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5-YEAR Wedding Anniversary :: The Westin Pasadena

June 22nd, 2011, written by Lucia Li
Found in Our Stories

Months before our five year wedding anniversary, Henry and I had a talk about how we wanted to celebrate the special occasion. “We should take a long vacation and go traveling!” I proclaimed with excitement. My eyes sparkled. “Let’s go back to Hawaii! It’s the place where we decided to get married, so it’s the most meaningful place to celebrate the anniversary.” “Or, how about somewhere we have never been to? We can go on new adventures and make new memories.” Yes, I started to get creative… “You know? 5-year is a big one, we should definitely travel to somewhere far, beautiful, and romantic.” After throwing back and forth a few more ideas, which included jetting off to places like Canada, Costa Rica, New Zealand, etc., we decided that there was still plenty of time so we just entertained the ideas.

Then, as time passed by and both of us got buried with work, our “dream destination” became closer and closer to home. And when it was only one week before the “big day”, this supposedly grand vacation became a short weekend getaway. The final contenders were Big Bear (where we first met each other), Pasadena (where we had our wedding), and Palm Springs (for no particular reason… maybe because I wanted to go swimming and the weather is usually sunny and hot there).

Finally, we made a decision to spend our anniversary in Pasadena, starting with a visit to Pacific Asia Museum (where we had our wedding ceremony), and then a stay over at the Westin hotel next door (where we had our banquet and spent the first night together as husband and wife). It turned out to be a truly special trip and we loved every minute of it! Even though it wasn’t a long vacation at a far away exotic destination, we got to revisit all these beautiful places, and relived precious memories.

Several weeks after we got back from our trip, Isabella put together a lovely slideshow to help us remember the details of our fifth anniversary celebration. The pictures in the slideshow above were all taken by her (she was with us briefly, taking a few shots just before we hurried off to dinner). I LOVE the pictures and the slideshow so much I have to blog and share them with the world!! Thank you sis for all these!

Since I mentioned our wedding venues in this post, I thought it would be great to share some of our wedding pictures too. Those pictures were taken by the famous and talented Jessica Claire (Check out her site! She is truly unbelievably amazing!!)

Lucia Wedding Veil

Henry Lucia Wedding Westin Pasadena

Jessica knew that I love to dance, so she asked me to do a few spins for her:

Pacific Asia Museum Pasadena wedding ceremony flowers decorations Our cute and cozy ceremony site: Pacific Asia Museum

Henry Lucia Wedding Ceremony

I wore a big smile on my face the whole time.

Henry Lucia Wedding party Pasadena Westin Hotel

Pink Lemonade Signature Drink

Our signature drink: pink lemonade. Both Henry and I don’t drink, so juice suits us better. I love the orchids. :-)

Henry Lucia Westin Pasadena Banquet Slideshow

Isabella gave us a surprise wedding gift. She secretly interviewed and filmed our family and friends and put together a video. It was a big hit with our guests! Everyone loved it, especially loved Henry’s cousin’s hilarious skit. He did an impression of Henry. So funny I almost cried.

Henry Lucia Wedding First Dance Westin Pasadena

First dance, to the song “A Whole New World”

Henry Lucia Wedding Cake Cutting Westin Pasadena

I often find myself thanking god and thinking how I am the luckiest person in the world. I married a very very VERY! good man. Marrying Henry was without question the best thing that has ever happened to me. He has the kindest heart and soul, and all the small things he does have made me love him more each and every day.

Happy 5-year, and many more to come! I love you BB!

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By the way, if you are curious about the beautiful song Isabella picked for the slideshow, here’s the lyrics translated in English.

Licensed song, “Mi Ancla” (My Anchor) by Mindy Gledhill

“When all the world is spinning ‘round
Like a red balloon way up in the clouds
And my feet will not stay on the ground
You anchor me back down

I am nearly world renowned
As a restless soul who always skips town
But I look for you to come around
And anchor me back down

There are those who think that I’m strange
They would box me up and tell me to change
But you hold me close and softly say
That you wouldn’t have me any other way

When people pin me as a clown
You behave as though I’m wearing a crown
When I’m lost I feel so very found
When you anchor me back down

When all the world is spinning ‘round
Like a red balloon way up in the clouds
And my feet will not stay on the ground
You anchor me back down”

Tags: anniversary slideshow, Pacific Asia Museum, viel, wedding anniversary celebration, Westin Hotel Pasadena
Found in Our Stories | Written by Lucia Li | 3 Comments »

Mini Maternity Session :: Reena and Hero Part I

June 7th, 2011, written by Isabella Li
Found in Maternity

It’s been awhile since we blogged, tweeted, or posted anything on our FB page. Truth is, there have been a lot of changes over the past few months and we were all feeling a bit burnt out. Long story short, we shot a couple of portrait and event sessions, helped get my parents’ house ready for sale (continued to be a work in progress), and I went for a 2nd laparoscopy for endometriosis while Lucia decided to quit her full-time day job at Mattel to further pursue our photography business as well as her other dream to start a family. Since a baby is in the plan and Lucia’s doctor wants her to minimize stress (FYI, she’s not pregnant yet), we have decided to temporarily hold off on accepting any more weddings for now, and instead shift our focus onto doing more events (birthday party, bridal shower, baby shower, etc.) and portrait sessions (individual, couple, family, children, baby, pet, etc.), and if there’s free time left, we would like to devote those on creating some personal projects, and continue to update ourselves with new knowledge by taking workshops and seminars.

A few weeks ago we held our first in-studio maternity portrait session.

We first met Reena and Hero at a Halloween dance party at CSULA several years ago. They are one of the most creative, down-to-earth, and fun-loving couples we’ve ever known. Over the years we’ve grown to become close friends, and often marveled at each others’ creative hand-made ensembles at Halloweens. I remember one year Reena made her own Cleopatra costume, while Hero made his Iron Man one (complete with gadget/light too!) And last year Hero put together a darn cool Halo costume (fruit of more than a year of designing and labor). Costumes this cool demand to be seen by the world; therefore, we have planned to do a Halo-themed photo session later on this year, and are very looking forward to all the fun time we are gonna have with this Cosplay shoot!

Alright, let’s get back to talking about the main topic of this post. Hero contacted us about the idea of doing a maternity session for Reena. He had planned to surprise Reena on her birthday by buying a cake that’s the same as the one they had for their wedding. Having surprised Reena with a hand-made canopy bed the prior year (don’t ask me how he managed to hide something of this scale and scope from her), Hero’s plan this year was sure to be a continual success. That is — until Reena accidentally discovered the receipt for the cake! (note to all: hide your receipt well – burn it, swallow it, mail it to the IRS – leave no traces at home!) Unwilling to let this little mishap ruin his plan, Hero thought about purchasing a maternity session with us and give it to Reena as a gift. Together we came up with a customized maternity series photo package, which includes a mini 30-min studio session every month to document the changes during pregnancy, as well as a full portrait session outdoors to celebrate and capture the couple’s love for each other at this especially exciting time of their lives. We had a blast at the first mini session. Below are some images from the set. Enjoy, and stay tuned for Part II of the series in the coming months!

Maternity-sari-silhouette