On April 20th, 2025, S and I got married! What a wild journey. I’m writing this on April 22nd (though we’ll see when I finally publish and finish writing this ha!), and I am still full of emotion and touched by all those who came out to celebrate with us. I’ll be honest: when we first decided to do a proper ceremony with family and friends, I wasn’t sure it’d be worth it. But I’m so glad we ended up doing a big wedding.

More than a year ago in early 2024, Seb and I decided we’d like to get properly married. We then embarked on a search for venues. We tried out Hart House (and unfortunately contracted food poisoning there), and took a tour of the UBC Boathouse. We outreached to numerous other venues as well. I had initially wanted a wedding with green fields and white tents—but serve our guests a traditional Chinese banquet dinner for food. It proved to be a bit hard to find a location like that, and we learned that caterers were unable to whip up a banquet dinner without a proper Chinese kitchen.

Eventually, we took a tour of Fraser River Lodge out in Agassiz and given they would also be able to accommodate a dog-friendly wedding (another item on our wishlist), we chose to do the wedding in April of the following year. The reasoning behind April was because you saved almost $7,000 between that and May given April was not the venue’s peak wedding season.

The venue itself is beautiful. We knew we’d have out of town guests, and we felt that the property showcased a very British Columbian backdrop with Mount Cheam in the background. The Fraser River also ran right behind the lodge too.

The rest of the year consisted of sporadic planning and design sessions, as well as talking to many different vendors. We had to make decisions on what we wanted to cut costs on versus what we’d splurge a bit on. I will say that the final cost of the wedding went way beyond what I had thought our budget would be—but I also now realize how unrealistic my initial ballpark figure was.

S has 3 sisters and they were instrumental in helping us get this wedding together. We also had 2 groomsmen, and 2 bridesmaid (one of which was my sister) who also got added to our wedding helpers group chat. There was a brother-in-law in that chat too, as well as one of our groomsmen’s partner. With these folks, we somehow managed to stay relatively sane and pull off a wedding. And of course, numerous other family members and friends also helped the day of the wedding in order to make it all happen.

The main reason why I wanted to find some time to sit down and document some thoughts is because I haven’t felt so loved and filled with emotion for a very long time. On my wedding day, I woke up very tired because I barely managed to fall asleep out of anxiety. Then we did the 1.5 hour drive out to Agassiz with one of our bridesmaid and her partner, as well as our dog. I thought I’d take a nap on the way there, but we ended up chatting. I was also too nervous to go to sleep anyway.

We then met the rest of our helpers and family at Fraser River Lodge at around 9:00 AM. The rest of the morning was a blur where I had to get my hair done and therefore couldn’t quite help organize the prep and planning. We jumped into a Chinese tea ceremony at 11:30 AM. S and I really wanted to do a tea ceremony because we lamented not being able to find a good spot for a Chinese banquet and it was important for us to experience some of our heritage on our wedding day.

After the tea ceremony was a quick bite for lunch and then I changed into my wedding gown to do a first look photoshoot with S. I had bought my dress a year back in December of 2023 since I really wanted my mom and sister to help me look for a dress. Over the last year, I had to try to maintain my weight so that the dress would still fit. And somehow, we managed to keep the dress from S this whole time. The first look was emotional, and our wonderful photographers at Asteria Films gave us a bit to just take in the moment before they helped stage us for some photos and videos.

People started to trickle in and arrive at 2:30 PM like we asked. And S and I had to go and prep with our processional party! I wasn’t able to partake in any rehearsals in the morning since I was getting my hair done so I relied on my parents to help guide me at the appropriate speed down the aisle. I remember waiting to walk down the aisle and realizing “how is it 3 PM already?!” Since S and I had also been out of sight since guests started arriving, I had a horrible moment where I realized “wait, what if no one came?” What if we were about to walk into a sparsely populated ceremony hall?

S and I debated about the distance of Fraser River Lodge from Vancouver. First, we were worried friends and family may not be willing to make the long drive out. And since we would have out of town guests, it’d be an additional hassle for them to not only have to fly in to Vancouver, but also go to the venue with rental cars and additional lodging. But some point during our 1+ year long of debating, I had someone tell me that if the person we invited cared enough, the distance would not be a problem. And that turned out to be true.

As I walked down the aisle and got the first glimpse into the ceremony hall, my eyes teared up. The ceremony hall was so full. We had so many people who came all this way to celebrate our wedding with us. And then of course, getting to the end of the aisle to S and also our wonderful bridesmaids and groomsmen was a whole other level of trying to hold back tears. We did our ceremony and when it came to our vows, S and I read off what we had written. S’ made everyone cry and then I had to say mine. I joked “I should’ve gone first” because I was having some difficulty pulling myself together so I could read what I had written. Apparently, there were quite a few teary eyes in the audience as well and hearing that made me cry after the fact.

There is something about all the people who came together for us. The amount of love we felt was something entirely different. Today while S and I were shopping at Costco, we were remarking how the wedding made us feel changed. Not necessarily because of just him and I affirming our love to one another. But we were also filled with a different kind of joy from seeing our loved ones crying, laughing, and even dancing with us on Sunday. I wish I could bottle that happiness up and save it for times when the world seems a little grey. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt that kind of brightness in my life.

The wedding literally wouldn’t have been possible without some of our key friends and family members. S’ groomsmen had such thoughtful gifts (one of them handmade a watch for him and the other groomsmen?! and the other gifted us a whole photo book with blurbs throughout about our life/friend group). My sister and my bridesmaid were the biggest pillars of support for me on my wedding day, and also organized S and I’s Bach Bash (we did a joint bachelorette/bachelor party)! Our parents overcame their nervousness and worries and welcomed our friends and family throughout the day. S’ siblings fully threw themselves into the prep and making sure everything was exactly as we had imagined (my dad was the one who mentioned afterwards how hard S’ sisters all worked that whole day). E, Seb’s brother-in-law, was our emcee and he did an amazing job getting everyone to stick to the schedule and filling the programming with things we had wanted to come to life. All the tables were such good sport when it came to the games we had wanted everyone to play, and they were all intently listening as our designated speakers gave speeches.

The speeches made me cry so much. My sister’s in particular was very special to me and I love her so much. I can’t imagine that day or really—my entire life—without her. I thought at some point I’d be all cried out, but that never ended up happening. I actually have been crying randomly out of overwhelming emotions over the last 2 days after our wedding too. At least three times a day so far? When I’d recount moments from the wedding, or when someone would tell me a story I’d miss about some guest, I’d find myself tearing up again.

One of those included a friend I’d never thought would cry in public who my sister mentioned she made eye contact with them in the crowd during the ceremony and saw them wiping their eyes. And that made my sister cry too. And then I cried when I heard about this because I also didn’t think this person would cry for us/in public! So so touched. My dad also cried a fair bit. If I had to count the number of times I’ve seen my dad cry, I’d be able to do it on one hand. So this was a big deal :’ )

I’m so thankful too that my sister’s boyfriend J took on dog duty during our big day. It was important that our furbaby be there for our celebrations, but our boy Onyx is not an easy doggo to manage. He’s reactive, so he can be a handful. However, J did an amazing job and was taking Onyx out on walking breaks and feeding him during his dinner time. Onyx was also such a good boy that day. He’s usually a bit of a menace, but he really held it together. It’s as if he knew his parents were getting married. I knew he was definitely overwhelmed and at one point, he came over to S and I and he started to snuggle into my dress for comfort. S picked him up to cuddle him for a bit and we got some pictures. But then J took him back to our room (located at the venue!) to rest and decompress.

I’m so glad we ended up deciding to do a proper wedding. And I can’t believe I’m someone’s wife now!? And I can call S my husband?! I wish to hold on to the magic and joy I felt on our wedding day for the rest of our life. I’m thankful for all who made our day possible, and to those who celebrated with us. We are so loved and we didn’t even realize it.

Oh another magical moment was that although it was scheduled to rain the entire Sunday, right after our ceremony, the sun came out?! And we managed to get photos with our guests outside with Mount Cheam in the background! I’m not sure which one of our ancestors pulled some strings to make that happen for us up there, but I’m super grateful.

We didn’t get our proper photos back from the photographer (duh, it’s been like 2 days), but I’ll probably make another post to annotate some photos when we get them back! This post consists of random photos I managed to take in the rare moments where I had my phone, or where I was sent various photos from family members. Not the best quality, but I’d rather sprinkle some visuals in here for my memories than not 🙂