Wedding catastrophies

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Tonight, I had two chats with two different prospective photographers I’m considering hiring for our wedding. One question I like to ask photographers is what is the craziest thing that has ever happened in a wedding that they did not anticipate, and how did they handle it (from a photography perspective). Tonight, I got an answer I wasn’t that prepared for. Usually when I ask this question, I really mean to ask if any spiffs happened with family, if family members were uncooperative with the photographer in getting the family/friends shots, etc. Tonight, a photographer told me that the worst thing that ever happened at a wedding was when one by one, each of the reception table centerpieces caught on fire because of the flowers hanging too low above the tea light candles. The bride had hired a florist who wasn’t experienced with doing weddings as a way to save money, but when the florist made the arrangements and placed the candles around the vases, she didn’t realize she was placing them ominously close to the flowers. So they all caught on fire. As a word of advice, she said to me, try to make sure you hire a florist who is very experienced with wedding florals and arrangements.

And of course, this light show was not photographed.

Ed and the therapist

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I had a really good sleep last night. It was probably the best weeknight sleep I’ve had since I’ve come back to New York from San Francisco last month. And oddly, I dreamt about being in a small conference room with my therapist…. and Ed. Ed was sitting at the table with us.

I don’t remember hearing any of the words coming out of our mouths during our discussion, but I remember seeing all of us very animated and speaking and smiling and laughing. Ed was speaking openly with my therapist, and it was like a real, truthful conversation about our family and our intertwined lives. Ed was smiling a lot.

Usually, when I dream of Ed, I tend to wake up and not want to get out of bed. I want to stay in bed and try to fall back asleep in hopes that he will come back so I can see him again. This morning, I didn’t. I woke up, lingered for ten minutes, and hauled myself out of bed to go to the gym.

It hurts to see him in my dreams and know I will never see him again in this life on earth. But as much as I want to linger and hope that I can see him, what I really need to do is to stop holding onto trying to see him in my dreams, and instead to live my life to the best of my ability to make him proud.

Ao dai

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I’m considering getting an ao dai, a traditional Vietnamese dress, made for our welcome dinner before our wedding next year. I’ve always imagined myself having a traditional western white dress and a Chinese qi pao, but I realized that would be slighting my mother, who is Vietnamese, which obviously makes me half Vietnamese. My mom’s always felt like her race was lesser since moving to the U.S. Her mother-in-law, my grandmother, thought that Vietnamese people were like the dirt of the earth and was so disappointed that my dad decided not to marry a Chinese girl and instead chose the filth that was my mother. My mother quickly learned English and Toisan, as useless of a language as it is, in order to communicate with her mother-in-law. She never taught Ed or me Vietnamese because my grandmother forbade it. And I think at some point, my mother actually believed after all my grandmother’s brainwashing that it was a useless language to learn, that Vietnamese culture didn’t matter as much as Chinese culture, and that we would grow up not knowing much about Vietnam other than the food.

I don’t want to contribute to the view that Vietnamese culture is less, though. I want my mom to know I’m proud to have her as my mother (as crazy as she drives me), that I’m happy that she has passed down this incredible culture to me. So I’d like to show it in the form of dress for the wedding period. I talked to her about it today, and she was so surprised. She said, “You want to wear an ao dai? But that is so old looking. It’s not stylish today.” I reminded her that I’m half Vietnamese, remember? She laughed and said, “Okay, if you want to, you can as long as it makes you happy. Just don’t spend too much money on it! You can get it for cheap in San Jose!” Always the practical one, my mom.

Green smoothie

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I’ve been experimenting with different recipes and methods of cooking in the last few weeks to not only make more use of the new and shiny slow cooker I bought, but also to incorporate more ways of eating beans, legumes, seeds, and other non-meat forms of protein, especially after a trainer at the gym hinted that I probably need more protein in my diet given what I’m trying to achieve (how often does an American get told s/he needs more protein?!). I also wanted to have more smoothies for breakfast, so after adding in chia seeds for protein, I’ve also been putting in spinach to make my smoothies green. You can’t have too many vegetables in your diet.

Chris didn’t seem to appreciate this idea. When he came back from his trip to Austin for South by Southwest, I had a glass of just blended green smoothie on the counter waiting for him. In it was a mix of orange-peach juice, coconut water, a couple frozen pineapple chunks, pear, tangerines, chia seeds, spinach, and ice. The dominant flavor of the smoothie by far was orange/citrus/pineapple. You can’t taste the spinach at all. But he didn’t seem to agree with me. After one sip, he said he couldn’t have anymore and that this was “too healthy.” He happily ate the pureed black bean soup I made, though.

Well, here’s to trying to convert him. 🙂 My green smoothie post was clearly popular on Instagram, as I think it’s one of my top liked posts ever.

Bridal gown “discounts”

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My friend and I went bridal gown shopping yesterday afternoon, and I found one dress I really liked that is now on my short list. The hesitation I have with this dress is that the sample I tried on is about six sizes too big for me, so obviously because of the size difference, it’s hard to tell exactly how the dress would fit my bust and arms if it were exactly in my size. By far, it’s the favorite dress I’ve tried on since beginning my bridal gown shopping, so I’ve thought about it a lot since then.

The assistant who was helping me gave me the brand, model number, and the price, and when she wrote the price down, she said that she’d give me 10% off the original price. This morning, I looked up the brand and model number, and I find out that the retail price for this dress is actually the price the assistant gave me after the discount.

You’ve got to love the fake mark-ups for the fake mark-downs. Everyone is out to screw you in the wedding industry. Everyone.

Gratitude

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I woke up early this morning to have breakfast downtown with my friend and his girlfriend, who I haven’t seen since I can’t even remember. I catch up with this friend at least once a month, but I don’t often see his girlfriend because our schedules are so different. She’s been working on a nonprofit project in her spare time, and they’re doing a fundraiser to raise money to help young children stay fit and active, so I donated money to it. I’ve donated money a few times to a number of causes, but this was the first time I donated and someone actually bought and wrote me a thank you card for donating. She handed me this card, and I said, what’s this? I didn’t do anything. And she says, no, you did! Thanks so much for donating. She wrote some really kind things in the note that clearly showed she wrote this especially for me, so this wasn’t some canned response she gave to anyone who donated. I was really caught off guard.

Gratitude is one of those things that seems to be forgotten in today’s digital age. People rarely avidly express gratitude past a casual “thanks,” and a hand-written thank you note, even after formalities such as weddings or funerals, seems uncommon now. I love and appreciate these things, though, and try to make sure I do these things. Chris’s grandmother recently expressed to Chris’s brother that she had attended a wedding and of course gave a gift, but months after the wedding, she’d never received a thank-you note, and she was really disappointed and turned off. Maybe my etiquette expectations around gift giving and showing gratitude are from another era.

 

Lavender

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I need to sleep well on weeknights and fight off this stupid insomnia, and I’m averse to trying anything like sleeping pills, or even herbal supplements that claim to be “all natural” like melatonin. The idea of using something external and putting it into me to get me to sleep just doesn’t seem right. I guess I got my aversion to medicine from my dad at a young age. He always used to tell us that our bodies are strong and capable, that with time, if something is wrong with us, our bodies know how to fight it off (well, this obviously doesn’t apply to things like AIDS or cancer, but I think we all know he means minor things like colds and sore throats).

As I was thinking of things to soothe me, I remembered a tiny bottle of lavender essential oil I’d purchased in December 2013 when we visited a small lavender farm in Akaroa Harbour, New Zealand. Just the thought of it made me smile and remember that place, which is one of the most gorgeous spots I’ve ever visited. I took the bottle out and dabbed some on my neck and wrists, and as I remembered how beautiful it was there and how much we enjoyed it, I somehow managed to drift off into an amazing sleep last night.

And then I accidentally hit my alarm off this morning instead of snoozing it, and I missed my window to go to the gym. Well, at least I slept well.

First positive dream

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I had my first positive dream last night. It was the day of my wedding. Somehow, everything came together nicely even though I had forgotten to pay my wedding coordinator her deposit or full amount. She showed up anyway without a hitch and said it wasn’t a big deal and that I could pay her after. Our photographer showed up on time and took lots of photos, and after the ceremony, he encouraged us to take off our formal wear and frolic on the beach. In the back of my mind, I thought, but we’re leaving all our guests behind! We’re abandoning them! But I enjoyed our running around the beach as our photographer took random photos of us. It was a pleasant time, and eventually, I forgot we even had guests waiting for us back at our venue.

Well, now I’m not sure if this is a fully positive dream, but I suppose there are some positive elements in it?

Insomnia

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I met with my therapist today, and we discussed why I think I haven’t been able to sleep well since I’ve come back from San Francisco. She noted that it was a very emotionally charged period that left me feeling very angry and conjured up a lot of bad memories for me, but she wondered why the effects have lasted this long. Even last night, I couldn’t fall asleep until around 2am, which led me to skip the gym. It’s like a vicious cycle because if I can’t sleep, then I don’t make my morning workout, which means I will likely be less tired at the end of the day than if I did make that morning workout.

I realized with her that maybe the problem is that I’m almost setting myself up for failure by thinking about how I need to sleep and how I need to go to the gym the next morning, and by consciously thinking about that, my body gets mad and decides to rebel against my wishes. I’m idle in bed, and I know I hate being idle. Being idle annoys me, which means I’m irritated while lying in bed, and therefore I can’t fall asleep because I’m having negative thoughts about being idle and not being able to sleep.

She suggested I try meditation and the practice of being just with oneself. I think that may take some baby steps for me, since my last experiences with meditation were not fruitful in the least bit.

An MIA mentor

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Tonight, I went to my third in-person mentoring session at my program’s high school in the west 50s. When I arrived, my mentee was sitting and eating pizza with her friend, who is part of the program, but her mentor was absent. I decided to include her in our discussions so that she’d feel like she had a reason to be there that night.

The more I interacted with her, the more I realized that her English was even poorer than my own mentee’s. She could barely understand me when I asked her what grade she was in, so in the end, my mentee ended up being our translator, even though my mentee’s English isn’t so good. I found out that this mentee has only met her mentor once, and that every other mentoring session that has happened, the mentor has never RSVPed or showed up. She’s never given her any advance notification that she couldn’t make it.

That made me so mad when I heard this. The face I made immediately made both the girls burst into laughter. While they found it comical that I was so annoyed, I just couldn’t believe that someone would sign up for this program and be so flaky. Why even participate in the program if you can’t show up at all, and if you don’t, at least give your mentee some notice? It’s as though this mentee shows up once a month, waiting to be disappointed each and every time, except that one lone time her mentor decided to actually show up. These kids join this program, hoping to have someone to look up to, and instead, this kid gets absolutely nothing and instead just keeps getting let down. She’s already complained and told the program coordinator, but unfortunately, he said that they had no more available mentors left to fill in the spot. She just keeps showing up, waiting to one day not be disappointed.

That almost sounds like me.