Made it to Franklyn's place a little after 8am. I found Kristine already working hard with flowers for the event. Both she an Wayne had been picking out flowers from the garden early in the morning. Franklyn as a small garden but well utilized, full of beautiful flowers.
I came across Franklyn's father whom I haven't seen in 5 years with a new Fiji Digital camera for this event shooting away. It was good to him and his wife and their daughter Susan again.
M is so beautiful of a person and she has beautiful clear eyes. I find her graceful and classy, the air feels comfortable to breathe in when she's around. I translated for her as I chatted with Franklyn's parents about this and that. I haven't seen them for 5 years and somehow we can just chat and chat as if we've known each other my whole life. M was nervous about creating own original vows and not having it all memorized. At one point she started to get teary. I think it's cool they've come up with original vows. Here it is in Franklyn's writing which most people find it hard to decipher including the bride.
Susan who was a Bio Chem graduate is on her second degree in the art field. She is M's stylist today. She roomed with me for a few months after she graduated from college in the east coast coming out to the west looking for jobs in the field. I remember having lots of fun conversations with her over literature, art, food, and well, everything. We would chat till 3am in the morning until we both passed out. I was younger then, I could still pull it off the next day with very little sleep. I really enjoyed her company. Her parents seem to be happy that she is also in a field that she is happy in and they recognize and support her talent.
While I chatted with Franklyn's mom, his dad went at it with the camera and took many photos of me talking. He said photographers usually don't get photos of themselves because they are usually the one behind the camera and said today is my day to actually have pictures of me. I think he had a great time and I appreciate these photos of me.
Frankly was busy working on the getting his bike and Megan's bike ready with flowers etc.. Wayne was busy loading up the bikes with flowers with Kristine. All bikes got decorated. The ride is 4 miles uphill into Tilden Park. I have a bike. I'll ride a bike with my outfit for the wedding and put a biker short on underneath. But really, I don't want to ruin my make up or hair or accessory. Plus it is important to take photos of guests at the ceremony and reception site while everyone waits for the procession of bikers including the bride and groom to arrive.
Steven Chan came with his son Ansel and brought toddler bike cart. Rinaldi checked everyone's gear to make sure people were certainly set for the ride including sunscreen. He's great. He's the captain where ever he goes because he just is a detailed nurturing guy who has the heart and mind for these things.
Kristine drove and Stacy, Laura, Kien, myself all carpooled with her. Kristine and Stacy were both worried about getting lost, I joked about how that wouldn't be a problem because we have the food in our car anyways.
When we entered the park we saw Snjezanna and Alp walking, they walked from their home in Berkeley Hills. This was their second route, they had already walked to another place where they thought was the wedding site, but discovered it wasn't there. Now they are in their second route and I confirmed the direction they should be going.
We also came across David Yin who walked from downtown Berkeley. When we came across him he was going in the opposite direction of the ceremonial site. Pointed out the right direction and set him around.
Tilden Park
Fern Picnic Area
At the site, Tom, Shari, Upekkha were already done setting up the tables with red cloth, and cup cakes. We brought more flowers for the table setting and did some finishing touches on the cake too. Rinaldi and Yvonne picked up the tamales, taquitos, and soft tacos.
Franklyn changed into a pink shirt to go with M's biker wedding dress of which he picked out for her. It was beautiful and a good choice. She's wearing a passion fruit flower from her garden and the colors really matched the dress and her eyes well.
Marty officiated the wedding ceremony. People had opinions on where the actual ceremony should take place and the tree down the hill hanging off a cliff is where most people liked it. I liked it up the hill facing the redwood trees on clear cut grass but I didn't say anything. Franklyn had Marty pick out a spot and Marty has an eye for good Feng Sui and he picked out the spot I liked for the ceremony.
Marty's talk about being nervous when he heard Franklyn was having a bicycle wedding was funny, yes Frankly is famous for falling off his bike and getting shocked back to life by the EMT and then the other time was getting helicopter air lifted out to the hospital. Well, after both instances, he refused to follow his family's concerns for him and stuck by his love for cycling. Infact he became even more determined that he infected everyone else around him to become passionate about cycling. He's also known as the bike doctor. He knows so much about bikes and bike parts.
They both pulled out the vows and recited for each other. M got teary again. The blessing by Marty was beautiful and heart warming. Franklyn's father spoke also and welcomed Megan to the family and shared their joy for this union and hoped SOON there will be little baby Franklyns. It's good to see Franklyn so happy.
Although there was a seating chart, people pretty much ignored it and hit the shade. It was 69 degrees in high noon. I really like the sun, it felt great on this clear sunny beautiful day. But I needed two coats of sunblock and glad someone brought sunblock with them because I forgot. It just hasn't been this sunny and warm yet so I didn't think of it.
Lunch was delicious and great for finger food because the whole very green and Berkeley and picnic casual thing of bringing your own plate and utensil really didn't quite work. Only Megan's college friend from law school did and Stacy and Jason. The rest of us ate using the tamale banana leaf wrapper as the plate until the plates arrived.
Cake was chocolate with chocolate icing and the white icing is lemon with ginger cake. It actually tasted like carrot cake without the carrot. They were vegan and delicious. I had a good time chatting with Snjezanna, Alp, Tom, Jason over marble toilets in Turkey to squatting pits in Asia and the different salt content in this sea and that ocean.
This a photograph of their bikes together with just married garland.
After the wedding I sat with Shari, Franklyn's father to compile photos from all our cameras. The after wedding party was at Rinaldi's garden over Pu-er and Tie Guan Yin tea, cheese, apples, olive bread, crackers, and more cup cakes. It was nice of Rinaldi and Yvonne to host the post wedding party. The garden party lasted till it was pitch dark and we could no longer see each other's faces around 8pm. Then the 3rd leg of the party was moved to a restaurant. During the tea party more photos were compiled from Rinaldi's two camera and Upekkha's camera. She set the video motion in her point and shoot and had videos of the ceremony. It's was quite a productive afternoon to get all these photos ready for Frankly and Megan to view right away.
It felt good to sit and drink tea in the afternoon and have more cake. It was very relaxing. I don't live in the area anymore so I do miss moments like this. Rinaldi was busy running with hot water making sure the tea was properly brewed and hot in our cup. I totally appreciated this. Upekkha restocked the munchies. She's a great shopper who has an eye for deals and she has good taste. When in doubt, ask her, she probably has it and it's most likely beautiful and great quality, if not she probably knows where to direct you to get it. In general she's very sweet, nurturing and a wonderful host. I had a long but wonderful day today.
