Carmen & Jason

It was love at first sight when we met at Takapuna Grammar School in August 2005.

On 29th of July 2018, Jason asked me to marry him under the stars of beautiful Lake Tekapo and we married on Tuesday 19 March 2019 at Mudbrick Vineyard and Restaurant.

We wanted our wedding to be small and intimate with only our closest friends and family.

 I bought both my wedding gown and evening dress from Modes on Broadway, the gown is Pronovias – I love this brand and all their designs!

Jason wore a dark navy suit with black bowtie from RJB Design and the Groomsmen wore suits from Zara, also dark navy to match..

We followed Hong Kong pre-wedding traditions – Jason had to come and get me in the morning. In order to do that, the groom and groomsmen had to go through challenges (fun games prepared by the bridesmaids) and Jason had to make his love statement to get me.

 After the games session we had the traditional tea ceremony where we served tea to our families.

Our theme was Tuscan Vineyard Romance. We had accents in silvery pebble grey, soft olive and white.

The bridesmaids wore a blue grey which tied in well with our theme & colours. I wanted them to each pick their own style of dress; something they were comfortable wearing. We had so much fun trying on dresses.

We both fell in love with Mudbrick the first time we visited. We were also relieved that they had a wet weather option, just in case!

Our wedding favours were a premium Sandlewood & Clove pure soy triple scented candle, with our design on the jar. We wanted to give our guests something special to take away after the wedding.

We designed everything for our wedding ourselves (invitations, table numbers, welcome sign, seating plan, drinks & dinner menus, wedding favours etc).

It meant a lot to us that we could have DJ Ryuzo play at our wedding – he was our lecturer at Whitecliffe College and has been a part of our long relationship!

Carmen – I gave a speech to thank everyone and then played guitar and sang a classic Hong Kong love song; which I learnt from scratch and practised for 2 months.

Jason – I incorporated storytelling and music in my speech to deliver my feelings and promises to Carmen. With the help of my best mate Eric, I prepared a story highlighting different stages of our relationship over the past 14 years; both the good and the bad. I then sang 11 parts of a song, with my mates and with Carmen’s Dad – the whole process made Carmen cry a lot.

The wedding cake was very special to us as it was made by Jacqueline (a very close friend of ours) who has a cake business in Melbourne (Oreo the Baking Dog). She flew all the way to Auckland to be my bridesmaid and she made this beautiful 3-tier sponge cake with earl grey flavour, vanilla bean and swiss meringue buttercream in our own beautiful kitchen.