Multicultural Wedding Planning

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of WeddingWire. The opinions and text are all mine.

Asian weddings. I love them, and I hate them. My hopes on the first few wedding venue options were crushed when I learned it didn't have the capacity to hold all our guests. Why must we have almost 300 guests, with 200 being family and/or people we don't know? How do we pay respect to our elders when we're not fluent in the language? How do we let non-Asian guests know that our culture takes cash as wedding gifts? It's been a tough aspect of our wedding planning.

From Nickie & Cheuck's tea ceremony

I'm Chinese, and Brian is Vietnamese. My family is actually from Vietnam, so culturally, I didn't mind doing a Vietnamese tea ceremony. However, the logistics were hard to plan because neither of our parents live in the same city as us. I also asked my mom how to plan for a tea ceremony, and she basically shrugged and said her mom planned it for her. I don't know how to speak about weddings in Cantonese. Cue headache.

I looked into a helpful WeddingWire article on this topic as well: 11 Tips to Help You Plan a Multicultural Wedding. There were some tips I'm used to, like holding two separate ceremonies, but it also gave me ideas I never thought about, like hiring a wedding planner with experience. However, I didn't know where to begin to look for a tea ceremony planner, and we didn't want to spend extra money on a just a tea ceremony.

However much I wanted to wear a pretty ao dai (Vietnamese traditional dress) and have our families meet, it just wasn't coming to fruition. In the end, it seemed like neither of our families would be disappointed if we DIDN'T have a tea ceremony, so we decided not to. However, we are going to wear our traditional gowns during the reception, which I saw was something WeddingWire also suggested! I actually won't be wearing an ao dai but a cheongsam (Chinese traditional dress) instead.

A wedding I helped shoot, with the mother of the bride in a traditional Korean hanbok

We're also going to be serving Chinese-Vietnamese cuisine! In the end, we're keeping a lot of our culture, and we're happy enough with that! As for the tradition of receiving cash gifts, the WeddingWire forums have also been very helpful! We just won't set up a registry, but we won't ASK for cash either because it's perceived as rude to ask money. I also learned that in some cultures, it's rude to set up a registry. Ahh traditions.

Wedding Planning Update

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of WeddingWire. The opinions and text are all mine.

Photo by Maddie Tober Photography

Well, it's been a good 5 months since I first posted about my wedding planning progress! A LOT has happened since then... some of it was "spur of the moment decisions" that we originally didn't put too much thought into, like a hotel block for out-of-town guests or a wedding videographer.  

Deciding on a hotel block was a process, and I definitely used WeddingWire's forums to see how to go about it. It seems like so many people prefer staying somewhere they have points for, but in the end it seemed like a nice gesture for our guests! Finding an actual hotel was so easy thanks to WeddingWire's Hotel Blocks feature! The search engine made it super easy to find and compare available hotels in the area, narrowing it down to searches by number of rooms, hotel star ratings, pricing, and proximity to our venue. We made the decision within a couple of days!

I've also been utilizing WeddingWire's checklist to keep us on track:

It looks like I'm overdue on some suggested dates but ahead on others! I definitely use this as a guideline for the bigger things like booking a honeymoon (which we JUST did - a European cruise)!!

Since my last update, we've also booked a DJ, sent out Save the Dates, hired a wonderful officiant, and picked out bridesmaids dresses! I actually designed our Save the Dates as a postcard in Photoshop and had a local company print them:

Image is, again, by the wonderfully talented Maddie Tober

Everyone is telling me to enjoy the process, but I honestly don't like a single thing about it. It's easy because we know exactly what we like and don't like, but it definitely feels like we're just chugging through and checking things off a list. Thank you again to WeddingWire for keeping me sane! 

Wedding Planning Progress

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of WeddingWire. The opinions and text are all mine.

Photo by Maddie Tober

So, it's been a little over 2 months since Brian and I got engaged, and I've planned out... a lot! I've already booked the photographer, venue, caterer, hair & makeup, photobooth, month-of-coordinator, took engagement photos, designed Save the Dates, and am now currently in the midst of wedding dress shopping. WHEW.

I think I do things so fast because I get anxiety with UNKNOWNS. And when I get anxious, I research research research until I have a better understanding. Where would the wedding be? What day? What vendors do I need? What parts of a wedding am I forgetting (or do I not even know about)? These questions overwhelmed me until I could make a spreadsheet of almost every little detail. It took me 2 weeks to accomplish and then I felt sooo much better.

A lot of my research was just googling! And a common website that I kept coming across was WeddingWire! It helped me a lot in my research because every time I searched a question such as, "How far in advance should I send Save the Dates?" their forum popped up with real brides' answers. I referred a lot to their forums for many of the questions that I had!

I also used their website to research the prices of venues and vendors because I just had NO idea what price range they should even fall in. AND I learned about wedding dress styles from them! Now I know all about A-line, trumpets, mermaids, and sheaths (I'm not a very fashionable girl ha). Like I said before, not knowing much about a subject gives me anxiety, so the more information the better. 

So there's my update! I've slowed down on planning for now, but I know I'll have a lot more questions. Thank you to all the past brides, bride-to-be's, and everyone who has gone through wedding planning that have helped me out!