A beautiful and sweet wedding with a traditional tea ceremony to celebrate Tamara’s Vietnamese heritage. We love how this couple made their wedding day their own with cute favors and special details that reflected themselves!
from the photographer: “Tamara and Nick eloped back in 2020 due to COVID, but decided to still celebrate their wedding this year–complete with a traditional tea ceremony to honor the bride’s heritage, as well as gorgeous wedding attire for the second look. Tamara and Nick wanted to share their love, as well as their culture and background, with their closest friends and family.”
How did you meet?
We met through a night out with mutual friends. We were inseparable after that night.
What’s your proposal story?
Nick and I are avid hikers and that was one of our hobbies together while in a long distance relationship. We decided to plan a longer and bigger hiking trip and eventually stumbled on the Mount Everest Base Camp Trek. We booked a year in advance and committed to a training schedule to ensure that we were physically fit. It was a 10 day hike. On the 7th day, when we got to Everest Base Camp, Nick proposed. It was an intimate, private moment with just us and our two Nepalese guides.
Tell us about your wedding vision and attire choices!
We were originally supposed to get married in Scotland in the early summer of 2020. The location we were getting married at was surrounded by a lot of nature and greenery. We wanted to choose colours that would complement the green and the feel of a light, airy summer wedding. Though our Scotland wedding did not happen, we carried forward our decor and vision forward from our planned Scotland wedding and implemented it into our wedding at Folk Tree Lodge. We wore both the traditional white wedding dress and suit and also the Ao dai, which is the traditional Vietnamese national garment. It was important to me to have a piece of my culture reflected and shared on the day we were to be joined as a family. Though Nick did not end up wearing a kilt and his tartan colours to symbolize his Scottish heritage. He did get his suit custom made in Scotland during one of the many trips we took over there while planning our original Scotland wedding.
What was the most important thing to you while planning?
I think one of the most important things to us while planning the wedding was to keep our wedding intimate. Yes, we have many other friends and family members that we would have loved to share the day with but we loved the ability to focus on our day while being able to spend enough time with everyone there. Our photographer was the next important part of our day. We really wanted to find someone that we clicked with but also someone that would be able to represent our story and our love in an art form and style that we both appreciated.
Favorite part of the day?
We loved wearing our traditional ao dai wedding outfits and being able to use our traditional tea ceremony set, which also tied in my Chinese roots. It was a surprise for my parents and neither of them knew it was something my husband and I were planning on incorporating. My husband loved the cultural aspect of our wedding and that we were able to incorporate different events compared to a standard wedding. We loved being able to spend time with everyone there intimately. We loved being able to show our competitive sides and play lawn games with everyone. We loved just being able to FINALLY celebrate our big day with our loved ones since Covid had hit.
Tell us about your flowers, cake, and favors.
We made our boutonnière’s, corsages, bridesmaid bouquets, and bridal bouquet ourselves. The flowers were meant to capture the feel of a light, airy summer wedding. We opted for artificial silk flowers as we were planning on DIY’ing everything ourselves and bringing as much as we could to our Scotland wedding. I actually got overwhelmed with trying to make my bouquets and my husband actually did most of the work. He is the more creative one out of the two of us.
We got our cake and cupcakes made from Crave Cupcakes. We chose red velvet as it is our favourite cake flavour. The handmade llama wedding topper was made by myself and my husband. He is obsessed with them and I think they’re cute.
We had personalized wine glasses made for favors. Guests were also allowed to take home their names (used for seating arrangements) which had been 3D printed.
Any advice for couples planning their wedding?
Don’t sweat the small stuff. Enjoy your day!
Photography: Meg Seitz Photography | Ceremony Venue: Folk Tree Lodge | Reception Venue: Folk Tree Lodge | Wedding Cake: Crave Cupcakes | Rentals: Special Event Rentals Calgary | Linens: Special Event Rentals Calgary | Hair: Emily Joy Beauty | Makeup: Emily Joy Beauty | Wedding Dress: The bridal center | Groom’s Attire: Scotland Shop | Submitted via: Matchology
