This love story, like all classic Northern California love stories, begins in the high school robotics club.
Alan was the founder of the club, at their high school in San Jose, and Yuanyuan had just recently joined. She remembers thinking he was cute. It took him a couple of months to realize he liked her, and from that point it was immediate. “I was pretty obsessed with her,” he told me.
They’ve been together ever since, for 13 years, defying the odds of high-school relationships. “They proved all of us wrong,” Yuanyuan’s sister, Alice, said.
When these two are serious about something, they go all in. Alan proposed to Yuanyuan by cooking her a 12-course dinner that included uni, homemade ravioli, lamp chops and mashed potatoes. He said he tried to include all the ingredients she loved. “The 13th course was a ring that I didn’t eat,” Yuanyuan said.
Their wedding day at Cornerstone Sonoma was sunny, lighthearted and fun, which reflected their personalities perfectly. They have a love that is just… easy. They have a blast together and never take anything too seriously. A perfect example of this was in lieu of a first dance, they threw the first balls on the Skee-ball machines they rented for their reception. In our many years as wedding photographers, that was a first for us.
Yuanyuan and Alan now live in Boston, where he is pursuing his post-doctorate at MIT and Yuayuan is continuing her work as a data scientist for Lyft.