I wish I had more photos, but Rachel and I had just gotten back from Hong Kong and I was still pretty jet lagged.
As always, you can see all of them and download hi-res versions at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/afdn/sets/72157651353626664
We were in Hong Kong to attend the wedding for Rachel’s brother, Mark. I’m not sure going to a single wedding in Hong Kong allows me to extrapolate fully, but from what I gleaned most weddings are very similar to this: suits tailored the week before, shoes for the bridesmaids custom made in two days, and a full day of pomp and circumstance with both Western and Chinese tradition.
It’s quite the show. Here’s part two of three (see part 1 and part 3).
Vanessa and Mark
Rite of Marriage
Press corp…no less than five professional photographer/videographers. Both Nikon and Canon.
Blessing
Signing of the Marriage Certificate
About three months ago, we made the decision to postpone our wedding. We had a date chosen (hooray!) and a venue secured (relief!) and were starting to dive into the details of wedding planning, the nitty gritty.
Throughout our engagement we have prepared for marriage, attending premarital counseling and working at diving deep into the issues that most couples inevitably face. These are the ugly things in relationships and human nature that if left unaddressed and ignored, could cause heartache and strife later on.
Issues arose and wedding planning became stressful, fight inducing, and just plain wasn’t any fun. When we identified clearly what was going on with each of us individually and as a couple, we decided that, because of our tight wedding timeline we could either move forward with planning our wedding or we could take a timeout and work on our relationship, but we could not do both simultaneously. Moving forward with our wedding would likely be at the detriment of our relationship, so we made a tough call—we chose to postpone our wedding.
We both felt it was important that we work on these issues so that we can start married life together on the right foot, even if that meant postponing the wedding (and ruffling feathers). We continue to go through pre-marital counseling and feel blessed with how things have gone so far.
We are confident that taking this time has better prepared us to enter into married life as a team that can build one another up and, as God sees fit, enable us to better serve our community.
It goes without saying that this has been terribly challenging. The comfort has been that throughout making the decision to postpone the wedding there has been a sense of peace and comfort that it was the right decision. We praise God for His faithfulness and grace!
We are excited about what the future holds. Thank you for your love and prayers.