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| Reader LPC asked today if I had ever posted pictures of my Chinese banquet, held one month after our wedding in the summer of 2007, and, well, I didn't! Sorry everyone! Since it was a party thrown FOR us, not BY us, Mr. Bluebell and I didn't have any say in the details of the banquet, or vendors/decor etc, so we basically just showed up. It was awesome! But for some reason, I just never got around to posting any pictures. So here they are, over a year and a half later!
The banquet was held at Gala Manor, in Flushing (part of Queens, NYC). Everything went quite smoothly, the food was tasty, and we had a lot of fun! I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. 
A pretty traditional dragon & phoenix and double happiness set-up:
a cake just a wee bit different from what we would choose for ourselves...
with Mr. Bluebell's great aunt who sang during our ceremony
I started off the night in my wedding dress that I wore for our actual wedding
We go back to Gala Manor for dim sum or dinner every so often, and it's so fun when we see some of the same servers who were there for our banquet!
As dinner was being served, I slipped away to change into my cheongsam.
Then we went around and toasted every single table.
Mr. Bluebell's parents were nice to us and surreptitiously filled our glasses with iced tea instead of cognac, so we didn't, um, die.
My parents came too!
Then I changed into my third dress
Mr. Bluebell's parents gave me some gold jewelry from Hong Kong, that his mom is showing off to another relative here.
It is in the traditional wedding design of a dragon and a phoenix.
Thanks LPC for inspiring me to actually post these!!
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| We had decided a looong time ago not to have a bouquet toss or garter toss. I think they're fun at other people's weddings, but I've heard a lot about single girls feeling awkard at the bouquet toss, and there was no way at all ever that I was going to let anyone - even a brand new husband - go all up my skirt in front of everyone I know. Yes, it's entertaining to watch as an observer, but I am just one of those people that would be way too humiliated to enjoy it aaaat all.
Regardless, the decision was made many months back, and no one made any objections, so we were all set.
Until. After everyone had been dancing a while, one of my bridesmaids started desperately pleading, um, I mean, politely asking  , if we could please please pleeeeease have a bouquet toss. She kept asking and asking and, honestly, I was just in a pretty good mood at the time! I'd just gotten married! Big happy party! So I was just like "okay, fine, sure!" My only caveat was that I didn't want to throw my actual bouquet (because it was huge and heavy) so I told her I'd throw one of the bridesmaids' bouquets if she wanted. She thought the MOH's bouquet would be better since it was a little larger and also had some of the coral peonies in it like mine (and unlike the BM's), so I said she could ask the MOH and if she didn't mind, I was down! She didn't, so we just started yelling "Hey we're going to do a bouquet toss now!!!" randomly, and I trotted off to find Jane (our awesome photographer) to make sure she caught it on film, since I'd previously told her we wouldn't be having one. So, picture time now!
<All photos by Jane Heller.>
First, the bridesmaid who insisted we do the toss, yelled out instructions to me on where to aim.
I tried to turn as I tossed to make sure she caught it....
So so close....
...but NO!!!  Instead it was caught by a family friend....who is twelve years old!!! 
Luckily, my uncle (above) had seen the whole story play out, so even though my begging bridesmaid was acting very brave and nonchalant, he asked the 12 year old if she wouldn't mind giving it to "that tall girl who really wants it." The twelve year old (who's soooo sweet, and seriously, would you ever guess she was 12?!?) agreed, but, hehe, I don't know if she misunderstood, or if my uncle (who has a tendency towards making things dramatic just for entertainment's sake) suggested it, or what....but she decided to throw the bouquet again!!!
Note how no one else is even trying to catch it in that picture. 
Aaaand....
She finally caught it!!! Look at the pride in her face as she gazes lovingly at it!
So yeah, all in all, I am very glad we had our surprise bouquet toss, and that these two girls caught it! An extremely entertaining if unexpected addition to the wedding!
Has anyone else ever seen a second bouquet toss? Or anything else unconventional about the bouquet and/or garter toss? Would you be up for a last minute change like this if the situation were to present itself?
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| <all photos by Jane Heller.>
When I was dancing with my dad (in the background), Mr. Bluebell danced with my adorable little cousin!! (You'll see lots more of her, don't you worry!) We didn't have an official father-daughter dance, and Mr. Bluebell's mom preferred not to dance at all, so my dad just stepped in at some point to whatever song happened to be playing then. After everyone staring at us for...the first thirty seconds of our first dance, I was more than happy to not be the center of attention again!
My uncle, from rural South Carolina, loves to sing (and has done some local musical theatre). So when he saw Mr. Bluebell's great aunt, the professional Chinese opera singer who sang during our ceremony, after dinner, he couldn't resist a duet! Despite the language and musical-styles barriers, they settled on Moon River as a song they both knew and it was awesome to see them sing it together!!!!
Awww aren't they the cutest?
We had a bonfire just a ways outside the tent for anyone who got cold or just wanted a bit of fresh air. People were gathered around it all night!! We had a few tree stumps around it as well, so people could sit if they wanted.
You can't really tell in the night time pictures, but the lanterns were pale blue, red, and pale orange. There were 12 blues and 6 each of red and orange, so we alternated them blue, not blue, blue, not blue so that the blue would tie them all together but they still had a casual festive look.
My awesomely cute cousin decided that we should play Copycat - where she does ridiculous dance moves and everyone has to imitate her. I would guess that at least 30% of our guests were copying her at one point or another throughout the night!!
more Copycat!
Even the older relatives were gettin' down!
After a good bit of Copycat, my cousin started challenging people to DANCEOFFS!! One of my bridesmaids accepted every DANCEOFF challenge, and got quite competitive. The only truly important rule in a DANCEOFF is that the person who is not dancing at the moment has to cross their arms in front of them and look sassy.
One of my cousin's awesome DANCEOFF moves!!
Haha we don't even know what this one is! (Back to Copycat now)
A little husband-wife-crazydancingcousin bonding.
Mr. Bluebell hand-crafted all of the playlists for our wedding, and did all the wiring etc himself too! It worked out really well and he only occasionally had to pop over to the laptop to adjust anything. Behind him is my cousin that got CRAZY HIGH by chugging many many bottles of our maple syrup favors. Oh man, he was out of control.
Oh yeah, you know it's another DANCEOFF!
A quiet moment by the bonfire as the party winds down...
...and back up the lantern-lit path to the house we go!
[a separate post about my surprise (!) bouquet toss coming soon...]
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| I just realized after seeing Mrs. Onion's post that I never posted an update after my first incredibly horrendous trip to the DMV in NYC.
[Superbrief recap: a horrible horrible *@&%$*#! at the NYC DMV told me that I had to hyphenate my maiden and last names whether I wanted to or not since I had listed my maiden name as a "middle" name on my marriage license, but "we know" it's really a last name since it was on my old identification, and proceeded to taunt me cruelly for politely asking if I couldn't keep it as a middle name, as was stated on my marriage certificate with no problems whatsoever.]
After I got my correct name on my social security card in the mail, I felt more confident in my ability to "prove" my new name was valid as shown on the marriage certificate since I had the whole thing written out on two Big Important Official documents (First Middle Maiden Newlast, where Newlast is my only "last" name and my maiden became a second middle name), but I still wasn't sure I was brave enough to face the demons of the NYC DMV again.
<picture from epilogue.net. not an actual DMV employee.>
I also found out that the "rule" with which I was taunted was NOT a DMV rule, but a NYC marriage bureau rule. If you get you marriage license in New York City, you can't have "two last names" so your only options are to:
- Not have your maiden name anywhere in your post-marriage name
- Keep your maiden name as your last name, and not have your husband's name anywhere
- Hyphenate
...and that's it. According to my online research, the reason is that they claim they are not authorized to change "middle" names, only last names, so they can't give you a new middle name, even if it was previously a part of your legal name. Which seriously, is bunk. That's legal (and incredibly common) everywhere else. But whatever.
So I decided that my best bet DMV-wise was to just skip all the way out of New York City to a place where they didn't even know about this silly nonsense rule, and since the town clerk where I got my marriage license happily wrote my name out just the way I wanted it, I thought that would be a good place to start!
For Labor Day weekend, we trekked up to the Adirondacks late late Thursday night so that we'd be there when the DMV was open on Friday during business hours.
When I got to the supercute county building Friday morning, there was literally one person in line in front of me, so as soon as I'd filled out my form, I stepped up to talk to Cheri (got her name this time!). I explained the problem and she instantly understood exactly what I wanted to do, but wasn't quite sure if the documentation I had was enough to change my current post-marriage name ("Maiden-Newlast") in the DMV system, since this was no longer a simple maiden-to-married name change. She asked a coworker who also wasn't entirely sure, and then said she'd have to call the main Albany office to double check, but she was optimistic that she would be able to do it since it really appeared that the NYC DMV had done it incorrectly so she should hopefully be able to fix it.
Once on hold with the Albany line (for DMV employees only) she said that it might take a long time since it was around lunchtime, so if we had a local phone number she could just give us a call after she got an answer, but we decided to wait it out. After about 45 minutes on hold, she finally talked to someone in Albany. The highlight of the call was when she yelled "Well I know that and you know that, but they still wrote it that way on her license!!" Cheri and the Albany rep agreed that my license had been issued incorrectly in NYC (), and the Albany person authorized her to make the fix!
After filling in all the appropriate paperwork (The license will now say "First M. M. Newlast" instead of spelling out both middle & maiden names because they can't write out two middle names, so you must use initials if you have more than one middle name), she took my picture, and asked which one I liked best (!), then let me try to sign my name on about 6 different signature cards since I kept involuntarily writing my full maiden name instead of just the initial. She was extremely nice and helpful and it was all in all a very pleasant experience - and I finally got my license straightened out!! VICTORYYY!!! Take THAT NYC DMV rep from hell!
There is also a really entertaining post-script to my whole saga.... After I first blogged about my horrible experience at the NYC DMV, a reporter from SmartMoney (the Wall Street Journal's magazine) contacted me for an interview for an article she was writing about the DMV!! She said it's mainly an informative piece, with a few anecdotes for color, so it's not really "about" me, but I still feel very special. The only sad part is that the fact checker called to confirm the details right before I went upstate and got my sweet sweet victory!! I wrote the reporter back to ask her to include how Cheri saved the day and the head office in Albany explicitly said that the NYC DMV was completely wrong, but unfortunately the story had already gone to press. But look for me in November's issue!!  | | |
| I just watched my first ever episode of Tyra (this is what happens when Mr. Bluebell has plans & I don't - also, has anyone seen Tori & Dean: Inn Love?? Man, I'm hooked!!!)...and the theme of the episode was DOOMED FOR DIVORCE (yes, with a scary graphic and everything). In addition to picking at every potential issue in two poor couples' relationships, there was an "Are YOU doomed for divorce?" quiz which was, I am ashamed to admit, the real hook that kept me watching.
The quiz questions were:
1) Have you attended college? (If yes, risk of divorce decreases by 13%)
If Yes: give yourself 1 point
2) Is your annual income over $50,000? (If yes, risk of divorce decreases by 30%)
If Yes: give yourself 4 points
3) Do you have a religious affiliation? (If yes, risk of divorce decreases by 14%)
If Yes: give yourself 1 point
4) Are your parents still married? (If yes, risk of divorce decreases by 14%)
If Yes: give yourself 1 point
5) Were you married/will your first marriage be after the age of 25? (If yes, risk of divorce decreases by 24%)
If Yes: give yourself 3 points
Scoring:
If you scored less than 4 points you are "doomed for divorce"
If you scored between 5 and 7 you might have some issues, but can potentially work it out
If you scored between 8 and 10 you're probably fine
Is anyone else underwhelmed by this quiz?? Isn't this a perfect example for a statistics teacher on how not to use statistics? The first two questions especially irk me as they seem to be saying "unless you're really rich and well educated, then your love life is going to suck too!" which, honestly, does not seem particularly helpful or even relevant. Because wouldn't everyone rather make lots of money, have happily married parents, and fabulous education? So don't tell me that just because I don't have something else that would be nice, that I have no chance at a successful marriage!! Because whether or not there is a statistical correlation - you can't really prove causation, not to mention that even if all of your percentages show that you have a higher risk of divorce than someone else, that doesn't mean you will get divorced.
Okay, I seem to be taking my Tyra a bit too seriously.
But most of these questions are based on circumstances that a) you can't easily "fix" and b) they have nothing at all to do with who your partner is. Wouldn't you think that an individual who scores a 10 based on these questions might still marry the wrong guy on occasion? Or that a 0 might find their perfect mate? Or that Mrs. Bluebell needs to stop watching Tyra if she just can't handle it?
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