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A Private Proposal

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Featured in: Featured Vol. 11, Iss. 1, No. 21 + By: Noa Glouberman + Photographed by: Erin Gilmore

The first time Ray Leung laid eyes on Jinny Chiu, he couldn’t help but notice her height.

“Yes, Jinny’s a little bit taller than me,” laughs 36-year-old Ray. He thanks mutual friends for making that first, fateful introduction to Jinny eight years ago at a Greek restaurant on downtown Vancouver’s Denman Street. Though he noticed her height, he also noticed something about her. “The more I got to know her, the more I knew it was just….right,” he says.

So right, in fact, that when Ray left to work overseas in Tokyo and Shanghai several years later, he and Jinny promised to do whatever it took to make their long-distance relationship last. And though she describes the four years that ensued as tough, with phone calls often consisting of one saying good night while the other said good morning, Jinny, now 28, agrees it was worth it.

Knowing, too, that practical, level-headed Jinny was the yin to his yang, Ray could hardly contain his excitement when he finally returned home for good and started making plans to pop the question. “It’s hard to keep a secret from Jinny,” he says, “but I was determined to make this one a surprise.”

A self-professed prankster, Ray figured the best place to ambush his bride-to-be was where she’d least expect it. And ambush her he did. Waiting for just the right moment, after a romantic dinner out when Jinny made a trip to the ladies’ room, he barged his way into her bathroom stall, got down on one knee and asked her to marry him.

“She looked at me and said, ‘Now? You’re really doing this now?’” he recalls, laughing. “Then she asked me to wait until she washed her hands and warned me that I was going to have to make this up to her. But that’s why this works. We can joke around with each other and just be ourselves and be silly. She’s the love of my life … my lifelong play pal.”

Shortly thereafter a date was set. Not only was 2011’s May long weekend lucky by Chinese astrological standards, it was also far enough out that family and friends from Asia could make plans to attend. Preparations for the big day began almost immediately. And, far from letting his fiancée run the show, Ray was about as handson when it came to wedding planning as a groom can be.

“Oh, I was very involved,” he says matter-of-factly, adding that Jinny, a designated chartered accountant by trade, kept a careful eye on the budget. “We wanted something that really reflected our relationship and let people know who we are, as individuals and as a couple. But we also wanted to give our guests a great time; our motto was that there would be no ‘B-listers’ at this party.”

True to their word, Jinny and Ray planned an event designed to blow their guests away; nearly every aspect of the wedding—held in its entirety at the Vancouver Convention Centre’s spectacular West expansion—was infused with the couple’s unique joie de vivre.

For starters, a San Francisco-style trolley bus rented from the Vancouver Trolley Company shuttled the wedding party around the city for pre-ceremony fun and photos. With both bridesmaids and groomsmen donning custom-tailored dresses and suits—the latter lined with electric blue, pink, orange and green satin—not even the rain could put a damper on the day. “The weather couldn’t get us down, we were so excited,” Jinny confirms. Adds Ray: “It was nice and misty, and our photographer, Erin Gilmore, was able to get some really fantastic shots before the wedding started.”

Back at the Convention Centre, Jinny, a vision in Vera Wang, glided down the aisle on her brother’ s arm past 226 onlookers. “I felt like I was marrying a supermodel,” Ray remembers of the moment he realized he was about to wed his best friend. “I knew I’d be emotional, but I didn’t think I’d cry so much!” adds Jinny, who later changed into a second gown, as is customary in Chinese weddings.

Once the vows were exchanged and the couple was declared husband and wife, the party kicked off on the Convention Centre’s Summit Level, which had been decked out in a lime-green and fuchsia theme—colours which Ray says “wouldn’t normally go together, but do, just like Jinny and I.” Guests dined on succulent roast pig and nibbled on personal cupcakes rather than a traditional tiered wedding cake.

Just when everyone thought the night couldn’t get better, Ray pulled one more trick from his sleeve. “I always had it in the back of my mind that I owed Jinny the romantic proposal she had dreamed of,” he says. “I really wanted to make it up to her, so I connected with Celebration Fireworks and asked if they would do a personal fireworks show for us on the water.”

When the right moment arrived, Ray asked Jinny to join him on the balcony. As they gazed over the dark harbour, he dropped to his knee, took her hand and asked her to marry him all over again. “As soon as she said yes the guys sent a couple of shells up for us into the night sky,” says Ray. “It was like an exclamation point on our wedding—a beautiful ending to a perfect day and a perfect beginning to the rest of our lives.”

How They Did It

1. Jeanette Kornelson of Delovely Creative used cymbidium orchids to decorate Jinny’s bouquets and boutonnieres, accenting them with tiny crystals and white feathers. The crystals represented Jinny’s gown, while the white feathers tied in with the ostrich feathers that decorated the hall. The fuchsia flowers matched Jinny’s wedding colours of fuchsia and lime green.

2. Dessert at the wedding was tapas style, with lemon macaroons, chocolate truffle cups, crème brûlée and cupcakes. “They offered more variety for our guests and a better presentation than a traditional wedding cake,” Jinny says.

3. “The inspiration for our wedding was a Chinese luxury brand called Shanghai Tang, which is famous for using many vibrant colours, like the ones reflected in the groomsmen’s jackets,” says Ray. His groomsmen wore jackets lined with a different colour, custom made by Ray’s tailor in Shanghai.

4. The table centrepieces consisted of green and fuchsia cymbidium orchids, equisetums and green mums. A collaborative effort by Jinny, Ray, Delovely Creative and Donald Yim, the couple’s emcee, the centepieces were deliberately low, so that they would not block anyone’s view.