Wedding Weekend Itinerary

Below you'll find an itinerary for the wedding weekend as well as driving directions to the ceremony site at the Arnold Arboretum. You'll also find walking directions to the Leventritt Shrub and Vine Garden within the Arboretum where the ceremony will be held.
Please note that there will be a bus to transport guests from the Charles Hotel to the Arboretum on Saturday afternoon at 3:30pm. Questions? Feel free to call us at 617-308-6454 (Hien) or 617-388-7282 (Dylan).

Friday, September 14th:
We hope you'll be arriving into Boston and will join us for some after-dinner drinks at a location yet to be determined.

Saturday, September 15th:
9am - 2pm : Check out "Things to do in Boston/Cambridge" and relax before the party.
3:30pm: Meet at the Charles Hotel where a bus will be waiting to take you to the Arnold Arboretum. If you decide to drive, please see below for driving directions to the Arboretum.
3:45pm - 4:15pm: Bus ride to the Arnold Arboretum
4:30pm-5pm: We get married in the Leventritt Shrub and Vine Garden in the Arboretum! Pray for good weather!
5:15pm: Bus departs from the Arboretum back to the Charles Hotel.
6pm-7pm: Cocktails and h'ors d'oeuvres in the courtyard of the Charles Hotel.
7pm-midnight: Candlelight dinner, drinks and dancing in the Regattabar of the Charles Hotel. We hope you'll bring your appetite and dancing shoes!
Midnight onward: To be determined. The Charles Hotel houses the renowned Noir bar which is open until 2am.

Sunday, September 16th:
10am-12pm: Out of town guests are invited back to the Charles Hotel for a farewell brunch in the Rogers Stratton room on the 2nd floor.

Driving Directions to the Arnold Arboretum

To the Arnold Arboretum from the Charles Hotel:

Make a R out of the parking lot onto Eliot Street. At the light, make a R onto JFK St. At the next intersection, make a L onto Memorial Dr. Continue on Memorial, you will pass 2 Shell stations on your L. After the second Shell, move into R lane and then take R exit through the rotary over the BU bridge. Continue ahead, you will cross over Commonwealth Ave and then you will bear L onto East 22 toward Kenmore Square, which becomes Park Drive. Cross Beacon St and, at the next light, take the farmost R lane onto Riverway. Continue on Riverway, which becomes the Jamaicaway. Go around the William Kelly Circle, stay in the L lane. The road quickly splits; you will need to bear R. At the next rotary, take a hard R onto Center Street. About 0.5 mi up the hill, you will see the Center St gate into the Arboretum on your L. The turn out comes up quick. If you miss it, you can turn R in to the Faulkner Hospital just ahead and double back on to the entrance.

From the Arboretum to the Charles Hotel:

Proceed down the hill along Center St from the Center St gate and go around the rotary to the Arborway. This will turn into the Jamaicaway. Continue on Jamaicaway, eventually, you will see signs indicating the Longwood Medical Area. At the next light, take a L onto Longwood Ave. Take your first R onto Chapel St. Cross over Beacon St., and then go straight through the next light over Mountford St. At the next light, make a L onto Commonwealth Ave. Immediately get into the R lane and make the next R over the BU bridge. Enter the roundabout and take the 2nd R onto Memorial Dr. Proceed for about 1.5mi, then make a R onto JFK St. Turn L onto Eliot St. The Charles Hotel will be on your R at One Bennett St.

The Walk to the Ceremony

You will be entering the Arboretum via the Centre Street Gates. Walk through the gates and follow the road to the left. Walk down the hill. After a few minutes, you will see a green bench on your left. Walk past this bench and the paved service road and make a L onto the gravel path. You will be entering the Leventritt Shrub and Vine Garden. Continue straight ahead until you reach the pavilion. This walk will take you approximately 5 minutes.

Go to http://www.arboretum.harvard.edu/visitors/map_grounds.html for a printable map of this route. Note that you will be starting at around #10 on this map and ending at #4.

Big Day Basics

We're so excited for you to help us celebrate our wedding! This blog is intended to provide up-to-date information regarding the big day and traveling to Boston. Please check back frequently for updates or feel free to get in touch with us if you have any questions. See you in September!

Ceremony:
The ceremony will take place in the Leventritt Shrub and Vine Garden in the Arnold Arboretum at 4:30 PM. The Arboretum lies in Boston’s Emerald Necklace, a string of parks that run from downtown Boston to Dorchester. A shuttle bus will depart from the Charles Hotel at 3:30 PM to transport attendees to and from the Arboretum. Please refer to the links provided on the side bar for more information about the Arboretum.

Cocktails & Reception:
The reception will take place at the Charles Hotel in Harvard Square, Cambridge. Cocktails and hors d'oeuvres will be served in the courtyard of the hotel from 6 pm to 7 pm. Dinner, drinks and dancing will follow in the Regattabar on the second floor of the hotel.

Accomodations:
Blocks of rooms with reduced rates are reserved for guests of the Nguyen/Tierney wedding at the Charles Hotel, the Sheraton Commander and the Cambridge Marriott. The Charles is located in Harvard Square proper and is the site of the reception. The Commander is also in Harvard Square but about a 10 minute walk from the Charles Hotel. The Marriott is located in Kendall Square overlooking the Charles River and is approximately 10 minutes to Harvard Square on the T. Please refer to the links provided on the side bar for more information and contact information specific to each hotel. Alternatively, guests can choose from many other hotels in the Cambridge and Boston area.

Notes on Hien

Hien doesn’t remember meeting me for the first time. We were at a med school orientation party, an obligatory ritual for grad school nerds at the start of any new educational endeavor. Big summer thunderstorms rolled through Richmond all night long. Our introduction was quick but just long enough to make me curious about her. I angled for another conversation through the first weeks of medical school but my big break came when fate assigned us to the same group in anatomy lab.

We spent the next three months up to our elbows in cadaveric goop. It turns out that you get to know someone pretty well under those romantic circumstances. I discovered that Hien grew up almost Canadian in way upstate New York, loved mashed potatoes and red wine, spoke passable French, table Vietnamese and halting Spanish, was a monster in the 100 meter free and looked great in a pair of scrubs. She also was the best student in class. We got into our first fight over how to dissect the knee and, since that day, she hasn’t stopped telling me the way it is.

It’s hard to describe the past five years with Hien in a couple of paragraphs without sounding like a complete cheeseball so I’ll just say that I’m having the time of my life. The long days and nights of residency are made easier knowing that we’re in it together. I have found a faithful travel companion and a fairly reliable navigator. A mean bowl of pho is always close at hand. Scrabble matches have taken on a new urgency. My ears will stay forever clean. Everything seems possible.

Notes on Dylan

Dylan and I met in the fall of 2001 in Richmond, Virginia. He claims that I forget meeting him, but that’s basically not possible. At that time, he had just moved from San Francisco, CA where he had just received his M.P.H from Berkeley. He wore allergy-inducing wool sweaters and sat at the front of the class. We became good friends during our Gross Anatomy class that year, carefully dissecting “Leo”, our cadaver. I learned that he was a die-hard Connecticut fan, being from Bridgeport, but that he had a passion for travel and had recently spent 14 months traveling alone through South America. He also spoke about his dreams to work internationally in infectious diseases like HIV and tuberculosis. He says he knew we would be a good match when I laughed hard at his dry pun jokes, (“Have you heard the one about the corduroy pillow?!? It’s been making headlines…).

Dylan is known for being passionate about everything he does, loving a good debate among friends, knowing a lot about a lot, not being afraid to do things differently, liking everything from bluegrass to Mos Def and the Sox to the Richmond Spiders. He also has the best “Andrew Jackson” hair of anyone I know.

Since that year in Richmond, Dylan has taken (and sometimes dragged) me to a thousand places I never would have known: freezing in a swimming hole in the Blue Ridge mountains, getting strange looks at a Waffle House in Mississippi, sleeping under the stars in South Africa, drinking champagne in paper cups on the city steps in Barcelona, listening to coyote in Texas, touring Montreal on foot in January, eating peanuts and sausages in the bleachers at Fenway…just to name a few. I can’t wait to find out what happens next.