Weddingbee boards

I'm currently waiting, but my guy is Vietnamese. He told me recently that his family (mostly mom) thought he should wait until he is out of school to get married, which would be fine except for he is going for his PhD which will take him 4.5 more years. He says he thinks we are ready, so hopefully it will happen soon. His mom has a lot of power in their family though. I don't know what kind of wedding she expects us to have, but I want a non-traditional all around (aka not traditional American or Vietnamese wedding). 

Vietnamese bride here! Luckily my parents have been pretty open minded about what we what our wedding to be like. We are doing the morning tea ceremony out of respect for them however...plus ao dai makes for some pretty great pics :-)  My FI is Taiwanese and his mom is pretty westernized so she hasn't pushed anything on us at all! But I will be changing into a qipao during the reception because I think his grandma would appreciate it.

Originally we were gonna wait a few more years since I'm currently getting my masters (finishing in June!!) and he is getting his PhD and MBA (and still has 3 years to go), but our parents have been pushing us to move the wedding up since we've been together almost 6 years. Both sides are helping pay and we are paying a portion ourselves as well.

I think a good compromise and to incorporate some vietnamese traditions would be to do the morning tea ceremony. I think there was also some resistance to our decision to have our reception catered (buffet style) by a restaurant that does almost asian fusion type food rather than going to a vietnamese/chinese restaurant and doing the whole traditional reception. But they've come around :-)

Good luck fighting battles!

@jduck:we had the same issue...moving in together post-engagement, pre-wedding...but we have roommates and supposedly have separate rooms. LOL

Yeah, the problem with me is my guy knows like nothing of Vietnamese weddings, so it doesn't help me to incorporate anything. Also, when I tried looking it up online a while back, I found very little information about traditions. I think it is because most of it is not written in English. If any of you know any good resources I would love to see them.

I think that is interesting about the moving in before wedding post engagement stuff, because I totally see his mom flipping out if we did that, but it could be a total likelihood. 

@jduck: OMG I never even thought of banh mi and viet iced coffee!! Brilliant!

@quirky: most of what I know about viet weddings are from going to them or from hearing about them from family members. i think there are probably some blogs out there that might be helpful (like: http://www.banquetevent.com/wedding/misc/bande/2009/03/she-said-traditional-vietnamese-wedding.html). I think fewer and fewer couples are doing the whole traditional vietnamese wedding and taking the bits and pieces they like.

@hotwings Please do a post on Viet traditions!   My FI is Vietnamese, but he's very uninterested in the wedding planning, so I'm having trouble getting him to tell me about the traditions that we should be including. It would be great to get the scoop from a Vietnamese bride!

Yeah my parents were happy that I wanted to incorporate Vietnamese traditions into my wedding as well. It really gave them a way to be involved in the planning and I'm sure they appreciate that since they are helping pay for part of our wedding. 

@hotwings: Did you buy your ao dai online? I don't know where to get one and I heard bad things about aodaivinh.

@vttp926: my FI feels weird about asking my parents what to bring when he comes to their house on the wedding day for tea ceremony...what kinds of things does the groom side typically bring??

@yrret107: That's awesome that you didn't have any drama about the moving in together thing. I moved to Seattle about a year and a half ago and my FI was already here...we just moved in together in September and my parents were soooooo hesitant about it. But it's fine now :-)

@vttp: Thanks for the info!

@jduck: Same here...parents are totally into the tet things so we're going to visit and doing all that stuff next weekend. LOL at what your dad said! I think my dad was saying something about doing things right so people don't gossip too. So funny!

@tweet & @Worrywart: HAHA we had the same issue. We were basically given 2 dates after FI's grandma checked out the calendar. Lucky for us it worked out too!

@Worrywart:we are doing the tea ceremony as well since our ceremony and reception is completely western. No red and gold chinese restaurant...our ceremony is going to be in a garden on a farm and the reception is going to be in the barn on the same farm. My mom was initially like WHAT?? but she's cool with it now, especially since we're doing the tea ceremony.

@Mocha_Luv: FI's grandma consulted the calendar for us and gave us specific dates that we could get married on that were "good". Your sister said there are absolutely no summer dates you can get married on? I always thought it was specific dates rather than an entire year? I don't think I really believe in these things, but we didn't want to hear the drama from the older relatives if we just picked a date without consulting the calendar :-)

I'm Vietnames and he's Taiwanese.  My mom finally (after 2 yrs of me asking for one) picked us out a wedding date of 12/11, I asked my FI if that was ok with him, he said it's fine.  Told him he has to tell his parents too, and so we came to our first battle.  His parents have a flea market business that's only open on the weekends, and holiday season is a good $$ time for them.  When he told his mom the date, she complained about having to close on a Saturday right before Christmas.  I was fairly upset that for the wedding of their oldest son, they could think that opening to make a couple of hundred bucks was more important.  I went back and forth with him about it until he said he didn't want to ask his parents to close just for the wedding, which made me want go bridezilla on him.  Asking his parents to close for OUR wedding was going to be too much to ask??  I'm not asking them to pay, I just want them to show up for pete's sake.  Am I really being unreasonable, when my family is the more traditional one in wanting to pick a good date for us?  This is not their only source of income BTW.

@hotwings

They finally told my FI that whatever my family and I wanted was fine, since it was important to us.  Now my mom is the one driving me crazy!  LOL  If it's not one side, it's the other right?  Hopefully after this weekend I will have my reception restaurant picked.  Lots of my mom's friends are buddhist, so she wanted me to have a vegetarian reception, I told her I wasn't going to have only veggie food when his family isn't even religious and force them to eat that way.  She said fine, we'll have 2 receptions, 1 veggie then another day have a normal one!!  I think my head was ready to explode when she said that :(  Since I didn't want to tell her about the drama of trying to get them to close ONE day, much less to tell them now I wanted TWO days, I just said I couldn't afford to do two days worth of photography, hair, flowers, etc.  Told her I could have a veggie lunch reception for her friends, then regular dinner reception for everyone else in one day.  She thought about it and now has changed her mind again.... so this weekend we are going to try out a restaurant on mother's day to see how the food is, and if it's ok, they have both a regular and veggie banquet menu I can book from.  Please pray that the food will be good for me.  The place I originally picked, that even had my date available, and would create a veggie menu for me was not good enough for her.  I'm beginning to think this isn't MY wedding.  Being the youngest AND the only one to have a real wedding and reception is going to kill me.

Sorry for the long rant!

So I'm back to update, though I just want to curl up in the corner and hide

We did not eat at the restaurant for Mother's Day because when I went to sit and pick a menu on Friday, the manager told me that she would not be able to accomodate my wedding without shutting down the whole restaurant, AND she would have to get the other manager's approval before she could promise that for me.  I didn't feel like I should spend money doing a tasting when I couldn't know for sure if we could book them, so I decided to wait and see.  Called her today and she told me that to close the restaurant their minimum would be $17k in food and drink.  Guest list is about 200 people, even if I ordered the best food, I'd barely make it to $12k!  I'm not about to open bar this just to make the minimum, so this place is out the door now.  Called my mom and told her, she suggested two other places, still refusing the one place I want.  I told her no to one of her places, because I've been to a wedding for 200 there and it was very cramped and didn't even have room for a dance floor.  So now I'm checking at the one other place she said and if it's a no there, then she has no other choice than to go with my pick.  Called her last place and the guy who handles the dates is not in today, so will try my luck tomorrow.  My fingers are crossed!

Just in case though.  Does anyone know any place that caters Chinese/Vietnamese food in Houston?  I'm not talking teriyaki on a stick, I'd want them to at least be able to do Peking duck.  Of all things, I actually found a place that will do vegetarian Chinese catering, but can't find one that will do normal food!

Sorry for another long post!

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.  So last place did not have my date, called my mom and she STILL won't give in to the place I picked.  At this rate, by the time she gives in, THEY probably won't have my date anymore!

My sister already tried for me, she gave up because my mom argued even worse with her than with me.  I wish mellow could be a word I could EVER use with my mom. Out of 5 of us, only 1 brother has had a formal wedding and reception, but it was in Vietnam which was out of my mom's control.  He was supposed to have a reception here once his wife got here, but that never happened.  Maybe if he had been the first to have one here, I would have been let off the hook a little.  *SIGH*

Kim Son is already booked for the 3 locations I was looking into having it at.  The 4th location they have I don't even want to look into, because it is attached to their "buffet" location, so it kind of screams tacky at me.  Oceans Palace I didn't look at because my friend's sister had her wedding there and they complained about how ugly the whole place is.  The place I said is cramped earlier has my date, but I looked at their menu and I'm thinking that for the same amount of money, my original pick has much better menu options.  Plus the reason they are cramped is because they don't have a separate party area and if I book less than 35 tables, then they are still open for regular business, they just split their dining area to accomodate for the wedding. 

Things may be looking up for me though.  My mom and I did come to an agreement of sorts over the weekend.  She is rethinking my first proposal of having vegetarian lunch for her friends at the temple and then dinner at my restaurant choice for everyone else.  Apparently by me letting her have the vegetarian part, I bumped the guest list for her vegetarian friends from 50 to 100!  Thank goodness the temple should be only half the price compared to restaurants so I can afford the doubling of guests there.  She is going to look more closely into booking the temple this weekend I think.  Cross your fingers for me that she doesn't change her mind again!