Wedding in a Box: Vicky Choy

Matter of fact and funny, Vicky Choy is one of those women whose focus during conversation makes you feel that she is absorbing every detail.  Owner of wedding planning firm Event Accomplished,  Vicky's straightforward style shines through on her blog, especially in her "Newly Engaged Starter Guide." Go ahead, check it out - we'll wait.

Worth it, right?

Vicky had two receptions, and, no, it's not what you think! Her mom's e-mail made me laugh out loud (scroll to the first image).  If that isnt' the quintessential "thanks, mom" moment I don't know what is.  The way she wove two cultures together throughout both events was really personal and beautiful.

All of this and more is better coming from Vicky herself:

I can't believe it's been 5 years since I got married. Time really seems to be flying faster the older I get. We got married on July 31, 2004, on one of the hottest days of the year with temperatures in the 90s and high humidity.

image by Emilie Inc

When Jessica asked us about our 'weddings in a box,' I was sure that I had one too until I started looking for it. I realized that I didn't have an actual box. I had stored all my wedding stuff in different places, but I knew exactly where everything was located. So if I had a box, these are the things that would be in it. What's not in the 'box' is my wedding dress because it lives in its own box. I had it dry cleaned after the wedding and the cleaners put it in a box for me, hermetically sealed I'm sure.

image by Emilie Inc.

The funniest thing has to be this email from my Mom. According to Chinese traditions, you need to consult a Chinese calendar/almanac using the bride and groom's birth dates and times in order to select an auspicious date for a wedding. My Mom took care of that task and emailed me a bunch of Saturdays that would work. You can see clearly in that I circled July 31 because it one of the "best" Saturdays in 2004. But nevermind the date. Look at the sentence underneath the date. My Mom said "Pick a day that you won't have your period." Always looking out for my best interest!

 I loved our ring pillow because my Mom made it herself. She told me she saw an article about how to make one in Martha Stewart Weddings and she just made it. Isn't is pretty? She's so talented. My Mom used to make a lot of her clothes and dresses. she told me she sewed her own prom dress.

I had very few pieces of stationery since we had a cocktail style reception with no assigned tables. What I did save was our invitation (the red one with the double happiness Chinese character), an insert that invited select guests to our Chinese banquet held in San Franisco the week after our wedding here in DC (the white vellum), and my DIY program for the ceremony that I designed in like 10 minutes and printed at Kinkos on resume paper. You can tell I didn't care much about that.

On the left, you'll see 2 copies of the passages from the Bible read by my Aunt Josephine and my sister-in-law Pam during the ceremony, printed on branded stationery of course. On the right is a copy of our rehearsal dinner menu at the fomer Mezza9 Restaurant at the Rosslyn Hyatt. The yellow notepad paper is a list of Chinese wedding Traditions that my Mom had translated into English from our a Chinese book. I wanted to know which ones we could incorporate within reason so she just translated the whole darn thing. It was 3 pages long, hand written.

 During the cocktail hour, I chose to change out of my white wedding dress into a traditional Chinese wedding dress. But because my Mom was renting it for me in San Francisco, and she's not tech savvy enough to take a digital photo of the choices, somehow you found 2 dresses from a magazine and glued them an index card and sent them to me. She also noted the one she picked out for me (similar to the one of the left). My Mom has good fashion sense so I just left it up to her. All the choices are gorgeous so you can't really go wrong.

 

I'm definitely not a crafty person but I saw a girl I knew who had cut out the wishes people had written in their cards and mounted them on a mat surrounded by a pretty frame. I thought it looked cool but couldn't be bothered with the whole mat thing so I just found some pretty scrapbook paper and did the same thing. I put all the pages into a scrapbook my mother-in-law gave me for no reason. It's nice to go back and read the things people wrote.

The night before the wedding, it's Chinese tradition to comb the bride's hair for good luck. The set of candles were used during that ceremony. Inside the ziplock bag are dates, a red envelop of money, and a few other items that you are supposed to put under the mattress for 100 years of good fortune. The red hair piece and the piece of shrubbery were placed in my hair for the cocktail hour and hair combing ceremony, respectively.

Instead of a guest book, we had guests signed this traditional Chinese cloth. It still needs to be framed.

Finally, my shoes. I loved the sparkly heel and I knew I needed shoe with straps since I planned on doing a lot of dancing.

I love the sparkly heels, too, girl...perfect for dancing! Thanks for sharing your Wedding Spread All Over The House!

Send me your wedding in a box! Jessica@afoxywedding.com