Anne & Jeff | Aracely Cafe Wedding on Treasure Island

Our last wedding of the year was Anne & Jeff’s at Aracely Cafe, and we couldn’t have asked for a sweeter couple or a more wonderful wedding to close out the year. Before we begin, I just want to recap their proposal story, which I thought was quite romantic and very clever: Jeff arranged for a wildlife photography tour for Anne at the Cypress Tree Tunnel in Point Reyes, and to avoid giving away the surprise, he scheduled this the day before they were supposed to go ring shopping. With Anne totally off her guard, he proposed to her at one of the most beautiful (and one of our favorite) spots in all of NorCal.

Their wedding day kicked off with some pre-ceremony games for the wedding party, where Jeff, with the help of his groomsmen, would have to perform certain, mostly hilarious, tasks to Anne’s satisfaction. Some examples were: the “telephone” game, except with drawings instead of words (and Jeff was surprisingly skilled at deciphering the, erm, “abstract” drawings from his groomsmen), rolling quarters into the teeth of a fork, and de-pithing orange slices to Anne’s very particular standards. And since this was before their first look, Anne watched much of it live from a video stream on her cellphone, which you can see in some of the photos below. We actually haven’t photographed many of these before, so it was a great lesson for us in how to hold the camera still while trying to control uncontrollable laughter.

Looking back through photos of Anne & Jeff’s ceremony, and even their bridal party group photos, I find myself smiling at my screen a lot from remembering how much fun the entire group was. I loved how their personalities really show through, especially in those not-so-standard wedding photos that capture just the right amount of goofiness.

During the reception, family & friends delivered many touching toasts (with live English/Chinese translations!) and the couple had arranged for some fun games to entertain the crowd. But after that, their bridal party had actually arranged for a surprise flash mob — they got up and performed an excellently-choreographed series of dances on stage, and Jeff & Anne’s reactions were precious. My personal favorite routine was the officiant and groomsmen dancing to the Pokemon theme song like pros. They must have practiced that for weeks, because it was amazing… and the dancing Pikachu really elevated that one to the next level.

Congrats to Anne & Jeff on their wedding — we enjoyed every minute of being there, and between the fun & games, their love for each other and for their friends and family, and being the sweetest couple to us and their other vendors, A&J are, truly, “the very best, like no one ever was” 😛

Enjoy these photos below!