The One with the Purple Door: A Friends-Inspired Garden Wedding in Saigon

Vy and Minh’s planners at The Story Packer didn’t start with colors, florals, or a mood board. They started with the couple: their running jokes, the objects they’d kept, the evenings they liked best, and a Korean BBQ dinner where she out-joked him all night. Two themes came out of it: Friends and tennis. So the end of the aisle is a full-size replica of Monica’s purple door from Friends, with a yellow frame, peephole frame and all, standing in a garden at New World Saigon Hotel. The tennis comes later, and there’s a lot of it.

Vy and Minh live abroad and flew into Vietnam just two weeks before the wedding, so almost all of it was planned from a distance, which makes the level of detail even more impressive.Big thanks to HoangPhuong Wedding for photographing the day. Let’s take a look!

Ok, how cute are their vow booklets, both titled The One Where We Tie the Knot?! The vow booklets and their invitations were designed by Stationery Space.

How They Met. Vy and Minh met at a Korean BBQ dinner in Canada in late December 2021. A mutual friend had set it up, and the table was mostly strangers making stiff small talk for the first half hour. What Minh remembers is how quickly Vy cut through it: he’d make a joke, and she’d catch it and send one straight back, faster than his. By the end of the night, she was the person he’d been talking to all evening without quite realizing it. He didn’t ask for her number, since she was a friend of a friend and it felt like too much. “So Vy found him on Instagram instead,” the planners write. “Somebody had to.”

The First Look

Both of them had said beforehand that they were not going to cry, and both had a joke lined up to get through it with. Then they saw each other dressed for their own wedding, in the garden, before a single guest had arrived. Minh reached for the tissue first.

Once the tears were done, the door got its first workout :)

The Ceremony

The ceremony sat in a circular brick courtyard at the hotel, cream bentwood chairs curved around a central planting bed, painted discs in yellow, mint, orange, and red scattered across the pavers like the dots between the letters of the show’s title card.

Fléur. by Tunlee kept the aisle arrangements loose and stem-heavy, orange ranunculus and yellow gerbera on long stems, pink spray roses, cream garden roses, tiny pale blue flowers, everything at a different height. Bright rather than tidy, which is the right register for a garden in Saigon in July.

Guests were met by a sign reading “Welcome to somewhere between sarcasm and loving banter,” the words set inside a wavy mirror cutout because Vy loves a selfie, flanked by two painted lop-eared rabbits standing in for the couple’s own bunnies.

The planners’ rule was that the references had to show up as part of the day rather than as decorations sitting on top of it, and the door is the clearest case. It is a working door, painted a dusty lavender rather than a hard purple, hinged so it opens onto the garden behind it, with a brass bell, a gold knob and lever lock, and the yellow oval frame on a beaded chain. To its right, V + M and the date in gray hand lettering, and below everything the real dahlias, parrot tulips, and gerberas crowding up against the painted ones.

Two of the youngest guests walked the aisle as unicorn fairies, iridescent wings, rainbow tiers, horn headbands, gold boxes in hand, and Minh crouched to their height at the door to take delivery. That was the pattern for the rest of the day, in the couple’s telling: “Nobody just sat and watched. Everyone joined in, and the day ended up warmer and much louder than they had expected.”

Music had been part of their relationship since the early dates and the late-night drives with the stereo up, so they skipped the standard wedding playlist and chose artists they actually listen to. That playlist had a sense of humor, too. The groomsmen walked in to a football chant.

The Attire

The bridesmaids are the idea to steal here. Each one wore a different satin dress and carried a bouquet of a single flower in her own color, tied with a matching ribbon. It’s such an easy way to take mismatched bridesmaids one step further, and it makes the whole lineup look so intentional.

Cocktail Hour

Vy’s stunning strapless gown is from Thuy Bridal.

Cocktail hour ran on a table built as a tennis court: green top, white lines, a clear acrylic net down the middle, coupes of something amber on one side and dessert spoons on the other, a few real tennis balls in the corner for good measure.

The Reception

Inside the ballroom, the palette softened into pleated dusty rose drapes and the couple’s names in warm neon. Two illustrated cutouts flanked the stage: a classical urn spilling line-drawn flowers on one side, and the fountain from the Friends opening credits on the other. So subtle and another fun nod to Friends!

The seating chart is 16 vinyl records mounted on a green-and-white striped wall, each table printed on the center label, under lettering that reads For the record, we’re so glad you’re here.

The tennis carried onto the tables, with loose balls on green cloth beside silver bowls of garden roses, craspedia, and clematis. And the welcome table had our favorite easter egg: a LEGO Central Perk, orange couch and all. It’s a real set, and it’s a genius (and very doable) way to work a shared obsession into your decor. You could build it together in the months before the wedding and keep it forever.

The main stage was built as a tennis ball, round and green with a white line around it, backed by glowing circular panels printed with the lyrics of their favorite song. Vy came back out in her second look, the one the planners describe as closer to how she normally dresses: white satin with a structured ruffled skirt, a slit for moving, a three-dimensional rose at the waist, and a short veil finished with a white bow.

The First Dance

Neither of them had ever danced, and the first dance made them nervous enough that the planners worked out a compromise: they would perform behind a screen with only their shadows showing. A choreographer rehearsed with them online while they were still abroad, then in person once they landed. What the room saw was a circle of teal light, a kneeling silhouette reaching up for a standing one, and two shadows thrown large across the wall. Paulios Filming was on video for the day.

Game. Set. Match

Then the wall. Nearly 500 tennis balls pinned across three white rails on a crimson curtain, spelling GAME, SET, MATCH, with a white slatted bench in front and a wire basket of spare balls to the side, which is how the last frame ends up with a dozen of them in the air. The planners say it was the guest photo of the night!

The couple also produced their own wedding video styled as a Netflix series and screened it in the ballroom, turning the room into a private theater for the people closest to them. The night closed with everyone singing along with Memory Band, a long stretch of dancing, and a lucky-draw bouquet toss that passed the good luck along to the next friend in line.

The couple’s advice comes with a footnote from the planners: look at what your life already is. “These two are happiest at home on a weekend night with a glass of wine and a good film. A wedding doesn’t have to be the opposite of that.”

Congratulations, Vy and Minh! All the best from GWS.