Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! Thanks to everyone who made it out to sunny San Francisco this weekend to celebrate our marriage! Well, those of you who were in SF Thursday and Friday know very well that it wasn’t exactly sunny all weekend… We especially thank everyone who travelled through the super thick trademark San Francisco fog and made it (eventually) to our celebration on Friday evening. However, we had some luck with the sun poking out just before our dinner began, and it just got warmer from then on, making for a gorgeous weekend in the Bay Area.

The day began with Lisa getting her hair and makeup done downtown with her sisters (Mabel and Judy), and Rob checked into our hotel suite with Vince and Danny. Kurty, our photographer, met us at the hotel and began documenting our day. We walked around the block to Restaurant Lulu as Kurty snapped a bunch of photos in the urban landscape. Rob’s best friend Vince introduced us as we cautiously climbed atop a table to recite our vows. Once we took our seats, the feast began! By now, you all know how much we enjoy food. For most of you who already knew this, it shouldn’t have been much of a surprise that we had never-ending heaps of food served on Friday night. We received multiple comments about how much food there was, and that’s pretty much what we were going for… We wanted to ensure everyone had good food and drinks to last the entire evening! For anyone local to the Bay Area, we highly recommend coming back to dine at Lulu’s in the future. We had an absolutely great time and hope everyone enjoyed the live jazz band, caricature artists, photoboof, and awesome DJ (Herb Digs). The night turned out exactly as we had envisioned (just a big party with good food and wine, hanging out with friends and family without all the typical cheesy wedding stuff). For those of you who are interested, our Friday dinner menu consisted of:

Appetizers:

Antipasti of olives, mushrooms, and beets

First Course:

Iron Skillet Roasted Mussels
Apple and Blue Cheese Salad With Walnuts, Buttermilk Blue Cheese, Frisée & Champagne Vinaigrette
Wood Oven Baked Lulu Wild Mushroom Pizzas

Second Course:

Rosemary Scented Chicken With Warm Potato and Lettuce Salad
Grilled Rib Eye Steak With Escarole, Potatoes and Olive Butter
Wood Oven Roasted Salmon With “White Gazpacho” Tomato, Grape, Cucumber Cous Cous
Potato gnocchi With Wild Mushrooms, Peas and Parmesan
Platters of Assorted Seasonal Vegetables
Macaroni and Cheese

Dessert:

Lemon and Coffee Gelato
Christopher Elbow Chocolates: Strawberry Baslamic, Fleur de Sel, Peach, Venezuelan Dark, Champagne

Round Two! (7pm):

Tiger Prawns
Crispy Potato and Chive Cigars
Tomato, Mozzarella & Basil Skewers
Seared Ahi Tuna on Cucumber wheels
Pulled Pork Sliders
Artisanal Cheese selection
White truffled French fries
Taco Station with pulled pork and chicken, guacamole, various sauces
Desserts Petits Fours (chocolate flourless cake, passion fruit chiffon cake, chocolate madeleines)
Caramel & Strawberry popcorn

Wine and beverages:

A HUGE THANK YOU to our vendors for making this such a successful event:

Darla and the staff at Restaurant Lulu, San Francisco, CA
Jon Casey Caricatures
Doug Shannon Caricatures (facebook)
The PhotoBoof!
Live 4-piece band – BASSment
Christopher Elbow Chocolates
Flowers by Dave Wong of Absolute Elegance
DJ Herb Digs
Kurty Photography
Leung’s White Crane lion dance team

We’ve posted the PhotoBoof! pictures in our gallery. Please contact us if you’d like a digital copy of any of the individual photos (without the border).

We’ve also posted caricature drawings in our gallery and on facebook. From our gallery, you can download the high resolution copies by clicking the “DOWNLOAD IMAGE” link in the upper right corner.

So, moving on to Saturday night… Some have described it as “entertaining” or “loud” or “the most Chinese-y wedding they’ve ever attended”. We can just simply call it memorable. The evening started at 5pm for a traditional tea ceremony with the family. We had a fun time posing for pictures in front of our beautiful 1980′s-esque prom picture background with our cousins and friends. Special thanks to Andy for scrambling around to take photos for us through the evening! People began pouring in around 6 and didn’t stop until 43 tables were full and we were finally ready to make our grand entrance (1.5 hours after the original start time… but really, have you ever been to a Chinese banquet that started on time?). After bilingual introductions by our fabulous MC “Show me what you get!” aka Sandy, the White Crane lion dancers performed an amazing, death-defying bench routine for a good 20 minutes. Once the jellyfish and meat appetizer plate was served, we moved on to an interesting dancing/singing game… After Sharkfin soup and Abalone were served, Lisa and her mom changed into her cheongsam, then we literally ran through all 43 tables for toasts (mostly people we did not know personally). Another couple of dishes were served, then a fun kissing game with Rob’s cousin’s (plus a surprise guest, Jenny). Then chicken (heads included), lobster, sea bass, and fried rice to cap it off before impromptu dancing with the in-laws, cake cutting and apple cider toasting. Then dancing ensued amongst Lisa’s parents and their friends, accompanied by some good (and not so good) Chinese singing and karaoke. We had a great support table of friends who braved it and stuck with us through the crazy spectacle of loud, Chinese singing and games. Thanks also to all the family and friends who figured out some way of entertaining themselves and enjoying the evening. We can’t say that we’re looking forward to doing that again anytime soon (or ever), but it was fun and definitely a memorable night and end to our wedding weekend!

Thanks to Grace, Rhonda, Judy, and Andy for letting us use your pictures for this blog post (If we didn’t ask you beforehand… sorry, and I hope you were ok with it. hehe). You all took great photos, which really captured the events! We’ll be posting pictures soon from Friday and Saturday nights in our Gallery, as well as ceremony pictures from Italy!! Stay tuned…