Jason and Michelle met through friend’s friend, just like every couple who
Jason and Michelle met through friend’s friend, just like every couple who meets in New York City. It was a Labor Day weekend getaway trip to the Poconos that Michelle and her girlfriend (& her maid of honor), Janice, organized. Unfortunately a few friends bailed out last minute while they had already secured a deposit for a gigantic house. Since they were poor fresh graduates new to the city, they decided to invite friend’s friends to have a big fun group (and to split the bill)!! Jason was Janice’s coworker and he was one of those late invitees. They had a lot of challenges during the trip, from fitting 17 people with luggage in 3 cars along with food & beverage supply for 3 days, scheduling shower time since they only had 2 bathrooms, preparing BBQ dinner with a gas grill when they had no gas but only charcoal, to fixing a flat tire in the middle of nowhere, when no one had experience and no body shop opened on a holiday. But through all these fun times, Jason and Michelle got to know each other and the whole group turned out to be very good friends. Not only did Jason and Michelle become a couple, but also did Jason met her husband, who was also one of the late joiners at the same trip.
Wedding bells rand on September 2, 2005 at 6pm at the Biltmore, on the corner of 47th Street and Eight Avenue corner, the meet up point for a road trip!!!
It’s the wedding according to Michelle! See below:
Background
Jason and I were both born and raised in Hong Kong. Jason went to boarding school in California, and then college in New York, while I left home to attend college in Virginia. Both of us got our first job in New York City and we met each other the first year we moved to the city and we never departed ever since.
Last year, we decided to move back home to stay close to our family but little did I know Jason planned to propose before we left the city. But we were glad that it happened, otherwise we would not have taken our engagement pictures while we were still in the city at our favorite place: financial district – where we work, Seaport – where we take our stroll, Meatpacking District/Chelsea – where we hang out. We love our engagement album so much that it inspired us to have a NYC themed wedding in our home town, Hong Kong, and we invited our engagement photographer, Joe, to capture the beginning of our new chapter together.
The Proposal
It was the 2323rd day since we started dating. It was a normal evening after work, and we planned to catch the show that we longed to watch – “War Horse” at Lincoln Center. It was a chilly winter evening when all I wanted to do after the show was to catch a cab home and order take-out but Jason insisted on taking a walk to Time Warner Center to take the express train instead. Once we got there, he said he was very hungry and wanted to get dinner there. It was quite late already and I didn’t expect any restaurant would still be open but for the benefit of the desperately hungry boyfriend, we still went in to check it out. We circulated the first floor, there was nothing; then the second floor, there was nothing. When we reached the third floor, I didn’t even bother circulating the floor, I just went straight to the downward escalator and prepared a speech in my head why we should have taken the cab as we could have been eating at home rather than have wasted an hour only to still wander in the cold with empty stomachs. Just 2 seconds before I stepped my right foot on the downward escalator/ 1 second before I opened my lips to start my speech, Jason dragged my arm, got down on one knee with a gorgeous ring in his hand and began his proposal speech with “Columbus Circle was the place when we had our first date…” Shocked by the gesture, my brain already was frozen but I knew I would only say Yes and before I was able to come back to reality, Jason was already sliding the ring on my finger, and we officially “Circle-d” back and made 2323rd day our last date. Unlike most proposals, we did not have any staged plan, fancy restaurant, flower, music, clapping nor cheering in the background, instead we shared this very extraordinary moment our own way on a normal day at the most ordinary setting in this little corner by the downward escalator on the third floor of the Time Warner Center and shared this very private moment only between us forever. P.S. we ended up still taking the express train home and shared our happy news with our family over the phone while munching our favorite delivery – again, celebrating our engagement in our own ordinary way.
Theme/Inspiration
Being away from home for more than a decade, we would like our beloved friends and families to know more about our years together in NYC. We designed our logo, JLMC, after the signature LOVE sculpture that stood in midtown around MoMA.
Inspired by our passion of food and restaurants in the city, we named our guest tables after the 35 most significant restaurants to us, and our escort cards were actual business cards of those restaurants. Inspired by our enjoyment in Broadway shows, we designed the program after a PlayBill which included a piece of our story at each of the 35 restaurants. We also put up a few statement sized engagement pictures framed like Broadway show posters at the entrance of the foyer. There was an open snack bar serving 7 (the number of years we dated) of our favorite snacks from the US (thanks for our bridal party flying in the snacks): wasabi almond and lemongrass cashews by Trader Joe, Hershey’s chocolate covered pretzels, salty popcorn, M&Ms with our picture and logo, fortune cookies with a thank you message and lyrics of the song from our first dance “When You Say Nothing At All”, a tree of decorated homemade cookies. There were street signs after those in NYC pointing to a few landmarks of the city: Broadway – the ballroom, Central Park – the cocktail area where we brought in replicates of the bench and lamp post used in actual Central Park, Columbus Circle (of course), and added a hint of personal touch by including a sign pointing to the bathroom. Also, since we both like golfing, we had corsages made with a souvenir golf tee we got from some courses we played on, and paired it with our theme flowers, billy balls, which are in golf balls shape, while serving one of our theme colors: yellow.
Dress designed: Jessie by Augusta Jones
Cake designer: We had a cookie tree instead, by Cookie Lane
Florist/decoration: Wedding Garden
Photographer: Joseph Lin, of course!
Honeymoon
Due to the tight schedule this year, we were not able to have our dream honeymoon to take part in at the Great Migration in South Africa; we are targeting summer next year. However, just to take a break right after the wedding madness, we had a mini-moon to Melbourne + Sydney, which has been on our to-go list but never got a chance to visit because it is far from the US.
Thank you to Joseph Lin Photography
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Suite 800
New York, NY 10004
Tele: (347) 724-6259
blog.jlinphotography.com
www.jlinphotography.com