Where's Huyen?

(PICTURE: Our wedding invitation. This one never got handed to my friend Van...who still made the wedding.)

During our tour around Hanoi, I kept getting asked the same question. No, not "What's this ___" or "What's that ___" but rather, "Where's Huyen?" Huyen was with us most of the day but kept disappearing at different sites since she had a lot of last minute wedding planning to do. You see, in Vietnam you don't send out invitations six weeks ahead like in American. Instead, you hand deliver them about 6 (or 1) day before.

When Huyen and I originally set our wedding date, her parents said, "Why are you telling us now?" Well, that's the general attitude with all Vietnamese when it comes to RSVP-ing. For everyone, they want to know just a few days before. Personally, I find this ludicrous as an anal-retentive always-like-t0-plan-ahead type of person. However, when in Rome...

On the day of the tour, Huyen kept ducking into cafes to call her friends and coworkers to get a head count for the wedding. Also, she was busy organizing the bus that would take our Hanoi friends to the wedding on the 19th. Then at some point she jumped on a motorbike taxi to run some other small errands. You know, like getting her wedding dress fitted (although there ended up not being enough time and she had to do this literally the day before the wedding).

The point is, while my family, friends and I were having fun touring around, Huyen was busy being our wedding planner.