Silicon Valley's wealth and cultural diversity are creating new wedding traditions
Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
Happily Ever After
These days, young people often pay for their own weddings, and they want them to be uniquely their own
By Kara Chalmers
As guests walked up the stairs of Saratoga's Foothill Club for the wedding reception of Kathy Yen and Chris Jasper June 3, the first thing they encountered was a red silk cloth. Messages such as "Best Wishes" and "Congrats and lots of love" covered the cloth, which was draped over a table near the door.
The "signing cloth" was one of the cultural traditions that Yen, who is Chinese, brought to her wedding. She also brought a red poster with a gold double happiness symbol on it to hang in the reception hall. She said the character is always present at Chinese weddings, since it symbolizes "two becoming one."
In affluent, ethnically diverse Silicon Valley, nothing is the way it used to be, including that bastion of tradition--weddings.
In the past, brides wore white and didn't change until it was time to leave for the honeymoon. Etiquette books advised that the bride's parents pay for almost everything; the groom's parents often simply hosted the rehearsal dinner. But these days, well-heeled young couples, many of whom work in the Valley's high-tech industry, often pay for their weddings. When parents do pay, or chip in, it's not just the bride's parents.
With so many ethnic and cultural influences in this area, wedding traditions from around the world are often combined with American traditions to create ceremonies that celebrate cultural diversity.
In addition, young people today plan to make their big day not only special, but uniquely their own.
Saratoga, with its well-known wedding venues such as Hakone Gardens, the Mountain Winery and Villa Montalvo, is the perfect place to see what today's wedding celebrations are all about.
Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
Kathy Yen and Chris Jasper dance their first dance at the reception.
Kathy Yen, 29, was born in New York and grew up there. She is a financial systems coordinator at Veritas Software in Mountain View. Jasper, 30, grew up in Saratoga and remembers riding his bike around the Foothill Club's grounds as a child. He is a network administrator at a startup ecommerce company in Sunnyvale. The two met at work, when they both previously worked at a different company.
Yen and Jasper were married in a western-style civil ceremony with a judge, outside the Foothill Club. Yen wore a beautiful flowing white dress. After the ceremony, the wedding party and guests went inside the club for dinner. The couple danced their first dance and then danced with their parents. Soon after, Yen disappeared.
Within the five minutes it took for the DJ to play a swing song, Yen reentered the hall in a lovely red silk dress with bright blue lining. The form-fitting red dress, unlike the off-the-shoulder, white gown she had worn during the wedding ceremony and dinner, had a high neck and was sleeveless with a slit up the side. She and her new husband then cut their wedding cake, and Yen wore the red dress for the rest of the night.
In January, Yen's father, Bernard Yen, traveled all the way to Shanghai to have the red dress made for his daughter. He helped Yen pick out the white dress as well, she said.
Yen said that in the Chinese culture, women typically get married in red, since it's a festive, happy color. These days, a Chinese bride can change as often as one time per course during dinner. The reason Yen said she changed was to "bring a little bit of my heritage" to the wedding. She also said it was fun.
Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
A guest at the wedding of Kathy Yen and Chris Jasper signs a red silk cloth instead of a traditional guest book. The cloth is a Chinese custom.
Lora Knol, an event planner for Hakone Gardens in Saratoga, said that weddings today are all about individuality. "Couples nowadays are really creating their own specialized weddings and receptions where they are bringing in an element of themselves to make it their own," she said.
Knol said she has even seen couples hire magicians and balloon artists to entertain children at weddings. She said she knows of a couple who are planning a wedding in Napa that will have the flower girl carrying a Chinese parasol, the ring bearers carrying Chinese firecrackers, and the reception hall lit up with Chinese lanterns.
Knol said that perhaps couples can afford to individualize their weddings since some are waiting a little longer to get married and therefore may have more money to spend when the time comes. Today's strong economy contributes, too, she said.
"People are putting more effort into their weddings, getting more involved and doing certain things to make it uniquely their own," she said.
Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
Bridesmaid Eden Looney (left) and bride 'Nazy' anxiously wait for guests to be seated.
Farinaz Kashani, 27, and Steve Brink, 26, were married at Villa Montalvo's Oval Garden on June 25. They decided to have two ceremonies, each 15 minutes long, and then a reception.
Kashani, who is Persian and who moved to San Jose from Iran three years ago, wanted to combine traditional Persian cultural influences with American elements.
"I just knew it was going to be different," Kashani said about her wedding. "I didn't want it to be like everyone else's."
The couple's first ceremony was American. As a harp played in the background, Kashani's father walked her to her waiting fiancé. A clergyman read poems and the couple recited their vows. Asfand, an herb, was burned, Kashani said, to protect the bride and groom. As the smoke from the incense rose it was supposed to take away any evil and darkness, leaving only light, she said.
The second ceremony, called the aghd in Persian, took place in one of the rooms at Villa Montalvo. The word translates as "contract" in English, as in an ordinary business deal. Use of the word is supposed to emphasize the seriousness and permanence of marriage, Kashani said.
Laid out on a piece of fabric on the floor were objects that each carried different meanings. Kashani, her mother and sister arranged the setting, called the Sofreh. A mirror, representing the truth, was the central object, and Kashani and Brink sat facing it on a bench. There were red berries next to the mirror, and candles--which were lit at the beginning of the ceremony to symbolize the beginning of the couple's life together--were placed on either side of the mirror.
A display of bread, fresh herbs and cheese expressed the hope that the couple will always have enough food and money and gold-painted eggs that symbolized the hope that the couple would have healthy children. Almonds and walnuts painted gold and silver expressed the hope that the marriage would stay as strong as their shells, Kashani said.
At one point in the ceremony, Kashani's sister and her mother took turns crumbling sugar cones from Iran that were decorated with flowers, over a cotton canopy draped over the couple's heads. As the cones were rubbed together, bits of sugar rained down over the cloth, showering the couple with sweetness.
"That's a symbol of making our life very sweet," Kashani said.
The couple then each dipped their fingers in a jar of honey and fed each other. This intimate gesture symbolized making each other's lives sweet, Kashani said, and the hope that the two would always speak sweetly to each other.
Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
Steve Brink and Farinaz Kashani at their 'aghd,' a traditional Persian wedding ceremony, which took place after their traditional western-style outdoor wedding at Villa Montalvo. Here, the mother of the bride, bridesmaids, maid-of-honor, and honored female guests hold a white cloth over the newlyweds' heads and take turns crumbling sugar cones above their heads. The crumbling of sugar by a female friend or family member is supposed to spread sweetness over the couple.
Kashani's aghd was much more about Persian culture than about religion, she said. Rather than having a Persian priest reading the Koran, Kashani enlisted friends and family members to read poems. Although Kashani was born Muslim and Brink was born Christian, neither of them are religious, nor are their parents.
Kashani said she has always known that her wedding dress would be unique, too. Right after the couple decided to get married, she thought of red, which seemed to her an interesting and exotic color for a wedding dress. She also wore a glimmering gold headband, which dangled pearl-encrusted rubies over her forehead. The headpiece was a gift from her parents.
At first, friends and family members tried to convince Kashani to wear traditional white. She even tried on some white dresses, because she was afraid to tell salespeople what she really wanted.
Finally, after asking some companies if they would dye their white wedding dresses red, Kashani found that she had to have a red satin dress custom-made, with a layer of black fabric underneath the red in order to get the exact deep shade she had in mind.
Interestingly, Kashani's sister, who was her maid of honor, and her two bridesmaids, wore off-white dresses for the wedding. Kashani's mother made all of the dresses herself after the women chose the styles they liked. On the wedding invitations, Kashani's mother also attached three white flowers and one red flower to the paper, symbolizing Kashani and the three women. The invitations had to be packaged in little boxes, so that the flowers would stay intact.
At Kashani and Brink's reception, the DJ played a mix of Persian and American music. The flower arrangements incorporated white flowers, a lot of fruits, red berries and lemons, partly because fruits smell good, Kashani said. The food was mostly Persian, with traditional dishes such as rice and kebabs, and morasah polo, which is rice with pistachio and orange rind and berries. All the food was arranged buffet-style.
Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
After dancing one dance with her new husband in her traditional American wedding gown, Kathy Yen changed into a traditional red Chinese gown.
Villa Montalvo's Carol Bravo, who was Kashani's bridal coordinator, said she sees a lot of culturally mixed marriages in the valley and that many of the wedding menus she sees are made up of all different types of ethnic foods.
"Weddings are just as elaborate as they have ever been because of the economy in the Bay Area," Bravo said. "I've never seen it like this before."
To rent Villa Montalvo for eight hours, for a reception or both a ceremony and a reception, costs $10,000, and up to 200 guests are allowed. Montalvo requires that couples use a caterer selected from their list. Depending on the caterer, how elaborate the menu is and which beverages a couple wants, catering can cost from $50 to $200 per person.
"But then you also have to count your florist, your DJ, your photographer," Bravo said. Prices for these extras can add up, too, so that the total wedding can cost as much as $20,000 to $30,000, she said.
Pat Smith, who runs Pat Smith's Extravaganza, a catering business in Saratoga said that today, engagements seem to be shorter since young couples don't need to wait for years to save up enough money to get married. She said she also sees young couples being more spontaneous, since times are better economically. If they can't find a hall for the date they want, she said a lot of couples will opt for their own backyards, or a family member's backyard.
Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
Maria Shadlow, of Seattle, a cousin to the bride, Tresia Walker, video records the wedding from her seat at the backyard wedding.
Michael McKenzie, 31, and Tresia Walker, 26, were married on Brookwood Lane in Saratoga on June 24, in the backyard of McKenzie's grandparents, William and Ginny Higgins.
Walker is a financial consultant for Bank of the West in Palo Alto and McKenzie is an employment coordinator for Cisco Systems. They live in San Jose.
The Higginses have lived in Saratoga for 52 years in a house that William Higgins built. Their daughter, McKenzie's mother, had her wedding reception in the backyard, too. McKenzie said his grandmother responded that she would be "tickled" if he and Walker were married at the home.
According to McKenzie, if his grandparents hadn't offered their home for the ceremony and reception, they may not have gotten married at all, because of the expenses for a church and a reception hall.
McKenzie set up an arch, overlooking the Saratoga creek, in the Higgins' expansive yard under which he and Walker stood during the ceremony. A longtime family friend married the couple.
Tresia is part Persian, and the DJ played a mix of American and Persian music during the reception after the ceremony. William Higgins played his saxophone with two of his brothers-in-law. There were over 230 guests.
The planning for the wedding took about six months, McKenzie said. He met Walker a year ago and the two became engaged in September. He said their decision was definitely spontaneous but that they knew what they wanted. "The bottom line was, we knew we wanted to marry each other."
Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
Connie Collins, of Aptos, picked herself a vantage point from the living room to watch her great nephew get married in the backyard of his grandparents' home.
In McKenzie's case, the wedding may not have happened if it weren't for the help of family members, who offered a place for the ceremony and reception, decorated the grounds and helped pay for the catering and the cake. He and Walker paid for the photographer, the DJ, the invitations and Walker's wedding dress.
Smith said she sees more and more young couples paying for their own weddings, rather than their families. She said that couples want to exhibit their individuality and they can afford to do so today because of the economy. She also credits better jobs for people at a younger age. Kathy Yen and Chris Jasper are one example of this trend.
Yen's parents paid for half of the catering bill and Jasper's parents paid for the wine and champagne, but the couple paid for everything else at their wedding. Yen said that, in all, she and Jasper spent about $6,000, which she thinks is not much for a Bay Area ceremony and reception.
Mark Karakas, special event planner at the Mountain Winery, said that 90 percent of the weddings he coordinates are paid for entirely by the couples. "We have a lot of young engineers who meet in the workplace," he said. "A lot have been relocated from out of the area, so rarely do we see parents involved in the payment or the planning."
Karakas, too, notes that there are more weddings today than in the past few years because of the amount of money people are making at a younger age. Over the past 10 years, he has seen people spend more and more money on their weddings.
"It seems like people are definitely investing more," he said, citing as examples the quality of food and décor. Karakas said couples today opt for the finer linens and china, or for a more elaborate multicourse meal.
But at the same time, Karakas said he sees less emphasis on formality in weddings today.
"It's more of a celebration," he said.
"I think what we're looking at is a more mature group," he said. "They're both successful in the valley here, so they want to do something more fun and less formal."
In fact, Karakas is now planning a September wedding at the winery that will have a carnival theme, game booths and all.
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