This is the final part of my wedding recap. If you haven’t, please read part 1: the ceremony, part 2: before the reception, and part 3: the reception setup and details

Now we finally move onto the reception. As I mentioned before, we had it at Empress Pavilion in Chinatown. We had about 300-310 guests (crazy!) and dinner was chinese banquet style with 10 courses. YUMYUMYUM.

First up was our grand entrance. We had the bridal party enter in to Move Along by The All American Rejects. When it was our turn to enter, we played a video. I’m so mad at boyrobot cause he won’t let me upload the video. He’s ashamed of its low-quality. (We’re not film majors and we didn’t have the best camera to work with.) Anyways, I’ll try to describe it to you. We got the idea from my brother who saw it on the first episode when Conan hosted The Tonight Show. If you saw that episode, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about and this will make a lot more sense :P Anyways, so the video opens up with me calling boyrobot and asking where he is because the bridal party has already walked in. Turns out he forgot about the reception and has no access to a car so he has to run to the reception. The rest of the video is of him running through parts of LA that have some meaning to us like the beach, the casino, UCLA, Boba Time (our favorite boba place), etc. In the end, he makes it to the restaurant and the video ends. Believe me, it was a lot more entertaining to watch than reading it on here :) hehe Anyways, after the video ends we walk in to The Postal Service’s Such Great Heights.

Next, we had family introductions. This is a tradition in our culture that we are supposed to introduce all family members and distant relatives at the reception. Despite the party being 2/3s family, it went rather quickly thanks to my aunt who was mc-ing this portion. I am going to skip pictures here since I am trying to keep pictures of other people at a minimum since I don’t know who is internet shy.

After that we had speeches and toasts!
First up, my dad said a vietnamese speech that even I didn’t understand (ha, my viet isn’t too great). It was basically thanking everyone for coming etc. Then we had a speech by my maid of honor bridesmaid Christine, groomsman Liem, and another by groomsman Mike. They were all so touching to hear…I loved it. And Mike’s speech included gifts for us! A robot for me (how fitting) and a frog for boyrobot (cuz he hates them heheh).

After that, we showed our slideshow which is usually my favorite part of weddings. Ours was unbelievably long though (at least in my opinion), I hope people didn’t fall asleep! hhehe. It included pictures from both of our childhoods and ended with pictures from the mock engagement shoot that my brother and his friend did for us last christmas.

I then changed into my traditional vietnamese wedding outfit, complete with the donut hat! And we walked around to toast each table. The most embarrassing part was when one of our friends fed boyrobot a piece of ice and he had to transfer it to me. My mom was totally disgusted! heheh

Next was cake cutting time. For our cake cutting song we played U2’s The Sweetest Thing. Our cake had 3 flavors – mocha rum, fresh mango, or fresh strawberry and was made by Van’s Bakery. If you’re not a cake person like me, an asian bakery is the way to go. They make such YUMMY cakes. I find american cakes way too sweet for me but asian cakes aren’t and it’s nice and fluffy. The little flowers on the cake were made by my older sister. They’re so cute! I really wish I had gotten a chance to eat some wedding cake. Well, we have the top tier to eat next year :) Speaking of…when we were cutting the cake we totally forgot that you’re not supposed to cut the top tier. Thanks to our photographers for telling us just in time! :) And thanks so much to my new sister-in-law for our very nice Vera Wang cake cutting set (probably the only Vera Wang thing I will ever own hehe) and our neighbor for giving us some Cristal to toast with. :)

Everyone’s favorite part…
Bouquet toss – Clumsy by Fergie
Removal of the garter – Under Pressure by Queen (this is boyrobot and I’s karaoke song too hehe)
Garter toss – Who let the dogs out by (I don’t even know who sings this but boyrobot wanted it haha)

Lastly we had our first dance to First Day Of My Life by Bright Eyes.

I am going to repost that video my brother made me because it’s that awesome. :)

So yup…that was my very detailed wedding recap! Thanks again to everybody who came and helped us. It was a magical day for us that I will remember for the rest of my life. :)

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Once again here are the vendors I used and I (mostly) highly recommend them all. Please contact me if you are planning your own wedding and have any questions about these:

Photographer – Caroline Tran
Hair and makeup – Amy Tevis (no website but I have her contact info if you want)
Ceremony – Earl Burns Miller Japanese Garden
Reception – Empress Pavilion
Chair Covers – Pure Elegance
DJ – Wen Phan
Cake – Van’s Bakery
Photobooth – Photoboof LA