Weddingbee Blog

While I’m waiting for the DVD of pro pics from our Saturday wedding, I thought I’d share the pics from our crazy, pink Chinese banquet. The person who documented the day was our videographer from our Saturday wedding. In the artistic sense, his pictures leave much to be desired. I was frustrated by the end of the night because we were asked to take about a billion cheesy, posed pictures. But now that we have the photographs back, I’m happy that we at least had someone there to document the event. He even made his way around the room to get table pictures of the guests during dinner.

The banquet was very different than our wedding on Saturday. It was loud, crowded, and pretty crazy. I mentioned before that I’m an introvert. Well, all the commotion was a little overwhelming to me. I found myself hiding in a the “bridal suite” (aka, a dark closet upstairs) for the first hour of the event. Guests ate dinner and left as quickly as possible. In fact, many of the attendees didn’t pay attention to the speeches or slideshow, grabbed more than one wedding favor out of the baskets, and left before dinner ended. It just felt like some just didn’t care much to be there. I predict it’s probably because most of the guests were our parents’ or grandparents’ friends and they have never met Mr. Eggplant or me before. It’s hard to care about a wedding when you don’t know the bride or groom.

Anyway, onto the pictures!

Reduce, reuse, recycle! We brought over a few flower balls from our Saturday wedding to reuse them in our decor. We also reused our signage and candy buffet.

I had no control over the decisions made for our Chinese banquet. The color scheme was pink and my mom rented this very fuzzy, very pink money box from a wedding shop in the Sunset district of SF.

Here’s a shot of our red sign-in cloth, a traditional Chinese wedding keepsake.

The banquet room was set up with white chair covers, pink chair sashes, and pink napkins.

Before dinner, a traditional Chinese tea ceremony was performed. Here, Mr. Eggplant’s grandma is presenting me with some gold jewelry.

The photographer told us to stand and pretend to serve tea to my parents. Then he had us repeat fifty times. We have about a billion of these posed shots, but rotating with different people on the right.

Here’s something gross about the tea ceremony: The teacups used for the ceremony were being rinsed and reused for each participant. But they were being rinsed in the same bowl of dirty water over and over again. By the end of the ceremony, there were several shades of lipstick on the rim of each cup. Ew!

My mom and my cousin handled all the check-in craziness.

Our wedding invitations noted dinner was to start at 6pm. Of course, we were running on Chinese banquet time, which meant that guests didn’t start meandering in until 7:30pm.

Mr. Eggplant decided to dress for the occasion and purchased a silk Chinese shirt.

My dad, Mr. Toastmaster of the Year, giving his speech. He’s a really great speech writer. He used to be terrified of public speaking until he forced himself to join Toastmasters, and now he’s a pro.

Our photographer told us to pretend to toast, and then proceeded to have us repeat the action with 50 other groups.

Our wedding cake with a Precious Moments cake topper that matched our money box.

I just LOVE the expression on my face in this picture. Our photog asked Mr. Eggplant and me to do a “entangled arm” toast together, but we couldn’t find champagne. We poured red wine into our toasting flutes instead, hence the unsightly, dark liquid in our glasses.

We had karaoke at the banquet and our bridal party surprised us with a sweet and funny serenade.

Mr. Eggplant’s cousins also serenaded us with a very memorable a capella rendition of a Kelly Clarkson ballad.

My mom and dad.

My mom and my dad at their wedding. My mom’s dress had a fuschia phoenix down the front. Since I couldn’t fit her dress, I had one made with fuschia peonies.

Me and my MOH. She’s so much taller than me. She’s almost as tall as Mr. Eggplant while I’m a mere 5’2″.

Mr. Eggplant’s groomsman and his girlfriend. I posted this one up because I think it’s funny how our heads make a nice ski slope.

We stuck our bridal party and their dates all at the same table for dinner. I’m happy that they all had a blast at the Chinese banquet because I was worried they would be bored.

These are the very pink and frilly wedding favors that our parents picked out… I just know these will end up in a dusty drawer somewhere. Oh well.

We also had a very red version of a wedding favor. Mr. Eggplant and I were arguing over which figurine is the guy and which is the girl. But I guess it doesn’t matter since these will probably be sitting a drawer somewhere too.

And before I go, one last shot of our Precious Moments cake topper, which is now on display at my parents’ house.