Our Wedding

(This post is excerpted from a much longer piece I wrote about our wedding. You can download that article here.)

On Sunday, April 29, 2007, Lila and I got married in Hong Kong, because two foreigners can't get married in mainland China (and getting married in the Philippines or the U.S. had their own complications).

Here's the happy couple, wearing a kurta (mine) and salwar kameez (hers) provided by our good friends Sunny and Vinnie Gupta, managers of the Spice Circle Indian Restaurant where we had our after-wedding party.

This is our best man, Alan Rosenfield (left), and "person of honor" Adam Wood. Alan is one of my oldest friends here; he lives in Chicago, but visits Shenzhen frequently for business. We timed the wedding so that he would could stand up for me.

Adam, on the other hand, was a fairly new friend. A few months earlier, he had contacted Lila about yoga classes and, not knowing we were connected, had contacted me about a Buddhist discussion group I was running. We all three "clicked." So when Lila's chosen "maid of honor" couldn't make the wedding, Adam volunteered and, oddballs that we are, we chose not to stand on tradition, but instead we said "Cool! A 'person of honor'!"

So Alan and Adam were the official witnesses to our marriage.

These are the guests at the ceremony itself, standing in the lobby of the Marriage Registry in Shatin. Represented are Germany, England, America, the Philippines, Hong Kong, the mainland, and one we're not sure of: a typically broad range of nationalities in the expat life (and impressive considering there are only 13 people there!)

Hong Kong is a fairly stiff-upper-lip-conservative place when it comes to such things as weddings; a pamphlet in the Marriage Registry even discussed appropriate dress and behavior for the ceremony. So the ceremony itself was meant to be solemn; the Justice of the Peace certainly had no sense of humor. But as you can see in this picture, Lila and I were cracking each other up as usual. (The unsmiling lady J.O.P. is just visible in the top-right corner.)

Finally, MARRIED! This is us with a bunch of kids who happened to be outside the Marriage Registry; it's one of my favorites of all the pictures taken that day by our good friend Jesse Warren. All the pictures in this post were shot by Jesse, a pro who shot around all our wedding events for free. (Thanks, Jesse!) You can see more of his work starting here, here and here.

More pics of all the fun:

Lila's pics of the Shatin wedding and lunch

Lila's pics of the Spice Circle party

Jesse Warren's pics of both occasions

And don't forget to look at the article that tells the whole damned story in every sordid detail, from when we met, through my pre-wedding jitters, to the great day itself, and the subsequent honeymoon and more parties.