Celebrating Our Culture and Our Complicated Invites

This is the double happiness symbol I have been working with for our Chinese invitations. I purchased it on iStock. Invites to be revealed at a later date!

Lately I have been harping on how complicated our wedding(s) is(are) getting. To quickly recap, we have two events: a ceremony and reception in San Diego, and a big fat Chinese banquet in Sacramento. Guest count is constantly rising, with the number for the banquet running over 300 guests. And 300 is the minimum, not an overestimate. 

My head spun even more when I was trying to figure out what to do about invitations, and was the point in which I realized just how complicated “getting married” can be. I can do some graphic design, and I was planning to make my invitations with my gocco. After realizing that we would need two sets of invitations for our two events, one of them being translated into Chinese, and some people receiving both invites, my head almost popped off. I made the decision to forgo gocco, and just design both invites in InDesign and have them digitally printed. Just typing that out sounds easy enough, but the Chinese translation, getting the right double happiness symbol for the banquet invitation, and then making the invite for the San Diego event to match our save the date and website…enough to make this girl’s brain shut down, only to wake up saying “wedding? I’m sorry, what wedding?”

When I stop and think about this complicated array of festivities and celebration, I realize that it’s actually very special. The boy and I are bicultural as Asian Americans, both the children of immigrants, thus the amalgamation of a tea ceremony with Sprinkles cupcakes, a roasted pig with pasta salad, multiple dress changes, and a wedding playlist with mostly American music (and some Canadians…*wink*.) I like how we are incorporating so many aspects from both cultures, even if it means ramming my head into my scanner and yelling at my computer.

I know I’m not the only one since our readership is probably a cornucopia of different cultures, heritage, and traditions. What traditions/customs are you and your partner incorporating into your wedding?