“Table numbers are so boring. I want table names,” Chris said to me ages ago. Okay, I said, but you have to come up with a theme that makes sense. A few weeks ago, he asked me questions about what Ed’s favorite foods were. A few that came up off the top of my head included pork ribs, dim sum, mango mousse, and rocky road ice cream. Think up a few more, Chris said. I also thought up Gordo’s burritos (a mini chain of San Francisco style burritos back home), Funyun chips (our favorite junk food purchase at the corner store near our house growing up), Jamba Juice (in particular, the berry smoothies), and fried chicken. “Let’s have the table names be Ed’s favorite foods,” Chris said. “Not everyone will know right away what it’s about, but I’ll tell everyone during my reception speech.”

I immediately started crying when he said this. I felt like it would be another reminder for my mom and me that Ed wasn’t there, but Chris was insistent. “It’s a way to remember him and make him there at the wedding,” he reassured me. “It’s a good idea.” So I reluctantly agreed. And then after having the table names printed along with photos to accompany what each was, I decided that this would be a really fun and cute idea for our quirky wedding.

(What we later found out from discussing the wedding with guests is that some thought that the name of their tables was the only food they’d be getting for the evening. The “Pork Ribs” table wondered if they’d all be eating pork ribs, and the Dim Sum table thought they’d only be choosing from different bamboo baskets during the dinner reception. Boy were they in for a surprise!).

Ed was all over the wedding. He was sitting at the ceremony in my good friend Adam’s pocket on the ocean terrace. When Adam was manning our welcome table, little Bart was there with him, too, and apparently was handed off to a few other friends who took his photo in different wedding venue spots. I had photos of Ed and Ed and me placed at the gift table of our wedding welcome area. His favorite foods were the names of each of the reception tables, and a shout out to him was on the ceremony programs we stayed late at my office printing on the gold Indian paper that Chris’s mother bought in India. There was no way I’d have a wedding and pretend my brother didn’t exist or wasn’t important to me. I needed him to be everywhere, otherwise I couldn’t pull this wedding off and be sane.

We even had some of Ed’s favorite songs, such as Shania Twain’s “From This Moment On” and Mariah Carey’s “Hero played. And what not a single person knew, not even Chris, was that right before my parents walked me down the aisle for our wedding ceremony, I took out a tiny 1″ by 1” photo of Ed when he was just in elementary school and tucked it into the ivory ribbon that wrapped my bridal bouquet. This way, Ed would be closest to me during the ceremony and near me all night long; at the ceremony, during photos, at the reception head table, and back with me at the end of the night when everything has ended and everyone has gone home.

He lives on in me, and we hope he also enjoyed the wedding as much as we did.