Remembering Our Wedding Weekend (Part I)
Today is our six month anniversary. On November 16, 2019, we gathered with family and all our closest friends at the family barn in Calistoga, toasting champagne glasses, lighting sparkers and dancing the night away under a giant disco ball. It’s crazy how quickly six months can fly by, especially when two of them are in quarantine. Life is scary, crazy and chaotic at the moment, but no matter what, I just feel so grateful that Adam and I get to go through life (pandemic or not) together.
I promised myself I would write down all my thoughts and memories of our wedding weekend - the happiest moments and the things that went comedically wrong, but didn’t really matter in the end. After all, the fact that we were able to have a wedding ceremony at all is a blessing in itself. My heart goes out to all the people who have had to postpone or cancel their weddings this year. I don’t know if anyone else will care to read this (it’s a lot), but regardless, I wanted to remember it all and have it documented somewhere to look back on throughout the years of our marriage. As I started writing it all down, I realized that this post would be fairly detailed, so I’ve decided to split it up into two parts. First up, the whirlwind of last-minute wedding preparations, the rehearsal dinner and the welcome party.
Friday: The Fire Marshal, the Rehearsal Dinner and the Welcome Party
Honestly, Friday was a blur. We had decided long ago to have our wedding at Adam’s family barn in the small town of Calistoga, which sits at the top of Napa Valley. We’ve had so many great memories at the barn and thought it would feel more personal to celebrate there versus a traditional wedding venue. The only problem is, there’s a lot more work and set-up involved when you go that route.
Friday morning started calmly enough. We both woke up around 6 am since we knew there was still so much to do and we wanted a quiet moment to ourselves. Adam and I sat out on the porch side by side in the morning chill to finish writing down our vows. It was an intimate, romantic moment up until the point when his mom came out and sat between us and said something about running low on cat food (haha love you, Debbie!).
Then it was crunch time. We literally had six lists worth of tasks left to complete. There were still so many things to do, tables to decorate, silverware to arrange and the small matter of the seating chart still not being complete (up until the day before our wedding, we had some last minute cancelations, so the seating chart was a mess, but we figured we’d worry about it later).
We had a gorgeous clear tent set up on the lawn facing the vineyards. The leaves were just starting to turn and you’d see flashes of vibrant red and golden yellow. It was the perfect autumn day.
The fire marshal came by to inspect the tent, a requirement in Napa County. If you don’t have a fire permit, then you don’t have a tent. I saw Adam and his dad talking to the fire marshal. They all looked very serious. The fire marshal called me over and looked gravely into my eyes.
“You must be the bride,” he said.
“I am,” I replied. “Is everything OK?”
“You know, I love what I do, but sometimes I have the difficult job of telling brides something they really don’t want to hear. I don’t know what to tell you, but this tent is not cleared for inspection.”
My heart stopped.
“Ok, so what can we do?” I tried to say calmly while having an internal panic attack, trying to imagine what we’d do without the tent if it rained.
He then looked at Adam and his dad and smiled. “I’m just messing with you. You’re all good. Congratulations. It’s going to be a beautiful wedding.”
I laughed in relief and secretly cursed that damn fire marshal for messing with my head at the worst possible time. Things were fine, for now.
Then we got a call from the woman who was supposed to sing the Responsorial Psalms for our Catholic wedding ceremony and during the cocktail hour. She had come down with an awful cold and wouldn’t be able to make it. I almost lost it at that point, but there was no time to mourn the fact. Luckily, Adam’s aunt was able to step in for the ceremony and we had an entire gospel ensemble on call.
Yes, a gospel ensemble. To give you some background, my parents have sung in gospel choirs for years. You could say that I grew up on gospel. As a kid, I’d go to their concerts and sing along, clapping my hands and dancing in the pews. My dad is part of the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir and it was always a dream to incorporate gospel somehow into our big day. But for a while, it didn’t look likely to happen.
My Yeh-Yeh, my dad’s dad, was fighting to hang on to life and we lost him on April 11, 2019. It was heartbreaking and to see my dad grieving the loss of his father was incredibly hard to watch. My dad had enough on his plate flying to Singapore every few months to take care of the paperwork and dealing with the far greater emotional burden of losing someone you love. I figured that he just didn’t have the time or the energy to recruit enough people from the choir and then convince them to give up their weekends to be part of our wedding day. It was too much to ask for.
But you already know what happened. He pulled it off. Knowing how much it meant to me, he sent an email out to the entire choir, sharing stories about our family’s connection with gospel music and my dream to have a gospel choir fill up the church with their harmonies as I married the love of my life. He recruited nine people almost instantly. I’m eternally grateful to the choir for dedicating their time to make our wedding day feel so special and unique and, most of all, I’m grateful to my dad for orchestrating it all.
Now, back to the madness of Friday’s prep work. We powered through with the help of our family and some dear friends who were kind enough to dedicate entire weekends to helping us decorate and set up. We worked up until the last possible second, stringing lights and hanging up branches of eucalyptus leaves, all while trying to avoid the barn cats who weren’t much help with decorating, but there was only half an hour left to get ready before the wedding rehearsal at the church.
Adam and I rushed to take showers and change. I threw on my white crepe jumpsuit, grabbed my makeup bag and sat outside to do my makeup since all the bathrooms were taken at that point. While I was furiously blending my foundation, my mom tried to blow-dry my hair and stuffed some food in my mouth since I’d barely eaten all day. I laughed at that point since I literally had a dream a few weeks before that I showed up to our wedding with wet hair and chocolate on my face. Maybe it was a premonition.
We raced to St. Helena Catholic Church, where the ceremony would take place. I saw some of our wedding party waiting outside and they all cheered when they saw us. For the first time all day, I realized just how close we were to being married and felt a trill of excitement and nerves.
My grandma, aunts, uncle and cousins who’d flown all the way out from Singapore were there waiting in the pews. A dear friend from Spain who had lived with us for a summer back when I was in college was there too. It was a joyous, chaotic reunion with lots of hugs and lots of confusion about who was walking down the aisle with whom. The poor wedding coordinator tried her best to keep us organized, but we were all too hopped up on adrenaline and happiness to pay much attention. I was half terrified that I wouldn’t remember all of the many steps and rituals required in a Catholic wedding ceremony, but I was mostly on cloud nine, surrounded by all of my loved ones. I hugged my mom and my dad and my brother tight, thankful to have such a wonderfully supportive, close-knit and loving family.
Then it was time to head off to the rehearsal dinner. Adam’s parents had organized a beautiful rehearsal dinner at the Calistoga Inn, located at the heart of Downtown Calistoga. It was a small, cozy dining area and we were slightly cramped in amongst the tables and chairs, but it somehow made everything feel that much more intimate. I’m sorry to admit that I was too full of adrenaline and excitement to eat much of anything (very unlike me), but all my friends and family told me the food was very good. Adam and I passed out the thank you gifts we’d gotten our parents, the wedding party and our flower girls and ring bearer. We spent the evening talking and laughing with friends and family, knocking back glasses of wine.
And then it was time for toasts. It was heartwarming to hear Adam’s sisters talk about how great a brother he is and, as is their sisterly duty, roasted him a few times too. I was incredibly proud of my brother for going up to share a few words about me and Adam and to hear how excited he is that we’d found each other. My mom also made me tear up when she talked about how special it is when your child finds the person they are meant to be with. I don’t think I stopped smiling for a second.
After the toasts ended, we headed outside to the backyard terrace for the welcome party where all our guests were waiting for us. It felt a little bit like a time warp talking to people from my past, next-door neighbors who’d given me my first babysitting and housesitting jobs, and friends who I’d found later in life and grown close to.
Being very much an introvert, I remember feeling a little nervous anticipating what it would be like standing in the spotlight among so many people, but it felt completely natural talking to everyone. After all, these weren’t strangers. These were people who knew me and supported me. I remember thinking, if this is how amazing the welcome party is, how is tomorrow going to feel?
At some point in the night, I realized my purse was missing. I remembered having it at the church, but couldn’t remember where I’d last seen it. Maybe at the rehearsal dinner? I was too caught up talking to people to worry about it too much yet, but it was hanging there at the back of my mind. I wouldn’t have cared too much except for the fact that my phone was in there and I had my thank you speech saved on it. Plus, we would be flying off to Japan in just a few days for our honeymoon and I wouldn’t want to be without a phone.
As the night came to an end and our guests started leaving, I began panicking more and more. We tried searching for it on Find my Friends over and over again. My phone’s location kept showing up on the street where our car was parked. We practically turned the car inside out looking for it. We looked under and around the car too, but no luck. We ran to the area where we had our rehearsal dinner and the very kind wait staff helped us look under tables and chairs and behind pillows. Nothing.
Defeated, we decided to head back to the barn at around 11 pm. After all, there was still the seating chart to deal with. Adam and I looked at the spreadsheet, bleary-eyed from exhaustion. At 2 am, Adam finally convinced me and my mom to head to the Airbnb we had booked to get some sleep. He continued on, late into the night, working on the seating chart and then printing out all the names to stick on to our seating chart board. I still don’t think Adam realizes how much of a hero he is to me for doing that.
It wasn’t how I expected the night before our wedding to go. I thought my mom and I were going to have time to watch an episode of Gilmore Girls for old time’s sake, put on face masks and have deep conversations about where life would take me. Oh, how naive. Instead, we both crashed into bed and I fell asleep immediately, dreaming about how tomorrow was going to go.
