On June 26, 2009, Devan and his wife, Karen, hosted our rehearsal party. It was a relaxed day – great BBQ and our bridal party with their significant others. We ate, caught up with each other, handed out some well-deserved Thank-yous, and then the girls headed east where they were pampered the night before the wedding.

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Me and Donny less than 24 hours before we tied the knot!

Everyone hanging out.

Donny and his men

Me and my ladies

The whole gang plus little Joe

Ed trying on his ao dai

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On May 16, 2009, our wonderful maid of honor, Karen, and bridesmaid, Megan, hosted a fabulous co-ed stock-the-bar shower for us in Grand Rapids. The girls went all out for the 34 guests, providing delicious drinks, skewered meat, and hors d’oeurves and desserts that were to-die-for! We can’t express enough how wonderful the ladies were and how much fun we had with all of these great people. Everyone came with a little something to "Stock our bar Man Cave." Here are a few of ours. The rest can be viewed on Shutterfly using the bride’s maiden name in lowercase as the password.

First, the invitations (note that ours was addressed to the Dorky Duo):

The girls created a beautiful display of food. Warming up in the background were some beef and chicken skewers and crab cakes.

After some eating and mingling, they start setting up for a game. Megan pulled out the mousetraps…

Karen then explained that we were going to do heats of "Don’t get your weiner caught in the mouse trap." As she explained the the guests that the point of the game was to try to set off the mouse trap with the hot dog without using hands, the guests reacted in shock!

…but they all got into it! Even the boys who tried to hide had some fun. Ryan, one of our ushers, actually won the final round of who could set it off the fastest.

Then, the girls had everyone draw a wedding cake topper in one minute. There were three categories to be won: Most vulgar, Best representation of the couple, and most artistic. And go!

The last game was the Newlywed Game where the girls read questions to the guests. Guys had to guess what I was going to answer and the girls had to guess what Donny was going to answer. In the end, our friend Jas won for the guys and Angie won for the girls. Winners of all the games took home either a wine opener, bottle opener, or mini bottle of liquor!

Here we are with some of our guests.

Some of the groomsmen were able to make it into town!

And thanks to these two ladies for putting on the show. It was a great shower and people can’t stop complimenting on how much fun they had! Great job, girls!

We are truly blessed with great people in our lives!

Browse through the pictures in our gallery.

I hate the idea of opening gifts in front of a bunch of cooing ladies. You’re going to get the gifts you registered for, is it necessary to have a spectacle and act surprised? Our opinion, anyway. To each her own!

It’s also not customary in a Viet/Chinese wedding so I didn’t really know about what happens at them until my friend got married after college.

My girls hosted an Anti-shower bridal shower on May 2, 2009. The girls were invited to come over for a cocktail slumber party; no gifts. Girls going to Vegas made t-shirts for our little fling!

This is the invitation that they sent out:

It was a lot of fun. There were MANY delicious snacks. We played this Monopoly-like wedding board game where some of them enjoyed roasting me upon landing on certain spaces. Several t-shirts were started and then we enjoyed cheesy, wedding-related movies like Bride Wars and 27 dresses until we fell asleep around 3AM.

Unfortunately, I had broken my camera in March and the replacement one did not make it to me yet, so I did not get many pictures. Some of the girls were able to, but it’s up to them to upload them to Shutterfly. I was only able to snag these:

Thanks ladies for humoring a little old school fun!

Go big or go home! There is no better way to celebrate than to get our close guy friends and girl friends out to Vegas for a weekend! This whole thing came about YEARS ago when my closest girlfriends and I had started dating people seriously. We joked one time and said, "the first one of us to get engaged, we’re going to VEGAS for the bachelorette party!" Well, yours truly was the first and we kept this promise!

Basically, Donny’s men and Thao’s ladies will fly out to the city of sin, LAS VEGAS, during Memorial Day weekend (May 22-24). The guys will do their own thing and the girls will do their own thing each night. Mingling will probably occur during the day but everything that happens at night is a non-topic during the day! So we’ll probably talk about the weather… and… buffets… or that crazy Elvis impersonator.

Please come back after Memorial Day Weekend to see what trouble the bride and groom find while there. [updated!]

In the meantime, the girls have their weekend planned. Each night is themed and one of the theme nights is the typical cheesy decorated shirt night. Why not? I am wearing a white tank and all of the other girls are wearing shades of pink. Lexi spent the night and we started decorating our tees. Ignore the slumberwear.

I am excited to see what all of the other girls come up with for that night. The other nights include "Pinup/Corset Night" and "Classy Black Dress Night". I’ll rock out in white every night.

Read about the actual trip!