Met up with our photographer, Chris Lim from Coffeestains photography, tonight over some Tully's coffee at West Coast Plaza. We looked through some of his works (which was partly unnecessary, given that we've more or less sieved through about a dozen photographers' works) and filled him in on the program. His style is just what we like - I suppose you could call it photojournalistic portraiture, but personally I dislike the word "photojournalism" and what many of these photographers claim to be doing. In addition, photojournalism seems to be the hip thing nowadays, much to the chargrin of certain groups of photographers. True, they tend to capture candid shots, but candid does not necessarily translate to flattering.

The total cost seemed a little alarming, but once you break it down I suppose it's actually quite reasonable. (Heck, tuition costs $60 an hour nowadays, and all they do is to sit there and talk!) We decided to do away with getting him to do an album for us, which would cost an additional $400 (!!). Instead, I'll probably do the touching up myself and if we ever decide to, I know just the place to get books printed. It's exactly where all the wedding photographers go to print their stuff anyway.

He's an interesting guy alright - as Yanxian puts it, a bit of the artistic sort. A little eccentric, a little autistic, and just not the normal sort of people we hang out with. I'll just have to email him tomorrow to let him know we would like to have him for 4 hours, and without the photo book. He'll go scouting at the venue himself beforehand, and I was favourably impressed that he bothered to turn up a little earlier tonight than he was supposed to.

Went to visit some of the girly forums (i.e. Cozycot) and came across some people who did wedding blogs too! But oooh ... theirs are much nicer, lol.

Anyway, we'll be meeting our photographer tonight just to discuss the details. I'm thinking of getting a relative to do the video, it'll be amateurish but heck. Or maybe I'll shop around again on ClubSnap.

We're bursting the invites list!! OMG. It was planned for 50, and currently the list stands at 62.

I'm finding things a little more manageable as the day draws closer - thankfully, most of the nasty things have already been done!

I had to go in to work this morning, but right after that we met up with my parents at Chinatown for a lovely lunch of frog's porridge, and went basket-shopping. We were fretting over the bridesmaids' floral baskets, and finally settled on 3 lovely-looking ones. We passed by a makeshift stall selling some seashells too, and I was really, really tempted to get tonnes of them. But alas! (and thankfully!) I didn't have any cash on me. We later got down to buying some lace for Yanxian's ROM dress, and also went to Ocean to get a load of erm ... facial products for me. Remember I bought the men's range from L'oreal? It certainly worked, so I got more today! Cheap and good. And pampered myself with some Kerastase hair products.

We rounded up the evening by finishing the invites (yay!) together with Xuan and Wei, and Yanxian did something extremely nasty to me. Yes, they decided my eyebrows were too unruly for me to be wed, so they did a trial eyebrow-shaping for me. OUCH.

Well, there's been a lull in updates for the last week, so I thought I'd better do something about it. 

OK, I've been less-than-hardworking at updating this site. We managed to finish up doing the entire batch of bombonieres, so now all I'm left with for them is to get the vermiculite and seeds. Oooooh fun!!

Made a prototype of the invites tonight. It looked quite nice, but still lacks a woman's touch (hint hint) - it looks quite coarse.

Ah, something interesting. We went down for some bridal fair at Suntec last Saturday, together with Min Er and her beau. It was a useful experience. Firstly, those people are VULTURES. I absolutely detest them, if only for the fact that they are pushy, and untruthful. Like Bliss Bridal, these guys seriously dissed me. The effeminate man was going on and on and on, and pretended to give us extras on top of what the package offers. I glanced to the table next to us, and behold! They too received these apparent "extras"!



Also - maybe it's just me - but the photography services there were seriously not worth the money at all. They look like they were taken by an amateur with a DSLR and a rented studio.

To top it all, the gowns there were absolutely hideous. Why would anyone want to wear a dress that looks like it came out of "The Creepy Ballerina of Xmas Eve"? Anyway, I said it was a useful experience, as it at last convinced us that we don't need no package. We may (or may not) end up spending more dough, but I think a la carte is the way to go. BTW, Min Er signed up for a Taiwan photoshoot - I'm happy for her!

Made some progress today with the bombonieres, or what is more commonly known locally as favours. Although not common in solemnization ceremonies, we thought it would be sweet to give people a gift to thank them for the attendance. Not that we're spending a bomb on them - on the contrary, but I think our wedding is gearing towards as little wastage as possible. How many times have you brought one of those silly salt-and-pepper shakers home and dumped them in a corner (or in the bin)? And I still have a fruitcake-in-a-box rotting away after several months (I think. Could easily have been a year.)

We're making invites that can be re-used as bookmarks, and bombonieres that are fun - a spruced up bottle of seeds! Initially we wanted to use love-in-a-puff, but I only have 300 seeds which amounts to 6 per person - it'll only look silly - and it's a pretty uncommon plant so buying them will cost a bomb. Yanxian got hold of a hundred of these nice glass bottles, and she and my mom spent the evening tying pretty blue bows on them. I'm in charge of doing the seed mix, which will be mixed with vermiculite. Apart from looking pretty, the vermiculite will be soaked first in a concoction of vitamins etc so they can act as slow-release fertilisers. Right now I'm thinking of a whole list of stuff to mix, including balsam, love-in-a-puff, cosmos, zinnia, marigold, sunflower and a few surprises. Will be fun for people to grow them and see what comes up!

I just realised that this blog does not state the author who writes the entries. Ouch. An oversight on my part, it shall be fixed.

Spent yesterday at Ngee Ann City doing several things:

1) Collecting my suit
It finally fits!
We passed by G2K Black Label (essentially the same thing except apparently better materials) and saw some very, very nice cufflinks, and suits going at a steal - $130! Didn't have the luxury of time to browse though, so I'm not sure if they are just left with the odd sizes. Still .. the workmanship is quite decent, surprisingly.

2) Invites
Finally got hold of the materials for the invites, and we spent most of our time choosing and matching the things. Bear in mind though, that these are just the raw materials - making them into something usable is another thing altogether.

3) Shoes
Yanxian finally found some very nice shoes, at a very nice price! Yes, despite the common perception (I'm not even going to say "misperception") that Taka's shoes are expensive. There was a range though, that used real Swarovski crystals on the shoes - now THAT's expensive. Pics to come soon - I didn't manage to do them justice.

Isn't it a strange coincidence that one of the PhD comics' characters is also getting married? Are they spying on us???

For the longest time ever, I actually skipped to lab happily on a monday morning, probably because of the very constructive chat last night with the guys. :) 

We met up with the guys last night at the Green Room Cafe, which serves vegetarian food. OK, for some odd reason I'm still ballooning up! Have decided to take only 1 meal a day and see if it works. It's very upsetting. Anyway, we got a lot done last night! =) Starting to feel really excited, lol. Weijian has very kindly consented to be our music guy as well, so we'll be having a clavi there! I just hope, in Yingkai's words, that the benign tumour does not turn malignant. I was really surprised to learn of the re-entry, but it sounds really cool.

The afternoon was ealier spent at the RSYC, where we met the GM Gary. So yeah, it's decided that we'll use both the indoors and outdoors area - outdoors for the ROM ceremony, and later adjourn in for the dinner with 3 long tables. Stuff to settle for venue will be the decor.

Ah, tonight went quite well. I was fretting slightly during the day, especially as it surfaced 2 days ago that there might be political tensions, quite literally. We had a very pleasant 7-course dinner at Mandarin Hotel's Pine Garden restaurant, and the chef as usual came out to shake our hands. It's my first time meeting this guy though, who - I must say - is extremely talented. Under normal circumstances I would never dream of touching fusion Chinese food, but he really outdid himself this time. The first course was yu sheng, but it was no ordinary one. The entire dish was coated in edible gold flakes, and there was the distinctive aroma of truffle oil in it. I was impressed. I loved the addition of the coconut flesh particularly - it was daring, creative, and went very well with the dish. The highlight of the night though (I felt, strongly) was this vintage 1988 Chateau - probably the 2nd or 3rd best wine I've ever tasted. The nose was light and refined, with a very rich bouquet of aged french oak and a delicate cranberry finish.

In any case, I think it went better than both of us could have hoped for, and that's good enough for now.

Been a little quiet these days, as we are quite busy with work and whatnot, and most importantly, we're actually busy dealing with the nastier aspects of this rather than the fun shopping. I headed down to Yanxian's on Wednesday (post-call, no less!) to 拜年, and cleared up some of our intentions. Her father thought we were planning to pass off the ROM reception as the actual banquet! Eeeeks .. it's the first time I'm meeting her dad since we returned, and of course there were some slightly awkward questions. The parents will be meeting tonight, which is again another scary part. Arghhh. OK, let's hope they see eye to eye and agree to everything we want - for the ROM, at least.



For the venue, we've tentatively booked the RYSC 2nd floor deck. Shall have to meet the GM this Saturday or so to discuss the nitty-gritty. It would be heaven if we also had access to the restaurant itself.

Finally, HY has decided that I get to say some things too! 

Happy CNY!!

We went down to Arab Street again today for the Swarovski crystals, but alas! The shops weren't open yet! Ended up making a detour to Beads@Work at Holland V for some faux pearls and miscellaneous.

The other great thing we got today was a deal on a load of shells.

Ah, got most of the costume stuff settled. Over the long weekend, we visited Arab street and got a nice scarf - not to wear on the head (I keep thinking of Lady Gaga)/shoulders but to cut up and stitch into Yanxian's ROM gown. Remember the Celia Loe gown? It's amazingly flattering for Yanxian, but unfortunately the plunging bustline isn't quite appropriate for ROM. She's thinking of putting the veil-like material in there.

We're also cutomising the decorations on the dress ourselves! Going to Arab Street again today, this time to get some Swarovski crystal beads to spruce up the dress and shoes, and to make the hair ornaments.

Headed down to Raffles Arcade yesterday with Aaron, to try and see if we can get some shirts done. Unfortunately the people at CYC were quite disgusting in terms of service, like they can't be bothered. Whatever. We didn't take a second look, and went straight to Peninsula shopping centre instead where I ended up getting a nice blue Egyptian cotton shirt.

Yanxian just brought back from her lab 100 glass bottles to be used as bombonieres! How very smart ... it sure saves on cost, and on a lot of headache. We were thinking of using love-in-a-puff seeds in them, but the ones I have aren't quite enough. We just planted several seeds, hopefully they'll produce seeds soon enough?

Ah, we took a short break off serious planning for the weekend, as I was just too drained. OK, the only major thing we have to deal with for now is the venue. We're looking at the RSYC venue as I mentioned, due to the good deal we're getting from them. Had a quick survey of the place on Saturday, and it seems that the outside area that we're looking at may be a tad too small.

What I'm actually looking to do is to have both the air-conditioned area and the outside verandah as well. The air-con area will be laid with eating tables in small groups, each seating 4-6 people, while the outside portion will strictly be for the ceremony. Dad had strange ideas though, of using the outside for both.

I was post-call yesterday, but stayed around till 5pm to meet our Justice of Peace, Prof Low. It was quite an enjoyable affair, although at one point in time it got slightly alarming when Prof Low forgot he had written my name down. He has another engagement after our though, so he probably won't be able to stay. Shame.

We finally bought Yanxian's dress today! We headed down to Delphi again straight after work, and checked out Amanda Lee which was having a sale. They did have gorgeous wedding gowns though, but not that much of ROM dresses. What really caught my eye was a gold-trimmed lace gown and a voluminous pink gown, but then again these are the actual gowns with trains, which was not what we were looking for.



Celia Loe proved to be the winner. There was this bitch in there who was HOGGING the change room!

12 Jan 2009 - written in retrospect, as my net connection went down.

Had a bit of a brainwave this morning while driving to work, about using Disney's Fantillusion as a march-in piece. Haha .. a little too fairytale-ish.

After work we celebrated XW's birthday, then headed out again. This time, to Amanda Lee Bridal at Delphi as they were apparently having a 30-70% sales. Alas! We were too late, they were closed by the time we reached there. Had the chance to view a few more wedding boutiques there, but I thought the men's jackets were just so-so. True, most of them had the kind of lapel I wanted, but the cut was a tad ugly.

Slightly disappointed, we drove a short way over to Centrepoint. This time it was to view the collection at Celia Loe, but eeeeeeks. It was the wrong branch - this one sold mostly auntie-ish stuff! We were advised to go to the one at Vivocity instead. There was this VERY nice men's tailor, Milan men's boutique, which stocks the nicest fabrics. However, they were PRICEY. Has anyone spent $1800 on an office shirt yet? In any case, Robinson's was having a most fantastic sale. Shit, I went home with loads of CNY stuff instead of wedding things.