Dear Ed,

Today marks 37 years since you were brought into this world. Happy birthday to my loving, generous, warm-hearted brother, the one who left this life too soon, too quickly. It’s the third birthday of yours that you’ve missed because your life was cut short. This world can be such a painful place to be some days. Today is one of those days for me.

You know what it is kind of funny, but not funny in the literal sense? People think that the anniversary of your death or your birthday every year are my worst days. Those days serve as terrible reminders of the loss, but I think we all know that people who have loved and lost too soon, we think of those we lost every single day. A day never goes by when we don’t think about you or miss you. It’s just a fact. Some people say it gets easier over time. My sadness and anger over your premature death haven’t subsided, though. I still have so many conflicts over your life and how you were treated by everyone from your church ‘friends’ to our relatives to even our own parents. I am haunted in dreams by them because I don’t think those feelings will ever go away. In these nightmares, I am always yelling at our parents and expressing anger over how unfairly they treated you, how they ignored your illness and struggles, and even how they ignored your birthdays when you were alive and overall human feelings. No one really understands this, and most people, even my seemingly closest friends, don’t want to know all these truths. Your life is an enigma to them. It’s not an enigma to me, though.

I’m still struggling to have faith in the world and hope for the future. Every day is a struggle against cynicism for me, before your death, and even more so since your death. I try to be strong every day, but some days, the struggle is harder than others. Some days, I have little motivation to do more with my life. But then I think of you, and I think that I can’t fail your memory. It’s an ongoing thought that sits on my head throughout all my days.

To honor your birthday, Chris had kouign amann delivered to my office today. I know you never got a chance to try these when you were here, but they are a pastry from the Brittany region of France that are like the crispier, sweeter, and slightly denser version of a croissant. They were really tasty. I know you would have really liked them. You probably would have eaten all four in a single sitting if no one stopped you. There’s so much you never got a chance to eat when you were here — here in New York, back in San Francisco, and all around the world.

We went back to Elmhurst and had knife-cut noodles, dumplings, and cumin lamb in your memory tonight. It made me remember how I never got a chance to take you to my favorite hand-pulled noodle place in Elmhurst, and I didn’t even take you to have New York pizza when you were visiting New York in 2011. It was just too dramatic that time because of our mother constantly picking fights with me that trip. They really ruined that trip for you. I’m sorry. I was in survival mode at that point. But at least I took you to the original Shake Shack when you were here?

The world is dim today for me as I look through our childhood photos together and realize that we’ll never take another photo together ever again. As adults, we really didn’t take enough photos together. I really regret that. We didn’t celebrate or memorialize our everyday moments together, even after I got my iPhone. The worst thing is that I thought about taking more photos together in March 2013, but again, our mother was in such a sour mood for the two weeks I was back in San Francisco that year that the idea of taking a photo altogether really irritated me. That was the last time I saw you alive.

What are you doing today, anyway? Are you looking down at the earth, wondering what the future is going to be like after the presidential election has ended, wondering when I’m going to produce your future niece and nephew? Do you ever think, I wonder what life would have been like if I just moved out of that terrible house and struck it out on my own?  Well, I wonder that. I think you’d still be here today. But those are useless thoughts.

I don’t know when I’m going to see you again. When are you going to come back? I really miss you. Visiting your niche in San Francisco isn’t enough, especially since every time I go, I have to go with our parents. Do you ever miss them?

Life is going by really quickly. We’re already five months past our wedding that you were watching from above. The worst thing is that while life passes by quickly, the slowest moments are when I am thinking about you and how I’ll never see you again. That’s when life really, really sucks.

It’s okay, Ed. I’ll be okay without you. I think I’ve been doing decently well since you’ve left us. The rest of the world may not acknowledge you on your birthday, but I do. I acknowledge you every day in my heart and in my mind. I don’t really care if other people think it’s obsessive on Facebook or in person. They can continue living their miserable lives. You never forget the people you love most, regardless of whether they are still living or have passed on.

Fundraising time is about to begin. I’ll be thinking of you and our happy memories together, and hoping that your life now is far more peace-filled than it was on this earth. I love you.

With love and longing,

your little sister Yvonne

I spent a couple hours this afternoon finally working on an 8×8 photo book to compile all of our wedding photo booth pictures. I’m working on researching formal photo albums and photo books to compile our wedding photos, and so I thought it would be a good idea to make use of all the silly photo booth pictures all of our guests took at the wedding (that apparently not everyone was aware that we get every single copy of every single photo taken in that booth). During the course of planning our wedding, I read about all the lazy brides and grooms who never really do much with their wedding photos other than frame a few in their house (it’s amazing how many wedding boards exist out there on the web), and it made me sad to think that so many great photos would then ultimately get wasted and never have the chance to be appreciated. The same can be said of our photo booth pictures. They need their own place to shine.

It’s also convenient when your cousin works at Shutterfly and can get you discount codes for freebies. Things always feel even better when they are free or discounted.

There’s nothing worse than a long, boring wedding ceremony. The most boring wedding ceremony I had to attend was over three hours long and had way too many meaningless readings done that meant absolutely nothing. It was clear it was like a template that brides and grooms were blindly following. We agreed on thirty minutes max, twenty if we could possibly pull that off, and tried to abide by that and squeeze in a solo by my bridesmaid, a reading from a bridesmaid and a reading from a groomsman, our own personalized vows, and a unity ceremony in the form of a poured cocktail. I think we made it work.

During Chris’s vows, he surprised me with a quote that I did not recognize but did sound vaguely familiar. Who said this quote? He pulled out a Pooh bear from under the unity ceremony table. I love Pooh and was so excited. I knew he’d do something to surprise me at some point during the wedding, and this was it.

We wanted some visual for a unity ceremony toward the end of the ceremony, and we knew a candle would be too boring and trite, and a sand ceremony just seemed pointless because we’d need to carry that back to New York or give it away, which would defeat the purpose of having it. We both like cocktails, Chris said. So why don’t we just get some drinking vessels, pour our own into a single glass, and drink out of it to symbolize our union? It was an idea that amused so many of our guests, and some complained that they didn’t get a taste of it afterwards to see what we decided to mix. Of course, I chose tequila as the liquor of choice.

The readings were done really well — the one by my bridesmaid was chosen by herself, Sonnet XVII of Pablo Neruda, to reflect our bond and love, and the one by Chris’s cousin and groomsman, “If” by Rudyard Kipling, was to mark the next stage of our lives as adults. “If” is Chris’s favorite poem, and I’ve always loved the writings of Pablo Neruda both for his poetry as well as his novels. And the song that Crista sang, “Your Song,” was so beautifully delivered that it made me tear up when she was singing. She definitely put her own spin on the song that is unique from Elton John’s.

“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.

The truth is that although I don’t like cookie-cutter weddings, in general I love, love weddings. I love the idea of family and friends getting together to see two people join lives. I love the corniness of “love in the air” and people thinking about falling in love and being together forever. I also love everyone having this excuse to dress up in their finest and get decked out for a special occasion… and taking lots and lots of pictures to prove how good looking they all really are. I am a little brainwashed by Disney and love a happy ending.

But to try to prevent us from seeming like we would have a cookie cutter wedding, Chris and I spent the last year trying to figure out the best ways to make this wedding really “us.” How do we infuse this with the ridiculous and funny, light-hearted but heartfelt beings that we try to be?

Where did we start thinking about this? Well, if you know me at all, we started with the food. I sought out the only caterer of the three preferred caterers our venue was contracted with that would allow us the most cultural customization with our menu to reflect our cultures and our food loves. We had Vietnamese (which exceeded any and all expectations for both quantity and quality) for our welcome/rehearsal dinner, so we didn’t have to worry about that. For our reception, this ultimately resulted in Chinese, Malaysian, Indian, Thai, Mexican, and American-influenced dishes. We had to have a good mix of meat, seafood, and vegetables to accommodate our pescatarians and our meat-eaters alike, and there absolutely had to be rice. And because we’re in California, we wanted the option of tacos and quesadillas. so we made it happen via interactive food stations instead of formal plated dishes. We asked for a lot of customization, additions, and deletions (which, frankly, we had to pay quite a bit for), but in the end, it was all worth it. The food we had at our wedding was exactly like what we ate during our wedding tasting. And for the dishes we didn’t get a chance to taste but totally took a chance on, like the leg of lamb, the chicken tikka masala, and the butternut squash soup with ginger-poached pear, they were even better than they sounded on paper.

I was so proud to have wedding food that no one grumbled about or said was tasteless or worse, over-salted. And since Chris has always been a big snacker, he wanted to have little bowls of some of his favorite snacks, which include banana (plantain) chips, and his Aussie favorite Arnott’s Barbeque Shape crackers. Chris could gorge on these all day if you allowed him to, so we felt this was representative of us. We made sure to have Ben, his brother, groomsman, and MC, let all the guests know during the reception what these little snacks were in the bowls on their reception tables. And our wedding favors were many different flavors of Tim Tams, Chris’s favorite biscuit/cookie, which is also of Arnott’s from Australia. So we sent guests home with these biscuits packaged in plum purple organza drawstring bags with “With Love” labels that had on our names on them that we got complimentary from Wedding Paper Divas, courtesy of my cousin who works at Shutterfly.

What about dessert? We both love tropical flavors, so my first instinct was to try to find a dessert shop that could make us a mango cake. The only one that offered this was a shop that had a very high cake minimum and was hell-bent on using fondant; they were the ultimate cake Nazis. Neither of us likes fondant, so that was nixed. We finally found a dessert shop that could not only make our wedding cake image come true, but also accommodate mini desserts for the dessert table I’d always dreamed of having and having styled in our wedding colors. The wedding cake flavor was not mango in the end sadly, but was still tropical: vanilla cake with passion fruit filling and coconut cream cheese frosting. And because having wedding cake and four different mini desserts was not enough for me for variety, we also hired and got a great deal on a gelato cart, offering flavors that reflect us: pistachio (my favorite gelato flavor by far…with real pistachio chunks), tiramisu (hello, gelato is Italian, so we can’t NOT have tiramisu), pumpkin pie (very American), and mango sorbetto (to make up for not having mango cake). (Full disclosure, the dessert shop completely messed up on our cake design, as we ordered a completely different design and shape than what was delivered, but we’re taking it up with them now. It’s happily the only thing that really went “wrong” during the wedding day).

I researched and hand-picked every single seasonal floral and leaf stem put into the bridal and bridesmaid bouquets, the corsages and boutonnieres, and all center pieces and altar flowers. I loved the plum anemones, the white garden roses, the bright green cymbidiums, and the plum and white lilies the most. They gave a romantic but fresh look to the entire venue that I was so excited about when my florist presented the bouquets to me. She was happy to hear what I wanted, but also very proactive in giving me suggestions for the look we were trying to achieve. Chris said he didn’t care what I chose as long as there were orchids. We had two types of orchids, so he was very happy in the end. In fact, I’m surprised by how much he actually raved about the wedding flowers. He seemed more thrilled with the end result than I was!