How we met...

Bride's story
The first time Matt walked into my life, he made an impression on me. Unfortunately, it was not the first impression he probably wanted to make. Luckily for him, I got over it. Sadia and I had arranged to get our Matrix Reloaded fix in mid-July of 2003. Until then, I had only heard of Matt as "that guy from Princeton" who she ran into at Grand Central station a few months earlier and had not seen since graduation.

We decided to meet up with Sandra, another Princetonian, and Matt at Ollies Chinese restaurant for dinner before the movie. Sandra, Sadia and I were sitting in Ollies when Matt walked up to our table - I was the first one to notice him. My brain quickly assessed my initial impression of him. Bald? Shorts? Batik shirt? Teva sandals? Tattered "green" backpack? I'm thinking, did this guy just go hiking in Bali? I crossed him off my list of potentials.

But then he sat down next to me and we started talking. I quickly put him back on my list of potentials. There was something about him I couldn't quite put my finger on but I liked him. He was cute in a bald Captain Picard kind of way. Only Capt. Picard wouldn't have been presumptuous on his first encounter with me to say that he thought I was Singaporean based on my accent. But we won't dwell on that as Matt knows better now.

I saw Matt at a rained out "Shakespeare in the Park" outing in early August but it wasn't until after a New York blackout and a trip to New Orleans with my friend, Linda, that I spent time with him again. What finally brought us together were men in tights and tutus, more specifically, all my friends, except Matt, deciding at last minute not to go to the Trocadero de Monte Carlo ballet performance in Battery Park with me. Of course, Matt thought I had set him up on an "unofficial date" but hey, it just happened that way… really, it did. I'm not kidding. Anyway, the rest is history. We went on an official date a few weeks later and I never looked back. I didn't have to -- I knew he was the one.

Groom's story
I can't describe how I first came to know Shu-Lin without mentioning Sadia, my friend from Princeton and Shu-Lin's from Bangkok. Whether or not she intended to bring us together when Shu-Lin and I first met, I am eternally grateful to Sadia.

Shu-Lin was at first just a name to me, a name mentioned in passing when Sadia and I were returning to New York from reunions at Princeton in May 2003. Then I heard her Chinese name again when Sadia invited us and another friend to watch the Matrix at the Lincoln Square Theater in July. As soon as we were introduced and I heard her speak, I noticed Shu-Lin's attitude before anything else. It wasn't just that she had a quick quip for anything I said, but what came out of her mouth had a playful jab to it, leaving me dazed yet amused. "What a feisty girl," I thought to myself. But then maybe she was so sassy that night because I foolishly thought that I could impress her by guessing where she was from by her accent; "you must be from Singapore, right . . . ?" Wrong. I didn't realize then that this might be taken as an insult by someone who was born in Kuala Lumpur! "So then is that a British accent?" Wrong again. How was I to know that she was a Malaysian-born Australian who had only lived in England for two years and Thailand for four years, before moving to New York seven years ago!?

Just when my interest in this spunky girl was tweaked by her international background, we sat at opposite ends of each other in the theater for the beginning of the Matrix. We then spent a couple of hours afterwards in enthusiastic discussion of the movie, including the girls' infatuation with Keanu Reaves, while having dessert at Jackson Hole on Amsterdam Avenue. I was comforted by Shu-Lin's acknowledgement that Keanu was a lousy actor at best, then was pleasantly surprised to discover that her love for movies came with a degree in film studies at Barnard College. By the end of the night, we were back to talking more about our common experience of having spent many years of our lives in Asia and attending international schools. Sadia tried to fill in the blanks for me about Shu-Lin, as we waited in line for tickets to attend Shakespeare in the Park in August. I believe her comments ended with a warning that I shouldn't "mess with the girl," because her grandfather was the Chief of Police in Kuala Lumpur and she had years of training in Tae Kwan Do. Another friend of hers from high school, Freddy, later portrayed a similar picture of Shu-Lin, claiming that she used to slap around certain boys in class. But this only peaked my interest in her, though I didn't get to ask her about it directly since we were separated again by all who came to watch Henry V. Even after the play was rained out 15 minutes into the show, I was still unable to sit next to Shu-Lin when we all found shelter at her friend Remy's parents' apartment on Central Park West. So when I made some excuse to get up and she joined me, we began making idle chat until it was time to leave. And even though it was still raining hard outside, we parted with the others to walk home together while I felt like"singing in the rain."

I finally got the chance to sit next to Shu-Lin the third time we met up in September when she showed up by herself for what was meant to be another group outing with our friends. I couldn't conceal how amused, not to mention happy, I was that we were all alone, as I wore a smile on my face for the rest of that evening. I soon found out that Shu-Lin wasn't the tough girl that her friends made her out to be, not a bruiser but a dancer, who had to be sweet and gentle enough to have once been a ballerina. So perhaps it was no accident that she chose the Trocadero de Monte Carlo, an unconventional yet entertaining ballet with an all-male cast. Though I still haven't yet seen Shu-Lin perform on stage or on a movie set, I'm just glad to have her hand, and not her kick, in marriage.

How we met and how it led to a proposal!

Matt and Shu-Lin took this photo of themselves just after the proposal on the Big Sur. They look like they can't believe they're engaged!

The Proposal...

Bride's story
I would like to say that I didn't suspect a proposal was coming but I can't. Five months before Matt proposed, he had forwarded me an email from his mother regarding a delay in her upcoming trip to New York. The email was nothing unusual except for a sentence near the end that read: "About your rings, we will get them to you soon…."

Uhmm, rings? Does that mean what I think it does? I decided to play dumb when Matt called later that day and asked about the email message. It was going fine until Matt suddenly stops in mid-sentence as it dawns on him that he forgot to edit the forwarded message. He just had to ask me specifically about that part of the message and me being a terrible liar, I couldn't deny it. So Matt decided to play it cool and say that at least I didn't know "when" or "how" it would happen.

I narrowed the anticipated proposal to a two-week time frame - our vacation to California in December of 2004. It was more of a hunch than anything else because I figured if it was me, that would be what I would do. Our trip to California almost didn't happen as Matt had an appendectomy in early November but Matt was determined that we should go on this vacation.

So there we were in sunny California. Five days into our vacation, on December 15, we were cruising in our car along Route 1 on the Big Sur. We were heading into a beautiful sunset over the ocean and, on the spur of the moment, we decided to stop the car to enjoy the golden hour. I grabbed my camera and a packet of chips to munch on and settled myself on the edge of the cliff. The next thing I knew Matt had pulled out a little black box and had crawled onto his knee in front of me. Yes, Matt crawled out onto the side of the sloping cliff so that he could face me while he proposed. Clinging to each other with both hands so that he wouldn't fall over the edge, he asked me to marry him. I don't remember a word he said to me but I know that I finally said YES and that he didn't fall off the cliff. Then we sat and watched the remaining sunset together. Matt was right, I didn't know when or how he would propose but I think I always knew it would be perfect -- just like him.