Waking up on the morning of September 7, 2019, I felt surprisingly energetic for not having been able to sleep much the night before. I was not sure whether it was the excitement or the stress of all the little things that needed to be coordinated the day of, but I spent most of the night tossing and turning. We woke up to a gloomy, overcast sky in our Petaluma Airbnb, and got hair and make up done early. The excitement built as all of the bridal party, family members, and vendors started arriving at the venue.
Getting Ready
Our wedding venue, Garden Valley Ranch, was a beautiful and expansive rose garden that was in total full bloom. But what really won my heart over about the venue was the venue’s “Secret Garden”, where we ended up doing our first look and held our cocktail hour. We gathered into the little cottage for the bridal party to place our things in and to continue get ready. The weather started to warm and the sky started to turn blue as the afternoon drew closer. I walked into the day unbelievable stressed since Harry and I did not hire a wedding coordinator for the entire planning process, meaning that we were the only people who had the answers to most of the details. No matter how much we tried to prepare and allocate, last minute questions still came up, so with a bunch-load to do, my mind did not stop churning. I even needed to take a moment in the car alone to try and relax, but still had people tapping on the car for my attention (no one’s fault - we were the main hosts of the event after-all)! But my bridesmaids noticed how overwhelmed I was and they are really my best friends for a reason. Stress slowly turned to excitement as my sweet bridal party calmed my nerves, took care of many different logistics, and stepped up to make my day so much easier. Even to this day, I marvel at how wonderful our bridal party was. It made the day so much more special to have all of our favorite people in one place.
First Look
Leading up to the big day, I tried telling everyone that Harry and I generally do not “happy cry”. I did not want people’s expectations to be set too high, so I tried to warn everyone not to expect Harry nor I to cry during our wedding ceremony or even during the first look. I described Harry to be more likely to be greeting me with a wide, goofy grin instead. But as you scroll down to see, he surprised us all. As I tapped his shoulder, I expected him to smile and laugh and hug me, but his goofy grin turned into a hard cry by the time he turned fully around. I had just finished my make up so I kept telling him “stop! You’re going to make me cry!” as I wiped away his tears. This surprise brought tears to every bridesmaid who was watching on the sidelines as well, who collectively went back to touch up their make up as a result of this. Our first look moment was hands-down my favorite of the day. It was sweet, intimate, and a perfect way to get the tears out before hundreds of people are watching you.
Tea Ceremony
While my parents initially told me “you don’t have to do a tea ceremony - we are not super traditional”, I pushed for it because I’ve always found the concept of keeping in tune with generations of culture a beautiful thing. My mother jumped from telling me not to do the tea ceremony to organizing and running the entire thing. We poured tea for family, received warm wishes and and gifts, and found it to be a sweet way to honor our family (especially those who flew all the way from Hong Kong to be with us).
Ceremony
Our ceremony was short and sweet. Our officiants were our sweet pastors from our college ministry who had also met with us regularly for our pre-marital counseling sessions. This made the entire ceremony so much more special for the both of us. Under strings of lights and pillars of flowers, we exchanged our vows, rings, prayer, communion, and our first kiss as husband and wife WOOT!
A behind the scenes of Operation “get the bride to the ceremony without guests seeing her”.
Oh — don’t we look so blissful? Our photographers and videographer highly recommended us to take a moment (for just us two) after the ceremony to enjoy our first moments alone as newlyweds. We hopped around the venue holding hands, kissing, gawking at the fact that we were both officially wearing weddings rings, until… dun dun DUN. The big bad news of the day came. Our day of coordinator and one of our groomsmen, Guilherme, came walking up to us. We found this semi-odd, since the first they the coordinator said to us and the photographer was “we’ll let you guys finish first”. I must have looked a bit wide-eyed and started to panic, which turned out to be a totally justified response to what came next.
Reception
Our day of coordinator proceeded to tell us that PG&E had, of course without warning anyone, decided to shut off all power to the venue. This meant no lighting for our outdoor reception, no music for the dance floor, no speakers for the speeches, and worst of all NO DINNER since the caterers could not finish cooking the prepared food. Harry and I looked at each other in shock — months of preparations were about to go down the drain. I remember feeling numb — not sad, not frustrated — as Guilherme went on to make calls to nearby stores to try and get his hands on a back up generator and our day of coordinator was on the phone with the venue manager.
Our coordinator had her team bring chairs to us, bring us cocktails, and bring us the appetizers they had managed to cook before the power went out. We honestly felt like VIP in that very moment. As we continued to collect our thoughts, Harry and I just looked at each other, laugh and shrugged — saying “this is going to be an unforgettable night”. We decided to head over to cocktail hour to say hi to all of our guests, who were blissfully sipping on cocktails and had no idea what had just happened on the other side of the garden. As Harry and I were greeting many guests, we got separated as we were saying hello to different groups of people, but suddenly, we both heard music start playing from the garden speakers. At this moment, we ran towards each other (like a movie scene) and high-fived SO HARD it hurt my hands. Everyone looked at us confused, but the appearance of soft music playing in the background meant that PG&E had decided to turn the power to our venue suddenly back on. Aka - THE WEDDING WAS BACK ON!!
While our wedding coordinator worked very hard to rearrange the timeline of the entire night (the power outage pushed us back ~1 hour) and we had to come to terms with a slight adjustment to our dinner menu, most guests we followed up with afterwards did not notice the fiasco at all!
Our his & hers cocktails were cocktail recipes we decided to mix up on our own as a reflection of our personal favorite drinks.
His Cocktail: Gentleman’s Agreement: a gin, ginger berr, and lime juice concoction
Her Cocktail: The Last Rose (an ode to the Bachelor for my Bachelor fan friends) — grapefruit and elderflower with a vodka base
Now if you have heard of the love languages, words of affirmation is my very very top way of feeling loved. I came out so surprised as how much I not only laughed, but truly at how hard I cried at the speeches. My mom started off the whole planning process asking me “Uh.. I don’t have to give a speech right?”. She then proceeded to make me laugh as she gave herself an “A” for finishing up her “Project A” (aka me) and cry as she teared up talking about how much it meant to her when I told her and my dad what a great job they did raising two daughters. Then my sister proceeded to take the stage and make me cry even more as she herself teared up during her speech. I was just an emotional wreck after all of that! A second favorite moment of mine of our entire wedding day.
After a bunch of lively dancing (I had never seen my aunts and parents dance so hard), Harry surprised me with a sweet surprise serenade (with help from Guilherme) of the song Make You Feel My Love - Bob Dylan. I was totally caught off guard and could not stop swooning.
Our wedding day was definitely one for the books. Full of power outages, problem solving, family, friends, love, laughter, and tears. Honestly - we couldn’t have imagined it any other way. Ok, well maybe we could have done without the power outage.
Wedding Vendor List:
Venue: Garden Valley Ranch
Photographer: Meiwen Wang
Videographer: Ed Ju
Caterer: Culinary Excellence
Day of Coordinator: Jessica Murphy from Culinary Excellence
Calligraphy: Phoebe Tai
Florist: Bloomwell & Co.
Make Up: Elizabeth Krutz-Bonia (friend)
Hair: LeeCe Stylz by Alicia Lau
DJ: DJ Sneh