TBA
Viet and Maggie's Wedding
Yes, try to suspend your disbelief: Viet and Maggie finally got married!
Most of the gang showed up-- those of us who originated from Viet's original dorm days in Canyon Point and whatnot with An Thomas/Billy/Viet and everyone else who was part of that group. Those of us who didn't show up were unfortunately at another wedding the same day. =( Who showed, in no particular order: Miki, Quyen, George, Billy and Amy, An Thomas, Kevin, Anne, Ray, Nishant and his fiance, Todd and his girlfriend, etc. Toss in other friends and family, and it was a good-sized group. Kim and Brock missed the ceremony but made the reception (med school = Kim is busy!)
The ceremony itself was at a modest church in Fremont. Full on Catholic ceremony, dignified, orderly, and all sorts of things that many of us have to stretch to fake in daily life. ;-)
(building felt like a converted gym, actually. Aside from some confusion-- another wedding was happening at the church next door, too!-- it was still very nice.)
We did the usual thing in the gap between the ceremony and the reception: went to Dave and Buster's to go drink, play skeeball, mini-basketball, the stupidly addicting coin drop game, etc. Ray won a crapload of tickets, which we used to buy gifts for the bride and groom. Nishant, Ray, Quyen, Miki, I forget who else was with us...?
Next step was off to Asian Pearl in Fremont for the reception. A brand-new, pretty nice place, and the manager of the entire chain was there to take care of things, which was awesome. We didn't make too much noise in the back, but some of Viet's old coworkers from UCLA SEAS might have. Banquet food was fairly standard for a nice Chinese (or very nice Vietnamese) banquet-- cold plate, shark's fin soup, abalone and sea cucumber, lobster, fish, etc. Mmmmmmmmmm...
Crystal (maid of honor) lead the games for the bride and groom. They had to squish balloons, while-blindfolded identify Maggie's leg out of a crowd (I felt so violated and unappreciated after that!), get an egg up and down a pant leg, etc. Fun times, especially considering how reluctant Viet is to do anything remotely dirty despite all his talk. *grins*
After things wrapped up, we hit a dessert place next door, since some people-- George, Quyen, and Miki in particular-- had flown in from across the country or halfway across the world, and we needed to hang out some more. We actually got to have a nice conversation instead of constantly being distracted by wedding festivities. ;-)
And congrats to Viet and Maggie! Now on to the next step, actually living together! heehee...