Prior to their wedding, Tina and Thomas did engagement session with us in San Francisco.   By their wedding day, we have met each other three times and exchanged a bunch of emails/phone calls, so it really felt like we had known them for a long time, and as if we were attending an old friend’s wedding.

Tina and Thomas, though all grown up here in California, were originally from Vietnam.  Naturally, their wedding, with tea ceremony, church wedding, and reception in Oakland Chinatown, demonstrated a mixture of style and culture.

I have heard a lot about tea ceremony before, but this was actually the first Vietnamese tea ceremony I witnessed from beginning to the end.   The ceremony took place at Tina’s parents’ house.  Early in the morning, Thomas and his family, all dressed up in black, arrived in a limousine.  With six elaborately decorated lacquer boxes covered in red cloth, the groom’s family proceeded, in one single file line, into the house.  Their gifts, including betel, tea, fruit, jewelry and a roast pig, represent the wealth that the groom’s family will bring to the bride’s family.  BTW, the roast pig, served later at lunch, was unbelievable (good).   After everyone came into the house, Tina and Thomas served tea to their parents in front of all the guests. Each side of parents then gave advice about marriage and family to the couple and also passed red envelopes (with money of cause) to the couple.

First generation Vietnamese immigrated to the States as war refugees.  With extremely limited resource, they survived tons of hardship by staying together and supporting each other.  At Tina and Thomas’s tea ceremony, their uncles, aunts, and cousins from all over the country filled up the house, and gave a handful of fortune to the young couple.  I guess it was just a small illustration of the strong family bonding that all Vietnamese, being immigrants or not, celebrate and cherish each and every day.

A research article I read somewhere says the quality of a marriage is proportional to the time the couple has known and dated each other.   Tina and Thomas tied their knot after nine years of dating, and I can foresee they will have a life long happy marriage ahead of them.

Congratulations Tina and Thomas!  Thanks for having us as part of your day.