Military Wedding Week Contest..

Oh gosh, do I love to talk about our wedding. So what if the wedding almost 3 years ago? It was the party of the decade! I am taking full advantage of The Military Wedding Week Contest over on Skinnie Piggie's blog page! I hope to see lots of entries. I love looking at wedding photos, especially ones with beautiful brides and their handsome military hubbies (we all know weddings are better with a groom decked out in his blues, right?)
We got engaged in November of 2006 and decided to have a July wedding. Originally we wanted to have the wedding in my parents backyard, but that idea was quickly squashed by the sheer size of the guest list. A good 80% of the guest list was his family!!! Whoa! I am an only child and I have a small extended family. We had a very small budget and I will forever be proud of my amazing ability to negotiate a lower price for pratically everything. We settled on a restaurant in the Hollywood Hills. Yamashiro's dates back to early Hollywood, you can see all of Los Angeles from it's hilltop location. It is modeled after a Japanese pagoda and had a beautiful koi pond garden setting. David and I love our Los Angeles, I could not have ever imagined a more perfect location than this one.



David and I also love everything asian themed-Anything to do with Japanese culture we really flip for. One of my friends had a cousin that performed with a Chinese Lion Dance group. They offered to do my wedding for almost free! We didn't tell anyone that we had a scheduled a performance with them, so when they came out and performed our guests flipped out! If you haven't ever been to a Chinese New Year festival you most likely aren't too familiar with how awesome these groups are. It typically is accompanied by a drum group, the lion is supposed to bring luck to whoever "feeds" it. The whole performance just took my breath away. It was really special and I don't think it could ever be topped!

I love the color orange, it has great energy. Our colors went perfect with the garden setting, orange and brown. My grandmother made most of the bridesmaids dresses, each one cost about $25.00 for the fabric. I let all the girls pick their own pattern, shoes and accessories. They all added their own personality and I loved what each girl came up with. Everything looked so beautiful with all the green in the garden.

One my best good friends in the world, Roberto, got ordained online and married us. He is a natural at public speaking and has a great sense of humor. He did a great job and it meant so much to me to have one my oldest friends preside over the ceremony. And just to prove what a great presence he has -- he currently can be found on the Ellen Degeneres show! He is her personal chef and does a monthly segment about vegan cooking! I love this guy!

We had quite the party after the wedding, it went well into the night. We sold the bar out that night according to our coordinator. A year later we went back to celebrate our anniversary. When we told our server what we were celebrating she brought half the staff over and they all clapped and celebrated with us. Several of them said they will always remember our wedding, which says a lot considering this restaurant has hosted thousands of events.
Here are some of my favorite photos from that amazingly perfect day.










Well, I can't say I didn't warn you-- I love talking about our wedding. I can't wait to see everyone else's photos!