Nick, when I first met you, I knew you were exceptional. You spoke your mind eloquently, moved gracefully, and lived like no one was watching. You showed me a glimpse of the happiness I could have, of the person I could be, so of course I stayed up with you all night, gazing into the hope of a future with you. And now, here we stand, about to be husband and wife, but I don't feel grown up, because you remind me every day how to be alive and youthful.
For the last six years, we've built a love together on top of integrity, adventures, and frequent updates. You've taught me how to love selflessly and how to be patient with myself and others. For the rest of our lives, I will hold your head when you're weary, watch over you in your dreams, and share the burdens and joys of building a family. I look forward to us getting older, but also our souls growing wiser together.
Chloe, the best day of my life was the day that you said yes--except for today, and except for all these other days we'll have together, which will be even better. You'll see. I promise.
One wish, every wish, since I first saw you: that you would marry me someday. Now I guess your job is to stop eyelashes, dandelion seeds, and stars from falling, 'cause I would have no idea what else to wish for.
Despite your dazzling perfection, I know you're human, and I am, too, and sometimes, somehow, marriage is supposed to be hard. But I promise you, I will be ready. When taxes are due and you are sick and I am wrinkly and bald and you can't sleep and I set the house on fire and you get retrograde amnesia and the kids poop on everything, I'll still cuddle you awake in the morning and make you breakfast and remind you that I'm your husband, and you're my wife, and that love cuts paper. Love cleans poop. Love outlasts time.
I do. I am. I will. Let's go!
If I can have your attention for a few minutes.
I just wanted to thank everyone for making the trip to help celebrate this momentous occasion.
A special thanks to Mister and Missus Fan and my parents, for raising these two incredible people!
My name is Zach, I'm Nick's twin brother, and I'm honored to be his best man.
For me, growing next to Nick was a blur, mostly because I was always doing something outside while Nick spent a lot of his time in his room, on his computer. I will say that some of my best memories as a child were having LAN parties where dad and I would play videogames with Nick and his friends. While those were the good ol' days I do know that growing up for Nick held more low points than high ones.
College really was a chance for him to reinvent himself. But he couldn't do it alone, no one can. To his aid came George and Scott, college roommates turned business partners, and then of course his beautiful bride. When Nick met Chloe at Virginia Tech I wasn't sure how the long distance relationship thing was going to work out, but clearly, they pulled it off.
I have seen my brother in many places throughout life, but I have never seen him happier, nor have I been more proud of him than I am today. My brother truly is an amazing person, and he has found a truly amazing partner. Chloe you are so stunning and bright and you make Nick so happy I'm ecstatic that you two came together to form this special relationship.
Although I've only been married just over one year I do have some advice for you two. When you get into a conflict, because it will happen, remember, the first to apologize is the bravest, the first to forgive is the strongest, and the first to forget is the happiest.
Let's all raise our glasses in celebration of these two!
I love you guys!
I met Nick more than 8 years ago at Oberlin College. I joined his group to complete a film class project. Back then, Nick had Fabio-esque blonde hair down to his shoulders and insisted on always wearing a pair of beat-up tennis shoes and never wearing a coat--even during snowstorms. I thought that was odd, but not nearly so odd as never wearing shoes at all.
Over the course of that documentary project, we agreed to room together the next year. Our first night at the dining hall together that next semester, Nick stopped by the bins of fruit, held out his shirt in front of him and started piling oranges into it.
"Grab a few!" he said.
I looked around sure that I would find a dining hall staff member descending upon us with a look of disapproval. "Why?"
"To throw out of our window, of course.
"Nick's defining ability to make the mundane an adventure. One winter evening on our way to the cafeteria, he challenged me to a snow-angel-making contest. The winner would be the first person to reach the cafeteria, making a snow angel at every body's width along the way. He won that competition by a mile, but it was that kind of excitement and curiosity that makes him a great friend, and will make him a great husband.
I've spent 6 of the last 8 years living in close quarters with Nick and distinctly remember when he first told me about Chloe. He sent me an email telling me he'd fallen head over heels for a girl in his UVA summer research program. I got to meet her in the fall and knew there was something special about her. Nick would use his schmoopy voice whenever she called on Skype, he wrote her long love letters by candlelight, and even showered when she visited.
Normally toasts given in honor of the groom include some dramatic example of the groom's dedication to the bride. We're talking about the end of The Graduate where Dustin Hoffman interrupts the wedding to get the girl. I don't have a story like that, and I think it's telling. I knew Nick loved Chloe completely because of a thousand small actions. The cards, the notes, the reminders, the smiles, the hugs, the emails, the way he carried her up the steps to our second story apartment in Oberlin.
Nick and Chloe have accomplished what most couples can only aspire to: a loving relationship communicated daily through hundreds of tiny actions. When Chloe leaves for work in the morning, Nick always hugs her, when they go to sleep at night, there's always laughing from their room. When they disagree, a smile of appreciation is only ever a second away. Healthy marriages are not built out of sporadic grandiose gestures, but out of constant care and compassion.
Anyone can see they've learned to do that, and so I'd like to invite everyone to toast their life together. From butter-eating competitions to snow angel races, may your marriage be filled with daily adventure.
One of the most effective ways to make your life extraordinary is to surround yourself with extraordinary people. Nick is clearly one of those people that, if you spend enough time around, your life changes quite a bit for the better in many ways.
Right away as I got to know him in junior and senior years of college, life got more interesting. We watched great, obscure movies together, made the most of a snow day together, and tried to make some sort of game with a marble and ninja rope together. I found myself taking part in strange art projects with George and our other friends. We made balloon arches, drew chalk drawings, and created full body tape molds to place around the school. We even dressed Nick in tape himself and placed him among the molds to come to life and scare students and confuse the head of the school.
But Nick isn't satisfied just to fill the lives of him and everyone around him with unique, memorable activities. He spent the summer before senior year at IBM, and the main thing he took away from that was that he never, ever, ever wanted to spend any of his professional career in your average office environment. So, he convinced us to start Skritter together. For George and me, our lives were fundamentally altered because of Nick's pursuit of the good life. And it's been quite the adventure ever since.
I have learned so much working with Nick. He's one of the smartest, most creative and communicative people I know. Picking his brain and gaining his insights as we build one thing after another together has taught me so much, and it's been a pleasure to learn all the skills that go into making a startup together. And getting to crash and burn together has been fun too. Nothing quite as humbling to a few entrepreneurs as a room full of Chinese students with no idea how to use your website because your design is so bad.
But you know, seeing Nick and Chloe and their relationship grow has been just as teaching and inspiring, too. I remember one evening when Nick, George and I were still living in Oberlin together, Chloe made a surprise visit. I helped her sneak into the house and into his room, where she started a video call in the dark with Nick while he was in the next room, working. It took a few minutes, but when Nick realized where she was, they met in the hall and the look on his face was one of the happiest I have ever seen. He was quite speechless, which he rarely is. That was when I saw just how deeply in love he was with her. Remembering that surprise visit, and all the times they've been together since, I have no doubt in my mind the level of devotion they have for one another, and I expect they have many fruitful, fulfilling years to come.
So, let us toast to Nick and Chloe, inspiring all of us, and to their pursuit of happiness together, wherever it may take them.
Hi everybody, my name is Malissa, and Chloe has asked me to be her maid of honor. I met her in eighth grade out in Massachussetts. She was very, very quiet--very, very shy. I know you all know her as outgoing now, but when we were in high school she didn't want to talk to the guys she had crushes on. And we could never mention them in our conversation, so we had to give them nicknames. This was the best part because I got to come up with the nicknames, and they were always food-orientated. So, the first one was Strawberries, and then we went to Cream Puffs, and Naked Pickles, and all kinds of good ones. Nick, you'll be happy to know that I never had the chance to give you a nickname. That may be why it worked out.
As we grew up, we got older, Chloe moved on, she kinda, she went her way, she went from Wellesley, where I could visit her, which was only an hour away, down to Pittsburgh and on to San Francisco, so I never get to see her, and I never really get a chance to talk to her unless it's via email or we call each other, so.... even though we have the distance, we do call, we do text, we definitely stay in touch, we're there for each other.
And Nick, I'm definitely glad that she found you, 'cause some of her exes--oh boy. So this has definitely been a good thing for Chloe, and I'm so happy for the both of you. Congratulations, guys! Cheers!
... I met Chloe in 2009, when we were both visiting Carnegie Mellon and trying to decide if we wanted to go to grad school there. We were being shown around awesome Pittsburgh by Mr. Ian Li over there, who was sharing his love for Pittsburgh with us. And little did we know how close both of us would become to Ian when we ended up going.
But that first day when we meet in 2009 it was immediately clear how different Chloe and I were. She was the quietest one in the room, I was the loudest. And yet, that fall when we ended up at Carnegie Mellon, she quickly became one of my closest friends. It's been amazing to me how different we are yet how much we bond, and how much we care about one another. And I only had her there for two years until she left to live the dream life in California, but we bonded over the struggles of grad school and good old-fashioned girl talk, which you really, really appreciate when you're in Computer Science. We really, really value that good girl time.
So I tell this story often about how close this friend of mine is to me, because I find it so amazing that when I first meet people, the ones that are loud and outgoing just like me are the ones that I hit it off with immediately, but some of the gems like Chloe that you might not notice at first are the ones that I build the deepest, most lasting bonds with, and I think that's so cool, so Chloe's always my example of that.
Chloe, you are one of the goodest people I've ever known, and I don't know what other word to use, because there's just so much goodness in you, and anyone who knows me will know that that's the best compliment I can give. You are so sweet, and thoughtful and caring, and I love that about you. (You all saw the preshow during the ceremony--you knew I was going to cry.)
Thank you for teaching me more about myself, and more about friendship. At the very least, I know that my friendship to you has been fun because you've been able to live vicariously through my dating life. Chloe has been with Nick since I met her, so she's always loved to hear my dating stories and get to live vicariously. So, ya welcome, and I hope you've gotten much more than that out of our friendship.
Chloe, thank you for the honor of getting to be a part of this with you. Nick, thank you for being the kindest, sweetest person that Chloe could possibly (deserve?). To Nick and Chloe, thank you!
I want to speak a little bit about Nick and Chloe as a couple. I've known them both simultaneously. I met Chloe in 2011 in the summer when she was visiting the San Francsico Bay Area for her Nokia internship, and was roommates with both Nick and Chloe when they moved to San Francisco. And then we with three other friends, including Eri in the back there, started what we call the Human Hacker House, and people started asking us what we were all about--what's this Hacking Humans business? Someone even asked if they should alert the police to our activities because it sounded like we were axe murderers. What we actually did was hacking other things like marathon training, diets, and productivity. It made me realize that living together brought us closer to the best versions of ourselves.
In the last couple of years, I've also seen their relationship grow in such a way that culminated ultimately in Nick on one knee in our house proposing to Chloe--and Chloe bawling. I'm absolutely honored to have been a part of that experience with them. So, I'd like for us to raise a glass to Nick and Chloe as they become the best versions of themselves together.
I want to speak a little bit about Nick and Chloe as a couple. I've known them both simultaneously. I met Chloe in 2011 in the summer when she was visiting the San Francsico Bay Area for her Nokia internship, and was roommates with both Nick and Chloe when they moved to San Francisco. And then we with three other friends, including Eri in the back there, started what we call the Human Hacker House, and people started asking us what we were all about--what's this Hacking Humans business? Someone even asked if they should alert the police to our activities because it sounded like we were axe murderers. What we actually did was hacking other things like marathon training, diets, and productivity. It made me realize that living together brought us closer to the best versions of ourselves.
In the last couple of years, I've also seen their relationship grow in such a way that culminated ultimately in Nick on one knee in our house proposing to Chloe--and Chloe bawling. I'm absolutely honored to have been a part of that experience with them. So, I'd like for us to raise a glass to Nick and Chloe as they become the best versions of themselves together.
I'm Qinguo Fan, father of the bride, Chloe. Thank you. I'm thrilled and extremely happy to be here, to have the privilege to speak in the moment.
First of all, welcome everybody to Chloe and Nick's wedding ceremony. Many of you flew or drive a long distance coming here to witness and celebrate the important moment of Chloe and Nick's life. I really appreciate it very much. Thank you.
On behalf of my wife, Hua, who is there, standing behind you, I would like to thank Helen and Bruce for their great help and effort preparing the wedding with logistics and using their beautiful house as the wedding place. I also want to thank Uncle Tim for his great role in the wedding ceremony, continuing a special tradition of the Winter family.
Of course my sincere thanks should also go to Laurel and Derek, over there, and everyone else here including the bridesmaids and groomsmen who have been working hard making today a special and enjoyable day for Chloe and Nick. Thank you.
My dear daughter, Chloe, as some of you may know, has a Chinese nickname--Shan Shan--which means "slowly and elegantly". This name was given to her because she was born ten days overdue. We thought she must have known that the world outside is not as comfortable and safe as the one inside her mom.
When Chloe was five to eight, we were in the UK where I pursued my PhD study, she was often attracted to many small toys hanging around in the aisles of a supermarket and asked us to buy those toys. We just told her, "Sorry. That's not likely. However, if you would ask us to buy a small book, that might be okay." We ended up buying many books for her, and later she bought many as well with her own pocket money. She likes reading since then.
After I completed my PhD study, we moved to Mauritius, which is a small island country in the southwest Indian ocean with about one million people. The first thing Chloe said after we stepped out of the airplane on arrival was, "Wow, that is the hottest day I ever had!" Though it was only around seventy-five degrees. The reason for that is the season in Mauritius, which is located in the southern hemisphere, is exactly the opposite of what we have here in the northern hemisphere, and it snowed heavily for two days before we left the UK. It's also quite interesting, and you can imagine that when we have Christmas there, we wear shorts and T-shirts because the season is summer there.
Anyway, Chloe excelled in her primary school in Mauritius. She held the third position in the girls' group of the national primary school graduation examination. She also learned to speak French in Mauritius when she was nine.
Time flies by quickly. We moved to the States in 1998 after I obtained a faculty position at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Thank you. As usual, Chloe excelled though the middle school, the high school, then admitted to Wellesley College. One day, I sent her back to school after a happy weekend at home. Before I drove home alone, Chloe said to me, "Dad, tell me, give me a call, when you reach home." I was deeply moved by that because that was the first time she showed her care openly to me. I told my wife, Hua, "Our Chloe has really grown up."
She was 21 then. Today is just eight days away from Chloe's 26th birthday, and she's married to an intelligent, handsome, and hardworking gentleman Nick. Everytime Nick is with us at our home in Massachusetts, we tend to speak a lot of things in Chinese. We really appreciate that opportunity. Both my wife and I thought Nick is really a perfect match with Chloe. They both are indepentent, smart, caring, and most importantly, loving each other deeply.
Before I close my speech today, I would like to present two traditional Chinese sayings to Chloe and Nick. The first is, 夫妻之道和为贵, which is basically saying that the precious things between husband and wife are amiability and harmony. The second is 求大同，存小异，... which means, "pursuing the greatest harmony while leaving the small things alone." I hope Chloe and Nick can learn something from those traditional Chinese sayings and live happily ever after.
May I propose to a toast to the happy couple, Chloe and Nick.
I have to tell you the story of the beginning of the twins, Nick and Zach. And I need to get their permission first. Do you mind? Zach where are ya? Okay.
We got to the twins a week after they were born, and I'm a neonatal nurse, so I had two wonderful grandchildren. One was healthy, one was emaciated. Where are you Zach? There you are. If you can believe that. And I'm looking--there's something drastically wrong here. And I knew what my twin grandson had--pyloric stenosis--and I knew what needed to be done. And Laurie and Bruce didn't know what to do. So I put Zach in the car and said, we're going. We went to St. Mary's in Rochester and yes, he had pyloric stenosis, he needed surgery.
So immediately he went into neonatal, and of course Laurie and Bruce had Nick, and they were with Nick, and I was with Zach, and I was in neonatal for 24 hours while they were evaluating. And you never know what that's like--I mean, you're in uterine, so I'm in uterine and I'm hearing the uterine slush-slush while I'm with Zach. And then I realized that we're going to have to go to surgery. So Laurie and Bruce were involved with the doctor talking about this. So I had Nick in the front path with me and Zach was in surgery. And Nick and I--he doesn't remember this I'm sure--were walking back and forth at Mayos, in the hall. And we had surgery here, the out doors here--in glass. And as I walked back and forth with Nick--all of a sudden, Nick, and he's only a week old, or almost two weeks now, was--(moves head around). I heard nothing. I heard nothing. But what he heard was Zach waking up from surgery and crying. I coordinated with them, the neonatal surgeons and nurses in neonatal.
Talk about togetherness. So I tell you, my granddaughters in law, that you will never break that beautiful bond between these two. And I am so grateful I was part of it.
As you may have guessed from that interaction, I'm Bruce--I'm the dad. This is going to be really short, 'cause, like many of you, I'm having water-in-the-eyes problems.
So most of you probably know, I'm an engineer, and we're kind of a strange bunch, engineers. We like to try to model the world with science and math. So I was trying to use statistics to figure out just what is the probability that both Nick and Zach could find such... okay, you know where this is going--how they could find such wonderful women. Just amazing, appropriate--and not only find them, but to hook them and then to wed them.
The more I do this calculation, the more I'm amazed that--this isn't how, unfortunately, it often works. I feel--we feel--very grateful that we have such wonderful additions to our family not only just in Chloe and Tiffany, but in their family as well; you're all wonderful people.
But back to my calculation. This calculation shows that the odds of this happening to both is very small. About the same odds as my being able to walk across this pool without getting wet. So to demonstrate how fortunate we are and what these odds are--I've been practicing this. If you run fast enough, you can do it! So I gotta do it, I've even got the right shoes...
© Chloe & Nick 2012