Bay Area | November & December, 2022

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What a whirlwind it’s been since the end of last year. I’m circling back now to recap the last two months of 2022. We start it off with a 100-day celebration for Baby Valente! 

In November, we had such a beautiful engagement session, and we pulled together all the details for our December ceremony too.  Below, trying on dresses for the engagement; and deciding on rental linens for the ceremony.

What an incredible joy and privilege to have Cassie photograph our engagement session. Perhaps I’ll get around to posting our photos someday, but in the meantime nothing could be better than Cassie’s own heartfelt writeup. So much love.

Then it was time for friendsgiving with the Office of Accountability. Thank you to Chelsea for hosting!

Getting our marriage license! Alex’s first time in SF City Hall. 

I finally finished my 7-month long puff quilt project! And boxed it up to ship to my friend Talya in Germany, for her baby boy. 

A brand new Muni line! We got to ride it from Soma to the new Chinatown subway station. We’re big fans, even if it is only four new stops.

We also finally made it over to Van Ness to visit our friends’ gym, Benchmark Climbing. I don’t know anything about climbing, but this gym is beautiful! Alex eventually signed up for a membership, so hopefully we’ll be back regularly.

Happy Birthday to Dan! Alex smoked some ribs for our little dinner gathering before we left the Bay for Thanksgiving.

Insert our road trip down to LA, and when we came back to the Bay, we went right to a big banquet feast at Good to Eat Dumplings, featuring a veritable who’s who of the Taiwanese American community, all organized by Ho-Chie Tsai. 

Frankie Gaw detoured his trip back to Seattle just to come to this dinner! He had just published his cookbook First Generation: Recipes from my Taiwanese-American Home and was kind enough to sign our book. Also, lots of swag was gifted to all the attendees, in my handy Anna Wu Photography tote bags.

We’ve gotten to such an amazing point in Taiwanese American food these days. We’re very lucky to have a lot of great Taiwanese restaurants in the Bay, but there are also so many new cookbooks coming out this year, and so much more to look forward to! It’s pretty incredible to think back even five or ten years and to see how much the landscape has changed. I’m incredibly grateful to be a part of such a wonderful community.

We arrived back home to this massive stack of packages after two weeks away. Holiday shopping meets wedding prep! We got ourselves this new vinyl turntable and were very excited to start listening to the records we’ve started collecting!

Holiday party at Apple Park! The spaceship is almost never open to visitors, so this was a special chance to peek inside. Very nice. But so much walking to get from point A to B!

Mini craft project for the wedding… sewed a little zipper pouch for our rings.

December Accountability meeting! With babies!

Secret santa time.

More wedding crafts: little half-circle ornaments for our place cards.

And as we got closer, the rain forecasts only went higher and higher. So… some new rain boots then? Works for me! Also, a reunion as Do-Hee is back in town for the wedding! Off to get manicures for the big day.

My mom brought me this gold necklace that was gifted to me when I was a baby, from my godmother. So sweet.

Also this traditional coat, from my grandmother. And a gift for Alex- a gold Cartier tie clip!

Checking out the new bar & restaurant at Luma Hotel! This kiwi drink was incredible. So good.

Time to get married! Here are my few little phone snaps from the day. Again, perhaps I’ll someday share some of Courtney’s amazing photos in another post. Hair & makeup by my friend Becky, whom I’ve known for years!

My fun cape + dress combo for the winter wedding!

I conscripted all of my friends into working my wedding. Thank you, everyone. Such a dream team.

And Amanda even emerged from the woods like the magical flower fairy she is. Best of all, we got married! Woohoo!

And conveniently, it rained all morning and all night, but there was a nice 2-hour break in the rain just for the time that we were outside for photos and for the ceremony. How incredibly lucky!

The next day, we took my mom to pick out our little Christmas tree. I got to sit in the back with the tree in my lap.

We had our friends over for brunch and to help decorate the tree! 

Everyone was so ready for naptime.

But I turned around at some point, and Do-Hee and Cassie had already put up all our ornaments! This was the best. Would do it this way next time too.

Very cute gift from Mina & Dave. And a look at Dan and Jeri’s tree, featuring their ornaments from us!

Back to City Hall to file our paperwork! And it’s all decked out for the holidays.

So sweet, Alex’s parents decorated the house so we walked in to this whole display. Plus, a little craft project for my bouquet.

Lopped off the flowers and shipped them to Cast Paper Art to make flower paper for our thank you cards!

I also tried to press some of my flowers, but unfortunately most of them ended up sad and moldy. Alas. Next time.

Lunch date with Rebecca. Holiday festivities with the Warriors championship trophy.

And back up to wine country to start planning part two of our wedding celebrations!

A wonderful dinner at Mister Jiu’s in Chinatown, thanks to Meg who gifted us a meal there.

My custom wedding band came in! Such a perfect pairing with my engagement ring.

Cookie decorating party at Candace & Derek’s!

A bit of arts & crafts for my proposal clients. And a preorder of my Win Son cookbook came in early!

Christmas jammies, hehehe.

And Christmas Eve with the San Francisco 49ers! This was so much fun, even though Alex was rooting for the wrong team.

Cutest sweater award.

Epic sunset, and back to Dan & Jeri’s for dinner! Buster wants some too.

Christmas Day hotpot with both sides of our family!

And after a brief trip to Tahoe, back in the city for a very drenched New Year’s Eve. I don’t think anyone expected so much rain, but there was definitely flash flooding everywhere, and it was quite the adventure to go out that day. But first, a flower pickup from Francis & Frances, now newly rebranded as The Sidewalk Flowers!

Watching the Michigan bowl game, not the best outcome. But also, none of us actually went to that school, haha.

What a year!

Cheers to a wonderful 2022, and here’s to seeing what 2023 might bring.

Anna Wu is a wedding and portrait photographer based in San Francisco. She compulsively documents and blogs all of her daily adventures. Follow her on instagram and view more of her professional work at annawu.com.