Taiwanese way

Taiwanese has some customs when it comes to weddings.

Taking pre-wedding photo is one of them.

Besides taking pictures during the wedding ceremony, Taiwanese usually will make a photo album about their love stories ahead of time so the guests can WOW and HWA when they wait to get in the ceremony hall.

Sounds silly, and it is. When we just moved to Taiwan B saw some couples taking pre-wedding pictures around our apartment, and he swore he would not be one of them! Well, never say never. We also had our pics taken and make them into a HUGE photo album.

The best part of this photo shoot was the bride got to wear a lot of more dresses than just the one in the ceremony! So I went to Julia wedding again to pick the extra clothes for our photo shoot.

All the grooms who are going to get married to Taiwanese brides have to know one essential idea--the bride is the super star in this photo shoot and the groom is somehow a prop in the background. You can tell by the the numbers of dresses they offered me to try-on!

My point of this photo shoot was "exaggerating", any ridicurous and crazy dresses, just bring them on!!

Some sexiness was good for cheering my dear B up during the upcoming longggggg photo shoot.

OK, I think you all enough of me today.

2 years.

When you are having fun, time flies.

I guess that's why it dawned on us to realize we have been legally married for 2 year now! Wow, what happened?

We basically ate our way into our marriage, therefore, there is no exception this time.
Usually, I am the decision maker in turns of what we gonna eat, but this time, I gave the right to my dear husband B. I don't know where we are going to till the morning I ask him what I should wear for the occasion. Surprisingly, he goes for the traditional way, a Michelin star chef glorious french restaurant --L'atelier de Joel Robuchon Taipei

This is our 5th time eating there, I am liking this place more and more! The first time we
dined there with B's parents [about more than a year ago] it was a letdown cause we felt the atmosphere, service and food were very amateur comparing to the L'atelier we went in Paris. I think it was because we ordered the set menu [ little boring for our taste] and they were trying to form a new team at that time.

The restaurant is located at the most luxury shopping mall in Taipei city, you can feel it when you walk across the marble floor to get into the left. When we walk in the mall on a weekday noon, it gives us the guilty pleasure feeling that knowing other people are still working at this moment, hahaa.

B emailed the main chef--Yosuke Suga whom we accidentally chat one time in the restaurant before and told him today is our anniversary. He manages to give us a private corner with beautiful orchids to avoid we celebrate our marriage with 20 other people by the bar. Since they actually are fully booked it is a miracle we get this great spot~

2 years ago and now,any difference?

Sadly the main chef is not there cause he is on the business trip with the Mr. Robuchon to
Macao. It doesn't matter, the lunch is just as great as we expected!
The relatively new sommelier comes by with preparation, I am so happy to see he takes out the big gun!

Champagne without request~yummmm.

We get the menu along with the champagne, we toast away the "lunch special" and dig 
into the a la carte , this is a serious meal!

The sommelier is very nice and immediately point out which dishes are new ones and they have fresh 
oysters from France to die for. An aphrodisiac appetizer sounds great for today, we gonna have it~ We 
each order one other appetizer and one main course and one dessert,this is gonna be a long long lunch 
and we are looking forward to it.

I decide to wear exactly the same dress I wore the night we registered our marriage in Stockholm. 

I guess this will be one of my new traditions from now on--just hope I can still fit in that dress when I am 

50 years old lol.

Almost every thing is the same but I change my mind when it comes to shoes!

I had my beloved Prada on 2 year ago but I go for the new Dolce and Gabbana leather print 

heels.

The food is here

Amuse bouche is a new experience to me, the textures play a big part in this shot glass. 
I love the jelly and creamy foam mixed on my tongue. These 2 oysters are not creamy but 
full of the great saltiness, ocean flavor as if we have a bite of entire French coast.

Then the next 2 amazing appetizers hit us.

He says the huge bite taste better

I have the langoustine carpaccio with poppy seeds and B has some ravioli with peas and chantarelle. The carpaccio is one of the best carpaccio I ever had and the meat is firm, fresh and flavorful. The herbs and poppy seeds are so refreshing and this dish is served under perfect temperature. L'atelier is always good with peas and this dish is creamy and dreamy. The chantarelle is more moisture than the way we usually prepare it at home but still adds a great smell and texture to the dish.

More to come~

Wedding dress

Searching for a perfect wedding dress is always a bitchy journey.

In Taiwan, 99%of brides rent their wedding dress, wedding dress rental is a huge industry here. B is a Swedish, he doesn't like the idea of renting my dress for the big day " Think about it, once of your life time! You don't want to rent a dress somebody else may had it on" he said.

OMG, B has no idea buying a dress is not easy here, I either has to fly back to USA for buying a dress or I have to custom make one here. Overall, it is cheaper and more convenient to make my dress here.

We find to a place where they can design and make a wedding dress for me with decent quality in Taipei city. The place called "Julia wedding" they do wedding photo, dress rental and design, make up and hair etc.. The price is not that cheap--I can buy a Vera Wong with that budget.The process was very detailed, my wedding dress designer will reference my desires and pictures to come out with 3 idea sketches and I pick one to do mock-up. I have to do 3 times fitting and they will sew the whole dress all over again with the real material.

The first and second fitting was disappointing...
The cut didn't fit me well, too much shit on the dress.

The last fitting my sister and I were finally feeling there is a hope that I can walk down the aisle not naked,haha.

Actually, it was better than that, when they put the veil on me to try out the mock-up, my sister was feeling emotional and had a tear in her eye [she insisted that's because she was pregnant and moody] Adam never saw the dress till the wedding, we did pretty good job to hide the dress away from him!

Here is the final mock-up looks like

Register our marriage

2009. Sep. 9th B and I tided the knot in Stockholm before we moved to Taiwan.

Talking about registration, sounded very complicated but it was really out of my imagination here! No need to wait in line, no city hall. The ceremony was hold at one of our favorite restaurant in town--" Leijontornet" means the lion's tower. It is a cozy and historical spot in old town.

The process was shockingly simple, a city judge came to the restaurant, read some announcement, made us signed the papers and we were hitched! Then we all moved to the private room call " Dragon room" had a feast --the perfect ending for a registration!

That was a one star Michelin dinner fellowed with a lot of great wine!
We were in a romantic room with very dimmed lights---not so easy to take pictures, but who cares? We were having the greatest time ever! B and I were legally married!! The very first and hopefully the last time in my life!

The modern twist of traditional Swedish food: moose jerky! My mother in law prepared the nice rose bouquet for me, very kind and sweet! Thank you B-mother~

The other modern twist of Swedish food, dark bread with liver mousse , fried onion.etc...too drunk to remember at this point!

Scallop lollipop! Impressive

Look how happy he was with his vanilla ice cream and cloudberry reduction!

Amazing tender deer with chantarelle mushroom with some kind of consomme jelly

Happy and drunk group,We are Family!

The sweet night ended with a surprise! B book a honeymoon suite in Grand hotel,very nice work