Ceremony: Vietnamese Martyrs Catholic Church
Reception: Empress Palace
We celebrated Cinco de Mayo with Nicole and Quang in Dallas, TX. The morning started with a traditional tea ceremony (this is where the bride get traded away by her family for some fruits, tea, wine, jewelry, and of course an entire roasted pig.) Typically, the groom will get a bride who will keep the house, give him a son at the beginning of the year, a daughter at the end of the year (literal translation)...and of course cook for him. Unfortunately for groom, (and according to the bride's grandmother), the bride can't cook. Not even rice. Nicole, don't worry about the cooking thing, I don't have that skill either (two words - "top ramen"). After the tea ceremony, the bride changed out from her ao dai to her custom made wedding dress and headed over to the church for the ceremony and afterwards over to a Empress Palace for a traditional gazillion course meal (okay, maybe 8-10 courses). So, there were many notables about the wedding day - but I'm not going to recount them. Instead, I'm going to tell you what happened to me at the end of the evening. So, the "Party Like a Rockstar" portion of the reception started...the 3 year old ringbearer was having a dance off/crunk off/breakdancing competition with a much older adult male guest (mid/late 20s). This guest gets on the floor, starts breakdancing, doing headspins (stuff from one of the greatest movie of all time - BREAKIN') and of course I'm crouched down on the floor to get a wide angle shot of this. Well, with the wide, objects are closer than they appear. As he was spinning on the floor, his foot (equipped with a big shoe) collided with my forehead and *&#@!!!! Yes, wedding photography is a dangerous occupation. Nicole and Quang, congratulations. Also, if I bruise up over this, I'mma taking a picture of it, and addendum it to this blog. (~Mariae, Hali & Paul)
