Our Wedding, 22 May 1999

Sam and I got married on 22 May 1999. The ceremony was held at the First United Methodist Church in Palo Alto, and the reception was at the Sheraton in Palo Alto. The officiating pastor was Rev. John Shim from Sam's church, East Bay Baptist Church. It was a beautiful ceremony, I must admit, although I don't remember much about it because I was stressing out.

To prepare for the wedding we did a lot of stuff over the Christmas break before the wedding. Among them -- we went to a bridal faire (highly suggested to engaged couples, 'cause you get a lot of ideas for vendors, etc.), found our photographer (we really like him), determined the reception food (yum, yum), ordered the invitations (we really like them), and booked the honeymoon.

During Spring Break I also picked up my wedding dress and got it fitted by my friend's mother. She's a pro! It's a beautiful long-sleeve dress with Italian satin and Alençon lace, and a poofy skirt by Carole Hai. It's got a V-neck and I'm just crazy about it.

To go with the dress my mom and I put together the headpiece. Can you believe that headpieces average $200 at a bridal salon? My mom was smart -- we actually just bought the headpiece and the tulle for the veil and all the little beads that go onto it for around $50. That's pretty exciting. We put it together (it took two tries and two pieces of tulle -- pronounced "tool" -- and only about two or three hours of actual working on it) and I must admit it looks pretty dang good. Maybe we should sell it for $200 now that the wedding is over.

The bridesmaid dresses are navy blue satin spaghetti strap dresses with chiffon overlay. They're really nice. My friend's mother altered them too. The shoes to go with the bridesmaid dresses are navy blue too, from Payless Shoes. I was pretty excited because they were really REALLY cheap.

I had a pretty bad time with the DJ that we almost picked out. When I talked to the company owner he said that since the wedding is in May (a supposedly slow wedding month) he'll give us $100 off the price and charge us $300. When I talked to the actual DJ a week later, he said that he charges no less than $400. I went back and forth between the two DJ's and finally concluded that a vendor that can't get things right the first time shouldn't be worth dealing with. So, I ended up picking a completely different company, and got hooked up with a DJ that exceeded our expectations. Moral of the story? Don't just try to cut costs, but actually paying a *little* more for someone that you can trust is worth a *lot* more. I'm afraid to know what would have happened had I picked the first DJ.

The wedding favors were a big hit. They were little white boxes, with our picture, names, and wedding date on the outside, and Hershey's kisses, Hershey's hugs, and Dove promises on the inside. The boxes were wrapped in tulle and tied with a white rose and navy blue ribbon. Not bad on a limited budget.

Some of our wedding and honeymoon pictures, if you're interested, are posted on Sam's homepage.

Credits...
Some wedding people that we were quite pleased with were...
Ann's Dressmakers (408 378 4302), who did all of the wedding alterations
Master Wedding Photography (408 370 7513), who was our photographer
Steve Tieger, (408 252 2713), who was our DJ
and Rev. John Shim, who officiated our wedding.