The untold story of the author of the wedding invitation that 'caused a storm' in Nghe An

(Baonghean.vn) - Recently, social media users have been passing around a unique wedding invitation of a couple in Thanh Chuong district. However, few people know the story of the author of the invitation...

The unique wedding invitation that has gone viral on the internet is the product of the idea and effort of the bride's brother - Nguyen Viet Anh.

Stormy youth

Viet Anh was born into a well-educated family in hamlet 7, Thanh Ngoc commune (now block 14, Thanh Chuong town). His mother was a teacher, his father was a demobilized soldier, and he had two younger sisters.

During his high school years, Viet Anh was quickly drawn into conflicts and fights between groups of students from different communes and clusters. Gradually, he became a "big brother", often leading "gangster" students to participate in many fights inside and outside the school.

Nguyen Viet Anh - brother of the bride Nguyen Thuy Van, author of the unique wedding invitation.

Viet Anh even got involved in gambling. He sold the bicycle his parents had saved up to buy for him to gamble. When he ran out of money, he borrowed a friend's bike and pawned it, beating anyone who refused to lend it to him. Those "bad" achievements made the name "Viet Anh Thanh Ngoc" famous in the area, most of his friends in school and in the neighborhood feared and avoided him. As a result, at the end of the first semester of 10th grade, Viet Anh was warned by the school and suspended for a year.

In January 2000, Viet Anh took a bus to Dak Lak, applying for a job as a coffee weed hoeer for a coffee farm owner from Ha Tinh, whom he later learned was a timber smuggler and a mafia boss, and was paid 900,000 VND/month. After working for a few days, he was assigned a new task: escorting timber.

During his first trip to transport timber, he was given a sharp machete and the order “no mercy to anyone who touches my timber truck”. Then, he spent 3 consecutive months in the forest, participating in fierce “battles” with other timber traders using machetes and homemade guns. Along with that were terrible bouts of malaria, tormenting the skinny body of the 16-year-old boy.

At night, after the fever passed, Viet Anh lay thinking about what he had been through. “If this continues, I probably won’t be able to keep my life to go back to school. If I don’t get hacked to death, I’ll just hack someone and end up in jail.” Then tears streamed down his face as he missed his parents, his siblings, and regretted not studying and leaving his family. Then he was determined to go back and start over.

One time, while he was on the road with a truck carrying wood, when no one was paying attention, he jumped off the truck and ran away. When he reached Gia Lai, he ran out of money. By chance, he met a family from the North who were carpenters, whose son, the same age, had been shot dead while working as a lumber escort. Hearing the story and sympathizing with what Viet Anh had been through, the family took Viet Anh in as a carpenter and also taught him many things about life.

"Crossing the Gate of Heaven"

At the end of August 2000, when the new school year was about to begin, Viet Anh asked to return to his hometown. In addition to his salary for several months, the kind carpenter couple also gave him some extra money. When he returned home, he used that money to buy a mini bike and books to retake 10th grade. Because he had missed school for so long and had lost his foundation, Viet Anh had to work hard again. But with the love, care, and encouragement of his parents, Viet Anh gradually caught up with his classmates. However, his family only hoped that he would finish high school and then apply for a job as a factory worker, not thinking about taking the university entrance exam.

One time at home, bored because no one took him out, he took out his paper to draw. His aunt happened to see it, praised his drawing and suggested that he take the entrance exam to the University of Industrial Fine Arts. After that, his aunt took him to the house of a friend whose son was studying at the school, and after a few conversations with this guy, Viet Anh decided to stay in Hanoi to study for the entrance exam. And his efforts were well rewarded.

Early August 2004, holding in hand the admission notice to the regular program, majoring in product design at Hanoi University of Industrial Fine Arts.

Nguyen Viet Anh with his father and two younger sisters Thuy Duong and Thuy Van on the family trip to Hanoi when he was in his second year of university. This was also the last time he saw his father.

Graduating from university with honors (2009), Viet Anh had no difficulty in applying for a job at the Petroleum Communications Joint Stock Company. After 4 months, when he saw that Viettel Global Investment Joint Stock Company was recruiting design staff to work in Cambodia, he applied and was accepted. During the 3 years working at Viettel Cambodia from 2009-2012, thanks to his diligence, excellent completion of all tasks and many initiatives, Viet Anh was awarded many certificates of merit, certificates of merit from the Group, from the General Corporation and was honored to be admitted to the Party in the neighboring country.

At the end of 2012, Viettel Research and Development Institute was established, Viet Anh returned to Vietnam to work here as an industrial design specialist.

Continuing to demonstrate his ability and excellently complete all tasks, in 2015, Viet Anh was voted as one of the 27 most outstanding employees out of more than 30,000 employees of Viettel Group, receiving welfare support for home loans with 0% interest rate from the group.

Viet Anh (purple shirt) is currently an industrial design staff at Viettel Research and Development Institute.

Family is the most important

Not only successful in his work, Viet Anh also has a happy family with a wife who is also an employee of Viettel and a beautiful 2 and a half year old daughter. Since he graduated and started working, his mother also moved to Hanoi to live with her son.

The two younger sisters Thuy Duong and Thuy Van, with the help of their brother, both graduated from university, became commune officials and got married. Most recently, the younger sister Thuy Van - the character of the story "the unique invitation", just held her wedding on April 10th.

Young father Viet Anh and his 2 and a half year old daughter.

Viet Anh confided: “One month before the wedding of my younger sister Nguyen Thi Thuy Van, my mother asked me to design a beautiful wedding invitation so that she could bring it back to my hometown to show off to relatives and neighbors. With my major, this was not too difficult, and I designed a traditional style invitation according to my mother's wishes.

I called my sister home to talk about the idea and Thuy Van seemed very interested. So I took advantage of my lunch break to design the invitation. The invitation has 2 sides, the outside when folded is not much different from traditional wedding invitations. But the interesting thing is hidden on the inside, when opened the invitee will see a page of the newspaper "Tuoi Tre Buffalo - the mouthpiece of the anti-FA association..." with lively teen-style headlines as everyone has seen.

Before ending the story, Viet Anh confided: "From my life experiences, I want to tell young people who are still in school and still dependent on their families to think about their families and their parents who are working hard to earn money, and then think seriously about studying and career orientation for the future. Family is always the most important thing."

Minh Quan