About wedding (2)

2019 is approaching and it will be not appropriate to summarize my 2018 without mentioning a very important event, if not the most important of the year: I got married. My first career, which was also the closest to arts before I started Dat Set, was being a wedding planner. I had planned many weddings throughout that career. When I officially “stopped” being a wedding planner and had the next jobs, I was still involved in weddings in different ways. In Vietnam, although it’s been almost ten years since I started my wedding planning business, many people still know and regard me as a very talented wedding planner, a pioneering one who started my own wedding planning business before anyone dared to do it, and made it a successful brand name. It makes me feel proud and I also find it funny when some of them still wonder why I “gave up” on the business when it was clearly going to be successful. Weddings to me are special, and I can’t help having a lot of mixed feelings when it comes to my own wedding.

I have clear ideas for most of what I’d want for my wedding: a groom – of course, setting, gown, my Vietnamese traditional dress, colors, flowers, guests, music, etc. But things never happen exactly as we plan. I’m not a DIY kind of bride. I simply prefer to find the best wedding vendors and make sure they do things exactly the way I want. But when it was time to think about wedding favor, I couldn’t seem to find a supplier who has unique ideas for it. Making things in Vietnam – where the wedding would be, is cheap; but options for customization are quite limited. On the other hand, with the mentality “I can create pretty much anything with ceramics”, I thought about integrating some ceramic elements in my wedding. A ceramic bouquet? Probably too heavy. A ceramic cake topper? Maybe. Ceramic wedding favor? How?

Long story short, after many conversations with my families, I came up with a brilliant idea: ceramic keys with guests’ name imprinted that can be used as reception place cards and also wedding favors. My mom, after the wedding was over, posted on her Facebook: I saw a huge key board (not keyboard) next to the chuppah, and I have no idea what the keys are for. Without explanation, many people had the same questions. Some guests did not even know that the keys are ceramic, or that the bride hand-made those keys. (As usual, I under-sell my wedding!). Other guests had their “A ha!” moment when they realized why; and the reason was simple: my groom’s last name is Lock.

Summer 2018 has been intense for me. I wanted to finish my sculpture series of Vietnamese ethnic kids before I went back to Hanoi in October for the wedding; that means I spent the whole summer working on that project, planning my wedding with my wedding planner, while still having another full-time job. The most time consuming part was to “print” the guest names onto the keys. And if I do it wrong – I will have to do the key again, there is no “delete” or “undo” button. Hand-making about 100 ceramic keys gave me just enough “flavor” to understand what a DIY wedding could be like. Another aspect I like about it is that I also had a vague idea about installation: from conceptualizing, prototyping, mass-producing; to executing, packaging, shipping & installing. I liked most parts of the whole process.

Besides the keys, I also made a ceramic cake topper. It is a cut-out of the Hebrew word Ahava, which means love. The theme of my wedding was “Love”, I planned to have a big “love” made out of fresh flowers as the backdrop of the reception (but could not execute it – due to some last minute changes), the dance floor also has “Yêu” (love in Vietnamese) coated in glitter. Then I realized that there were probably only 4 people – including me, who actually know how Ahava is written in Hebrew – and hence could understand the idea of my cake topper. That was if they even noticed. So, unlike the ceramic keys, the cake topper was not a “hit” at the wedding, but I still liked it.

I also did a documentary in the form of an Instagram highlight story on my personal Instagram about the wedding planning process. It was an official farewell to my wedding planning career. I shared about how I started my wedding planning business, how I felt about planning for my own wedding, about my bridezilla moments, and the funny moments. I shared a lot of screenshots of the chats I had with my families and friends since most of them would come to Vietnam from different countries. I shared my wedding vendor reviews, some lessons learnt, and some wedding photos. After the wedding, I’ve been having several brides-to-be asking for advices. One of them was a guest at a wedding I planned 8 years ago – and she remembers a lot of things about that wedding (and isn’t that what any wedding planner would wish for?!); she is is getting married in four months and she was very happy and found it a great coincidence that we are talking.

The greatest achievement for me was that everyone, families and friends, was extremely proud and happy with the wedding. My background in hospitality, my experience as a wedding planner, and my obsession with details had the chance to come all in together. The whole celebration was the result of six months of hard work, lots of excitements and frustration, lots of family and wedding fatigues for me. The luckiest person was my husband – he did not have to plan anything – except for purchasing the air tickets for his family – which he considers as a hobby more than anything else. He happily put on and felt extremely comfortable with his Vietnamese traditional Ao Dai. To him, the wedding is purely and truly a pleasant experience. The bride was the one that went through the most, emotionally and rationally. But at the end, seeing our families happy – I guess that’s all worth it.

Sharing here some photos of my wedding. I can only feel grateful about 2018 for what I’ve accomplished: my first studio, successful experiments and successful first projects (and many failed ones that led to those successes), successful weddings (yes, I had more than one wedding!), and most importantly – a life partner who supports my ceramic adventure 😉