Susan's Wedding

  Towards the beginning of April, I had the opportunity to go to my mission trainer's wedding in California.  She lives (or used to, now she lives near Las Vegas) in Sacramento and got married in the Oakland Temple.  I flew to the San Francisco airport (it was a lot cheaper than the Sacramento airport) on a Wednesday night and spent the night at a hostel in San Francisco and then drove out to Sacramento Thursday morning.  Susan's family was very gracious and left Laura Sheridan (Susan's MTC and mission companion) and I both stay with them.  I was very grateful that they allowed me to stay with them.  Plus I appreciated the opportunity to get to know them better.  I had met most of her family last May when I was in California but I was only there for an evening versus the 3 days or so that I was there this time.

  On Thursday, we ran around getting stuff ready for the wedding and reception.  The three (Susan, Laura, and I) all did facials Thursday night too.  We did the whole process: scrubbing, steaming(complete with lemons/limes), mask, cleaner, and toner.  Friday morning was the wedding and then in the evening, we set up for the reception.  We set up enough chairs and tables for 400 guests!  That is a lot of chairs.  I am not too sure how appreciative the young men who were helping to set up were of Laura and I making them hunt down more chairs repeatedly.  Saturday morning rolled around and with it came at least 20 Hmong men and women to help cook the food for the reception that evening.  Within 4-5 hours all the food was ready to go (keep in mind that they were making enough food for 400+ people)!  Both Laura and I concurred that if it was white people in charge of the reception, it would have taken them at least 2-3 days to make all the food and not that many people would have shown up to help make it.  At the reception, we definitely filled all the seats that we had seat up and could have used even more.

  In the Hmong culture, you have a program and a sit-down dinner, not the stand-up line and finger foods that are more common these days.  According to Penny Lo, Susan's program was a shorter one running about 30 minutes or so.  Penny said that some programs go as long as 1-2 hours!  Another nice thing that happened is that everyone helps to clean up.  The men take the chairs, table, etc. . . and the women take the kitchen.  The women  dominated the kitchen!  They had all the dishes and food packed up and cleaned up in no time at all.

  It was all so much fun and I am really glad that I had the opportunity to be able to attend Susan and VaYee's wedding.  However, I definitely felt like all I did was eat, eat, and then eat some more.  But, I probably would eat it all again because I love Hmong food!

 

Chicken popsicle, anyone?                                    

    

 The three of us with the masks on (Me, Susan, Laura).  

                   

The Oakland Temple.                               Susan and VaYee. 

  The picture depicts the making and end result of one of my favorite Hmong dishes: papaya salad.  You can see it in the lower right part of the picture.  Papaya salad is soo good!

    This picture represents a portion of all the food that was made.

 Susan and I.