Wedding customs from Steve's family

Steve's family is Northern European in ancestry, with an English mother and Norwegian ancestry father.  Most of the weddings of Steve's family members have been fairly traditional North American weddings, some smaller and some larger, but always focusing on celebrating the newly-married couple's future happiness.  

Steve's parents, Barry and Sheelagh Willer, have fond memories of Grandpa Willer driving over the matchbooks for their wedding, and their car being filled with evergeen trees and smoke bombs before the wedding reception.  

Steve's sister and her husband, Cristen and Gonçalo Abecasis, have wonderful memories of a big Portuguese wedding, although Cristen laments having a hard time getting Gonçalo to leave the wedding because the caterers kept serving the groom cup after cup of the late-night Caldo Verde soup.  Cristen and Gonçalo remember walking to their hotel, a short distance from the wedding reception, while club partiers screamed and cheered at the newlyweds.

Wedding customs from Amy's family

Amy's family is Vietnamese, and the wedding and reception will incorporate several traditional Vietnamese ceremonies.  Amy was also raised Catholic, and as such the wedding ceremony will be performed with a Catholic Mass. 

A traditional Vietnamese wedding consists of an extensive set of ceremonies: asking permission to receive the bride, receiving the bride at her house, and bringing the bride to the groom’s house. Vietnamese people who are living abroad and desire to have a hybrid traditional Vietnamese and Western-style wedding will often incorporate the last two ceremonies with the Western-style wedding, performing the Catholic ceremony after the traditional Vietnamese ones.

Before the Catholic ceremonies, in the morning of August 7, Amy and Steve will have a traditional Vietnamese wedding procession and tea ceremony at Amy's aunt's house. We hope to have a video presentation of this ceremony during the reception; in the meantime, you can see what it's like in this Youtube video.