Can You Feel the Love Tonight: Group Pictures and the Sucky Part

After our rousing applause from the group of random people watching the wedding from afar, it was time to take some group pictures.

I'll spare you the large number of pictures of Daniel's and my families and stick with the highlights.

Photos still by Stephen Cheng.

First, we got a group shot of all of Daniel's buddies from high school.

Funny story behind this one.  When Minh (second from the right) got married a few years ago, the guys all decided it would be funny to get a picture like this...and then drop him.  Since then, it has become a tradition.  Fortunately, the dropping part has gotten less funny with each wedding, so they decided to forgo it for ours...thankfully.  But now half of them have this picture, and once the other half ties the knot (coming soon!), we're going to get a frame to put all of them in.

Next was Daniel's family.  Because there are, like, 4,000 of them (seriously, his dad's side alone is 17 people that he's close to), and several of them are babies who were not very happy with the ceremony.  To give you an idea of the size, below is the picture of just them...and they're not even all in it!  Some of the babies were wailing, so we had to leave them and their parents out of it.

Yeah, trying to fit that picture into the album I made for Daniel's dad was not easy.

This Is Just Cute.  Daniel and His Dad.

Finally, there was my family.  Significantly smaller, immediate family only.

I got individual shots with each member of my family too.  The one of my brother and me is one of my very favorite photos of the day.

I cannot express how rare a treat this is.  Cody never smiles in pictures anymore.  Having a picture with so much brotherly love showing is simply priceless.

Then we took some more shots with the wedding party since we had run so short on time before.  We were all much more relaxed, and they turned out much better.

First, we had to give Julia her photographic due.

And get a picture with our officiant, also one of my favorites of the day.

And then on to the rest of the wedding party.

We finally got to take some bridal photos too.  If there is one thing I wish we had gotten more photos of, it's me :).  There were only a couple that I like, and I really wanted a bit more variety in these shots, but the photographer thwarted my plan of doing these before the ceremony, so we didn't have much time.  We did at least get a couple of good shots.

And Daniel and I got a few more fun shots together.  I'm pretty sure the photographer thought I was crazy for wanting to do some of these, but they turned out well, and I'm really glad I got them.

Then it was time to go to the reception.

Unfortunately, it was also time for the worst of the Three Things That Still Bother Me.  Before the wedding, Daniel had emptied his pockets, entrusting their contents to a friend.  In this pile were both of our car keys.  The friend left for the reception without giving them back, so we had no way to follow.

Thus, the wedding party was stuck in the parking lot of our ceremony spot with no way to get to our reception.

I was not happy.

As the boys frantically called people at the reception to get them to bring us our keys or at least come pick us up, the girls and I found something useful to do with our time:  bustling my dress.

Not awkward at all.

There were I think 12 buttons or something ridiculous like that, so that took some time.  I was lucky to have Becca there; no one else had bustled a dress before.

But that was soon done, and we still hadn't gotten ahold of anyone.  Since they were all at the reception, no one was answering their phones.

So we waited.

We were about to call a cab when someone finally picked up and saved us.

But it took forever.  The road between the two locations is windy and small, so it's not an easy drive.  We lost somewhere between half-an-hour and an hour of reception time.

I was really upset about that and still am.  The wedding went by so quickly anyway, but losing so much time and having nothing to do but wait was just not OK.

But we got there in the end and had to put aside the sadness in favor of food.

Did anything happen at your wedding that still bothers you, despite your efforts to move past it?