Wrist Corsages

Wrist corsages from Lovely Lacey for the Jie meis:

Honeymoon: Aegean Airlines

Guess what? Just when we thought we have settled everything for our honeymoon, Aegean Airlines sent an email notification that our flight from Santorini to Athens will be delayed!!!! We were due to fly from Santorini to Athens on 1 Dec before taking a connecting flight on Emirates back to Singapore.

The departure time for our Emirates flight is at 15:50, and according to the revised flight schedule for Aegean Airlines, we will only arrive at Athens at 15:35!!!! It is impossible to catch our flight back to Singapore lor! Arrrgh...

Anyway, Aegean Airlines proposed that they give us a refund, but thats beside the point!

1) The only other airline that flies from Santorini to Athens is Olympic Airlines, and the departure time is at 07:00. What an unearthly hour!!! We have to rot for 7.5 hrs before the Emirates flight!

2) Air ticket prices have soared over the past few months. We are lucky we booked our flight early. Our round-trip flight on Aegean Airlines costed only EUR 152.78 for 2 pax but now, it costs EUR 228.96! This price increase applies to Olympic Airlines as well, and the fare for a one-way flight from Santorini to Athens cost EUR 101 PER PAX!!!! So even if Aegean Airlines were to cancel and refund us our fare for one-way flight, the refund of EUR 76 is not enough to cover the cost of the Olympic Airlines ticket which amounts to EUR 202 and we have to fork out the additional EUR 126 from our own pockets!!!!!

3) It is highly possible we may NOT be able to claim back the additional EUR 126 from our insurance agency.

4) We have to check out super early in order to catch the Olympic Airlines flight! Super early as in at 5.15am!!! So early also don't know got cab or not??

Kitty (aka Meowvin) emailed Aegeans Airlines to request for a refund PLUS compensation for the additional EUR 126 but they refused to pay us the compensation amount. Undeterred, the old cat called them up personally and hounded the other party for a good 30 mins over the phone. No choice, since we have to settle this quickly and book our Olympic Airlines flight. According to him, it was hard to converse with them as their foreign accent was pretty strong. He had to speak very, very slowly. Boy I am so glad I didn't have to do the dirty job. I think I would have given up after 15 mins at most, lol. Anyway, the other party was stubborn and refused to budge, but so was the old cat.

The old cat managed to speak with a higher level staff and guess what? Aegean Airlines agreed to refund us EUR 76 (for one-way) plus compensate us the additional EUR 126 we had to pay for the Olympic Airlines tickets!! Wahahahahaha we won!! Yay!! I bet Aegean Airlines must be feeling rather peeved, since the total amount (EUR 202) they have to pay us is even more than our round trip ticket (EUR 152.78)!

Anyway, we have booked our Olympic Airlines flight... hopefully there will be no more flight schedule changes!

-Phebe

Wedding Prep - 14 Oct 2008

Its about 1 month until our AD and now we are trying to settle all the nitty gritty details of our wedding prep.

Wedding invitations: Meowvin and I stayed up till 2am almost everyday during the past week printing out wedding invitations. I thought it was an easy task, until Mdm Poh showed us her list...and told us we have to use the Chinese formal way of addressing the relatives! e.g. To invite Meowvin's aunt who is his father's elder sister, we have to write it as so-and-so 胞姐阖府统请台升instead of a simple so-and-so 夫妇! Biang... we had a hard time figuring out how to write and worse... we didn't have their names and had to waste more time sourcing. Then Mdm Yik (my mum), who initially wanted to write in the "normal and simple" way, decided to "standardise" and wanted to do it the same way! *faint* The funny thing was... she also didn't know how and ended up I had to edit some of them for her, wahahhahahaa! Imagine... elder brother became 胞哥 instead of 胞兄 wahahahhahaa! Luckily Regent provided us with more cards than we needed, cos there was a lot of wastage and we had to reprint many times! Thankfully, our poor printer was good... it dutifully completed its task of printing out the names and addresses even though the black ink cartridge was near empty! Heng ar! We finally managed to mail out our cards last Friday.

Surprisingly, some of my friends received their cards on Saturday, so fast! Pleasantly surprised when they told me the card was very nice (haha, free one somemore) and unique. And... they noticed the customised stamp, wahahahha! Maybe this design is more eye catching? Last year for our ROM invitation we used a slightly darker photo for the stamps, so maybe that's why not as many people feedback about it? Regent supplied us with one whole stack of "How to get to Regent Hotel" maps to include with our invitations but we ended up re-designing the map by adding in more details and surrounding landmarks as the existing one was not as detailed, lol.

Items for AD: We went shopping with Mdm Yik last Saturday. Finally got around to buying those "traditional items". We went to Far East Plaza and I showed her the set of BLACK bedside lamps that we liked. Luckily she also agreed it is very modern, unlike those typical red colour plastic battery operated lamps like the one below.

The one we eyed has a black wooden rectangle frame with the word "喜", which is part of the black frame. It has a pink curvy small plate at the top of the black frame (it is removeable) which you can put little dried flowers, haha. Very nice piece of oriental yet modern display ornament! You have to connect it to power and it lights up when you touch the black frame. 1st touch, small brightness. 2nd touch, medium brightness. 3rd touch, brightest, and the 4th touch switches it off. Cool right?? It costed more than $40 compared to the red ugly ones above which costs about $8. Sounds silly, but Mdm Yik also said that instead of buying the ugly old fashioned lamp only to keep and collect dust after the wedding, might as well get something that looks modern and can be used after that. True, cos the black "喜" isn't obvious since it is part of the wooden black frame, whahahahhahaa! And we have found the perfect place to place it, on our dresser table, since its got the "woody" look as well and is dark brown, wahahhhaa!

Saw a very cute tea set where the shape of the tea pot is those curvy kind instead of the usual straight standing pots. The tea pot and the 4 cups that came along are red, without those traditional dragon and phoenix image on them, with the "喜" on each in black, very modern. Unfortunately, the cover of the tea pot is quite loose and prone to drop out. Mdm Yik was afraid that Meowvin's family (can be quite pandang) may say it is bad luck if sweh sweh it really drops out and so we had to choose another design.

Thankfully there was another design that looked traditional yet quite modern (looks good in photos too haha). it is white and red without the dragon and phoenix images as well, haha! Hard to explain and I don't have a pic. Quite cute cos the shape of the tea pot is quite fat, haha. So she got us that set, and the matching bowl set too! I really like the bowl set, very cute sia! The matching soup spoon has a hole at the top, and the shop assistant helped us to hook a red ribbon through it and created a flower-like design with it instead of the typical ribbon knot. Really beautifully done!

Bought some "喜" stickers as well and that settled our "AD to-buy" items! Went shopping with Mdm Yik for her accessories to match her outfit for that night. Sad to say, till now I still can't guess how her dress looks like, so mysterious, die die don't want to tell us. Even my dad also don't know! The only information I managed to squeeze out of her - 1) more than $400, branded 2) a lil bit of sleeve and quite possibly... korean style???? I don't know, but she did mention she doesn't want the MUA to doll her up until very red, she prefer korean style... so who knows perhaps her dress is also korean style?? Liew... she sure is good at keeping us in suspense!

Haiz sianz... this weekend we got to tag along with Mdm Poh to hand deliver the cards to their relatives... cannot post... :(

- Phebe

Our Ang Pow Box Completed!!!!!!!!!!

After months of toiling over the weekends, our AP box is finally completed!!!!

Despite saying a year ago "aiya AP box simple one can liao lah just anyhow buy one will do", we sang a different tune a few months ago when we chanced upon the mini version of our cat plushie - "lets get someone to customise our AP box with the cat and rat plushies!". Haha our idea was to create an AP box with the mini versions of the cat and rat plushies we used for our ring pillow.

So the massive hunt for the rat began. We wanted to get the mini version of our rat plushie but unfortunately, TY replied our email saying they don't produce mini Cheezers (that's the name of our white rat). We tried finding toy manufacturers to produce a mini replica of our rat but the cost was too high, so we dropped the idea. Not willing to give up our idea "just like that", I started searching online, and after a week, hola! I managed to find a rat finger puppet that looked almost alike to our original Cheezer!! To make sure it is the one and only one, I browsed through another 78 pages of soft toys on the same website. Yes, it is the only one!!!! Wahahahahahhaa so we had it shipped over from the States!

We started finding suppliers to customise an AP box with our mini soft toys but the cost was simply not worth it. Imagine charging more than $30 just to dress up our soft toys?? In the end, we decided to DIY, adding on yet another DIY item on our to-do list!

For those who are interested to DIY your own AP boxes, here is a brief account of each step of the process. It ain't that difficult, just tedious. LOL

Materials: Soft toys, A4 copier box, wrapping paper, name cushions, lace, chain of crystals, beads, rose buds, white glue, scissors, pen knife/cutter...etc

Vendors: theweddingthoughts.com, Mdm Yik aka Mrs Low my mum, Melvin & Phebe

1) Wrap up the ugly A4 copier paper box with 3 sheets of silvery-white wrapping paper. Take note that double-sided tape should secure the edges fully without any gaps in between so as to minimise possible tearing. Decide on the size of the hole on the cover, measure equal dimensions from the sides, make markings and cut out the shape with a cutter.

Wrap the cover of the box with the wrapping paper. Draw a divider line where the hole is.

Make a slit and fold it upwards so that it wraps up the ugly edges of the hole.

This is what you should see:

Use double-sided tape to secure the "flaps" to the underside of the box.

Tada!

Wrap up done!

2) Bought lace, a mini top hat and small rose buds and together with the soft toys, we passed them to Mdm Yik - this kind of sewing is too chim for me, haha!

Before:

After: Version 1

A bit plain, so asked Mdm Yik to add flowers with leaves for the rat to hold, and to sew the cat's left hand, errm, I mean PAW, onto the rat, just like the original pair. :) Oh, and asked her to sew tiny rose buds onto the rat's tail as well, haha!

After: Version 2

I thought the mini rat should wear a similar necklace like the original one, so we bought beads and I chained them together to form a necklace!

After: Version 3

To view the original plushies, read "A Special Ring Pillow" under June 2008.

3) We wanted to have our names sewn onto mini heart cushions but as both of us are not good at sewing, we outsoured the job to theweddingthoughts.com. Mdm Yik then helped us to sew the cushions onto the box.

4) Finally the time to decor the rest of the box!

Here are the materials used:

Wrap the lace around the border of the cover.

Paste flower buds around the border on top of the lace.

Finally, paste the chain of crystals all around the border of the box just below the cover as well as around the hole on the cover. Stick 3 white rosettes on the top right corner.

Tada! COMPLETED!!!

Total cost: About $100