Tammy and Phat's Wedding Blog

My mom made my veil! She used a Vogue pattern that we got at JoAnn fabrics.  We tried on some veils at David’s Bridal to get some ideas on what would look good and the veils there were all about $200! I didn’t want to spend that much money on something that I was only planning to wear for about an hour. My mom is so crafty and insisted on making my veil for me. 🙂 She just bought some ivory tulle to match my dress, used the Vogue pattern, and bought crystals and 2mm pearls and sewed them around my veil. It turned out so nice and I was really happy with it! For the clip, we got a really blinged out clip from Asian Mall.

My proud mama putting on the veil she made for me 🙂

Veil Shot! Instead of doing a two layer veil, we decided to do one layer so that the back of the dress could still be seen! You can see the pearls and crystals on the veil..so pretty and simple.

You can sort of see jeweled clip here..it was really pretty

Here's a picture of the veil from the back..we wanted the veil to hit just below the butt..not too long, not too short.

My mom did a great job!! The night before the wedding, when I was up at around 2 a.m., I was texting my brother and he told me my mom and my aunts were still over at the house talking and that my mom was still working on my veil. LOL! We are total procastinators..but hey, it turned out great!! lol.

My Ao Dai (traditional Vietnamese dress) was custom made by Co Thu. She has a shop inside OK Water on Brookhurst and Hazard near Van’s Bakery.  I brought her some photos of what I wanted and got fabric from LA.  She did a really beautiful job on it.  I loved everything from the detailing on the collar to the scalloped sleeves.  Since our colors were light blue and gold, I wanted a gold ao dai.  We blinged it up with some swarovski crystals.  The inside layer is a nude silk and the outside layer was a gold lace pattern.  My pants were also custom made in an ivory silk material which I also got in LA.

The hat was made by my best friend Linda’s mom. She is a pro at making them and offered to make mine! The day before the wedding, my aunts from Arizona were in town and they helped out with “blinging up” the ao dai and added some lace flowers from the excess material from the dress and hot glued them onto the hat along with crystals for some added bling!

I am so grateful and lucky to have such wonderful family who help out so much!

Here’s them blinging out the dress (Thanks Co Diep and Di Ri!):

You can see the bling on the top back part..bling! bling!

The whole outfit turned out great. I really love the dress. I want to wear it again!

Here’s a better picture of how the hat looked (thanks Co Liem!):

I wasn’t used to wearing that hat and kept bumping into things with it!

In one of our previous posts we talked about outfits for the kids in our wedding party. Well, we  nailed the look we were going for! The girls were so cute and surprisingly the boys were great sports w/ their newsboy caps!   Here are pictures of the ADORABLE kids. They all looked so cute in their outfits!!!

Our Flower Girls and Ring Boys from left to right: Brittany, Ben, Lani, and Matthew.

They look so stylish don’t they?

Here is a shot of the back of the girls’ dresses. Lani’s dress has a cute blush pink ribbon that my mom added to her dress and Brittany’s dress has a cute bow with a flower in the middle of it and cute buttons on her back!

I bought suspenders from Burlington Coat Factory and bow ties online for the boys and they supplied their own shirts and pants. I told their mamas what kind of hat I was looking for and they were so gracious in helping me find them!  They found some at Target and Ross! The boys looked AWESOME. LOVE their look.

Instead of flower baskets I made feather balls! I got the idea online. I bought styrofoam balls from Michaels and strings of pearls from Shinodas. With the help of my wonderful mom, we hot glue gunned the pearls to be used as handles and glued white boas around each ball. We originally were going to make a whole bunch to put on the pews as well, but once we realized how much work it was we opted against it. But the girls look so cute with them!

Our Junior Bridesmaids, Jessie and Ivy!  We also posted on their dresses a while back..they look so cute in them!  I also got each girl a pearl necklace which went so well with their dress!

Here is a picture of all the girls!! We will be posting on the lovely bridesmaids’ and groomsmen outfits soon!  Everyone looks so good!

All the boys..

Here is a picture of me and Phat. You can see the little ones on the sides..so cute.  If you look closely, you can also see the feathers that shed. Supposedly they were everywhere. LOL. But it’s okay! I mean, we asked the church if we can have feathers and they said yes! Little did they know what they were getting themselves into..they probably won’t allow that anymore. 

Our First Dance song was “Your Song” by Elton John. When Phat and I first started dating, we talked on Aol Instant Messanger a lot and on his AIM profile he put “How wonderful life is, now you’re in the world”, lyrics from the song.   It was actually from Moulin Rouge where he got it from, but the Elton John’s is a classic.  I always remember thinking it was so cute that he put that on his profile. Anyways, that always stuck and has always had special meaning to us. As you can see..the lyrics are also on our blog banner! 🙂

Dancing w/ Phat to this song at our wedding brought tears to my eyes..it was a very touching moment.  At one point, we actually started singing to each other too. 

Is it just me or is Charlie Chaplin in the back?!?!?

Twirling each other…

Dipping each other..lol

I loved how our bridal party all swayed together as we danced.  LOL..the best.

Phat wanted to get his groomsmen something they could use. I thought his gift was really cute. He bought all of the groomsmen a pair of Vans and his Best Man a watch. We had a get together before the Bachelor and Bachelorette parties at our Best Man Anthony’s house and Phat surprised them with their gifts. To get everyone’s shoe sizes, a few weeks before, Phat pretended that the tux rental shop was asking for everyone’s shoe sizes.

The guys trying on their new shoes..

The groomsmen wore their dress shoes during the morning and wedding ceremony, but for the reception, of course they had to put their dancing shoes on!! All the groomsmen changed into their vans at night 🙂

For the bridesmaids I got all the girls Victoria Secret silk Kimono Robes, lotion, a small notepad, nail polish, and crystal flasks with their names engraved! Mostly everything went with our wedding color scheme, light blue and gold so I got really excited. LOL. I found really cute boxes from Michael’s to put the girls’ gifts in.


For my maid of honor, my sister Sue, I got her the same thing as the girls but found a different box for her and I got her these really cute Kate Spade earrings and matching bracelet. My sister wanted these when we went shopping at Nordstrom but I insisted that she should save her money (so that I could buy it for her!).

I gave all the girls their gifts when we were in Vegas at the bachelorette party..

The girls with all their gifts!

The girls all wore their robes the morning of the wedding while they got their hair and makeup done and brought their flasks with them to keep them company throughout the long day lol!

The flasks sure came in handy on the big day!! lol

As for our gifts to each other, a few months ago, when the Apple Ipad just came out, Phat surprised me with an Ipad! Phat put that picture as my wallpaper..he liked that picture of Viet. LOL! I was super surprised but super stoked!!! I love that thing!

And I got him an LED 3D TV! All Phat ever wanted was a new TV so I knew I just had to get him one.

Yay! Just got an email from our wedding photographer and we will get our pictures next week!!!

After the church ceremony there was a huge weight lifted!!! Phat and I got video of our limo rides with the wedding party both before and after the ceremony. We were all ready to party in the second video!

Before ceremony:

AFTER!!!

Fun times ❤

Before the ceremony, the girls waited in the priests’ room while the guys waited outside. Here are some videos from inside and outside. Our youngest flower girl and ring boy were Lani and Matthew. Aren’t they cute? They couldn’t stay away from each other all day. I just remember the very first time they met at the rehearsal they were so shy but now look at them! Cuties.

And here is a video that Phat got on his phone of Anthony, one of our groomsmen re-enacting dance moves from Stomp the Yard..HIGHlarious

We stayed in a 2 bedroom suite at The Hyatt on Harbor in Garden Grove so there was plenty of room for us girls. I would highly recommend staying there if you ever need a big hotel room, it was really nice!

Anyways, so, we we had 7 girls who needed to get their hair done with one guy doing hair, so you can imagine how early we all had to wake up!  I got my hair and makeup done really early so while I was done, I was just lounging around, and figured I should record the girls!! So I did..check out the video below!

The morning of the wedding, I woke up at 4:30 a.m. the sad thing is, I attempted to go to sleep early (11:00 p.m.)..woke up at 1:00 a.m., and couldn’t sleep the rest of the night. I remember lying in bed feeling really anxious and facebooking on my phone while in bed. I slept in the same bed as my sister Sue, so any time I’d hear a sudden movement from her I’d whisper, “Sue, are you awake?” and..nothing. haha..you know that feeling where you can’t sleep and you’re so anxious you wish others were awake too so you could talk with them? haha..luckily my brother was awake that time and he saw I was on facebook and texted me and we started texting back and forth.

A special thanks to Sandy and Vincent for doing makeup!! 🙂

On Thursday, September 16 at 6:00 p.m., we had our rehearsal at St. Vincent De Paul and then dinner at 8:00 p.m. at Sandy’s Beach Grill in Huntington Beach.

Rehearsal at church was fun. It is always nice having everyone together!  It made me nervous because it just made me realize how much stuff we had to remember to do on wedding day and I was afraid of messing up! I think everyone felt the same way, but I’d say we all did a pretty darn good job on Saturday!!! Good job everyone in the wedding party!! 🙂

After the rehearsal we all drove to the beach for dinner.  Phat and I wanted to have a rehearsal dinner somewhere near the beach.  We had gone to eat at Duke’s and thought it would be cool to have our rehearsal dinner there but their Boardroom was too small for what we needed.  We saw Sandy’s under Duke’s and checked it out! We thought it would be cool to sit outside in the patio..it seemed really chill with a fun environment so we contacted them and the rest is history!  We ate family style and the food was good!! Here’s what the menu looked like:

• Seafood Ceviche
• Dry Rubbed Ribs
• Pepperoni and Sausage Pizza
• and Beer Can Chicken

Yummmm!

After dinner, a few of us went down to Main Street for some drinks..

It was a great day. Thank you so much to everyone who came out! Especially coming straight from work! We LOOOVE you!

Here are some pictures from our rehearsal and rehearsal dinner!

Here we are being silly in the church. I bet the wedding coordinator was getting frustrated trying to keep our attention. ha ha ha.

More fun!!! mwuaha.

This is what the patio looked like. The lights were really cute!

A lot of my family live in Arizona but they came here for the wedding and it was so nice to spend time with them!

We were all laughing at something funny…I wish I remember what it was!

VIEW MORE PICTURES FROM OUR WEDDING REHEARSAL AND REHEARSAL DINNER BY CLICKING HERE! 🙂

A big thanks to Annie for the pictures!!!