Weddingbee Blog

Hi hive!

Weddingbee’s fast approaching our 200th married bee! And as we do, we’re taking a look back at our absolute favorite posts, ever! We’ve asked all the married bees to choose the favorite post they’ve ever written to share with the hive over the next few weeks, in hopes that you’ll discover some bees and posts that may have come long before you were ever engaged. We hope you enjoy our Best of the ’Bee series, and I’m kicking it off with my favorite post ever.

It’s been two years since our wedding, and I’ve been to countless weddings since then. At one of the last weddings I went to, a relative pointed out some seemingly normal detail about the wedding we were currently attending. I feigned a smile and said, “oh…that’s nice.” She gave me a snide look and said something along the lines of, “If working in weddings has made you that jaded that you don’t appreciate details anymore, maybe you need to get a different job.”

To be honest, this statement stung. Never mind that I had tears in my eyes just 20 minutes earlier when the father of the groom gave a heartwarming speech. Never mind that watching the bride and groom kiss and hug each other from afar made my heart swell so big it almost burst. I simply didn’t care about a small detail about the wedding day (think flowers, guestbook, something pretty material) and all of the sudden I was “jaded”.

Seeing weddings every day—I do still care. But I don’t care about flowers, or guestbooks, or baking twine. They’re small and wonderful, personalized details, but they’ve become part of my everyday life. What I do care about is family. I care about the love. I care about heritage. And it’s no wonder that at Mrs. Jellyfish’s wedding, when the Romanian dance music came on and Mrs. Jelly and her family shrieked with joy, this was my favorite moment of her day. Not her beautiful flowers. Not her fun favors. The love. The family. And of course, as Jelly and her family danced in circles, I cried tears of joy.

And so, this is my favorite post I’ve ever written. Because this is the part of our wedding that brought generations of women on my side together to make it happen. My mother taught me about the history behind the water ceremony, my aunts schlepped pounds of costume jewelry thousands of miles, and this was truly the moment of our wedding that we did for my family. For the love.

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Immediately following the ceremony, in lieu of a receiving line, Mr. Penguin and I opted to celebrate a little of my family heritage and participate in a Thai Water Ceremony, or Rod Nam Sang.

Mr. Penguin and I both had Thai garb made down in Los Angeles, which cost us quite a bit of money, but we made my parents promise to throw us a Thai wedding in Thailand sometime in the next few years so we could break out the outfits once again! My parents were married here in California, but went back to Thailand when I was young to have a Thai wedding, so we hope to do the same very soon!

Wedding guests (typically only those older than the bride and groom, but we opted to have all our guests participate) pour holy water from a conch shell over the bride and groom’s hands, and give them their blessings. The water then pours over into the bowls full of flowers. The water must be blessed by Thai Monks.

Two conch shells in their stands (front) are used by guests to pour water over the bride’s and groom’s hands.

Putting on the Thai dress took quite the team of people to get done in a short period of time!

My aunt brought lots of gold jewelry from Thailand for me to wear. I’m not typically a fan of gold, and my mom suggested that I could wear silver, but when I think of Thailand, I think of gold, and I wanted to stick to tradition as much as possible. My mom wanted me to wear somewhat of a modern dress, but I kept trying to tell her I wanted us to look “as Thai as possible”! Especially because I’m half Chinese, I really needed to “Thai-it-up” to look legit!

A string is draped connecting the bride’s head to the groom’s, symbolizing their union. The draping is typically done by the most eldest and respected guest at the wedding, like a grandparent or mentor of the bride or groom. My eldest aunt from Thailand did the honors.

One of our younger guests remarked: “Mr. Penguin looks like such a DORK. But he is lucky that he has a mother-in-law that can cook him Brown Noodles (his favorite dish, Rad Na) whenever he wants, so I guess it is worth it!”

Me and my dorky new husband

Billie was SO over it. Even with all the hubbub, she managed to catch a snooze.

How will you inject your heritage into your wedding to make it unique?

Relive the day of the Penguins…
1. Morning, Sunshine! | 2. Ready, Men? | 3. Formalities | 4. We’re Hitched!

All photos by Sarah K. Chen Photography