The Chinese Banquet

Saturday April 30th.....evening time.

Seattle Washington-China Town.

This is the record of our Chinese Banquet. I hope you like it.

Photos were taken by Christine Armbruster.

Our Chinese Banquet was held at the House of Hong

There were some 35 tables with 10 people at a table. There were a lot of guests. Notice the giant double happiness character in the background. This is used to represent weddings. When you get married you go from being one happy to two happies. Thus the double happiness includes to happiness characters together symbolizing the bride and groom together....or so I have been told. Also Red is the lucky color for the wedding. So a lot of things are red here. The favors are red, my dress is red...you get the picture.

Instead of a guest book, people sign this big red banner. It is pretty neat looking. Someday we are supposed to hang it in our home….I think.

We had these cute favors on each table. Wendy, Marlena and Sarah Nelson helped us fold and fill around 350 of these cuties. (Thank you again! That saved us so much time!) They are the double happiness chinese symbol in a box form. Inside they have some dove chocolates along with some little chocolate rabbits. This is the year of the rabbit and Alan and I were both born in the year of the rabbit. This was a good year for us to get married.

Here are a few pictures of the adorable Children that were present at the banquet.

This is Josh and Lisa's little daughter Augustine

(she is pictured there with her father.)

This is Wendy (Alan's sister) and

Brandon's daughter Claire (Brandon is holding her.)

This is Ben (my brother) and Lindsy's daughter Thea. Thank you Ben and Lindsy for coming even though it was so late. I really appreciate it. PS. Thea is adorable.

One table was really close to the speaker and it was too loud,

but we moved them. Sorry about that guys.

We welcomed all the guests at the door. I was instructed to wear my white dress at this point. We have red bows on that say bride and groom and mother or bride, etc....at least that is what someone told me they said. (This picture was taken by Alan's cousin Pang and not by our photographer Christine)

We started off the night with a welcoming by my father and then we sang a Chinese song for our guests. It is called 童话 or Fairytale. This is not necessarily tradition, but our Chinese guests loved it. They were so impressed that I could sing so well in Chinese. We wanted to do it because we knew they would love it. We have been practicing by singing in the car for a long time now.

This is the English Translation for those of you who were there, but did not understand the words.

I've forgotten how long it has been
since I've never again...
listened to you telling your beloved fairytale
I've thought for a long time
I start to panic
have I done something wrong?

You said to me with full of tears
Inside the fairytale are all lies
I can't possibly be your prince
Maybe you can ever understand
You said I love you ever after
The stars in my sky has lightened up

I'm willing to be
that angel you love inside the fairytale
Spread up my hands
become the wings to protect you
You must believe
believe that we can be like that in the fairytale
prosperity and happiness is the ending

You said to me with full of tears
Inside the fairytale are all lies
I can't possibly be your prince
Maybe you can ever understand
You said I love you ever
After the stars in my sky has lightened up

I want to be
that angel you love inside the fairytale
Spread up my hands
become the wings to protect you
You must believe
believe that we can be like that in the fairytale
prosperity and happiness is the ending

Let's write our ending together

Then we had a ten-course meal, which was fantastic. I liked the shrimp best. This is from the non-traditional Chinese food. We had two menus. One that served the ten-course American Chinese food version and then the traditional.

Lot’s of people sang Karaoke, everyone had a blast. People get very dressed up for the Chinese banquet. Thus many people were in very formal attire. They all looked so beautiful.

My beautiful Bridesmaids were in attendance. This is our only picture all together. Elisa I am so grateful you could make it!

Not to mention two of my very best friends from La Grande Laura and Jennifer and (Laura’s significant other) came to the tea ceremony and dinner. I was so unbelievably happy that they came. It meant so much to have them there.

Every time they hit their plates with the chopsticks the couple has to kiss. We had to kiss a lot. Usually I wouldn’t publish such a PDA photo, but I figured it was culture.

Then we had our cake.

We had the traditional cutting of the cake, even though I despise the symbolism behind the cutting of the cake. (the bride and groom cut the cake that looks like the bottom of the bride’s wedding dress symbolizing the taking of her virginity.)

Alan pushed cake in my face, which was completely unexpected, but I got him back pretty good.

We then go around to all the tables and say thank you for coming and they gives us the Hong bao, or red pockets with money. The Chinese do not give physical gifts, they just give money.

Finally we had our first dance. I always thought my first dance would be in a beautiful white dress. But when it came down to it, I really didn’t care. We danced to “Baby I’m yours” a cover by Artic monkeys.