The Gray Lady at Our White Wedding: Read About Violet on Orange in the New York Times!

Hello! Are you tired of my constant coverage of my Halloween wedding yet? Are you starting to suspect that I have that disorder the guy in Memento had, since I apparently must write, reminisce and loudly proclaim about my nuptials in every conceivable moment? As though if I cease for one second, it may all crumble into the earth-time continuum, to be forgotten by all and even to be expunged from all history?

“Merry Christmas (Wedding’s Over)” could be my new single!

This is the maniacal, braying laugh I do when someone asks me whether I’m going to stop posting about my wedding soon … or ever

Well! Hold off on your fatigue for one moment, as I share with you a link to my wedding … as photographed, dramatized and tangibly published by The New York Times!

Violet Woodward Pu and Deepak Jain: After Speed Dating, a Slow Run to the Altar

As a longtime Vows fanatic myself, I knew that although the Weddings section runs in print on Sunday, the lead wedding story almost always goes live by Friday. In this week’s case — I hadn’t counted on its being published online at 3:00a PST today, though! Luckily, the inevitable marital mind-meld I share with my husband is obviously complete: He woke up fitfully at that very time last night, instinctively checked the New York Times Society page, and awoke me with a nudge and a line that was sure to jolt me immediately awake: “Our New York Times wedding feature is live, and they listed you as 30 years old!”

He told me a secret in the middle of the night last night … namely, that my real age is no longer a secret!

#retinue! (See previous entry for explanation of how I’m trying to get the Instagram generation to replace “squad” with “retinue”)

Well, they didn’t lie. We were bumped by 1 week (often, the New York Times sends reporters to two weddings in a single weekend and there is of course only 1 lead slot for coverage the following weekend). In the past week, of course — no fewer than 24 hours ago! — I ceased being classified as the cool “20something woman” and officially became a scary-sounding “30-year-old,” and of course a paper of record had to report this fact accurately, darn them.

My best gals!! Two of them are my sisters — no, screw it, all three of them are my sisters. Elizabeth – the one on far left – is my oldest and dearest friend. She once vouched for me as we created an elaborate lie to explain to my dad why I was late for my 9:15p curfew in high school. Thus, she is family!

The most chaste kiss in the world! We also didn’t smash cake in each other’s faces. Propriety rules … for the pictures, at least!

Also — and I obviously understood this, having worked extensively in newspapers, magazines and websites: I read some parts of the article and thought: 1) Did I really say that?! 2) Oh dear, how unflattering!

Happiness!

(Indescribable) happiness!

In the next few days, I want to get out some overdue posts. There is the interminable ongoing photo dump from the wedding. Also! I want to cover some significant moments from my husband’s and my past year, personal and professional (preview for his biggest professional moment – he is the #billiondollarman!) I also want to share with you: How I got to be covered by the New York Times, what it changed about our wedding, and how we handled the 2 weeks before our big day, as we were being extensively researched and interviewed by our very talented, and also perfectly named reporter, Jamie Diamond.

My Juliet cap veil appears to be falling off! It looks good to me in the other pictures, though. #madeinchina

For now, laugh with me at the title. Gosh, we sound like marital gimps. “Violet Woodward Pu and Deepak Jain: After Speed Dating, a Slow Run to the Altar.” As I’ve noted – Deepak and I got engaged while doing a trail run. I’m not as fast as he is (he can whip out 6:18 miles! I’m 7:00/mile on a good day – not Usain Bolt-ian but certainly decent). But there’s a lot of focus on impatience, slowness and dilatory tensions! I’m getting some vibes of John Milton in reading about myself here. Namely:

They also serve who only stand and wait

And here is my groom finally waiting for me to come up to him at the altar — well, they were right about the headline about a slow run to get there. My train was 15 feet long!

But I will continue to maintain that actually, it’s all an elaborate reference to the fact that I had my bridal party enter the reception to Fabolous’ “You Be Killin’ ‘Em.” A wonderful song that I selected for its catchy beat, its memorable off-beatness … and at least a little bit for its great lyric:

Shoulda seen her come to me when I called her / Slow strut like she walking to the altar

Yes. The New York Times headline writers were totally referencing Fabolous’ 2010 hit single with that.

Please enjoy the story, and share liberally! More to come!

This is my 2nd (or 3rd, if we’re counting sequentially) wedding dress! I changed for the reception. Again — #15foottrain surely would have ended in dance floor catastrophe.

Come on into some more posts!

Tunnel of love

I hope you will find our love story to be as piquant as a bottle of Sriracha. Actually, sriracha isn’t that hot to me! #deadtastebuds However, our poor James Beard event-hosting chef’s face when he saw that we brought a bottle of sriracha to the reception — if only as a gag — now that was heated …