Anhtai and Matt: A Love Story Of 26 Years
It’s a love story that has spanned over 26 years for these two grooms, having met in 1996. Anhtai and Matt have created volumes of memories in their 26 years together, and when speaking about their marriage, they tell us that “marriage was a confirmation of what we already are and what we already have. It was the opportunity for us to gather everyone we love together, including our two families, for a moment in time to recognise us and celebrate what is. It was such a happy day - the best day ever.”
Photographer Moments Film and Photography | Location Sydney, AUS
“Marriage was a confirmation of what we already are and what we already have. It was the opportunity for us to gather everyone we love together, including our two families, for a moment in time to recognise us and celebrate what is. It was such a happy day - the best day ever.”
How and when did you meet?
Anhtai: We met 26 years ago in 1996 in an online text chat room called IRC .. well before Tinder, Grindr, MSN or even ICQ. In the chat room, I posted a link to my so-called “blog” (before blogs actually existed) and a photo of myself. Matt saw my pic and messaged me, and we started chatting. Matt could show me what he looked like because he didn’t own a photo scanner! But right away, we noticed we had a similar sense of humour and cheekiness from the start.
Tell us a little about the first time you met?
Anhtai: After a few chats online, we moved to conversations on the home landline! I still didn’t know what Matt looked like at this point.
A few weeks later, we met in person at Café 191 in Taylor Square... but not in the way you might think. Matt was actually on a date with someone else, and we all bumped into each other on the street. It turns out Matt’s date was a friend of mine.
Matt: At that point, I didn’t have the courage to speak up and say that I was the one Tai had been chatting to, so I felt super guilty on the way home. I called him and confessed, and we ended up chatting until 6 am that night.
For our first official “date”, we met up at Skygarden in Pitt Street Mall. There we sat blankly across from each other, barely saying a word.
Anhtai: We were both shell-shocked. It’s a really strange feeling to see someone in real life for the first time after building up an image of them over the phone for several weeks. Matt was not what I imagined! (laugh) He had long hair almost down to his neck, and I thought, that mop has to go!
What was the first thing you noticed about each other?
Matt: With all of the awkward silences, I remember thinking it might be the end of it all. It wasn’t a great start. But after the shock wore off of seeing each other for the first time after weeks of a phone relationship, we started hanging out. We really developed an appreciation for each other’s company.
In the early days, I remember wanting to find reasons to talk to Anhtai. I wanted to see him beam that electric smile back at me and hear him laugh.
Anhtai: His mop aside, I immediately noticed Matt’s beautiful green eyes, and they invited me in to see his good nature, humour and heart. That’s when I knew this was the same Matt I had been speaking to over the phone.
And then I met Matt’s family for dinner at their home for the first time. They were all so warm and welcoming to this 17-year-old kid doing his HSC. (Matt was 22 and at uni.) And I started to really fall for both Matt and his family. I immediately felt that it could be the start of something very special.
Tell us about some standout moments in your relationship…
Anhtai: When you’ve been with someone for 26 years, you create volumes of memories together, so much so that nowadays I need Facebook to remind me!
I think the standout is that I’ve known Matt my entire adult life and to imagine life without him isn’t even a concept I can grasp in my head. To find him on the first go is winning the lottery of life.
I think it’s worth pointing out that we are both each other’s first relationship.
Matt: Anhtai and I felt strongly about the marriage equality debate going on in 2017. It was a national conversation about the legitimacy of a long-term commitment of two people of the same-sex. Suddenly, relationships like ours were centre stage.
Anhtai: 2017 was a time that stirred up a lot of old wounds from growing up, especially in an all-boys high school. I wasn’t out at school, but I guess people could tell. I was teased at school for years about being gay more than - and if that wasn’t enough - more than about being Asian. No kid needs to go through that, and the marriage equality debate at the time became toxic. So Matt and I had to do something.
Matt: We joined the Australian Marriage Equality campaign and hit the phone lines to ring as many people across Australia as possible to help provide our personal perspective on what saying “yes” meant for the two of us. Cold calling is challenging at the best of times, but it was the least we could do to get the word out there.
Anhtai: I also got the opportunity to bring up the conversation about the impact that the plebiscite had on high school students by asking a question on ABC’s Q&A that year.
Link: https://fb.watch/faANoRDDch/
Matt: That Australia voted yes is more than just our celebrant being able to declare that ‘marriage means the union of 2 people to the exclusion of all others’. It’s really transformed the mood and the vibe everywhere. No-one bats an eyelid when I talk about my husband. It’s both liberating and validating.
What does marriage mean to you?
Matt: Our friend Richard, in his wedding speech, summed up really powerfully what marriage means to us. He said that over our 26 years, we have already lived the usual wedding vows - to be together, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, for better and for worse, to love and to cherish - before we were even allowed to take them. When he said that, you could feel a collective lump in the throat of everyone in the room.
Anhtai: Marriage was a confirmation of what we already are and what we already have. It was the opportunity for us to gather everyone we love together, including our two families, for a moment in time to recognise us and celebrate what is. It was such a happy day - the best day ever.
Who proposed and how?
Matt: I proposed to Anhtai in 2014, 18 years after we met. I guess we’ve given a new meaning to taking it slow! The concept of marriage equality was just a dream at the time. I had started thinking about proposing to Anhtai and doing it in Hawaii after a friend’s wedding seemed like a good time.
I took him on a surprise long drive along the coast in a rented convertible to a very green and luscious national park called Hanauma Bay with turquoise blue water. At a quiet sandy end of the bay, I got down on one knee. Knowing that Anhtai doesn’t wear jewellery, I tore the ring-pull off a can of Spam-flavoured macadamia nuts (a Hawaiian staple) and proposed. How could he not say yes! (laugh)
Anhtai: Matt loves the element of surprise, and I started wondering if this excursion was a special surprise for my upcoming birthday or if it was the real deal. The ring-pull off a Spam can of nuts was Classic Matt - and we got to eat some bloody macadamias with my new “ring” on!
When did you get married?
Anhtai: We got married on Saturday, the 30th of April, 2022, at Sergeants Mess in leafy Chowder Bay.
Matt and I were both born and raised in Sydney. Our families are from Sydney. Our studies and careers are in Sydney. It’s our hometown. So we picked a spot that really showcases our hometown’s natural beauty.
Anhtai and Matt’s story continues below ↓
What was the main influence behind your wedding day?
Matt: Being with each other for so long, we knew that it was a day to celebrate who we are together. So we picked and did things that were very true to us. We love the Sydney outdoors, so we held our wedding in one of the most natural of settings and decorated the venue with touches of Australian flora.
Anhtai: Then there are the musical and showman sides of who we are. You’re never going to have this kind of day again, so we went all out!
Probably the best example of this is our first dance. It was never going to be “just a wedding dance”, but it ended up being much more elaborate than we initially imagined. A bit of RuPaul, then Moulin Rouge’s Come What May (Matt’s fave love song), then Vogue (my iconic song growing up), then some Dirty Dancing (what wedding is without it?) with quick-change costumes in between. It took lots of learning steps, sore backs, fan clacks... but also lots of camaraderie. It was a bit of a revelation - we actually enjoyed the process and didn’t strangle each other. The project was super top secret - we wanted to really surprise everyone with the big Ruveal.
What was the most important thing to you surrounding your wedding?
Matt: I think it was just the opportunity to have our families and friends there together to celebrate with us and with each other. We really tried to make it as fun as we could - we didn’t mind bending the “wedding rules” a bit to make it more like something we wanted.
Anhtai: For me, the most important thing was to have both our families bear witness to the most important day of our lives. A typical Vietnamese family grows and connects with one another based on a well-known set of traditions, including a wedding. But there really isn’t a Vietnamese tradition for a same-sex wedding. I’m so grateful to have been able to incorporate elements of my Vietnamese heritage into the wedding and to have my family so accepting of Matt and I.
The Vietnamese tunic I wore for our ceremony is called an áo dài. It was handmade in Ho Chi Minh City and featured a hand-painted golden dragon. As legend has it, the Vietnamese people are the children of the Dragon and grandchildren of the Fairy.
Where did you find the bulk of your inspiration?
Matt: We found a lot of inspiration from all the weddings we’ve been to over the 26 years together. We were lucky to be able to incorporate the best bits of all of them and to make them our own.
One example is the name plates for each guest. We went to a friend’s wedding where on each place setting was a Polaroid of the guest taken with the wedding couple at some point over their relationship. I’m an industrial designer, so I designed and 3D-printed a name plate for each of our guests, and Anhtai printed the Polaroids. Everyone could take them home with them too as a little memento - everyone commented on how personal it made their presence.
Anhtai: Theodore Magazine was such a help. It was easy to feel a little alienated on other wedding planning sites because we couldn’t see our relationship broadly reflected on them. Theodore was our window into the diversity of same-sex wedding celebrations and how possible it was to organise and hold one.
How did you choose your suppliers?
Anhtai: We found our suppliers through a mixture of Instagram, friends, recommendations through suppliers and also through our venue.
I gotta say we were very fortunate to have chosen our suppliers on the first go. It’s the feeling you get when in the first meeting. For our suppliers, they were able to replay to us what we were looking for and just as importantly, they were as excited as we were about the big day.
Any standout suppliers?
Anhtai: Our photo-video team, Moments Photography & Film, was a standout. They captured the heart and soul of our relationship and combined it with the love and energy of our event. Matt and I were blown away at what they created for us, including an 8-minute video memento for the ages!
Matt: Our marriage celebrant, Meggan Brummer, is another standout. So much so that friends of ours have now engaged her for their upcoming same-sex wedding. Three words about Meggan come to mind which is trust, warmth and care. She gave us the confidence to trust her in crafting and telling our story.
Anhtai: I want to shout out to Natalie at EventZen, our wedding coordinator. Nat made everything so easy for us both in the lead up to the wedding and on the day. We felt relaxed and were able to actually enjoy every moment of our wedding day. She’s super thorough, organised and reliable. It’s what you want out of a coordinator.
Matt: Susie at Wildflower Weddings and Events deserves to be a standout too. We picked her for her love for very natural palettes and arrangements, plus that she works with Australian natives a lot. The floral tastes of two men can actually be quite different to the usual and Susie was able to sense this and run with it. She’s such a friendly and caring person to deal with.
Anhtai: Great lighting and great sound were so important to us. We wanted it to be a show - so we were so lucky to have been introduced to Slave International. They’re super professional and happy to understand the details to make sure everything was what we wanted. A lot of what made our first dance so special was the incredible lighting, which was designed and executed by Shan at Slave.
Matt: To close off the standout suppliers is our venue, Sergeants Mess. They’re attentive and as accommodating as they can be with what we wanted. The outdoor amphitheatre for the ceremony is surrounded by bush and with a view over the harbour - it’s just a beautiful spot. It’s very guest-friendly to have the ceremony and reception areas next to each other. Many of our guests commented on how impressed they were with the food.
Did you choose to incorporate any traditions?
Anhtai: There are many Vietnamese wedding traditions, including the groom’s family delivering a set list of gifts to the bride’s family home. The ultimate and most prized gift is a whole roasted pig!
Matt and I didn’t want to go through all that. In a way, having a same-sex wedding without the typical traditions is actually quite liberating. We picked elements of both Western and Vietnamese weddings that meant something to us.
One Vietnamese tradition we kept was for Matt and I to hold a prayer before the ceremony to our ancestors. We sought the blessing of people whom we loved, including my dad, sister, uncle and grandparents.
What was the most difficult thing about planning your wedding?
Anhtai: We decided to style the wedding ourselves rather than have a stylist. Given we’re not professional stylists, the most difficult thing was not quite knowing whether all the suppliers you’ve picked and styling decisions you’ve made were all going to come together on the day as you had in your head. But that’s where having a clear plan and communication amongst ourselves and our suppliers were critical.
Matt: This is not a surprise, but it’s quite eye-opening how much time is needed to organise a wedding. In a way, the Covid lockdowns were actually a godsend in that the extra time at home afforded us more focus on planning and getting sh*t done.
Where did you spend your honeymoon?
Anhtai: The concept of a honeymoon against the backdrop of being 26 years together is kinda amusing! I can absolutely say that I’m still basking in the afterglow of the wedding, so everyday feels like a honeymoon! Though I’m not sure if Matt feels the same way...
Matt: Mmm... maybe not! (laugh) We threw everything into the wedding, including our heart and soul, and we got so much out of it. We’re living life and are looking into an overseas holiday when things in the world get calmer, possibly next year.
Any advice for other couples planning their day and finding it difficult to navigate the journey?
Anhtai: There’s hopefully one person in the relationship who can take the lead on setting deadlines and making sure sh*t gets done. The one thing that really saved us stress was a goal to have everything sorted 30 days before the wedding day - that’s including wedding suits, name plates, menus and so on. You really want to just enjoy your time together in the days leading up to it and to be in the moment on the day.
Matt: Have a wedding coordinator you can rely on, especially on the day. It’s their responsibility to run the day and your responsibility to let go and go with the flow. We didn’t even wear a watch nor have our phones on us the whole day.
The coordinator is a valuable resource for suppliers, knowledge and for decision-making - so lean on them. You’ll be grateful.
Anhtai and Matt’s Team
Photographer and Videographer Moments Film and Photography
Venue Sergeants Mess
Suits Brent Wilson
Planner EventZen
Flowers Wildflower Weddings & Events
Cake Madame & Yves
Stationery Signed By Bird
Celebrant Meggan Brummer
Singer-Guitarist Georgia Ivory
Lighting and Sound Slave International
Draping SS Draping
Pyrotechnics Sydney Fireworks
Dancefloor Sydney Dance Floors
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