Japan

Arashiyama

% ARABICA Kyoto Arashiyama

Walden Woods, Kyoto

Weekenders Coffee, Kyoto

Nara Park

Fushimi Inari Taisha

Mori Art Museum

National Art Center, Tokyo

Sensō-ji Temple

Yoyogi Park

Golden Gai, Shinjuku

Recommendations for Kyoto

Coffee:
Walden Woods
% ARABICA Kyoto Arashiyama
Weekenders Coffee

Food:
Otsuka
Breakfast Kishin

Sightseeing:
Arashiyama Bamboo Grove
Gion
Fushimi Inari Taisha

Recommendations for Tokyo

Coffee:
Onibus Coffee Nakameguro
Koffee Mameya

Food:
Shin Udon
Savoy Azabu-Juban
Tsukiji Fish Market

Sightseeing:
teamLab Borderless
National Art Center, Tokyo
Mori Art Museum
Sensō-ji Temple
Yoyogi Park

Tips

• Purchase a JR Pass if you’re traveling between cities to save tons of money.

• Purchase a PASMO card for easy travel on trains, subways, and buses.

• Renting portable wifi (like Pupuru) is super affordable and easy to pick up/return at the airport.

Watters Bridesmaids Dresses

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Watters. The opinions and text are all mine.

Earlier this year, my bridesmaids and I visited the Watters headquarters to pick out their bridesmaids dresses! In May, they received all of their dresses, and this past weekend, I got to shoot a few of them in it!

This was one of my favorite shoots all YEAR because I got to capture my beautiful bridesmaids in their dresses for the first time! Not everyone could make it, but I'm happy to have been able to shoot Jen, Angela, and Kat!

Left to right: Jen wearing Deni, Angela wearing Summer, and Kat wearing Lottie

I really loved that everyone got to choose a dress they liked from the Watters/Wtoo collections also! I wanted to be sure that everyone felt confident in how they look and feel in their dresses in September!

Don't they all look so beautiful? I'm so proud to call them my bridesmaids! I can't wait to see the other three girls in their dresses also! I know everyone is going to look amazing!

Multicultural Wedding Planning

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of WeddingWire. The opinions and text are all mine.

Asian weddings. I love them, and I hate them. My hopes on the first few wedding venue options were crushed when I learned it didn't have the capacity to hold all our guests. Why must we have almost 300 guests, with 200 being family and/or people we don't know? How do we pay respect to our elders when we're not fluent in the language? How do we let non-Asian guests know that our culture takes cash as wedding gifts? It's been a tough aspect of our wedding planning.

From Nickie & Cheuck's tea ceremony

I'm Chinese, and Brian is Vietnamese. My family is actually from Vietnam, so culturally, I didn't mind doing a Vietnamese tea ceremony. However, the logistics were hard to plan because neither of our parents live in the same city as us. I also asked my mom how to plan for a tea ceremony, and she basically shrugged and said her mom planned it for her. I don't know how to speak about weddings in Cantonese. Cue headache.

I looked into a helpful WeddingWire article on this topic as well: 11 Tips to Help You Plan a Multicultural Wedding. There were some tips I'm used to, like holding two separate ceremonies, but it also gave me ideas I never thought about, like hiring a wedding planner with experience. However, I didn't know where to begin to look for a tea ceremony planner, and we didn't want to spend extra money on a just a tea ceremony.

However much I wanted to wear a pretty ao dai (Vietnamese traditional dress) and have our families meet, it just wasn't coming to fruition. In the end, it seemed like neither of our families would be disappointed if we DIDN'T have a tea ceremony, so we decided not to. However, we are going to wear our traditional gowns during the reception, which I saw was something WeddingWire also suggested! I actually won't be wearing an ao dai but a cheongsam (Chinese traditional dress) instead.

A wedding I helped shoot, with the mother of the bride in a traditional Korean hanbok

We're also going to be serving Chinese-Vietnamese cuisine! In the end, we're keeping a lot of our culture, and we're happy enough with that! As for the tradition of receiving cash gifts, the WeddingWire forums have also been very helpful! We just won't set up a registry, but we won't ASK for cash either because it's perceived as rude to ask money. I also learned that in some cultures, it's rude to set up a registry. Ahh traditions.