Mười Năm

November 9, 2024

This Halloween was our 10 year wedding anniversary. It’s crazy to think it’s been 10 years now since our wedding.

When I originally planned our wedding, it wasn’t really a thought in my mind to incorporate a tea ceremony, or any Vietnamese traditions to be honest. It was an added expense and I was already trying to cut costs where I could to keep the main parts I wanted. I had a very stereotypical modern American wedding and that was expensive enough. My parents also didn’t pressure or even mention that they wanted any Vietnamese aspects included. They were mostly hands-off on the details with the exception of the guest list. I had to fight my mom a lot on that since she wanted to invite the entire neighborhood and all of Vietnam and all their children. I was trying to keep it to people I directly knew and would actually keep in touch with post wedding but allotted both my and his parents some room for invites for their own family/friends. The problem is his family is Irish/Italian which means big families, and my family is Vietnamese meaning they’re absolutely obnoxious as interpreting weddings like house parties where you can bring anyone and everyone. In the end, the wedding was relatively small compared to the grandeur of American weddings but still bigger than a small intimate affair.

In retrospect, I still absolutely love everything about my wedding, but wished I had pushed to do a much smaller affair. And simultaneously, given how much fighting was had between my mom and I, I know it would’ve been a much more arduous fight that I wouldn’t have the energy for.

In 2018, we vacationed in Paris for a week and took the opportunity to do a shoot in front of the Eiffel Tower in our wedding attire. It made me realize this was actually more what I wanted. I just wanted gorgeous photos of us in the most romantic place in the world and all we really needed was each other. If I had to do it over, elopement I would say, is the more romantic and cost-effective route. Although at the same time, I still would want my closest friends and family there. So I don’t regret anything about my wedding because I’m glad all my favorite people were there to celebrate the day with us, and many of them I truly still keep in touch with to this day. I would have liked to have had a destination wedding, but that’s also a big commitment to expect your closest friends and family to fly out and spend that kind of money to attend your wedding. So I guess looking back, it worked out. I had my big wedding with all my family and friends, and still was able to have my dreamy intimate photoshoot in Paris.

This got me thinking a few years ago when I saw other Vietnamese ceremony photos on the Facebook group Subtle Asian Traits where Asians from all over the globe share their lives and stories. It made me regret not having a tea ceremony a little. But then I realized it wasn’t that I really wanted the tea ceremony because I remember why I chose not to do it. I didn’t want to wake up any earlier than I already had to, to get ready the day of. I didn’t want to spend more money on more wedding outfits, an entire morning ceremony because it does cost a lot with all the different gifts and the food involved. What I really wanted, like Paris, was photos of us in traditional Vietnamese outfits. So I thought what if we just did a photoshoot? It was perfect. I got in contact with my wedding photographer whom I’ve become good friends with and stayed in touch with the past decade as well. I still absolutely love my wedding photos from him to this day because he has the extraordinary magic touch to make us look good in every single photo somehow. Don’t get me wrong, I love a lot of the photographers I’ve shot with over the years, but there are a small few who have the magical ability to create photographic alchemy. With Steven, I rarely have photos I want to skip or delete. He somehow knows all my angles, the perfect lighting no matter what time of day or conditions we have to shoot in, the perfect touch, how to capture the little details, everything. So it only made sense since he was there from the very beginning at our first couples’ shoot together; our engagement shoot. It was from that shoot alone that I knew he was a wizard. I remember receiving my photos and going crazy about them and immediately using them for our save the dates and our wedding invitations.

I reached out to Steven last year about this little project and he was totally down to help set this into motion. Then I got lucky earlier this year when my mom decided to go to Vietnam for Lunar New Year. I asked her to have the custom outfits made for us and she was able to commission them in time and gifted them to us upon her return. She even had a little hat made for Banh Mi, which probably was the oddest request for the little shop she used, lol. And then this summer, I was able to find the perfect location and secured a permit to shoot this project, at the New York Chinese Scholar’s Garden at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden in Staten Island.

The unfortunate thing was, the day of the shoot, somehow we hit an insane amount of traffic trying to get there, which forced our already small window of time to shoot at the garden to be even more limited. We were supposed to have 2 hours, but unfortunately we ended up only having 15 minutes left before the garden was to close. Luckily, between the really nice staff there allowing us an extra 15 minutes, and this not being our first rodeo (we’ve done so many couple shoots over the years now and have nailed down our go to couple poses and luckily my husband is a natural at this lol), and Steven having an extremely amazing eye for the shot and talent, we were able to work quickly and kill the shoot. I finally received the photos back last month and was trying so hard not to post them right away because they were meant to be posted our on our wedding anniversary. It was really hard holding these back because they came out so phenomenal. I’m so happy we were able to execute this project and I’ll treasure these for years to come. Who knows what we’ll pull off for the next milestone anniversary? 😉

If you’re looking for amazing engagement, wedding, or any couples photography, Steven of Sage Studios Photography is your guy. I wish he lived closer to me because I would work with him all the time if I could, but maybe it’s good because my husband would probably cry if I made him do all these shoots more often than we already do, lol. But I’m thankful I’m married to a good sport who believes in happy wife, happy life and entertains all the silly ideas and shoots I always want to do. I got lucky and he entertained me with not one, but TWO shoots this year and I can’t wait to share those photos soon too since that was also another shoot I’ve been excited to do for a while.

Anxiety

January 9, 2023

I'm a bad bitch, and I got bad anxiety
People call me rude 'cause I ain't lettin' 'em try me
Sayin' I'm a ho 'cause I'm in love with my body
Issues, but nobody I could talk to about it
They keep sayin' I should get help
But I don't even know what I need
They keep sayin' speak your truth
And at the same time say they don't believe, man
Excuse me while I get into my feelings for a second
Usually I keep it down, but today I gotta tell it
Not that anybody gives a fuck anyway
But everybody talkin' shit probably sucks anyway
Y'all don't even know how I feel
I don't even know how I deal
Today I really hate everybody
And that's just me bein' real, yeah
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
Bad bitches have bad days too
Friday, Saturday, Sunday, bounce back
How a bad bitch always do
All I really wanna hear is, "It'll be okay"
Bounce back 'cause a bad bitch can have bad days

Sometimes I feel like my own worst enemy. It’s been quite the week and it’s only the first week of the year. Is this what my 2023 is going to be like? To be fair, I was feeling apprehensive walking into it, whereas past years, I ran into it like BRING IT ON. Is this what growing up is like? You develop irrational fears and anxiety that didn’t use to be there? Like how I used to ride Six Flags rollercoasters back in high school fearlessly, but nowadays, I have a real fear of death if made to ride Tower of Terror. I hate that drop feeling in my stomach. I also developed bad anxiety on planes when experiencing turbulence. My last trip home from California, I started looking up Jetblue’s crash statistics when turbulence hit and went on a downward spiral on the internet. Let’s just say, I’m seriously considering getting Xanax prescribed for the next plane ride. Sadly, I wouldn’t even know where to begin.

But it’s like Meghan’s song says. I do feel like I need help a lot of the times. I do feel like I want to talk to someone, but at the same time, I don’t know who to turn to, where to go, how to ask. I don’t know how to heal from trauma. I feel like I’ve played this strong, independent, bad bitch person for so long, everyone sees me as someone who can handle it. So I don’t know how to translate my pain into asking for help and be vulnerable. I smile a lot and I’m okay for the most part, but there are days where I feel low. And sometimes, overwhelmingly, severely low. And when I feel drained from feeling this way, it’s like I’m running on E. It’s either I’m all the way up, or all the way down. Why does it feel like a rollercoaster? Why can’t I have just medium moments where I feel like okay, this is manageable? Le sigh. I didn’t use to feel this deeply about my anxiety in the past but as I get older, it feels harder to cope sometimes. Is it because of getting older or is it because of everything piling and adding up?

In the meantime, I guess I’ll write about what I know. An emotional dump, if you will, to work through my feelings and anxiety. Especially since therapy is expensive and time-consuming to even search for the right person to talk to. I’m going to try and do more of this in 2023 to try and crack down on the heaviness I feel in my life. Maybe this is the year I work through my trauma. A cathartic release. I wonder if I should get a small journal to keep with me to write down my thoughts when they come. It’s funny because this is what I use my long distance runs for. Therapy to work out my thoughts. But maybe I need to place to jot it all down instead of letting it bounce in my head.

This week, part of my anxiety is from all the different emotions I feel from my grandpa passing. I feel guilt, I feel regret, I feel like a bad person, I feel sad, I feel angry, I feel…lost.

My grief from Rocco’s death is different from my grandpa’s death in many ways, which probably doesn’t make coping any better. The depressive state and feelings of sadness are familiar, but the circumstances with each death, I’ve learned, I have to learn to grieve, cope and heal in a different way. With Rocco’s death, it was sudden and unexpected; I had just seen and spoken to him a day before and everything seemed fine. With my grandpa’s death, it was expected due to his old age and known declining health and condition, so it was more a natural course of life, but still devastating and heartbreaking nonetheless. Both still hurt.

My grandpa’s death, hit me in a depressive wave. I’ve spent the last few years purposely avoiding my dad’s side of the family due to the toxicity I experienced growing up. I never felt like I belonged or welcomed much. This can also be attributed to the toxic nature of Vietnamese culture growing up as well. The stereotype or rather the shared experience amongst my peers is that our families are not directly encouraging or supportive of our desires, our personalities, our dreams, our expressive nature, our career choices - especially if they’re outside the realm of traditional jobs our parents want us to follow. They tease us, they bully us, they discourage, they can be very mean and harsh growing up. And all any of us ever want is to feel accepted and “enough” as we navigate our way through life and figure out who we are meant to be. My relatives were definitely very judgmental, snarky, snobby, and rude. I grew up with them because my parents would send me to stay with them every summer vacation. When I reached college, I was finally old enough to make my own decisions and stopped going, opting to stay home and find a summer job instead. So my visits started becoming more limited and then after I got married, life and my full time job got in the way and I used that an excuse that I was just too busy to attend. So if I’m being honest, I haven’t had the greatest relationship with them.

But again, if I’m being honest, it’s not fair to talk about the bad parts only, and not give credit for the good parts. Growing up, they called me too skinny, too fat, ugly, told me I was wasting my time in fashion school when I took summer classes at FIT, they insulted my mother calling me mất dạy because I didn’t dress conservative and was more outspoken and loud than most children and brazen enough to talk back to defend myself. But like how I’ve given my parents some grace and forgiven them for our past relationship growing up, I too should reflect on my relationship with my relatives and give them credit. They were there for me to provide for me when my parents couldn’t afford everything I needed - especially in a family with 4 other siblings who had needs too - and also a lot of times would buy me things I wanted as well. I say this because wants and needs are obviously different. My aunt provided me with an expensive TI-84+ calculator when my parents could not afford it, but my aunts and uncles also bought me fashionable new school clothes and shoes for the fall school year so I would feel less than the other kids. They may have been snobby but sometimes it worked in my advantage, lol. And they did a lot of times, provide me with spending money so I could buy snacks and fun things at school when my parents could only give enough for lunch when we no longer qualified for free lunch. They provided me with a lot of experiences my parents simply couldn’t due to time and limited funds trying to raise 5 kids. They took me to see the latest popular movies. They took me to Coney Island. They took me to see Santa Claus at the mall. They searched for hard to find Sailor Moon merchandise at a time when it wasn’t popular yet like how it is now. They let me stay up late and watch as much tv as I want since I didn’t have cable back at home. They took me to see the 4th of July fireworks. They took me to beaches and they always bought me my own Happy Meal that I didn’t have to share with anyone. They helped raise me in the best way they knew how, even if I didn’t feel the love I wanted to feel, growing up. I’m not making excuses for their toxicity, I’m just trying to make an understanding of it and balance out the good and the bad. I don’t believe my relatives have bad intentions, but were rather a product of their own upbringing and experiences. I do believe, they care for me in their own and different ways. How do I know this? I haven’t seen them in years, like I said, but at my grandfather’s wake when we all spoke our piece to make our peace with each other and with grandpa, the way they talked about each other, and about me, revealed themselves, even if it was under sad circumstances. It’s when people are honest sometimes, when looking at life and death in the face and seeing how precious life is and how little time we truly have with another. My dad revealed to me at the wake that I truly was my grandpa’s favorite, despite not being a boy. And my aunt when I first walked into the funeral home, hugged me tightly and sobbed into my arms, severely disappointed at herself for not making it on time racing back to the state and hospital, but also how happy she was that we were with him in his final moments because of how much he loved his grandkids above everything else. We are his legacy and she was so very proud of all of us. It’s very rare to hear these words from Asian culture. It’s very eye-opening to us kids after spending so long bitter at the adults in our lives.

It made me feel bad for the years I spent angry and resentful at my relatives and stayed away. My aunts insisted I come to their house this past weekend on the 7th day after my grandpa’s passing, to practice đám giỗ. We do this on the 7th, 49th and 100th day of our loved one’s passing in the first year, and then annually thereafter. I’ve been doing this since I was little (up until college when I started going less and less and then not at all), but this time, it took a different meaning. As a child, the đám giỗ were always for ancestors I never knew/met. Now it was for someone I knew and played a role in my life. It was personal. So I went. And now, it felt much less toxic than before when I was younger. I don’t know if it’s because I grew up, or my relatives grew up and have become warmer and more understanding as people and less toxic. But they want me to start visiting more again. They live far though so I don’t know if I will continue these trips as often as they would like me to, but I would like to be able to try and make my grandfather’s đám giỗ a priority in my life to pay my respects and honor him since I didn’t visit as much as I should in his final years.

What is đám giỗ, though? Plainly put, it is the death anniversary of a passed loved one. In Vietnamese culture, the family gets together to share a meal. Many dishes are cooked and eaten family style, a lot of the times, the dishes can be the ancestor’s favorite dishes. One relative will host and the family members are expected to make their best efforts to make the trip. There is usually a family altar where a photo of the deceased are placed, sometimes along with other ancestors. The eldest family member will light 3 incense first and pray, placing the incense into a bowl of rice, inviting the ancestor into the home. The rest of the family will follow and light their own incense and pray as well. After all the incense has burned, then the family can share a meal since the ancestor has “finished eating” all the food placed on the altar. These events are not meant to be sorrowful, but a time of celebration and joy. You are celebrating their past life and cherished past memories you have of them. It is meant to be a time of togetherness and bonding. If you have ever watched Disney’s Coco, it is similar to Día de los Muertos.

As a kid, I honestly didn’t think much of these celebrations. I thought they were annoying sometimes because it meant my parents would take us on a trip to my relatives house which took forever to get to and back and it would cut into my homework and school time and I wouldn’t get home til late and be tired for school the next day. As an adult now and with my grandpa’s passing, my first direct relative connection to a đám giỗ, I see how important they are. You should make time for it, because how much time do any of us really have left. We should spend it with family. And of course, good food.

I want to be better. I’m going to work on being better about making time for my dad’s extended family, as well as continue making memories with my siblings and my parents. I’ve been learning to embrace more of my culture in recent years and wear it proudly. Maybe my return to dark hair was symbolic of returning to my roots, in more ways than one. I am Vietnamese and I am American. I don’t fit the stereotypical obedient daughter mold because I’ve always wanted to do things my way. I have never wanted to make myself smaller to fit what I’m ‘expected’ to be. I am loud and colorful. And I have never been one to apologize for it. But I am still proud of both my culture and who I am as an individual. I have a different sense of style but I want to bring my personality into the fold and marry it with my culture. This past summer when my mom had new ao dai made for me, I wanted to give my mom nice wholesome photos of me but also something I would love for my own portfolio. I’ve been wanting to do more shoots representing both me and my culture. Maybe this is how I find my place and fit in, after years of feeling stuck between two worlds. Maybe this is how I find peace.

The Floral Escape: Spring 2021 Edition

June 1, 2021

The Floral Escape is a seasonally decorated pop-up, recently all decked out and newly re-opened two weeks ago in time for the spring-summer session and is running through August 1st. I visited and reviewed their fall edition last year which can be read here on my blog. Since then, this new pop-up has come out with a few different experiences; a holiday photo studio with different backdrops perfect for those holiday photos, a winter edition of the original pop-up venue at Queens County Farm (both of which unfortunately I did not have time to make it to but hopefully next time!), a New Jersey location, and most recently, this new spring/summer version of their Queens County Farm location. I love the rotation of these seasonal makeovers and hope they continue with new ideas and designs for backdrops.

It’s an Instagrammer’s dream with 15 different installations of backdrops to take photos and film reels and TikTok videos to your heart’s content. Similar to their fall pop-up, I found this spring edition to offer a lot of potential when it comes to photographs, from different angles, to close-ups or full backgrounds, there’s a lot of different ways to be creative with your shots. The downside is there is a limit of 3-4 minutes per installation if there’s a line waiting. In the fall I went on a weekend and it was CROWDED. The parking lot was near full and I had even gotten there early. This time, I went on a Thursday at opening and I was one of 4-5 parties there and there was ample parking - so much that I could park right next to the entrance gate to the exhibit. I had a much easier time not having to wait for my turn or feeling rushed. So my best advice is to go on a Thursday as early as possible if you can. The only unfortunate thing about going that early is that the lighting is harsh so it made it difficult for me to photograph all of the installations, as some of them were placed in direct sunlight with no shade. These are probably easier to capture in the late afternoon or on an overcast day. Photos here at golden hour are probably even more beautiful, but probably also hectic to achieve during a busier, more congested time. So my advice is to work quick if you’re strapped for time. And definitely plan out what you want to wear with each installation if you’re interested in multiple outfit changes for maximum content creation. There are no bathrooms or changing rooms on site and there is no re-entry upon exit to go back to your car to change, so plan accordingly. I saw some guests brought their own changing tents or simply strategized their outfit changes (big fluffy dress first, smaller pieces to change into afterward to simply pull over and then pull the dress out, etc)

I do feel like each installation was very similar, since it all centered around a garden theme. The fall theme I felt like there was more original and creative, different pieces that stood out apart from each other, but this is just my own opinion as I would have liked to see more pieces that were different from each other, like the giant pumpkin spice latte cup, the elephant, the butterfly wings, giant roses in front of the barn, the yellow wisteria and the tractor. The star of the spring show was the yellow taxi cab, which I wasn’t able to grab too great of a photo in since it was in direct sunlight and the lighting was harsh when I went. But my second favorite was the purple swing and the rainbow chairs, since the rainbow wall was again, set in direct sunlight. My advice would be to study their Instagram to get a feel for which installations you like and how you want to photograph each one as well as what you’d like to wear for each one, strategize how you want to tackle all the different spots and go from there, especially if you want to try and do them all. I originally wanted to do them all, but was strapped for time with other engagements in the dayand hindered by harsh lighting so I had to compromise and work with what I had. Overall, I still love the shots we were able to get.

The Floral Escape is located at 73-50 Little Neck Pkwy in Floral Park, NY. Admission cost is $20 for adults, $12 for children 12 and under, and free for children under 2. Tickets need to be reserved online in advance. Parking is free, but first come, first serve so be careful on weekends as the lot can get full very fast. It’s located at the Queens County Farm Museum, where entry to the farm grounds after you finish with the pop-up, is also free if you’re looking for more things to do while in the area. The Floral Escape is open Thursday to Sunday from 11pm to 5pm on Thu-Fri and 10am-5pm on Sat-Sun. Last entry is 4:30pm sharp, but I would definitely arrive as early as possible to give ample time to get your photos in. Masks are not required when taking photos, but are required when social distancing is difficult to maintain.

Have fun!

Photos by: VBS Portrait, Jason Laboy Photography & NYCTravelerTV