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

I’m taking a wedding break because those posts are really time consuming to make. And I’m sure you’re sick of reading about my wedding too :)

Meanwhile enjoy these videos:

this dancing baby is THE CUTEST!

the best of youtube

confused dog doesn’t understand how the cat is on the laptop and ALSO RIGHT HERE. hilarious!

This is the best video ever: girl throws up while airplane flips

And now for our pride and joy….this is where we showcase all of the hard work we did. And yes…it was definitely a team project. Boyrobot was a hands on groom…in fact, I think he enjoyed it more than I did! :) Our reception was held at Empress Pavilion by the way.

All of the flowers and bouquets from the day were made by my talented aunts, sister, and cousins. I was so amazed with how beautiful everything was!

Our guestbook was made using Blurb (highly recommend!). Every page had a picture or memento from all of our years of dating. I had a page with all of the cards we’ve given each other, a ticket stub from our first movie date, our golf score cards from every anniversary (we play miniature golf every year because mini golf was our first date!), etc.

Our placecards doubled as raffle tickets. On one side was the guest’s name and their table number. The other side said “Ticket” and both sides had a number. Guests were told to tear off one half and drop it into their choice of three raffle prizes: A $100 Target gift card, a Canon digital camera, or an iPod Touch. (yes….you can only pick one! :P). We perforated each one of those suckers…it was a lot more time consuming than you think! We had our cute little ring bearer pick the winning numbers.

Drinks – We were sad that our restaurant didn’t allow us to bring our own alcohol but they said we could have wine, beer, and they let us put a bottle of Remy Martin on each table. We provided a bunch of different types of beers including Corona, Fat Tire, Samuel Adams, Heineken, and some more obscure ones that I don’t remember the names of. Hopefully, everyone was able to find something they liked! We also created a Bellini Bar with mango or guava puree which we found out afterwards we didn’t buy enough of :( So sad! We had tons of sparkling wine and champagne left over because of that.

We also had a Wish Jar where guests could write down a wish or piece of advice for us. We are saving to read them on our 1 year anniversary. I am *dying* to read them!! By the way, our original wish jar broke when we were setting up…somebody, I think one of the groomsman, bought this glass box from somewhere nearby thank goodness!!

For entertainment, we made a giant crossword puzzle with questions having to do with boyrobot and I. We made sure that a single person couldn’t answer all of them and had questions from our childhood, work, and current trivia about ourselves and our relationship. When we made it, we thought nobody would be geeky enough to enjoy it but we hear it got filled up pretty quickly! I guess we should have made it harder!

We also got a photobooth which was the best investment we made because I think our guests had the most fun with this. We got some really great photos! If anyone would like a digital copy of theirs, please email me and I can hook you up with one since we got copies of everybody’s. We also provided some props which included giant sunglasses, clown noses, and those mustaches I blogged about a long time ago. I had to include some of our favorite photobooth pictures.

Lastly, we have our favors. We actually had 3 things:

1 inch buttons that said “Better Together” and had images of things we like together like bacon and eggs. I also had to include a robot one :) It was cool…everybody was wearing them at the reception!

Custom Jones Sodas: We made 5 different bottles. Each one had a different picture and a fun fact about ourselves on the back. We designed, printed, and glued these on all ourselves so we were really happy with how they turned out.

And lastly, we gave each guest a mix CD. Boyrobot lightscribed 300 of these….there were 5 designs total. This was one of the most time consuming projects ever! Boyrobot was quite the lightscribing machine by the end of this ordeal.

Here is the playlist:
First Day Of My Life – Bright Eyes
Stolen – Dashboard Confessional
Better Together – Jack Johnson
Umbrella – Marie Digby
I’m Yours – Jason Mraz (I’m sooo sick of this song now hehe)
Bruised – Jack’s Mannequin
Baby, It’s Fact – Hellogoodbye
1, 2, 3, 4 – Plain White T’s
Fidelity – Regina Spektor
Dance Inside – All American Rejects
Lucky – Jason Mraz & Colbie Caillat
The Story – Brandi Carlile
Portions For Foxes – Rilo Kiley
I Will Follow You Into The Dark – Death Cab For Cutie
Konstantine – Something Corporate

Phew this was a long one….I’m going to make one more wedding recap post and then I’m done!

PS. Again, all pictures are by Caroline Tran.

Our reception was in Chinatown so we walked around and took pics with our awesome photographer Caroline Tran before the reception started.

I’m working on the reception post and hopefully I’ll finish by tomorrow. It’s a lot more interesting :)

We got our wedding pictures back so now I can finally do a mini wedding recap. I think I’ll have to split them in parts as there is so much to share!

First off, I would just like to say that boyrobot and I worked really hard on our wedding. Probably more than a normal couple should…but I think everything came together nicely and we think people enjoyed themselves so we’ll chalk it up to a success! I was so glad when the day finally came and it was over. BUT It went SO fast that I felt like I barely had time to enjoy anything. :( Was it the most happiest day of my life? In a way, yes. I was stressing so much the week beforehand that something was going to go wrong or that I would have some kind of family drama that as the day unfolded, and nothing went wrong…I really got to appreciate the day for what it was. There is nothing like seeing friends and family and everyone you love coming together to help you celebrate a marriage. I remember distinctly, right before the reception started, looking around the room…everyone that could… was helping us set up. It was a truly touching moment for me to realize how wonderful the people around us are! Boyrobot and I did not hire a wedding coordinator. We did everything ourselves with the help of our friends and family. It was truly a DIY wedding! And it made me love and appreciate everyone so much. So on that day….of course getting to marry boyrobot would make me a happy girl but truly knowing I have such special family and friends made me the happiest!! So now here are the details…I hope the people who were not able to make it will feel like they were there after reading this :)

Before the ceremony:
Instead of having our first look be when I walk down the aisle…we did it before the ceremony even started. This allowed us to take some fun pictures with the bridal party as well. Here is boyrobot seeing me for the first time :)

Next we took pictures with our bridal party. So many people commented on my bridesmaids and how HOTTT they were. :) I know right? What kind of bride picks such a beautiful group of girls to totally outshine her on her big day??? :) Just kidding….they were the BEST ever!

Then we did a few couple shots:

Now it’s finally time for the ceremony. We had it at the Earl Burns Miller Japanese Garden. Lucky for us, it was a BEAUTIFUL day…and not too hot! I’m so happy I got to have my ceremony here…it couldn’t have been a more romantic setting!

Music was a very important part for us the whole day. We picked every single song out including the background music. Most of the songs we played were by Vitamin String Quartet, who make amazing string versions of popular songs. Here are the songs we had for the processional:

Parents – Only Time by Enya
Bridal Party – Just Like Heaven by The Cure
Ring Bearer – I’m Yours by Jason Mraz
Bride – Canon in D

You can listen to snippets of these songs at Amazon

This little guy stole the show:

I’m so happy I got to walk down the aisle with my father:

The ceremony was pretty short for a buddhist one…which made me happy. The most memorable part of the whole thing was of course our vows. After boyrobot read his, I was so shocked and mad at Mike (one of our closest friends and a groomsman)! haha. You see, a few nights before…we both secretly read our vows to Mike so that he could tell us if our vows were ok. I was worried that boyrobot’s was long and that mine would be too short. I was also worried about how much mine would suck compared to his because he is a much better writer than I am. Well he told us that they were fine.

After hearing boyrobot’s….omg! :P Boyrobot’s was about 5 times longer than mine and 100 times better than mine! I was so scared to read mine after hearing his. The whole time I was thinking….why did I let him go first!!!! hehe But anyways, his vows were really good. Very personal and totally made me teary!

I can’t believe it….We’re finally married!!! :)

We just want to thank everyone who came out so bright and early to celebrate with us. It meant so much to us!

From now until November 1st, Zappos is offering free VIP membership for anyone who signs up through this link.

With VIP membership it means you can get free overnight shipping with every order!! And of course returns are always free.

I just had to share with all of the shoe lovers out there like me! I’ve ordered shoes from them before and I loved their customer service. They also have a wide selection of shoes and a really great reviews section if you’re looking for more info on a shoe.

Don’t you love friday links? If only that it signifies that the weekend is here!

Index of outstanding commencement speeches – always inspiring. Wish I had gotten someone cool to speak at mine.
10 divorce stories you won’t believe
Photos that changed the world – great collection including the first picture on the internet!
55 ways to boost your energy – maybe my allergies are the cause of my tiredness!
100 ways to cook an egg – i LOVE eggs. may be one of my favorite all around foods.
Lost spoiler on FlashForward – don’t click unless you’re willing to read the possible spoiler!
Coworkers discover they are brothers – they practically look like twins

And in case you haven’t gotten your fill check out exciting links for boring days

For awhile now, I kept one of these:

And every time I got a bill or an important document, I would file it away in there. I had labels for tax, phone, credit cards, insurance, car, etc. After awhile my box was really full. Little did I know that half of the papers I could have just thrown away! Here’s a little handy guide on what papers you need to keep and for how long.

For all monthly bills – you can shred them after you verify you have been charged the correct amount and your payment has been processed. but keep utility bills if you need to for your taxes

tax documents – you need to keep the hard copies for 7 yrs. after that you can shred it but always keep an electronic copy

bank and investment statements – Keep the quarterly ones until you get the year end statements. Keep the year end ones for 6 years

My filing box also contains other important documents like social security card, passport, and birth certificate etc. Since boyrobot and I have been traveling a lot, we’ve scanned in copies of our passport and emailed it to ourselves so we always have access to it. It’s probably a good idea to do this with other important documents.

I’m forever losing my phone. Sometimes it’s in my coat pocket. Or it’s slipped between the couch cushions. Or some other random place. I’m constantly asking boyrobot to call my phone so I can find it. No more!

I introduce you to Where’s My Cell Phone! A website that you can use to call your phone.

Just enter in your phone number and the website will call your phone. Pretty simple, but useful!

I really need a new web host. Any recommendations???

I used to LOVE my hosting service….jet net hosting. If you read reviews about them, people were always talking about what great customer service they had and I totally agreed. Whenever I had a problem, I would submit a problem ticket and it would get solved in a matter of minutes. They really seemed like they cared about their customers and keeping them happy. The owner of the company even once gave me a customer appreciation gift of extra disk space! I’ve been using them for a few years now and whenever people asked me for a web hosting recommendation I would wholeheartedly suggest them. I’ve also used them for the other websites I’ve been running in the past year.

In the past month, the company has done a 180 for me. It all started when their server got hacked and a bunch of websites, including mine, were down for a whole weekend. I didn’t mind too much because I understand that sometimes these things happen. There were a few more outages, but again….I let it pass because they have been so great in the past.

Earlier this month, I decided to cancel one of my websites because I just did not have the time to upkeep it and I wanted to concentrate more on building up girlrobot.net. I sent in the ticket to have it canceled and promptly received confirmation that it was canceled. This was the day before payment was due. Unfortunately, my paypal subscription for the web hosting still went through and so I ended up paying for the canceled service. No big deal, right? After I got the payment receipt I immediately emailed the billing department at Jetnet hosting dreamhost reviews to explain my situation. I waited a few days and got no response.

Strange. So I decided I’ll just open up a ticket and a hostgator coupon since you can open up problem tickets for billing issues as well. I figured since I have always gotten quick responses through their ticket system this would be the same. Again, I explained my situation and sent off my ticket. I got confirmation that they had received my ticket and waited a few more days. After waiting several days again, I decided to click on the ticket link to see if maybe I had missed their response. When I clicked on the link, it said that the ticket did not exist. My ticket was deleted???

I thought maybe it was just something screwy with their system so I opened up ANOTHER ticket. I wait a few days and I get an email that says something to the effect of “This is a notification to let you know that we are changing the status of your ticket #499199 to Closed as we have not received a response from you in over 24 hours.” A response?? I haven’t even gotten a reply from them….how am I supposed to respond? So I shoot them another email and say exactly that. What am I supposed to be responding to? I FINALLY get a response but guess what it ends up saying?

hello, why did you want to cancel? Just reload your site and everything will be great

W.T.F. I was like what is he talking about. I explain to him again that I have already canceled and that I just want my money back. BTW, the amount I am owed is just $25!!! I think maybe he thinks since the amount is so little that maybe I’ll just forget about it. DUDE. I’m asian. And besides, it’s the principle of it all. In my response, I also spell out my situation again. As if I am talking to a 3rd grader. So he will understand me. And I wait for his response.

Of course I don’t get one for a couple of days, but when I do…guess what it says:

This is a notification to let you know that we are changing the status of your ticket #499199 to Closed as we have not received a response from you in over 24 hours.

I reply again that I have not gotten a response to reply to (this opens the ticket again) and proceed to do this about 3 more times. I also email their main email address with which the owner usually sends out his emails from and I have always had better luck with the owner who has always seemed like the nicest guy. I also opened a ticket with the technical support system hoping I would get somebody, anybody to respond to me. But of course I get no response.

So over this past weekend, on one of my replies to their attempts of closing my ticket, I finally got another response! When I read this one, I was half crying/laughing at the ridiculous of it all:

please calm down, we are here but we werent here over weekend for sales and billing

Sometimes don’t you wish you could reach through the internet and strangle someone??? By the way, all of these exchanges are with the same idiot: Nathan O. I guess they have fired all of their other support people. I don’t know. I tried every avenue possible and he is always the one that responds. I’ve tried different hours of the day and still nothing! ARAGAOIHGAOSIDFJAOISJDFOASIJFD.

Anyways, I respond to him and tell him that up until now I WAS calm and actually very patient. But his last message put me over the edge because seriously….he is telling me to calm down….and that they can’t respond to my msges over the weekend BUT HE JUST RESPONDED TO ME. AND I HAVE BEEN EMAILING THEM FOR WEEKS. HAS THEIR SALES AND BILLING BEEN DOWN FOR THE WHOLE MONTH OF SEPTEMBER?!?!?!?!?!??!!?

Ok, I was much more calm than that. But do you get what I’m saying? What do you guys think? Should I calm down? And of course, since sending that last message I of course haven’t received a response. Even though it’s MONDAY AND THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN OPEN ALL DAY TO RESPOND TO TICKETS.

Oh and their phone support has been disconnected. Bad sign, right?

So yes. Now I am looking for a new webhost. Thank god girlrobot.net’s contract is expiring in November. And don’t worry, I have made backups of my website in case Nathan O reads this. I’m not 100% sure he knows how to read though so I’m not very worried.

For now, I think I am going to keep responding to my ticket so they can’t say they haven’t heard from me every 24 hrs and CLOSE IT. I can’t wait to see what Nathan is going to say to me next,