My Once-in-a-lifetime - Page 3
Flowers to any guys I think are not important as to us girls. Especially when we want to have the perfect wedding, we just leave no chance to mistakes. When Wei and I were dating, he never bought me any flowers. Not on Valentine’s Day or on my birthday, okay, he did gave me a fake flower before but that is not counted!
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This was my present for one of the Valentine’s Day where he tried to propose to me but failed.
Nevertheless, I wanted loads and loads of flowers to decorate our wedding. I think my husband just balked at the prices of the flowers. So since we are having green and white theme, I am going to find flowers on those two colours.
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With white flowers, I think it is the easiest to choose, it is either a white rose or a white lily for me. Although white lily in chinese means "One hundred years in harmony", I think my husband might be allergic to its pollen.
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In order not to take any chances, we opt in for the white rose. So alluring!
Now for the green flowers.
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I think I have mentioned before that both our mothers are very important to us so in Chinese, a carnation represent a mother's love.
That is what we are going to have! A green carnation!
 "Green carnation wedding bouquet")
You may think it look weird, paired together but in fact, it looks perfect! At least to us.. Haha!
 "White rose wedding bouquet")
The final product and as you can see, our wedding is decorated with the same flowers all over!
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We are going to have a sit down buffet at the lawn with our tables being set up by the vendors. At first, I wanted a picnic wedding lunch but the vendor advices us not to do so because we can’t control the weather and if the night before it rains, I will have guests sitting on the ground! Instead he advice us to use a tent with temporary table set up inside. But he couldn’t come up with additional decorations for us due to our limited budget hence I had to go and research online with the help of Kong, of course. He had graciously loan us his laptop so I could surf online in the comfort of my own home instead of having to go to a Internet café all the time.
My chosen decoration pieces ~ Yes! We bought them all!
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First stop, the back of the chairs! We don't want a plain old white chair so to add in a dash of green, we had the vendor tied in a green ribbon.
 "Wedding signs")
Table numbers is very important not to cause confusion among the guests, so we order this here:
https://item.taobao.com/item...
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Link:https://item.taobao.com/item...
Look how nice the miniature green trees are!! We placed that on each of the tables.
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Link:https://item.taobao.com/item...
Then for some cheeky fun, we ordered some paper carousel to decorate the table and make it as a talking piece!
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Link:https://item.taobao.com/item...
We ordered about 380 pieces of the box for us to put in chocolates for our guests and we packed in extras for those who couldn't turn up for our wedding.
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And to reward those who really made an effort to turn up for our biggest day in our life? We gave back two little cute salt and pepper pea pods to remind them we are two peas in a pod! Cute, right?
I think this is the part where both of us enjoy the most in our wedding planning. Food tasting!! As we are both big foodies and we are so particular about food. So we waited at the vendor’s office with much anticipation before he brought us to the restaurant that is going to assist in catering the food to us. Wei remembered going to a distant cousin’s wedding in Jiangsu before and the food was so horrible, it was barely palatable. It was either the food has no taste or it was overloaded with MSG that he had to wash the food down with beer at each bite. In the end, he and some of the wedding guests left the premises early in search of food down the street. We don’t want that to happen to us!!
The restaurant seems quiet for a weekday dinner night. Quite a lot of food just for the two of us! Immediately, we quickly called Kong to join us for the food tasting too since there are so much food.
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This Golden Pork Ribs in Honey Mustard Sauce.. Very sweet, very tasty! Three of us love it!
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This is called the Yuan Yuan Man Man Meatball soup, it means "Full Circle (Harmony)". Its a bit bland for my husband and myself so we asked to change to another soup.
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I love this "Double Fish Head Stew"!! It is very tasty and we all finished leaving only the bones.
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Since my stomach can't take anything spicy, Kong and my husband finished up this "Spicy Red Hot Crab" between the two of them. They gave thumbs up.
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This is one of my favourite dish "Chicken in Shaoxing Wine and Soya Sauce".
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This is Green Peppers with beef. The beef slices are so tender, it just melt in your mouth. The peppers are very fresh and crunchy too.
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The potato slices are crunchy as well. They just need more colour for this dish otherwise, it looks so dull.
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The Golden Abalone is the restaurant's speciality and it is really delicious. Not too sweet nor too salty, with the freshness of the cucumber, the balance on the taste bud is just right.
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The Golden Jumbo Prawns with the sour mango and papaya salad is our last dish! Phew! This is good but I only managed to sneak a bite, the rest of the prawns were down by Kong. Even my husband surrendered when we got to the potato slices dish. Haha!
Searching for the right photographer is pretty hard because there are too many selections! We visited a few studios and end up, my husband just left the decision to me with a comment “as long as they make you beautiful and happy, that’s all I want.” Instead, my husband concentrates on his work as he recently got promoted! So Kong and me went for more studio research, we kept getting mistaken that we are a couple, haha!
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This studio is very professional but it is too expensive for us. I really like the way their photographers style.
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This one is looks so dodgy we ended up pretending to pass by, we didn't even go in even though I had called up earlier to make appointment.
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This photography studio is also very professional looking, their staff is very nice and polite but too bad, they are unable to serve us on our wedding date as their photographers are fully booked on that day. According to them, it is a popular date for weddings.
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So we skipped to another nearby studio to only find that it is closed for the day..... Too bad.
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This is the place we finally settled down for because their photos are beautifully taken and they seems to be very popular with online recommendations, importantly, their packages are reasonable and well valued.
The importance of having a reception table at a wedding is to allow your guests to identify whose wedding and also to mark the arrival of the guests. So in my opinion, this is one area I don’t think we should take likely of, especially since it will be the first impression that our guests will have. Together with my husband and the vendor, we came up with a list of items to decorate the reception table following our colour theme closely.
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Link:https://item.taobao.com/item...
First, a sign to let all our guests knows that this is the reception table.
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This is another of our decorations that I love very much, this idea was suggested by one of my husband's colleagues!!
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This is our guest book for our guests to write down their wishes and blessing to us.
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This pair of cute bears are actually present to us by my mother-in-law and she is so sweet!!
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We bought like 10 photo frames to decorate the reception table and now the photo frames sits about our house with our photos.
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This is the end results, mainly thanks to my vendor's provides extra flowers to brighten up the table even though our package did not include it in. He said it is a gift from him for being such a nice couple. Awww!
So I have the duty to get the thank you gifts for my helpers while my husband is in charge of getting for the emcee (who is his uncle) and Kong who is our best man. For me, I’ll need to source for my bridesmaid and my two flower girls. In addition, I want to sneak a pleasant surprise to buy something for my mother and my mother-in-law. My husband doesn’t know this and I am not putting it on our budget list because I want to surprise him. I know how much it means to him that I get along with his family especially his mother.
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For the younger flower girl, I know she loves the movie Frozen so I got her this with Elsa picture inside. Her mother told me she loves the watch so much, she even wore it to sleep!
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Link:https://detail.tmall.com/item...
For the older flower girl, I bought her a similar pink watch but this time it is Hell Kitty which she is a fan for many years. Even her bedsheets are Hello Kitty.
 "Wedding headpieces, veils, cover-ups & brooches")
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Link:https://item.taobao.com/item...
This is for my bridesmaid and since she is born in the month of July, the red symbolises ruby that is her birthstone.
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Link:https://item.taobao.com/item...
These two are the bags that I bought for my mother and mother-in-law. They both love it very much especially my mother who refuses to use it even today and kept it in a nice cloth bag to preserve it. She said, "It is the last present from my daughter who is still single."
One of the most important elements in a wedding is the bridal gown.
This is something I anticipate eagerly yet hesitant. It’s like choosing your wedding gown has some kind of finality to it. Like I am all grown up now and no longer my daddy’s girl. How is it like to entrust your whole life happiness to only one man and to be with him for better or worse?
It is sometimes a daunting thought that I am going to entrust my happiness to Wei, but don’t get me wrong, I love him to bits. I am very sure he is the one I want to spend the rest of my life with, just that the thought of changing my surname to follow his, still gives me the goosebumps.
Nevertheless, I had fun choosing my wedding gown with a group of girlfriends and my mother. We had such a huge entourage that the bridal shop had to clear some customers who are browsing to accommodate us. Haha!
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This is the first bridal studio I went to and they let me try on their latest wedding gown just arrived two days ago, not yet tried by anyone else. I like it but my mother thinks it is too simple.
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At the same shop, I tried on another piece which the shop assistants commented that it is their award winning piece but I don't really like the way, my tummy kept protruding out.
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This is another one I tried on which my girlfriends says I look very pretty in it.
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We tried about 3 studio shops in total and the last one I tried is the above one which I think compliments me the best plus the shop is having great promotion now and their prices are really reasonable, they even throw in hair accessories and such! So below photo is the actual day effect of the gown on our wedding day.
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After choosing my bridal gown, it is time to choose his tux. But Wei refuses to allow me to tag along no matter how I plead. He says he want it to be a surprise for me when I see him for the time in suit. He and Kong went for suit fitting the whole of Saturday.
I think it is good for him to take a breather too; after all he has been busy liaising with the vendors on the decorations, working hard due to the extra responsibilities piled on him at work (sometimes it means he does not get home until midnight) and in additional, his mother was feeling under the weather. So I have been visiting his home with boiled herbal soup for my future mother-in-law, she refuses to be coax into seeing a doctor, saying that she will recover the next day.
My husband tells me that all old ladies are stubborn, then I retort him with “You better be prepared because I will turn into an old lady one day too.” He just laughed and ruffled my hair again.
Kong tells me that both of them went to a few tailors to try out the outfits and in different colours, different styles. He reveals that this is the first time he has seen Wei so vain, prancing in front of the mirror several times. Haha!
In the end, he chose the one below. I think he fits a black suit much better than a white.
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Every bride wants to look their best on her most important day of her life but I have heard horrible stories about how make up artist can make one look terribly frightening. I don’t want that to happen to me so for two days straight, I went to the nearby Internet café and started trolling the wedding forums online and searching for make up tips and pictures and any recommendation that I could have.
To my surprise, the wedding bridal studio actually has a better review on their make up artist than their gowns. Immediately, I called her and to my surprise, she is available on my wedding day because one of the couple pulled out on that day the day before. She asked that I drop by the bridal studio to have a chat with her.
I did within the same week and Lian (my make up artist) was very professional. She asked me to show her some of my research pictures and in turn, she shared her own collections as well.
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Initially, I narrowed down to this and the below korean make up references however, Lian advice me that darker share of red is not suitable for my face and it will make me look looker than my age.
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I also wanted something like the fresh dewy korean looks that are now the hottest trends but I am also skeptical that it will make me look very pale especially under the sunlight in an outdoor wedding.
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I also show Lian that I love this pair of eyes. Hence, she flipped through her collection album and showed me the below photos which are exactly what I am looking for! Dark emphasis on the eye yet softer dewy look on the cheeks and lips.
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While I have settled my make up with Lian, I still need to locate a hair stylist on that day. My make up artist recommends her colleague Shanie who is a freelancer for the bridal studio and a full time hairdresser at one of her own hair salon. Her charges are very reasonable, only to compensate her transportation and the products she used will be bought by me but no charge to her skills. Shanie mentioned she is doing bridal to increase her salon profile.
After meeting Shanie at her salon, I feel very confident that she is the one for me. She even got her staff to give me a free wash while we discussed on the hairstyle I want. Below are the few sample looks we went through.
 "Bridal hair and make-up")
I really like this because of it's sweet design but Shanie advices that I would have to sit for at least 2 hours for this hairdo to be perfect.
 "Bridal hair and make-up")
Shanie suggested this hairstyle for me but I don't really like it because it looks messy to me.
 "Bridal hair and make-up")
I prefer this however, I know my hair is not long enough to braid and twist.
 "Bridal hair and make-up")
I like this simple hairstyle. Very japanese, very quietly classic and clean looking. I reveal this to Shanie and it took her a while to find a photo of a hairstyle she did for me to reference.
 "Bridal hair and make-up")
Shanie suggested hair extension and we can go for this hairstyle. This probably means I have to pay extra for fake hair extension before the wedding! Hmmm....
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This is the hair I wanted, clean and simple to match my character. I know my husband won't want me to turn out differently from what he see in his daily life too. Can't wait as we are approaching our biggest day!!