Sharlene and I had our wedding celebration exactly one month ago, on March 21st, 2026! It was a lot of work and strife planning the big weekend, but it was very worth it. We were so lucky to celebrate our marriage surrounded by all of our amazing friends and family.
Background
We'd actually gotten legally married in October of last year, but this event in March was the real celebration. For us, we didn't really feel married until we celebrated with our friends and family.
We had our celebration at Palette Tea House in San Francisco's Ghirardelli Square. Our night started with a cocktail hour, then continued with our vow exchange, dinner, and speeches from some of our friends, before finally concluding with a bunch of karaoke.
We wanted our event to be fun and heartfelt rather than polished or overly produced, and we're pretty happy with how it played out.
Sharlene's wedding costs writeup 💸
Sharlene wrote up a budget recap (with numbers!) at her website here. Click through to read! I think it's a great breakdown of our costs and tradeoffs, and I hope it can serve as a useful reference for anybody planning a wedding in the future.
The TL;DR:
- Venue and food: $19.7k
- DJ, photography, coordinator, florals: $9k
- Splurges: $24.2k
- Grand total: $52k
This was definitely the most expensive thing we've ever done. We're very fortunate to have had the privilege to host this celebration.
Some photos!
All photos are by Eric Le (and his assistant Dom) of Inspired By Studio. They did an amazing job.
There are so many great photos of all our family and friends, but I don't think it makes sense to try to post them here. Instead, I'm just picking a few photos from our couples' photo session and of the event as a whole.
Thanks to...
Our vendors: We were really happy with all of our vendors and would recommend any of them without hesitation.
- Venue and food: Palette Tea House was so great to work with, priced right, and served amazing food. 100% the right choice for us.
- Photography: Eric Le (and his assistant Dom) of Inspired By Studio asked all the right questions, guided us through our day with professionalism and cheer, and delivered spectacular work. On top of that, he generously volunteered to cover our tea ceremony and delivered our full gallery insanely quickly.
- DJ/MC: Heart Of Gold DJs' Jordan Springman answered all our questions, went above and beyond to accommodate the Chinese-language songs we wanted to include, and just made all our audio and karaoke work perfectly. Karaoke was a blast thanks to her.
- Day-of coordinator: Arlene Muñoz made sure everything ran smoothly so we could enjoy our day. Other coordinators we interviewed were also good at planning and tracking details, but Arlene stood out because she made us feel relaxed and reassured.
- Florals: Village No. 7's Cecilia Tran did a great job creating our cute tabletop florals and the boutonniere I wore.
- Dress: Sharlene's incredible dress was custom made by Alethea Sposa in Jakarta, Indonesia, and then saved by emergency alterations from Suzanne Hanley of Atelier Des Modistes.
Our wedding party, for handling all our last-minute needs with such competence and grace, and for generally being incredible people.
And of course, all of our friends and family who were able to join us and celebrate this special moment in our lives.
