We got our laundry back, and wow! It was quite a relief that nothing serious went wrong, after the horrible week. I was told that 1) the bra cups could deform 2) the rhinestones could fall off or lose their shine. Thankfully, neither happened. I am impressed with the ladies there - for future reference, this was at Jelita Drycleaners on the 2nd floor. Highly recommended. 

This has been somewhat a terrible week. Maybe as it draws closer to the date, my tolerance for slip-ups decreases drastically. I am now blogging using Yanxian's MacBook, as mine is now DEAD. Yes. Dead. With my last backup 2 weeks ago, this means that my edited photographs, songlists and others are now gone. I was plugging my computer into the printer outside, when it just went dead. Subsequently the computer couldn't detect the startup disk - probably a fried harddisk!! Thankfully, I still have all my RAW images on backup and on the SD card - I'll have to do post-processing again, but at least the photos are still there. Last night, Yanxian re-downloaded the wedding songlist and re-edited the important songs using GarageBand. 

Hen & Stag Parties

My, what a weekend!

Just a little filler before the weekend thing - we spent 2 days at Jubilee Road doing our shoots in our makeshift home studio! I rented 2 very excellent lenses from Desmond, the Canon EF 24-70 f2.8L USM and EF 70-200 f2.8L USM. It turned out to be an excellent decision, even though it set me back by quite a bit. The images were contrasty and tack-sharp, and on hindsight I could have just made do with the 24-70mm lens. The second lens had a focal length that was just too long for my cropped factor camera body, althought it produced really flattering portrait shots at the long end of the zoom.

Here's a pic of the makeshift studio!

Yanxian's very ghetto dressing table. That lamp is actually my continuous flourescent light that is used for product shots.


The shoot covered 2 days - the first shoot was done in casual clothes, but alas! I initially set the camera to shoot in small jpg files while I was doing the lighting adjustments, and later forgot to set it back to RAW! Felt really sore about it, but thankfully the images were nothing to shout about anyway. The good thing that came out of this shoot was that it prepped me for the following day's shoot, and as a result things were done much faster as I was more familiar with the lighting adjustments and ratios.

We went back the next day with our ROM attire and a few other props. The main concept for this shoot was to do a series of seamless high-key shots, and some off-camera crosslighting as well.

Urgh. Feeling annoyed.

We were planning for a photoshoot tomorrow, and all of a sudden Yanxian's boss magicked some meeting for her and it has to be cancelled. After all my preparation too!

Just had to rant.

The last few things ...

Touch up Yanxian's dress tonight (some of the rhinestones that were set earlier by iron fell off .. )
Indoors photoshoot this Thursday 16/4/9 by moi
Send clothes to dry cleaner's this Friday
Finalise wedding vows
Call Prof Low by this week

I'm not being OCD about the photoshoot, Yanxian. I just want to make sure everything goes exactly the way I want it.

Anyway, I do not see how much difference there is between me doing it and engaging some photo guy to do it. Wei has very graciously offered to help us take the photos! OK, obviously for the banquet day itself I can't possibly be part of the thing and do the photos as the same time. I'm hoping Chris' work will turn out to be to our satisfaction, and that'll probably be the banquet day photographer settled. If not, we could always get Black Box (they should start giving us a DSO Labs package discount already!)

I'm actually planning for a rather elaborate shoot. But whether it actually churns out award-winning photos .. that's another story altogether. =) I went absolutely nuts and bought an el-cheapo studio strobe. I'm still trying to digest that one now.

We did some finishing touches to the pen stand last night. In keeping with the sea-shelley theme, we wanted the pen stand to sit inside a giant clam shell - the same one which I gave Yanxian some 7 years ago. We'd then use vermiculite to fill up the gap and to conceal the original penstand gap, and adorn it with something sparkly. Problem is vermiculite tends to scatter all over the place, so I bought some clear sealant spray and did a bit of art and craft the other night. The spray was weird though, and it took an hour and several tries to get it right. It tended to make the vermiculite grey... eeeeeks. It was alright in the end, phew.

As promised earlier, pics of the wedding bands!! OK, something is VERY wrong with this picture. It came out kind of soft.

Hmmm, it's great that everything for solemnization is falling into place. Which leaves us with planning for the tea ceremony-cum-wedding-dinner day... Oh, did we mention that the date is sorta fixed? 21st Nov 2010 (Sunday). 

Yay!!! We finally collected our wedding bands tonight! =D And we could still fit our fingers into them, after 3 months. The only thing is, the things actually came in little ZIPLOCK bags. OM. For the money we paid, you'd think that they would at least come in plastic boxes, if not acrylic. The lady took them out from their very ugly bags, and put them into a nicer box. Oh well. At least they gave us a free ring pillow. Pics to come when I get the luxury of taking photos.

The seeds are finally here! Was thoroughly excited about it. Anyway, the packets were actually smaller than I expected them to be (250 seeds look like a teaspoon's worth of stuff) but it was fun mixing them up. The pic below is the mixing stage.



So what's in the mix?
- Zinnia elegans 'Lilliput Mix'
- Strawflower
- Nicotiana alata (Flowering tobacco)
- A selection of morning glory varieties: 'Carevale di Venezia', 'Crimson Rambler' and 'Milky Way'
- Arroyo lupine
- Love-in-a-mist
- Four O'Clock
- Sunflower 'Autumn Beauty'
- Marigold
- Cleome 'Violet Queen'
- Some fragrant herbs: Basil 'Genovese', dill, borage, sweet marjoram, black cumin
- Okra 'Burgundy'
- Amaranth 'Golden Giant'
- Portulaca
- Balsam: a selection of heirloom singles and doubles from my own garden
- Cosmos 'Bright Lights'
- Another Cosmos variety from my garden, I have no idea what it is. Bright yellow stuff.

A few lucky people will be getting some zucchini seeds and love-in-a-puff (Cardiospermum) seeds. The whole thing is entirely random of course, so not everyone will get the same stuff. They were packed into the bottles (remember we were busy tying ribbons to bottles a couple of months back?) with some vermiculite that had been soaked in nutrient solution. I'm guessing each bottle should have an average 50-70 seeds. Ha .. I'm going to cheat a bit and put extra lupine and cleome seeds into Aaron's. (BTW, did the cleome ever germinate?)

I'm starting to get worried about the seeds. Diane definitely sent them out, but no news so far and it's been 2 weeks! If, by the end of next week, I still don't get anything in the post, it's time for drastic measures.

Anyway, we're fretting about the music now. Weijian's keyboard is too soft, and the club won't let us plug it into their sound system. I'll see if we can get a mic or something, but there's still the issue of interference. And that silly woman at RSYC takes FOREVER to reply to emails.

On something more positive, I've finally done up the prototype for the penstand! Not that it's a big deal, since it's an extremely simple thing to do, but I just had to test it out.



And I had the chance to use my new light tent. =)


Yanxian is also almost done with her wedding vows, and once again I've got the rough thing in my head, but just need to write it down on paper.

Yes, the meet-up with Sylvia was most fruitful. I like her, just about everything we asked for, she was ok with it. It's rare to see administrators who are so decisive and spontaneous about guests' requests. Now, we just need her confirmation about things. One thing abt her though, she doesn't seem to like replying to emails. Argh. It'll be easier if we have a written record about things. Oh well, nobody's perfect.

Finally met up with Sylvia, the sales manager at RSYC yesterday, to discuss some of the finer and final details. We fixed up the outdoors seating arrangement, and she'll be sending us the indoor blueprint so we can finalise the table arrangement too. It seems like we'll be taking up most of the restaurant, oops. We'll need to decide on the bouquet throw though - she said that doing a re-entry would actually be weird. Haha .. Ying Kai!! Where did you come up with that??

Another sneak preview time!!

Yanxian and I did a DIY pre-wedding photography session yesterday, and I am pleased with the results. There were only 5-6 keepers, but these are great IMHO. By the way, I nicked the hydrangeas from my garden. =) Not too bad for a non-pro wedding photographer eh?

Still waiting for the seeds to arrive - should be here any day now. The good thing is, the vermiculite has almost finished drying. Now I'm starting to wonder if I should have spiked the vermiculite with low dose gibberallic acid - it'll do wonders for germination, but people will end up with lanky plants.

Feeling somewhat annoyed too by the slow response on the RSYC side - I've been bugging them for a meet-up so that I can finalise the decor with Peng Tze. Heck, I'll just go ahead today and settle it with Peng Tze anyway.

As an aside, we're going to have a break this weekend!! =) Really looking forward to it - thanks for the suggestion, Yanxian. We'll see if we can take the chance to do a couple of shots!

Got a few things done over the weekend! After getting the vermiculite, I thought of soaking them in something to coat the stuff with goodies so that they can behave as slow-release fertilisers. So I dumped a batch into a solution of 30-5-5 nitrogen fertiliser and a vitamin B solution, and now they are in the process of drying out. I dug out a store of seeds as well, and to my surprise I actually have quite a bit of viable seeds stashed away. Most were collected through the years, including a few memorables ones which I bought from Morrison's in Glasgow. Now I'm just waiting for the real batch of seeds to arrive from Diane's, and we'll be packing the vermiculite-and-seed mix into the bottles as gifts.

I'm just hoping that people will actually grow them. I realise not everyone likes growing plants. But hey - it beats giving stuff like keychains right?

Yay, finally got hold of the vermiculite! I don't know why, but it was extremely difficult getting hold of any. I repeatedly visited several nurseries at Thomson, Ang Mo Kio, even at Sembawang, but to no avail. Finally I just bit the bullet and went straight to a hydroponics supplier and got a gigantic bag of the stuff today.

Now I'm just waiting on my seed order to arrive. Unfortunately, Singapore has suddenly become a major crop-producing hub in SE Asia - or you would otherwise be led to believe, given the amount of NEW red tape that our dear AVA has installed to prevent people from tending plants and saving the earth. I realised that I had to pay S$120 for a phytosanitary certificate for some packets of seeds from a reputable nursery in the US (which I suppose in AVA's eyes harbours copious amounts of Fusarium wilt fungus, aflatoxin, colorado beetles, aphids and bacterial blight). Bleargh. Anyway, I ordered from a new source, which should arrive in a week or so (fingers crossed).

Oh yeah - we've decided that other than our Bali photos, we might venture into doing a little photography ourselves. What we're doing now is scouting around for venues etc and doing some test shots, then we'll rent some equipment and do a shoot - should be fun! It might not be in time for our ROM, but it'll be fun nonetheless. So last weekend, other than my mushroom thingy, we headed down to Kent Ridge Park and took a few test shots.



It's nowhere as professional as the pros, but hey, it's all about the fun! This session was kind of impromptu though, so we didn't go prepared with insect spray and quickly became mosquito fodder.

Ah hah, I've got quite a few updates here. We had our engagement party last Friday at Attica, which was really quite fun - if only I wasn't in a state of near-fainting from the stummy ache!!

Anyway, on Saturday Yanxian and I went on yet another romp at Pearl Centre. The place is an absolute gem for what we set out to do. Just months ago, Yanxian's favourite haunt for Swarovski crystal beads and beading supplies were Arab Street and Beads@Work respectively. Now, we found out that Pearl Centre has at least 4 very well-stocked shops selling these crystal beads at (if you'll believe it) even better prices than Arab Street. We went home with more of these hot-fix rhinestones by Swarovski at bulk prices.



Better yet (for me, the poor fiance-turned-tailor) I managed to lay my paws on this inexpensive rhinetone applicator.



The freaking applicator sped me up by more than 10x, and swiftly paid for itself simply for the convenience of it. As a result, I completed Yanxian's dress that evening! Hahahaha. Feeling very proud of myself. I'm not really sure what Yanxian was doing at that time though ... some belt or hair thing I think.

I also managed to buy the pen stand on Sunday at Bras Besah. That'll still need a little working on.

And finally, we have met with the 2 shortlisted florists, and decided to go with Peng Tze. He's actually this ice sculptor who also manages an events-decor company, and a real easy-going chap who's good to work with. I like the fact that he's not pushy about getting us to get more flowers or whatever - more of the contrary actually. He was giving suggestions like we don't need certain centrepieces (which the other florist was charging at $80), and even gave tips on the chair arrangement. The downside to it however, is that his style is really quite classic. I don't mean in the cheena sense, but just classic. Like what you'd expect at a company dinner, not at a DKNY runway show or something - i.e. staples, rather than chic. That's perfectly fine with me, however, since we weren't budgeting for extravagant decor anyway. The only problem came for Yanxian's hand bouquet - I'm sure Peng Tze would have provided a lovely bouquet, but I was really looking for something a little different and a little more fun for that one. I guess I'll somehow come up with doing it myself.

Update time! (I'm shuttling between 2 blogs, so pardon me if I get confused sometimes.)

We went back to Chinatown yesterday to pick up several things - Yanxian's waist ribbon, more ribbon for our informal photoshoot (photographer being yours truly), beads and some hot-fix crystals for the dress. I actually suspect that Yanxian is using the wedding adornments as an excuse to buy more beads. Hah.

We decided to adorn Yanxian's dress on our own! Got our hands on some inexpensive Swarovski crystals which we'll be placing on the dress. I went onto Youtube to find out how exactly to do it, since the auntie at the beads shop sounded really iffy about how to go about doing it. So this morning I did a prototype - first on a scrap of tulle material, which worked really well. So I did 2 more on the dress itself, and oooh, it's actually quite nice. Shall post before- and after- pics soon.

Oh, and we picked up a tux for the naughty boy. He looked so totally endearing in it! Shame that he can't come though, he would have made such a cute ring-bearer. =)

OH YES. WE RECEIVED OUR PHOTOSHOOT ALBUMS!! Our thanks once again goes to Mario, Thea, Lennie and everyone at Aditi Niranjan for doing such a fantastic job. I keep hearing how my friends hated the pre-wedding shoot sessions, but these people really made it quite an enjoyable affair. Previews, anyone?






These are the raw photos - unedited shots, and they sent a total of 2 albums totaling 80 edited shots, 1 large canvas print, and a 30 minute behind-the-scenes video which was really awesome. Not that the videography was fantastic or anything, but it captured a lot of funny stuff that went on, such as the 2 failed attempts before we got that shot above (I appeared to be eating boobs at one point in time ...) and of the horse going wild at the beach. Mario also knew I'm kinda into photography, so he very nicely obliged and sent me 2 DVDs containing all the original shots (some 600 of them, I believe) in TIFF format so I can edit and print as I want to - which is very professional and kind of him, as most of the local photographers I know only return you a selection of shots.

Finally, the invites are completed! Many thanks to HY's mum, Wei, Xuan and last but not least, HY! Everybody chipped in, and they couldn't have been done so nicely and so quickly if not for everyone's efforts. Haha, I finally realised yesterday, what a klutz HY is at handicraft. Can't even cut in a straight line even though I already printed out the line for him to follow! Wow. Hey, but he made up for it with his lovely handwriting, which is exactly what I lack.

Finally collected my shirt! Quite pleased with it.