We're Legal!

So H. and I had our legal wedding ceremony at the ornate and elegant San Francisco City Hall rotunda this past Wednesday, accompanied only by three of our close friends (who are also in our wedding party). We had a great time, especially watching all the same-sex couples get married. I wanted to take pictures of them more than I wanted to have pictures taken of us, since their weddings are truly historic and represent an important part of the advancement of civil rights in California and in the nation. But alas, it would've been slightly rude and probably way more distracting and irritating than flattering to bother all these couples and ask if we could document their weddings. I did take a picture of one lesbian couple who were by themselves, but only with their camera. I was happy to help!

We decided to do a legal ceremony before the 'real', big-day wedding ceremony for a few reasons: 1) All of our 'real' wedding stuff is happening in the East Bay, and H. is a Frisco native and we wanted to acknowledge his hometown; 2) It seemed really cool to get married in SF City Hall during all this gay marriage hoopla--and it was!; and 3) I'm superstitious and knew that getting married in August was supposed to be good luck according to Chinese tradition because of the number 8 (although we were too late to book 8/8/08 for our City Hall wedding). And although this wasn't one of the reasons we decided to do this smaller legal ceremony first, I am now thankful we did it this way, because the overwhelm of realizing you're married may have been too much to deal with for the first time on my actual wedding day. This way, we get to kind of ease into it a little bit.

We filled out some paperwork, waited in line a lot (although not too long, for the City seems really prepared to churn out weddings like hot cakes these days, and good thing because there were a lot of people getting married that day!), had our witnesses sign our marriage certificate, and then traipsed up to the small antechamber at the top of the grand marble staircase in the City Hall rotunda where marriage ceremonies take place. It was a sweet, romantic and intimate moment that H. and I were very happy to share with our friends A., M. and R. (yeah I know, initials are irritating and mysterious but I'm too paranoid to put people's actual names on here!). And then H. and I went and had a casual but yummy lunch at the Ferry Building, walked around downtown, went to see Wall-E again, then took the ferry back to Oakland, then ended with another nice meal at Breads of India, then dessert at one of my favorite restaurants, B Restaurant, both in Old Oakland.

Here are a few photos from the day. And yes, we were (and are) very very happy. Thanks to all the folks who've sent us their good wishes via Facebook or otherwise. Enjoy!





Filling out paperwork. A cold, bureaucratic process, but necessary. Doing paperwork, ironically, made both H. and I feel more 'serious' about the whole thing I think.


H. walking up the stairway of the rotunda.



On the ferry ride on our way back to Oakland, acting touristy. We asked a real tourist to take our photo.

Our First Wedding

Just booked the venue and officiant (sort of) for our first wedding, which I'm proud to say will be taking place at the elegantly beautiful and historic San Francisco City Hall. The pic above I snatched off some web site (it didn't look copyrighted, okay?). We probably won't be lucky enough to have our ceremony under the rotunda, which is where the photo above is taken, but that's fine with me. The Hall has been made famous in recent years because of the big gay marriage legalization drama, which makes me even more proud to be having our first wedding here. Here's another, public photo of the front of the building:





H. and I decided to have two wedding ceremonies because:

1) we wanted to cover our Chinese pseudo-astrological 'good luck' base with a wedding in August, which is supposed to be an auspicious month for weddings because the number '8' sounds like the word for prosperity (I think). So a lot of people are getting married on August 8, 2008 (8/8/08) to take advantage of this. We waited too long and had to settle for a slightly different date, but it's all good. August is what matters!

2) We wanted to get married in San Francisco, at least this way, because it would've been super-expensive and logistically challenging to have our 'real' (aka big) wedding in the City. Most of our family and friends live in the East Bay or even further away from Frisco, but since H. is a proud Frisco native we wanted to at least have one wedding in his hometown.

And I've been home sick for the better part of this past week, today with a raging phlegm-producing cough that makes me sound like a 60-year-old chainsmoking lounge lizard. But being forced to stay indoors is helping me get a lot of wedding stuff done. Invitations are going out this week (finally! And thanks to our fabulous wedding crew for helping us assemble the suckers) and I am going to be booking our event waitstaff for the reception as well. Only three more months to go!