Another Sneak Peak!

[Photo taken by my brother-in-law...psst, click on it to make it larger!]

[For the first sneak peak, click here!]

This picture puts a smile on my face, so I just couldn't wait to share it! This is right after the ceremony with my sisters. You can see the boy hugging his brother in the background.

Judging by the look on my face, I guess I did have fun. :)

The Chinese Banquet: Portraits

After San Diego, my dear sister suggested we have life-size cardboard cut-outs of ourselves so that anyone can get a picture with the bride and groom. I kid you not, there are some group portraits where I am right in the middle of the picture with the boy and I don't know anyone.

They were mostly our parents' friends, and since this was their party, I had to oblige.

But I did manage to get some shots with a few people I actually know. Here are a few of them.

[This is my Dad. He likes dorky neck ties, Home Depot, prime rib, and American Idol.]

[This is my grandmother. She likes sewing, knitting, gardening, and Chinese television dramas.]

[These are my sisters. The both live in the SF Bay Area. The boy says that I have an entirely different laugh when I'm with them than I do with anyone else. What can I say? They're my best friends and are the few people who understand my impersonations of our mother.]

[This is my cousin. I don't know if I have ever shared the story of how we met, but we actually met at college. In the same dorm! We're distantly related, but our parents saw each other on move-in day, recognized each other, and we've been friends ever since. She is also getting married (hooray!) and you can follow her journey on her blog.]

[And this is us. I felt it necessary to take a few shots like this to keep it real. The boy is smiling because he smiles a lot. He told me yesterday that one of his co-workers always asks "Why are you so happy?" because he smiles so much.]

That concludes my banquet recap! For anyone planning a Chinese banquet in Sacramento, we had ours at Rice Bowl Restaurant and we received a lot of compliments on the food. They also let us bring our own alcohol, so we had a "mini bar" for anyone that wanted to get a little bit tipsy. But I would advise any brides/grooms/anyone to get dressed elsewhere because that changing room is window-less and smells like roast duck.

As a final note, I might be complaining a lot, and I do make fun of my mother, and enjoy arguing with elders when I find something absolutely ridiculous...and rolling my eyes...and being the most American of Chinese daughters...but I am really glad that we had the banquet. Not only was it important for both of our parents, but it was an important tradition for many of our relatives and also a celebration of our family. Growing up, the Chinese Banquet was THE wedding celebration, and I had never experienced anything else until I got older. I'm glad we could continue the tradition.

[For more banquet craziness, I recommend watching Ang Lee's The Wedding Banquet--luckily our experience was less dramatic.]

[All photos, except for the one she is in, taken by my sister]

The Chinese Banquet: Cutting the Cake

Despite three hours of portraits and having to grapple with tradition and customs, our cake cutting was pretty fun.

[Top: The obligatory cake cutting shot. Bottom: My parents' wedding, San Francisco, 36 years ago. Their cake totally rocked more than ours.]

[Him: Mo, can I smash cake in your face? Me: What? I didn't hear you I was too busy cutting our cake.]

[Him: Pleeeeeaaaassse??? Me: Mmmmm...this cake is gonna be gooood.]

[Him: Teehee! I totally did it!]

[Him: What are you doing?]

[Him: Mo-- Me: Here, hold still.]

[*smoosh*]

[Me: This cake is pretty good. Him: *muffled* Yup]

I think the cake cutting demonstrates one of the reasons why I love the boy. Despite having a bunch of cake on his face and frosting up his nose (care of yours truly,) he still kept eating it and managed to kiss me.

[All photos taken by my sister]

The Chinese Banquet: Details

[For my first two banquet posts, click here and here.]

Our mothers took care of all the details and planning, which was nice because then I didn't have to make double the decisions for both parties. (Then again, as evidence from my last post, sometimes there are more sensitive issues that need to be addressed.) They picked out the restaurant, the centerpieces, made the favors, brought the alcohol, etc. etc.

I just showed up. *little dance*
The great part was having people ask me questions and telling them "I have no clue. Have you met my mother?"

[My mother-in-law's custom cheongsam made of pink lace]

[My mom's vintage cheongsam from the 1960s]

[Mini bamboo steamer favors with hard candy inside. Bamboo steamers from H2 Cards, custom tags from Mau Studio. Instead of tying each ribbon around the steamer, my mom and sister used a hot glue gun to place the ribbon and tag.]

[The sign-in table. The peacock is made from Hong Kong money and was brought by my parents' friends. The huge engagement photo was taken by the fabulous Jessamyn and printed at Kinko's.]

[A close-up of the awesome paper/money peacock.]

[This was brought from Hong Kong because my Mom couldn't find any vendors in the Bay Area that could supply us with a pink sheet. It is typically red, but pink looks pretty nice, no?]

[Our cake had three layers. The bottom layer was neapolitan: chocolate, vanilla, and raspberry filling. The middle layer was the boy's favorite, mocha and chocolate. The top layer was mine, banana and chocolate. Cake is from The Village Cake Shoppe.]

[This was just too cheesy not to share. There were monitors at the restaurant that showed random love scenes with the lyrics to whichever karaoke song was playing at the time. I don't remember any English songs being sung though, so I don't know why Up Where We Belong is on the screen.
It's stuck in your head now, isn't it? ...where the eagles cry...on a mountain high...]

[The centerpieces were made of pink gerbera daisies. We re-used the vases from my sister's wedding last year. Wow, has it really been a year??]

Up next, the end of the night: our cake cutting!

The Chinese Banquet: The Tea Ceremony+Getting Fed Up

[Accepting a gift from my Popo (grandmother) during the tea ceremony]

This post can also be known as, Mo blows her cover as someone who always obeys her elders without question. It could also be titled, I'm not changing my last name and I don't think my in-laws know that. Whoops!

Before I get into the tea ceremony, the day before the wedding banquet I was going a little crazy because the boy's parents asked me to proofread the names of my relatives who would be introduced. [It is customary at Chinese banquets for parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts to be introduced along with the bride and groom.] I noticed that the format was "Mr. and Mrs. HisLastName" and that's when I very calmly informed my in-laws that that did not apply to my aunt or my two sisters, because they have hyphenated names, or they just kept their last name. "Why would anyone do that?" my mother-in-law asked. Uh-oh.

And then I told her that I thought all the women needed to be announced with their first names, not just "Mrs. HisName", and I got a "no one is going to care" response.

Um, I beg to differ, you're standing in front of someone that cares. *Wildly raises hand* So I took the list and rewrote it to include all of my aunts' and sisters' first names. And then I realized that no one asked about how we were going to be introduced in Chinese. Uh-oh.

I could just hear it now, Introducing for the first time, Mr. HisName and BRIDE! My Uncle was doing the introductions, so I basically ran over to him when I saw him and told him, "Please introduce me with my full name. PLEASE." He laughed at how pained I looked, but kindly obliged.

So by the time I reached the tea ceremony the next day, I was still reeling from the possibility of all of the women's names being erased from introductions, including mine.

[Serving tea to my Uncle and Aunt during the tea ceremony]

The tea ceremony is very simple (or at least ours was.) Ours went a little something like this: An elder (or elder couple) will sit, I would stand and serve tea, and then I say "Elder's name, drink tea" and he or she in turn will drink tea, and give a gift, often money in a red envelope like in the photo of the boy's aunt and uncle below.


We did the boy's side of the family first, so we served them all tea and then it was my family's turn. The boy and I took turns serving the tea, we did not offer the cups at the same time, but instead he would go first and then I would serve tea after.

When it was my family's turn to be served, I picked up a tea cup first before the boy, and was quickly reprimanded. "No! The man always goes first! You go after." I looked down at the cup. Then back up. Then at my parents, and said "Seriously? But they're MY PARENTS." I got a lecture about tradition and "this is how it has always been done" and so the boy served tea first. And I served the cup after him.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that we did the tea ceremony and had the banquet, as our heritage is important to us and we wanted to have a banquet that our extended families could attend.

But did it have to be so sexist?

The Chinese Banquet: The Cheongsam+Getting Pretty

[The collar of my dress for the Chinese Banquet. The gold heart is from my in-laws, the jade is from my grandmother. Photo by my sister.]

For an earlier post about my cheongsam, click here.

In comparison to wedding #1, getting ready for the Chinese Banquet was low-maintenence. My cheongsam was really the only (tangible) thing I had to worry about the day-of the banquet, that and getting hair and makeup done at Salon Paisley, which was a cake walk. I don't have any photos of getting ready at the salon, but I highly recommend them. It's a super cute space, and Ashley (the hair stylist) and Emmy (the makeup artist) did a great job. I'm guessing I fit the demographic, because I was also a sucker for the decor, and the music playlist sounded like my Kate Nash Pandora station. Girly artistic types unite!

The makeup actually only cost $25 if I brought my own foundation. I was running out of my MAC foundation anyway, so I picked up a new bottle and Emmy had all the colors ready when I got there. She put gold and purple on my lids, which I thought was really nice with my gold cheongsam.

[Salon Paisley]

While I was sitting in the chair getting pretty, my cousin brought me sushi (hooray!) so I wouldn't starve, and once I was completely transformed the boy picked me up to go get dressed at our hotel.

[The Citizen Hotel--I was a fan of the yellow striped walls.]

It took me five minutes to get ready and put my dress on. I sat around for an hour while the boy got ready, so I took the opportunity to basically check myself out.

[My shoes, and nails fresh from a pedicure. These shoes are awesome, I have already worn them several times for special occasions: Jillian Kitten Heels from J.Crew.]

[Hi there. Oh, this? Oh yeah it's just something I had lying around. I'm also hardly wearing any makeup, and this is how my hair normally looks when I get up in the morning. Ready to go take three hours of portraits and show your in-laws you're worthy of marrying their eldest son, the future doctor? I know I am!]

The boy had his suit on, my cheongsam and hair were in place, and our parking meter was about to run out. With hands held, we headed toward the car, ready to take on 230 of our relatives, a roast pig, and a karaoke machine. Aiyah.

Call Us Mom and Dad

This was the request my mother-in-law had right before the wedding. Why don't you call us Mom and Dad from now on? I said OK, but I never did because it just felt WEIRD.

Do you call your in-laws Mom and Dad, and if you do, how long did it take to get used to calling them that?