Wedding Bells in Singapore


Jackie and Adrian got hitched at the Seattle Aquarium back in May.


In November, Adrian's family hosted a wonderful, festive second reception for the couple in Singapore, where Adrian's family lives. Being less than a 100 miles north of the Equator makes for one hot republic, even after spending a week in the Vietnam heat.

The family was separated at the airport when it was discovered that Grandma's passport was missing.  We had left most of our luggage in holding at the hotel in Saigon for the shot trip to Singapore.  Di 6 had the hotel bring them to the airport so they could search all the bags for the passport.  They arrived on a later flight to Singapore but not too much later.

That night, we settled into our hostel-like hotel at the very tip top of a steep hill - Mt. Emily.  The heat was really exhausting and uncomfortable, probably just because we were hiking with our luggage.  Grandma, Alex, Carol, and Alan and I shared a spacious room with one bathroom. 

The first night, we had a traditional 10-course meal at a seafood restaurant. The meal was delicious and between the 15 camera flashes going off (mine not being one of them), it was probably well documented.  We met Adrian's family for the first time.  He has two sisters, one who hosted the wedding celebration and the other one was our personal tour guide basically while we were there.  We ate in many diverse food courts - Thai, Indian, Indonesian, Vietnamese, every place was represented.

We went to the Singapore museum to learn about the history of colonization and how it became a commerce capital.  The boys trekked to the redlight district, but I walked back to the hotel in the rain to see how Grandma was doing.  She had been pretty wiped out by the traveling and we needed to be in good shape for the wedding reception!

Jackie and Adrian had another lovely reception with lots of friends and family - the best man speech was pretty hilarious and the food was delicious.  The family photos taken prior to the dinner are really priceless - everyone is all smiles and the women look beautiful in our ao dai.  Jackie looked just beautiful in her emerald green dress.  How cool of my cousin to have two fun weddings, share them both with tons of family and friends, and let us all travel to a new country to boot!

With lots of "weather" occurring in Thailand, I chickened out and did not go to Krabi and Phuket with Carol and Alan as initially planned.  Instead, Alex and I picked up tickets to Hong Kong, which instantly became one of my favorite cities in the world.

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