESEC dance of all times. Enjoy the Dance, enjoy the prep process, enjoy your big day and enjoy your life :)))
~ Wish you togetherness forever ~
p.s. I am happy to share more photos of the big day HERE.
So the previous week-end was full of Barcamp. Geeks from Armenia and some other foreign countries gathered to Barcamp together on IT, media, design and general social topics. In comparison with the last years I think this year I was geeker to actively participate at the Barcamp. I wasn’t really able to participate in all the sessions I would have liked to, but still some of the sessions I did participate and would like to share my impressions.
Eveything started from the pre-party at Friends BarClub, it followed by night and the opening in the next morning which was pretty cool, a lot of fun and creating the mood for the upcoming 2 days.
Actually I had to leave right after the beginning for couple of hours so I got back only during the Armcomedy presentation. This is actually the session that had the most of the audience. It was a lot of fun... guys were telling about their general activities and their new NewsՀԱԲ project. The session was so much fun and the project video teaser was even funnier that I can not exactly remember what the project was about :)) so I’ll stop telling about the project here not to give any disinformation…
ArmComedy Narek presents...
ArmComedy Sergey presents...
NewsՀԱԲ coming soon
By the way, once again my warmest congrats to the Armcomedy guys for getting the prize of the best presentation of the Barcamp.
The next session was dedicated to the Armenian Wallie (the Cymeroid)… cute and smart robot able to move, see, detect, follow and do some other things I guess :))
Wallie the Cymeroid
Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of Wallie doing all that because I had to translate the session to a Slovenian friend of mine.
As I am not really a technical person, I really enjoyed media and design related session, as I interact with both of them. I would particularly like to mention the presentation of Vadz about the Design as Art and Art of Selling, and how much I enjoyed it… within those 30 minutes he gave a lot of useful information on design techniques, problems and challenges. There was a big discussion on the topic as well, so I really enjoy it and got so much carried away with the session that I forgot to take any pictures :))
I really enjoyed the session with BBC journalist Pooneh GHODOUSI about the BBC World News civil journalist.
Pooneh presents...
But the culmination of all the session I attended of course was the Arpik’s “How to date a Geek Girl” session…
Arpik presents...
You know what I can say for sure is that some of the recommended tips can be used even when you are not geek… I am just saying it from personal experience.
I am afraid I might not be able to fully describe how much I enjoyed the session; I just go ahead reading it here.
This was the session that raised a lot of emotions in the audience...
YES!!! say it Arpik, say it :))))
Girls thoughful, older generation sleeping back there... :)
Some guys are really nervous :)))
... and some are making LOVE confessions :))
Arpik presents
There was a comment I heard during the presentation and it totally made my day :))
Quote from a presentation: "Geek girls are not that kind of ones you can achieve by sending the standard flowers, inviting for a classic café dates. :)"
Here the Slovenian friend of ours asked in rhetorical form. "If we can not send standart flowers, can we at least send pictures of flowers?" :))))))
Aprik, please clarify this part with him, so that he doesn't get into trouble when dating a geek girl :)))
Opera guy was presenting something technical and here I would definately lie if I say that I loved the session, as didn’t really get much of what he was saying, just was accompanying my muss’ :)))) But judging from the discussions after, I think if was quite informative :))
Opera Guy presents...
the audience at the presentation
Geeks discussing/testing after the presentation
Well I didn’t attend many sessions as at some point I was enjoying spending 2 hour talking to Nouneh Sarkissian about life stuff… I really appreciate the insights I got. Thank you so much for that.
Indie Libertines present...
the conference is drawing to its end
Other Opera guy is getting a Barcamp certificate
Organizing committee photosession
According to the logical flow then was the time for afterparty :)))
the greatest music band for the party
people having fun
some networking
:))
That was definitely one of the best after-parties I have attended… a lot of fun, a lot of networking, a lot of singing and dancing. I was very impressed about the fact that Geeks do not only dance, joke and have fun, but also sing and play musical instruments.
So huge round of applauses goes to the whole organizing committee team for making the conference happen, volunteers for supporting the organizer, presenters for making the nicest content for the conference and the audience for being there and spreading the word after, of course, all the partners and YOU for reading this post till the end :))))
p.s. unfortunately I couldn’t display many photos and talk about more presentations, as I still need an external flash for my camera... a lot of pics were rather poor in their quality...
