Scans By: Photovision Prints | Reception Venue: Century Dynasty Palace Restaurant
Flowers By: Petals4Less | Cake By: La Favourite | Stationery: Upper Case Press
Make Up Artist: Lydia Yapp | Bridal Hair By: June Tran – Shear Lock Combs Hair Spa
Bride’s White Wedding Dress: Watters from Happy Brautmoden München
Bride’s Áo dài: Tailored from Vietnam | Groom’s Suit: Hugo Boss from Hirmer
A few words from Lam:
How we met: We met in March 2013 while on a 3 week bus tour of Australia, where we started in Cairns and travelled south along the Eastern coast down to Sydney. We started out as good friends and shared a lot of once in lifetime activities; sailing on the Whitsunday Islands, Skydiving at Byron Bay and surf camp at Crescent Head. Following the trip we went back to our respective lives in Canada and Germany, however, we stayed in touch and soon planned a trip to New York to meet up again. From there we continued our trans-atlantic long-distance relationship, including many (delayed) flights, visas and even masters degrees in order to stay together.
The Proposal: Since we love travelling, Alex organized a surprise weekend getaway to Paris, France. After indulging in the delicious French cuisine, beautiful walks along the Seine, we ended our evening up at the Sacre Coeur, on top of a hill, overlooking all of Paris -and that was where Alex proposed!
Wedding Plans: We actually eloped in Aeroskøbing, Denmark in January 2016 in an intimate ceremony with just our wedding planner, photographer and officiant. However, we planned on a having a large traditional Vietnamese wedding back in Edmonton during the summer, since Lam was in the middle of her master’s program.
Most of the Edmonton wedding was planned by Lam, remotely from Germany (the magic of internet!), and her mom in Edmonton. We wanted a light summer wedding feeling; so we opted for whites, peaches and light pinks as the colour palette. We also wanted to incorporate some Canadian wedding traditions into the traditional Vietnamese wedding.
The red tea ceremony dress worn by the bride along with the bridesmaids dresses were traditional Vietnamese dresses called áo dài, which were all custom made in Vietnam. The white dress, I picked because of its slightly risqué plunging v-neck and light, airy, garden party feeling, which I thought would be fitting for a July wedding. Fun fact: I wore 5 dresses in total for the day and had 2 bridesmaids on dress changing duty.
Alex is known for his sweet tooth, so for the reception we opted for a loaded candy bar to honour his love of sweets.
Favourite Part of the Day: The slideshow and speeches. It was the one part of the day where we were not getting pulled in 3 different directions, but we really had some time to just sit back and enjoy the show. The slideshow was put together by Lam’s brother and Alex’s sister, so there was a lot of meaning behind the pictures included and countless inside jokes. Same goes for the speeches, just having some precious moments to reflect on our relationship and our journey to get where we are through the perspective of our best friends was just one of the happiest moments of the day.
