Tell us a little about yourselves!
We met on the first day of our freshman year in college, over a decade ago. We were best friends for two years before we started dating. What stood out to us was how long our conversations lasted; we’d sit for hours in the hallway of our dorm just talking through the night, until we heard birds chirping outside in the morning.
We’ve lived all over together — from San Francisco to Atlanta and Upstate NY to now Brooklyn — and spent a year traveling as well. We both love nature, design, cooking, books and film, road trips, and trying new hobbies (like foraging and birdwatching).
We got engaged while hiking in Alaska. Daniel made a book about our relationship, and we read it together on the mountain. One of our first conversations was about Alaska, so the location felt meaningful to us. It was serendipitous because it had been cloudy all week while we were there, but on the day of the proposal, we finally got to see the Northern Lights! Apparently the locals said it was the best viewing in two decades.
Why did you decide to get married where you did?
We wanted to get married in NYC, since most of our community is based here.
We chose our venue, The Foundry, because it had a beautiful outdoor space (which is hard to find in the city). We also loved how it had different rooms that we could transition through. We held our ceremony in the main space, cocktail hour in the greenhouse, dinner in the courtyard, and a separate afterparty and bonfire outdoors. It was a raw space, which meant we could customize almost everything. Since we were planning our wedding ourselves and wanted to personalize it as much as possible, it felt like a great fit.
We procrastinated and started planning our wedding relatively late, so at first there were no dates available! Magically, the date of September 9th opened — which happened to be our “friendiversary,” the day we first met. 9s are also lucky numbers in Chinese culture and represent longevity, so we felt like it was amazing luck to have our wedding on 9/9.
How many guests did you have?
Around 100 close friends and family. One of our favorite aspects of the wedding was all the unexpected connections; so many people from different chapters of our lives became friends and started hanging out afterward. We also loved the intimate size, since we were able to spend time with each wedding guest throughout the weekend.
Tell us about your outfits.
Maggie wanted to find a wedding dress that was minimal and structurally interesting. She wore an architectural gown from Newhite, designed by Juliette Kim. She loved the asymmetry and angles of the neckline, the draping of the organza, and the additional detail of the side bow. For the afterparty, she changed into a mini sparkling dress by Markarian and white sneakers. She paired both outfits with tiered pearl earrings from Chan Luu.
Daniel got a black tuxedo from Enzo Custom, with red lining inside the suit jacket (red represents good luck and happiness in Chinese culture). He wore a mini pomegranate as part of his boutonniere to fit our theme of “fruit as an Asian love language.”
What was the most important aspect for you, in terms of planning your wedding?
We wanted to focus on community: making the wedding less about spotlighting ourselves and more about celebrating our friendships and loved ones.
To kick off the mixing of our worlds, we held a welcome party the night before the wedding, where we encouraged guests to get to know each other through a fun game of wedding guest bingo (Daniel spent days collecting photos and printing stickers of each guest’s face to make this happen). It set a really comfortable vibe for the day of the wedding, because it felt like everyone already warmed up and became friends.
For the ceremony, we emphasized this value by choosing not to have a formal wedding party. We were intentional about who we invited, and we wanted each guest to feel appreciated rather than elevating some over others.
For the reception, we wanted to create warm, cozy dinner party vibes. We set up rows of long tables and candles outside in the courtyard, so that people would feel intimate and have easy-flowing conversations with each other. Everyone sat next to at least one person that they knew.
Our goal was for nothing to feel stiff or overly formal. We wanted guests to feel comfortable, so we could all just jump into the fun together. We truly felt this at the end of the night, when the DJ played “Can You Feel The Love Tonight.” Everyone gathered in a big circle around us and started waving their phone lights, singing together.
Were there any elements that were important for you to incorporate?
We wanted our wedding to have Asian American elements, bridging inspiration from both our Chinese culture and American upbringing. Maggie asked our florist to include bamboo in her bouquet as a reference to her Chinese name (梅竹), and we had mahjong tiles and mandarin oranges scattered throughout our welcome party. We spent weeks wandering around Chinatown trying to find tall porcelain vases, which we used for our ceremony backdrop.
We really anchored on the idea that peeled/cut fruit is an Asian love language — it’s how our parents express love to us and one of the many ways we support each other. So, fruit was featured heavily throughout the wedding. We even used fruit like papaya and dragon fruit instead of vases for our ikebana flowers (funny story: our florist spent so long making these as art pieces, only to have Maggie’s mom and grandma eat the fruit during the reception). For dessert, we asked our caterer to make a new matcha-strawberry cake flavor to fit our theme. And during our ceremony, Maggie’s high school English teacher read a poem that was fruit-themed: it was called “From Blossoms” by Li-Young Li and moved so many guests to tears.
Another element we wanted to include was a sense of reflectiveness, so we encouraged all guests to share their favorite memories and stories with us. Instead of using a guestbook, we found a set of vintage botanical garden postcards on Etsy (we love the Brooklyn Botanic Garden) and scattered them across the entryway table, so everyone could pick their favorite ones and write their thoughts for us to carry forward in the years to come. We brought them home in an album and they’re so special for us to look back on!
Throughout the wedding, we tried to bring in personal touches from the places that shaped us. Our wedding cocktails were a nod to Daniel’s Georgia roots (Cheeky Peach) and Maggie’s love for citrus and Japanese whiskey (Yuzu Whiskey Sour). We included a recipe from Leland Eating and Drinking House, one of our favorite restaurants in Brooklyn, as part of our wedding menu. Maggie brought spicy tomato oil from Pastabilities, her go-to restaurant in Syracuse, as well as local wine and cider from Upstate NY. At the end of the night, we gave out mooncakes with red ribbons that were handmade by Daniel’s family friends in Atlanta, molded in the shape of the Chinese character for “double happiness.”
Lastly, we incorporated our friends throughout the wedding, so it felt like more of a collective experience. One of our closest friends was our officiant, since she had experienced our relationship from the start and could really capture our essence as a couple, and we had friend and family speeches scheduled throughout the cocktail hour and dinner. Another friend designed all our stationery (with the theme of anthuriums — a flower in Maggie’s bouquet that we loved for its heart shape), and two other friends did our welcome party florals.
Any tips for couples getting married?
Planning a wedding is like doing a creative project together. You learn how to recruit a team, express your taste and understand your priorities, and make tons of micro-decisions (from the ceremony music to types of silverware and colors of the napkins to the lighting of each room). Although it’s a lot of work, make sure you have fun in the process. In the months leading up to the wedding, we made a weekend ritual of walking through Prospect Park to our favorite out-of-the-way coffee shop and camping out there all day to work on wedding planning.
Also, follow your own vision and customize the wedding however you want! At the core, a wedding is a celebration and expression of you as a couple — feel free to share that story in a way that feels special to you. Our wedding was an opportunity for everyone to temporarily step into our world; therefore, we wanted it to reflect us personally as much as possible.
Some logistical advice: Even if you don’t have a wedding planner, get a day-of coordinator. It’s so helpful to have someone handle all the details and last-minute mishaps that can come up, so you can focus on being present. Also, we loved our professional wedding photos, but it was equally fun to see our guests’ photos as well. We had disposable cameras placed throughout the wedding venue, and it was a joy to develop them weeks later to see what people had captured while we were waiting for our actual photos to come in.
Savor the feeling of your wedding day, don’t get caught up in your head. It was fulfilling to see a vision that we planned for so long come to life, and we’re glad we took the time to experience it all slowly rather than rushing through everything.
Are there any vendors that you would like to tell us a little more about?
Everyone was so great! A few shoutouts:
Sav & Cam : They flew in from Hawaii to photograph our wedding. We loved that they were a photographer-videographer couple, as well as how great they were at capturing both digital and film shots. Sav took such beautiful photos of the night, while Cam recorded a lovely super 8mm video that allowed us to relive our wedding each time we watched it. We appreciated their documentary style, where we were able to just naturally live the wedding day and they captured it as we went.
FDK Florals: Fernando is a floral genius! He really understood our vision from our first conversation. He designed a beautiful bouquet in an autumn palette, featuring lots of reds for our Asian-American theme. We especially loved the Japanese sweetpeas, shibori anthuriums, and lantern flowers he included. He’s so creative and open-minded to new ideas, and made everything beautiful, from the fruiting branches in our ceremony backdrop to the kokedama moss balls used during cocktail hour. Plus, our morning visit together to the Manhattan flower market was such a special day, hand-picking the flowers that stood out for our bouquet.
Bartleby & Sage: They allowed us to customize our menu with an Asian-American flair, featuring small bites like peking duck carnitas, ahi tuna bites, shishito peppers, spring rolls, and ube/matcha cream puffs. They even recreated the crispy sea bass with 5-spice maple glaze that we love from Leland Eating and Drinking House in Brooklyn. Their pastry chef experimented with new flavors to fit our theme, allowing us to have a strawberry-matcha cake that was designed so beautifully and ended up matching the shape of Maggie’s wedding dress. Their team was incredibly nice — they even set aside hors d'oeuvres for us to try after the ceremony since they knew we’d be too busy to eat while socializing with guests later on.
Collectives by Diana : Diana was amazing as our day-of coordinator. She had such great attention to detail and clear communication. We really trusted her taste and she even offered hourly consulting whenever we got stuck in our planning (especially around all the small decisions that made the night run smoother). She made us feel really cared for throughout the whole process, and the night truly wouldn’t have gone as seamlessly as it did without her.
Photography & Videography: Sav & Cam @sav.and.cam | Day-of Coordinator: Collectives by Diana
@collectivesbydiana | Flora: FDK Florals @fdk_florals | Ceremony & Reception Location: The Foundry @thefoundrylic | Officiant: A close friend | Hire: Broadway Party Rentals @broadwaypartyrentals | HMUA: Tatiana Li @tatianalimua | Catering, Beverages & Cake: Bartleby & Sage @bartlebyandsage | Stationery: A friend | Entertainment: Preston Dugger from 74 Events @74events | Ceremony & Reception Dress: Newhite @newhite_bridal from The One Bridal @theonebridalny | After-Party Dress: Markarian @markarian_nyc | Suit: Enzo Custom @enzocustom | Veil: Twigs & Honey @twigsandhoney from The One Bridal @theonebridalny | Engagement Ring: Mociun @mociun | Wedding Rings: Kataoka @kataoka_jewelry | Shoes: Loeffler Randall @loefflerrandal (bride) and Our Legacy (groom) | Earrings: Chan Luu @chanluu