BTLA: wedding

Showing posts with label wedding. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 14, 2019

Celebrating in the Streets (especially VAxMF)

We had some fun in the streets our last two days in SoCal. On Friday, we visited the Westminster night market in Little Saigon, where there were tons of street vendors and great (Vietnamese) food, including snails and squid.

Tina and her fiance, Chris, joined us (the next time we'll be in OC will be for their wedding!).

On Saturday, we headed to LA for the wedding of Vanda (a UCLA college friend of Kelvin's) and Michael. It was truly an amazing event! Vanda's family owns and operates LA's Ayara Thai restaurant, and they blocked off the city street block in front of their restaurant for the festivities (also veiled as Ayara's 15th anniversary) which included the outdoor ceremony with us seated at tables, cocktail hour with various snacks a-la-food-truck, a scrumptious 7-course dinner, and amusement park-themed events (including a giant ferris wheel) and live music for the reception. Vanda and Michael have been together since high school (close to twenty years!) and it was lovely to hear the sweet tributes to the couple as they (finally!) tied the knot. While we had child-minders (K's family) for one last night out, we unfortunately had to duck out of the celebration early to do last-minute packing and get ready to fly home early the following morning.

Me with my little dressed-up wanna-be wedding goer (who had to stay home with the grandparents)

Lovely outdoor decorated street (the ferris wheel is not normally there but was a brought in attraction!)

Techie outdoor "photobooth" from which you could e-mail or text yourself the pictures! Genius!

Kelvin reconnected with some old UCLA buds-- Deborah (now an opthalmologist)...

... and David (who works for NYU's Shanghai campus)

We didn't get any ceremony photos, as the couple requested a tech-free solemn event (which I treasured).

At cocktail hour, there were signature drinks named after the pair's dogs (Lucy and Hac-Gow), who had walked down the aisle.

Here is a photo we got with the bride Vanda, in her stunning red dress!

Delicious dinner selections

Reception photos

First dance

Cotton candy booth!

(with mango chile topper)

It was truly a love-filled, spectacularly themed wedding of two incredible people, and we were blessed to be there to celebrate Vanda and Michael as they start their (married) lives together.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Love & Las Lomas

Tina, Laura, Adrian, Kelvin, Danny

This weekend, we celebrated another wedding-- that of Laura (a friend of K's from his college days) and Adrian, in Orange County.

They had their wedding (ceremony + reception) on Sunday at Rancho Las Lomas, a private estate in the foothills of southern OC, which was one of the most fabulous wedding venues we have been to (and this being about our 13th wedding [who's counting?!] in 2 years, we have seen a lot!).

The courtyard ceremony was lovely; we got a nice aisle seat to get these shots of the bride (and wedding party).

During cocktail hour, we enjoyed roaming the grounds.... which included scenic fountains and a zoologic garden (inspired by the owners' past travel and their commitment to educating the local public about endangered species). Thanks to Danny for most of these lovely pics of us two... we so rarely have "people along" to catch us both in a snapshot (Danny also has a fabulous eye for photography)!

(Tina does get credit for this one :))

They had TWO white tigers (which is exceedingly rare-- i.e. 1/10,000 tigers is white from a recessive gene) and two (orange) Bengals, too!

More goofing off with Danny

The reception was fun, with a great bilingual emcee/DJ (the same one from Kenn and Lisa's wedding in June-- we hear he is extremely popular in this area!).