musings...: Details of our wedding (with a splash of uniqueness)

With eleven months of wedding planning, I scoured the wedding blogs to find inspiration. My Google reader was always full of new posts about some wedding out there in the world. At first, I found it exhilarating to learn more about what was out there and how to make our wedding fit us as a couple. I'm sure that I started to fall into the category of the "coordinating" bride where I had to consider what might be thematic like colors, flowers, decorations or whatever. But about a few months into our engagement, I realized that these themes were not who we are so we tossed any thematic idea out the window. Instead, we focused on making sure that we threw a party that was fun, exciting, different and most importantly, a place where our family and friends can just enjoy themselves.

The first step to ensure that most of our visual elements was fun was enlisting the help of a dear friend who designed all of our elements and made sure that nothing was conservative or boring. The final effect was that all of our visual elements was bright, colorful, fancy with a little hint of psychedelic-ness which is not the standard fare.

• our escort board with photos of our families and selves •

Besides making sure that all the visual, printed elements rocked, we added in some additional touches that would be unique. We wanted to include splashes of my Vietnamese heritage so my mom created these Vietnamese hats that she decorated throughout our ceremony and reception site. By the end of the evening, they were all snatched up because our guests loved them as souvenirs. My mom rocks.

Having a sugar rush (besides the free alcohol) is also important for guests of a wedding so we included a full candy bar and dessert bar. Unfortunately, the candy bar was demolished before dinner had even started! We never even had a chance to see what it looked like. I'm glad that some people took some photos so we could see what the end result was like. We also had a cupcake tower (with our cake topper as a Dutch delft ceramic couple kissing with tulips) and a full dessert table. I don't think that I even had a chance to see what the dessert table looked like but that was demolished too!

To wrap it all up, there was the wacky photo booth! Oh my goodness, we can't believe how wild and crazy our guests went over this! There was always a line and everyone made sure to wear the props that we provided. The best idea though was the album that we found for people to put their photos into. We got a Kolo photo album (best ever) and purchased a variety of colored markers and fun stickers and let the guests do the rest. The end result is a wonderful keepsake that is bright, unique, creative and just fantastic. Each page really showcases the level of fun that everyone had and each time we look through it, we are happy with ourselves that our wedding really did achieve our main goals: fun, exciting and different. Here are just some of the wackiness that went into our book...