Happy 10th Anniversary – Our Wedding Preparations

Our Wedding Journey Part I

This is really going to be a very long post. I am finally blogging about our wedding, hopefully, I can remember as many details as possible. We got married on 5th January 2019. Unbelievably, 2019 also marks our 10 years anniversary.

Planning a wedding is really stressful – I saved lots of pictures of the styles, designs I wanted, but I ended up having difficulties deciding which one. Luckily for me, I am not working full time, hence I have slightly more time in the day to do the planning. And also, I’ve roughly drafted the guests’ list and planned the style I wanted a while back :p I am glad that I managed to put everything up within 3 months. Tiring, crazy but fun! I was still running errands at the very last min :p I was feeling unwell, I think probably because of the late nights and the travelling around to get things done.

Our Preparations

I was doing up my wedding mood board & planning. Read a lot on forums, bridal sites, etc. Also found a lot of wedding planning guide and checklists. Oh My, how am I going to plan everything within 3 months? Skipped some and am glad that we managed to tick off quite a bit of my to-do list.

Keywords
Started off with what kind of wedding we want? We wanted our wedding to be cosy, casual, simple, intimate, memorable.

Color Theme
I like the combination of Black, White and Rose Gold. But everyone was against the idea of having Black & White for wedding 🙁 With some compromise, H allowed me to add a bit of Black and White subtlely – ie. the Panda & Penguin 😀 Ok, I can deal with that. I had it on the wedding invitation cards (for friends and colleagues and my families), Cupcakes Toppers, Table Tent Cards, etc. The main color theme is White, Rose Gold, Peach, etc.

Style
Fun, casual setting where we have time to mingle with our guests. H and I value the experience that we can give our guests at the end of the day. Hence, we focused on planning that we felt will make our guests remember and enjoy. We would love to have a buffet setting or long tables so that we don’t have to fuss about seating arrangements. Well…gotta accommodate to Parents’ needs – must have sit-down dinner banquet. There goes my rooftop bar/beach party/buffet. No wonder everyone said marriage is not just between 2 people. It really does involve the entire family! There were some restrictions here and there and some ‘so-call’ traditions.

After some discussion, H said whatever traditions the parents want, we will do it. We will decide on the dinner flow and style. OK, I can deal with that 😀 To make it simpler, we forgo the 过大礼 since my parents are not around. We still stick to the 4点金, 敬茶, 安床procedures.

Budget
I think we were on quite a small budget. Actually, we are pretty unwilling to spend on certain stuff like the pre-wedding shoot, wedding gown, wedding planner, wedding stylist, photo booth, etc. WAHAHAHA… I planned the wedding myself, J helped a lot with the displays and decorations. But we did spend additional on customised tshirts for Brothers & Sisters, Balloons for kids, Cookies & Cupcakes for the dessert table.

He got his Suit set and my dress from Bangkok. I think total not more than 300 for both. We wore sneakers throughout the day. He bought his pair of Adidas for $80, I bought mine from Taobao at about $23. WAHAHAHHA…. Our friends even joked that we are the new budgeted Groom & Bride. Well, I love his suit and my dress 😀 It’s just our style. If possible, I even want to just wear tshirt or rompers ?

Suit / Gown
Well, I didn’t want a formal wedding gown. I felt like so bulky and heavy, I’m already quite fat. WAHAHHAA… Anyways, H bought a nice white dress from BKK while shopping for his suit. This is what we wore during the dinner.

I bought some from Taobao, but they were disastrous. Well, don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying the quality sucks. The dress probably not suitable for me, they just made me looked like Humpty Dumpty ? Was so depressed after trying. With Miss D’s recommendation, I went to Love Potion at the very last minute. Luckily, I managed to find the perfect one within 5 mins. Rental $120 and $15 for alterations. Worth it right! Collected the altered gown on 3rd Jan, wore it in the morning. Miss D also gave me a shawl to wear along with it. Happy Happy!

Venue
Ok, I know some restaurants may serve better food than Hotel and is also cheaper. I also thought of having our wedding dinner in Peony Jade restaurants. However, it’s quite inconvenient for H & Gang to fetch me from my rented place. So, we decided to have the wedding dinner in a Hotel instead.

We only started sourcing for potential venues 2 months before the wedding day. Oh my, most of the hotels were fully booked or only available for a wedding lunch. We were almost confirming with Holiday Inn Orchard City Centre (they have really good perks and is within our budget) until I found Hotel Rendezvous (both within budget and available for wedding dinner). So, we confirmed the booking with Hotel Rendezvous. Yan & Team was very helpful and attentive throughout the entire preparation. She even sent me gentle reminders to get some tasks done ?

We were given the bridal suite on the 11th floor in the wedding package. It also comes with a night anniversary stay, but I exchanged it for a night stay on 4th Jan, so that we can have the gate crash at the hotel in the morning on the 5th :p Love the room, but the bed was the hot topic in the group chat that day. I had difficulties going up the bed. It’s SO HIGH! WAHAHAHHA….

Brothers & Sisters attire
Well, whenever I am in the Sisters team, I always have difficulties deciding what to wear. So, for my wedding, I wanted them to wear something comfortable, especially the weather is very hot lately. I sent my designs to T-Shirt Guys for print. Surprisingly, the t-shirt is not the thin and see through type, is quite thick. The gang was surprised with the quality (item code CT71). I customised one for J and BBD but from different printers as their sizes are too big for the kids.

For the Kids
We also prepared something for the kids. Balloons!!! We ordered Panda and Penguin balloons according to the no. of kids in the guests list. Ordered Dino for Jacob 😀 I thought of having the kids walk in with us with the balloons, but then with the EDM arrangement, think better not.

Wedding Invitation & Stationeries
Did my own wedding invitation design. Well, I used Google Form for the RSVP and sent out digital versions of the wedding invitation card. His colleagues were wow by our style, WAHAHAHA 😀 Standard invitation cards were included in the banquet package, we printed about 80pcs for his relatives.

Tent cards were printed and made at the last minute in office. We thought that it will be helpful to have a tent card on every table to remind the guests to be our photographer for the night and tagged their photos with our hashtag. We had the Instagram Live feed to display the pictures on the screen.

Solemniser
Oh man, this is the tough part. The very popular ones were booked or unavailable. I’ve contacted about 20 before I found Mr Chew. Couldn’t find much information about him. Thankfully, he’s available on 5th Jan, 730pm. Very happy because he can accommodate my preferred timing. I wanted to have only 1 March-In, with the solemnisation on the dinner itself! He’s fun and fast; not naggy and no lengthy speech. WAHAHAHA…. So we did the solemnisation like about 15 – 20mins?

We thought we can use the standard vows until Mr Chew told me to prepare our own vows. OMG! WAHAHAHA….we wrote our vows on the night before. WAHAHAHHA…. Luckily, Miss D gave us some samples…

Make-Up Artist
I have been following some makeup artists on Instagram. In my opinion, Instagram is really a good source for researching for Makeup artist, photographers, florists, wedding styles. That’s where I got all my inspirations 😀 My preferred MUAs were unavailable, and friends introduced some nice ones to me, their prices around $800+. With that budget, I decided to engage my 2nd preferred makeup artist (Queenie, from Makeup Maestro) and most importantly, she’s available on 5th Jan!!!!

Well, I am happy with my choice! She’s very attentive and detail. Am glad that I went to get my hair colored at Myeongdong Hair Studio @ Rivervale Mall after listening to her advice during the trial session. She said black hair may make me looks older. And also, I need to wear contact lens that matches the hair color on the wedding day (I actually thinking of wearing matching specs with H. I thought we might look cute, WAHAHAHHA).

Flowers
Got my flowers from Liz Florals, found her from Instagram as well. I’m not sure what type of flowers I preferred, I just gave Liz my color palette and some sample pictures, and she built the rest 😀 Liz delivered the bouquet, boutonnieres, wrist corsages and the bridal car flowers to our preferred venue. I’ve requested for quotations from several florists, and she’s the only one who offered delivery of the items to where our bridal car is located and at about the same price as others. As we are using our friend’s car as the bridal car, so we try not to get our friend to drive the car to the florist’s office on a weekday. OH! And also, because I’ve engaged MUA from Makeup Maestro, I got a discount for the flowers too 😀

Cupcakes
Ordered cupcakes from Kristabelle Bakes previously for his Mother’s birthday party and everyone loved it. So, he ordered from KB again for the morning session at home and we brought ¾ of them to the hotel to place on the dessert table.

I did some cake toppers at the last minute – so that it synced with our wedding theme 😀

Cookies
I planned to have the cookies as the wedding favours as I don’t want some less useful stuff like mini towel, shot glasses, cups, etc. I thought of giving something meaningful and with a good cause – cookies from MINDS. But we had more guests than planned initially. So I only ordered about 130 bottles to place on the dessert table. Our guests loved the cookies. We forgot to keep 1 bottle for ourselves, but I managed to “steal” 1 from his cousin. Yummy, and not sweet 😀

Wedding Decorations
DIY-ed my reception & dessert table. J gave me a lot of ideas and helped a lot in researching and sourcing for items. She also did the recep & dessert table setup that day. In fact, she did a few baby showers / birthday parties setup before – for her sister-in-law and herself. I encouraged her to go into this styling business. WAHAHAHHA….

H’s friend said that the cookies were so nicely displayed that they dare not take the cookies as they can’t bear to break the deco. WAHAHAHHA….

Photographer
Well, H and I really not into spending a few thousands on pre-wedding shoots and the album ended up in the storeroom. We set up the Instagram Live feed so that every guest is our photographer for the night. However, I still think it’s safer to get a professional photographer. Gotten several quotes – some were way beyond our budget; some unavailable; some within our budget but not the style that I like. Was looking through some recommendations from Budget Bride Facebook Group and someone recommended Hisham (Krystalpixels Photography). Checked his IG and super love his works immediately.

Met him for a quick discussion before we signed the contract. We also run through our schedule with him and he also gave some suggestions to our planning 😀 Despite being relatively new to the industry, he is an amazing photographer. I don’t really like to pose for photographs, or maybe I don’t know how to. He was patient and made us quite comfortable during the session. We love the way he captured the moments/angles. Well, in fact, I was very surprised at how the photographs turned out.

I would highly recommend him and the price is quite affordable.

Videographer
Hm….this is a really very last minute decision. Videographer is not a must-have item in our list and we only managed to engage one about 2 weeks before the wedding day. After very much procrastination, I thought we should get a videographer to capture the morning gatecrash. Zero from ZeroSee Studio was recommended by H’s good friend.

Met up with Zero to run through the details. As of the day we met him, we had more or less finalised the plans for the morning and night. He suggested to shorten the time in the morning (need not capture the entire tea ceremony) and we can allocate 1hour or so for the special march-in and solemnisation at night. Now, I am glad that we engaged a Videographer for capturing the morning and night session. In my initial plans, I didn’t include playing the morning highlights during the dinner. But H insisted on playing it. Since we already engaged one, might as well play the highlights at night to share with the guests. If you are looking for a videographer, I would definitely recommend Zero too!

We had good reviews for both the Photographer and Videographer after dinner. Will share the video once I got it from Zero. It’s a pity that I didn’t take photos with them 🙁

The day before the wedding
Went to ROM on 4th Jan 930am to collect the documents for the solemnisation on 5th Jan. I went home to pack to check in to Hotel Rendezvous at about 5plus. Did some work, ordered room service (too lazy to go out for dinner alone) while waiting for Miss D to come to stay over. Everyone was worried that I overslept the next morning. WAHAHAHHA…. Who knows, I woke up at 230am 🙁

 

Wedding Day