They liked mine!

This past weekend we attended the wedding of my college friend Angela and her fiance (duh) Howard.

It was back down in NoVA so FI and I had another road trip. We're getting pretty good at these. We split the driving both ways, I drive the Delware to VA part and he drives the Delaware to NY part. We also have both the GPS and the handy atlas at our disposal so we both know where we're going and how to take alternate routes if necessary.

The ceremony was outside next to the reception hall. We thought we were totally late, but we were rushing in like everyone else. A combination of a mostly Chinese guests wedding and a kind-of-far out location kept everything from starting on time. So we didn't miss anything although we did end up with seats in the way back.

Here's Meime, one of the bridesmaids. Angela's favorite color is purple and it was used throughout the wedding. I love these dresses. They are really flattering and the color looks so rich.

We could hear what was happening during the ceremony, but couldn't really see anything. It was a nice and short ceremony. They had a vibraphonist for their ceremony musician. I'm not sure what a vibraphone is, but it sounded nice.

Here's the happy couple!

As part of their ceremony, their "unification ritual" was a "blending of the sands". They poured in sands of different colors (he with purple and black, she with pink and white) in at the same time to create a jar of layered sand. The final product was really pretty.

Here's one of the flower arrangements. I like the dark purple, white/cream, and pink color combinations she used.

Here's one of the appetizers. It was lightly seared tuna on top of polenta (I think) and covered in black seasame seeds. The other appetizers (which I didn't get pictures of) included ceviche and crab dip.

They did 2 table set-ups. Alternating dark purple and cream, and high and low.

The first table set-up had a dark purple tablecloth with a low centerpiece. The centerpiece was a wide-necked glass vase with water and floating tea lights. Then around the vase was a floral wreath of cream ranunculus(?) and pink roses.

There were 8 tea lights floating in each vase. The center one was dark purple and the rest were white. What was cool was that the tea lights had been lit for a little while so they all melted together.

The other table set-up had white tableclothes with a tree branch centerpiece with rose petals. Hanging off the branches were strings of pink clear beads and hanging pink tealights.

Also the napkins were altering colors too. I liked the contrasting looks of the two table set-ups. Not having high centerpieces on all the tables kept it from feeling like you couldn't see anything.

Here's the wedding cake with purple accents and a double happiness cake topper.

The cake was a shortcake with strawberry and cream filling. Very light and yummy!

Remember how I wrote about creating a fun RSVP card for my friend's wedding? And how I really wanted to win whatever they were giving out as prizes?

They actually had all of the RSVP cards on display at the wedding, in a binder near the guest book. It was really cool to see everyone's work and see some of the really creative (and not-so-creative) ones. The ones drawn by kids were especially cute.

Anyways, back to winning... I won! They picked 12 winners and we each got to keep one of the wreath centerpieces. I gave mine to Mom since we didn't need to lug it back to New York.

My friend Loun-Loun won as well. She did a cool ink drawing in the style of Chinese painting. There's bamboo and a Chinese couplet "Bai To Shei Lao" - basically "together until you are both white-haired and bent over with age".
It was a lovely and low-key wedding, even with 200 guests. It was fun to see some NoVA friends that I hadn't talked to in a while.