(Nearly) At the End of One Long Road...

So as you've probably figured out by now if you can read that countdown meter to the left, the wedding has come and gone. If I sound a little down or sad about it, I am a little. I think I'm experiencing a bit of post-event depression, a phenomenon explained to me by the first event planner extraordinaire that I'd ever worked with, Ali Vogt, who has organized countless fundraising events, conferences and other special days for nonprofits in the Bay Area. Basically, once a big event is over, one that you've spent your life working on for the past several months or more, you feel kind of depressed because the one big exciting thing that was stressing you out and getting you up every day and injecting all this fun and adrenaline into your daily life is, well, over.

The wedding itself was beautiful and amazing and definitely fun. It was so cool to look out from where we stood in the middle of the audience at the wedding chapel--it's a round structure with the altar on a raised dais in the middle...



and when we stood in the middle and looked out a the small sea of familiar faces, some not seen for years, of family, friends, colleagues, etc. it was really moving and beautiful. Same thing when we were at the wedding reception and I looked out at all the people we love in our lives, sitting together and eating and laughing and drinking and having a great time. That, for me, was one of the best parts of the wedding. Just being able to bring folks together like that is one of the reason people seem to love weddings so much! More than one of my friends called it a reunion, because they got to see so many people from college or wherever for the first time in a long while.

Of course, there were things that didn't go well or as I wanted. I didn't get to take portraits with my bridesmaids because H. hadn't communicated to our friend who was helping the photographer organize people what her job was. I'm still sad and emotional about that one--it's not like I can recreate that day and how gorgeous we all looked in our dresses and makeup and hairdos on the fly--but I know I'm going to have to let it go. H. owned up to his part in that fiasco, which I'm grateful for. Our event staffer (whose link I have now removed from my blog) ended up being pretty incompetent--my plate of food at the reception was cold and didn't have any rice on it, and they didn't cut the cake as they'd said they'd do until being prodded by one of my friends, and by then a lot of people had just started going up and cutting the cake themselves! And that was just the tip of the iceberg. The lead event staffer, Gina, was rude to my friends, and had the gall afterwards to tell me that my friends were rude to her! I may have even tried to see her side of things except for the one friend that she had the worst time with, supposedly, happens to be one of the sweetest and least temperamental people I know, which means that Gina must have been pretty awful to work with to get my friend that upset in the first place.

But for the most part my guests at least didn't notice all those little things that weren't happening well. They ate up the lechon (whole Filipino roasted suckling pig), which was a site to behold (I promise to post pictures later), and they enjoyed the slide show and all that. I was surprised and at first a little disappointed that they didn't clink their glasses more than a couple times to get us to kiss, but hey, every wedding has its own character and its own story and i've always thought that glasses-clinking thing was a bit cheesy.

Our friends were great and very helpful. We were so blessed to have such a beautiful and supportive crew of friends working with us. I was also very fortunate to have my two 'Jersey sisters' as they call themselves---my father's daughters whom I met for the first time last year--at the wedding, hanging out with me and helping me with my dress, driving H. and I to the reception, and generally just filling in as needed which was awesome and super-helpful.

And lastly, of course, the actual 'wedding' part--exchanging vows with H. was touching and fun and totally US--we both wrote our own vows and then read a short set of vows at the same time as we exchanged rings. Especially funny was the fact that H. mistakenly started reading my vows at first because our officiant handed him what she thought were his vows (they were mine). We had a funny moment where I stopped him, took my vows gently from his hands, and made a goofy apology to the audience who all laughed good-naturedly. He then read his real vows which were poetic and sensitive and loving and beautiful, just like him. And then I read mine (I have to admit it felt more like a performance in some ways, and H. and I read them again to each other later in private to have that intimate moment alone), and they were funny and telling and passionate, as I think I am.

I can't wait for the photos to come out! Our photographer, Hasain Rasheed, and his assistant and wife, Joanna, were awesome! Ultra-professional but down-to-earth (my mom thought they were friends of ours, that's how easily they blended into the wedding), helpful and totally not invasive, and they snapped pictures constantly, so I expect that we'll have lots of good photos to choose from. It's kinda weird not to have any significant documentation of such a significant day in our lives right afterwards, but we were both expecting to have to wait a while to get photos and video (thanks to our friends A. and B. for putting together video for us!), it's just that I didn't expect to feel so excited and anxious about seeing the photos right afterwards. I'll post some photos as soon as I get them.

Now we just have to finish writing all our thank you notes and dealing with the gift-checks that say "payable to: Mr. and Mrs. Henry Liu' (I'm not changing my name). It's the end of one long road, yes, but the real test, of course, is the long road ahead.

Booked! And a New Vendor Link

So we finally booked our reception event staff, who will pick up the food for our pan-Asian (mostly Chinese and some Filipino and Vietnamese) dinner buffet from Chinatown, set up all the food and the drinks at the venue, and serve and clean up. Awesome!

The vendor is Gina's Party Staffing, a small, woman of color-owned company that I found, bizarrely enough, the old-fashioned way: by calling a number posted on a bulletin board at the Piedmont Grocery. I was attracted to Gina's use of 'diverse staff' on her business card--it's important for H. and I to have an ethnically diverse, culturally competent wait staff who won't be freaked out by the whole suckling roast pig (lechon) we'll have at the reception, or the very diverse (in terms of race, gender, language, sexual orientation, etc.) group of guests we'll have at our wedding. Gina and her crew totally fit the bill, and she's got lots of Filipino friends so the lechon will be no problem!

I vibed with Gina immediately when we talked on the phone, and as I explained in previous posts, that 'realness' that we've found in the vendors that we've chosen to book for our wedding is (wedding vendors take note) extremely important to us. We didn't want to go with a corporate, impersonal staff for our wedding who wouldn't make it feel homey and welcoming and fun. Gina had great referrals and was super-helpful from the get-go. We booked her and her team (we'll have four waitstaff and a bartender as well) the other night and I'm so excited to work with her!

Moving Forward! Getting Sh*t Done!

So we finally got our invitations out and the wedding web site up--a free thing through TheKnot.com that actually seems to do what we need it to do. And I don't want to jinx it so I won't say we've already booked her but we are meeting with the potential lead event staffer for the reception tomorrow night to make our deposit and sign the contract. We're getting five servers to help with picking up food, setting up the buffet, serving drinks (only beer, wine, soft drinks, water and sparkling cider instead of champagne) and clean up.

And we're really starting in earnest to plan our honeymoon to Belize, which really does seem like one of the most amazing and beautiful places on earth. I swear, the whole country is like a National Park! It's a tiny country, less than 9,000 square miles (by contrast, California takes up over 130,000 square miles) and on all the maps I look at it seems like every region of Belize has numerous wildlife preserves (including ones for sea tortoises, manatee and jaguars!), national parks and Mayan ruins that are being protected. It's amazing that such a small country is doing so much to protect its environment and wildlife, while still having a thriving tourist industry, while in the US we can't seem to develop so-called 'undeveloped' areas fast enough to suit our crazy lifestyles. I'm sure there are many places in Belize where people's homes are threatened or changed by the tourist trade, but relatively speaking it seems like a fairly 'pristine' (to sound like a travel guide) place.

I'm SO excited about these developments you can't even know! I've been waking up at like 5am (withOUT an alarm, mind you) the last couple days to add new things to add to our to-do list, checking out how many hits our web site has gotten, or reading about places to visit in Belize in this book we bought the other night, cheesily entitled Adventure Guide to Belize. And I'm happy to report that I'm not stressed out about all this, I'm actually quite happy about it all.

I can't wait for the wedding and for our honeymoon. Now I finally understand why people want to get married this way. How much frickin' fun!