Wedding Prep Updates - 25 August

Flower girl: Wahahahhaa after so many weeks of endless searching for reasonably priced flower girl baskets and headbands, we have finally bought them! I am so glad we didn't buy them at Kiddy Palace, where the EXACT SAME (yes, exactly the same right down to the details!) flower girl basket costs $15.90 each and similar headbands cost $10 or more!



The total cost for the above items: SGD 28!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Manz!!!! It is so unbelievable!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ok, I got them at Jakarta, haha, and I suspect Kiddy Palace might have gotten their supplies from there, cos its exactly the same! Imagine... each basket costs only SGD 4~!!! Its like buy-1-get-3 free!! The headbands only cost SGD 3 each!!!!!

Muaahahahahhahaa! Had been prepared to splurge (reluctantly) $100 on these 8 items but now we only spent $28! I think, its time to think of making a business out of this. Buy more from Jakarta and then sell it here for double the price! Wahahahahhaa!

Honeymoon: As mentioned in one of my previous posts, we have finally purchased our Eurostar and Eurail tickets. When collecting the tickets last week, I noticed that the prices stated on the Eurostar tickets were wrong. They were much, much cheaper. Checked with the Pricebreaker staff and the girl was also surprised to see the difference in price from what we paid. So she said she would check and get back to me. LUCKILY GOT CHECK AR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Apparently, there was some kind of promotion going on and the Eurostar company booked our tickets at the promotional rates which means we are gonna get a refund of $190~!!!!!!!! Wahahahhahaa I think luck is really on our side with all these savings here and there!

- Phebe

My Soup is Too Salty!!

11 Aug 08 - Today marks 3 years 9 months since the day when Her Royal Majesty and I officially, "went steady", as most 13-year-olds would put it. However, instead of celebrating the occasion at some dimly-lit romantic Italian restaurant, we were having a 8-course dinner with both our parents, my brother and my aunt at a dimly-lit Chinese restaurant.

We were sampling the menu that was selected for our wedding banquet, and the whole gang was roped in to provide expert commentary and critics. Images of us shrieking, "My soup is too salty!" amidst flying crockery, à la Zhang Ziyi, came to mind.

At the same time, my aunt was tasked with an additional mission --- to facilitate talks between both families on the betrothal gift, dowry and other details. Our parents were unclear about what each family was supposed to present to the other, when they were supposed to do so, and which other traditions they had to follow. As such, my mum had suggested enlisting my aunt's help, since she has experience handling such matters, including my brother's.

Instead of advocating a strict adherence to tradition, my aunt recommended that we keep things as simple as possible. Our parents must have been relieved to hear that and eventually decided to give each other an ang pow in place of the various traditional items.

Throughout the discussion, we were also busy tasting and commenting on the various dishes. The hotel even provided a little card where you could write your remarks next to a list of all the dishes on the menu. The hotel's restaurant, Summer Palace, was supposed to be rather famous (or at least that's what the restaurant says about itself), but we felt that while some dishes were really good, others were just ho-hum and ordinary.

After dessert, the chef came out to discuss about the food, and we took the chance to air our very honest opinions. Thankfully, he took them calmly, and even wrote down our comments and suggested alternatives. Based on his advice, we made some changes to the menu, and hopefully, our guests would be happy with our choice of dishes.

All in all, this was indeed a very different anniversary, though I'm sure I would not live beyond the next one if I even had any thoughts of repeating this again. Happy 3 years 9 months!

- Melvin

Wedding Prep Updates - 12 August

Regent Hotel: The time has finally come for us to select our invitation cards, wedding favours and dinner theme. We managed to select the cards and favours quite quickly, but sad to say, still can't make up our minds on which theme to select. Went down on 2 Aug to view one of the themes and it was really nice, though Kitty (Melvin) was saying that the stage looks quite plain? And the black theme is definitely out, don't want to hear the folks making more noise, lol. So now we are waiting for 31 Aug, when there is another wedding dinner using one of the themes that we are considering. I wonder if can mix and match?

Photo Selection at Jazz: Our Photoshoot pics are finally ready for selection. Made our way down to Jazz on 7 Aug to select the shots for our album. Haha, we got a shock when we saw the 2 huge piles of photos on the table. Yes, all were ours, lol. Bet our coordinator was hoping that we would spend another few K topping up on photos but we proved them wrong. The photos were much better than the ones we took at Focus last year. Interestingly though, we took a few days to select our photos last year, whereas this time round, we took only 2.5 hours to make our selection, which was at least 3-4 times more in quantity! I guess perhaps I was in a rush to go home to catch the 9pm drama, haha! Anyway, we ended up $1K poorer. Topped up for 7 photos, but at the same time, managed to bargain extra stuff into our package and extra 1 more pic for the album, so its a total of extra 8 pics! The moment we stepped out of Jazz, I turned to Kitty and said,"Shut up... don't say anything else about the extra money... I don't want to suffer from post purchase dissonance". LOL.

Flower girl dress: I realise that the collection of flower girl dresses in Singapore is really pathetically limited. Saw so many lovely dresses in those US websites and had initially wanted to order them, until I found out that they don't ship internationally, what a shame. I think Kitty and I made at least 6 trips to Kiddy Palace... I am so sick of Kiddy Palace now. Finally managed to buy a nice dress for Charlene and brought it to church to let her try. Wow, she looks so cute! The dress was a size too big though, luckily Kiddy Palace still had stock for the smaller sizes!

Still can't find nice hair accessories and flower girl baskets though. Sianz... sometimes I really wish I am good at sewing or craft works.... I will gladly DIY! DIY is so much better... you get to call the shots for everything ranging from material to colour to...whatever. Anyway, I shall try my luck next week when I am in Jakarta.... my colleagues said JKT sells a lot of such things.... *keeping my fingers crossed*

Ang Pao Box: After looking around for so long... we have decided to DIY again, creating yet more trouble for ourselves, haha. To be exact, we outsource half the work, the parts that require SEWING, lol. I think end up the total cost might even exceed the market rate of $70 per AP box, lol, but well...we are trying to console ourselves that at least we get exactly what we want instead of being restricted by the various vendors who sell AP boxes. Spent our last weekend wrapping up the box... and now feeling super satisfied, haha! Hopefully the outsourced work will turn out well... we're counting on Mdm Yik (my mum), lol. Will blog about the process with pics once it is completed!

Guestbook: Another hassle... decided to DIY AGAIN after failing to find anything that we like. Ultimately, it must fit into our memory book. The other ideas that we had initially, interesting though they were... had their limitations... either you spend a lot on printing, or you waste a lot of time sourcing for materials and vendors. So after one big round, our original idea is still the best! Went shopping at Made with Love on Saturday (9 Aug)... burnt a hole just buying PAPER, only to find out that we still have some leftovers from the previous time we did our memory book!!!! Arrrghh.....

Memory Book: I really look forward to the day we come back from our Europe honeymoon and then we can finally work on COMPLETING our wedding memory book! Spent our Sunday afternoon updating the contents of our memory book and thankfully we managed to finish what we set out to do heheh, happie!! Can't wait for its full completion, then we'll finally be trouble-free! Yay!

Honeymoon: Finally got to purchasing our Eurail and Eurostar tickets. Haiz... one would have thought that only plane travel would be expensive... you'll be surprised that train tickets can cost as much, if not more! This is getting more and more exciting!

Time flies... and its about 3 months before our AD! As we get more in-depth into our wedding prep, the reality of "AD is approaching real fast" finally starts to sink into my head. Now, I FINALLY start to feel some excitement... previously, whenever people ask me if I feel excited, I always say,"Ok lor, nothing much leh, still long".... until one fine day last week a friend retorted,"Still long?? xiao jie its 3 more months leh!!"

Now, that really made me wake up.


- Phebe