Post Wedding 3: Families & Friends (Part One)

I know by now so many of you are itching to see the photos and I cannot release them on Facebook yet because I haven't post them here.

So perhaps I shall do a post on the guest list now.

This was the hardest part of planning a wedding.

It does not matter if you have paid RM20,000 for a team of wedding planners to plan the perfect wedding for you because this is the one thing that both you and your partner has to do.

First, you will sit with your parents respectively and discuss on the family side invitations. Which tier and which generation are you to choose to draw that line? How many tables do you actually need to accommodate just your family members?

Then, you move onto your colleagues, friends and et cetera.

The headache for us is that we want to invite as many family members and friends that we can because we value each and everyone of you. Having all of you with us on the biggest day of our lives means so much but due to budget, we can only have so many.

So, here's an apology if you did not make it to the list and know that it's not because we don't like you. It's just we don't have enough seats for all. We're sorry. Please don't stop talking to us okay.

As much as I love being with little humans, we would not afford to invite them to our dinner because the cost is just way too much and since we'll be serving wine all night, we also thought that it will be a good night for all parents to have some sort of 'date-night' :)

With that being said, please know that for those who made it to the list, you all are very special and important to the both of us so cherish that. Hah.

We had two sessions - church ceremony in the morning and wedding reception dinner at night.

Most of those who were not in the dinner list were invited to our ceremony in the morning and some of those on the dinner list made it to the morning list too.

Perfecting the guest list was an ongoing effort, right till the night before the big day.

I remembered we came home from a family + bridesmen hangout at Macallum and mom sat down st the dining table and checked through the guest list again to only notice that 2 people who were already invited not seen in the table listing!

I STRAIGHT PANICKED BECAUSE THE TABLE LISTING WAS ALREADY COMPLETE AND PERFECT.

 I may have let our a short scream. Hah.

So, at 12am on Friday (wedding next day morning), I sat down with Vanessa at the dining room and brainstormed on the seating plan. I was not willing to open another table just to slot 2 people in. Then again, it was my mistake for overlooking the list.

Somehow, we managed to arrange and everything seemed perfect again and I had like 5-hours sleep. Adrenalin already started to pump in that time. I was going to marry my best friend please. Forever stuck with him. Hah.

Ultimately, we really want all our guests to enjoy the wedding and have fun. That's why we decided to pay RM6,000 for Jazzhats to play 3 sets of 45 minutes that night. It was way over our 'entertainment' budget but after a lot of debates and discussion, we realized now that it was worth every cent. Too bad Jazzhats didn't want to extend their time that night considering all our guests were having so much fun on the dance-floor.

So yes, here's all the photos that was captured during the morning church ceremony and wedding reception dinner at night. They are all placed randomly okay and there's a lot of them so take your time :)

Thank you all for coming and being a part of our happily ever after. For those who have wished us on Facebook and Snapchat, thank you for your well-wishes all your congratulations! We're very blessed to be surrounded by all you humans :)

Part two will come soon with all the group photos.

Bye now. 

Post-Wedding 2: Flowers.

I realized now that I have so many posts that is overdue and happened like more than 2 months ago, so here I am trying my best to squeeze all the brain juice that's left to speed it all up. Heh. 

I will admit that for the first time in my life, I pinterest-ed "perfect wedding flowers" just about less than 3 months before the wedding. I am not a flower kind of girl and if everything were up to me, there would be no flowers seen on the bid day. Hah. But Koay wants some flowers so okay. 

There are so many great photos on Pinterest but I only had my eyes on roses and baby breaths. 

I didn't really like how the combination of both flowers are like, so that means I had to choose one. 

I really like roses, and I really like baby breaths and I really don't want to combine both, not separately or together in a bouquet. 

After quick thinking (since flowers could cost a bomb in weddings), I decided to go for baby breaths. Roses are expensive but I've learnt through this wedding that baby breaths are equally as expensive, if not more. They are apparently seasonal, so yay to us that we're in their season! 

For other flowers-decoration-purpose, I left that decision with Uncle Phillip because his eyes is far better than mine. So, what he says, we'll go for it. 

My flower-related-decision was only on my main bouquet, flower-girls headpiece and what my maids were going to hold as they walked down the aisle before me. Once upon a time, I pictured each of them holding one KFC drumstick instead of mini bouquet of baby breaths, serious I kid you not. 

But I really like roses too okay seriously and I would need some kind of 'things' to be thrown at the newlyweds after they till death do us part and walk down the aisle together. 

Why not rose petals then, the brain thought. Heh. 

So yes, in the end, I managed to have both roses and baby breaths on our big day. Win all. 

All my baby breaths bouquet were handmade by a dear friend of Uncle Phillip who is no longer an active florist as she's now a proud and busy grandmother of 2 :) Thank you Aunty Louisa! She also gave us one (1) big bag of different colored rose petals that I feel have helped soften the wedding decoration :)

The way the baby breaths were tied together was inspired by Pinterest of course and it was perfect :)

Here are some photos of the baby breaths and rose petals that were captured beautifully :)

Here's a quick tip on how you can save cost on flowers. I always feel that spending so much on flowers very useless because they will die at the end of the day and they are just a one-day-thing for the decor. There are so many other things that you can use to substitute the flowers, like umm.. Okay, maybe you cannot really replace flowers with anything else that gives the similar feel, but you can strategically choose/use them. Here's what I learn from my wedding. 

Choose flowers that you can use for the lunch/dinner reception. 

For me, it was easy because I re-used all the baby breaths' bouquet. I did not want to carry my bridal bouquet anymore so we transformed that into a headpiece that my amazing makeup artist, Sam used and did for my hair. 

For the mini bouquets, we took out bits and pieces of it and lay it on the reception tables. Same goes with the petals. 

Write down on a paper

For my case, I bought too little. Heh. I missed out one baby breaths head-piece for Vanessa, so if you see properly right, instead of a headpiece, she only had a few pieces of baby breaths on the side of her head. Heh. 

I should have written down all the names of those who will be involved with the flowers and what they are supposed to receive, but lazy me just remember all in the head. Padan muka I. 

In your case, you could end up paying extra for the 'too much' so be more hardworking than me okay. 

Discuss with the groom-to-be

This one helps a lot. 

I feel men with their "MONEY IS FIRST PRIORITY" focus, they are someow able to talk us into getting flowers only when its necessary. 

Like the whole idea of not having roses and baby breaths together was his idea actually. He thought that it would save a lot of $$ and he was indeed right. 

He would asked me questions like, "You really want them together?" or "Do you think that maybe you actually just like one?"

Questions that made me think deeply. Heh. 

So ladies if I may, discuss this with your huz-to-be for they may say something that made sense once in a while. Hah. Thank you Hun :) 

I hope you will have a great time planning your big day, be it a wedding, 21st birthday or a get-together party. It's all good :)

Bye now.

Our Little Love Nest.

Our room is obviously already 100% live-able since we've been staying in here for more than a month - close to 2 months now. I somehow forgot to post on the final product because of all the hoo-haas on the wedding.

Anyways, while waiting for me to finish choosing the wedding photos (and upload them here) and a wedding video, here's a perfect time to show you guys how our little comfort zone looks like now.

There is only one problem though.

Ever since the new set of wooden furniture were moved in, our room has this kind of smell that is not all too bad but it isn't very pleasing to the nose either.

We have tried using all kind of make-the-room-smells-good-method like heating up the fragrant oil using a mini bowl thing, used Lampe Berger, used fragrant sprays and leaving the room door open with fan switched on whole day.

BUT ALL ALSO CANNOT GET RID OF THE SMELL.

It has some sour-y smell with wooden and it's been there since we moved in.

If anyone of you knows of anything that can help us get rid of the smell, PLEASE LET US KNOW! We are very desperate.

So, besides the whole smell thing, our love nest is perfect.

The bed is obviously the most comfortable thing in the room. The moment anyone lies down on it, confirm you get good sleep okay. The other day we lay Daryl down on the bed and he sleeps like a baby. Hah.

Without further ado, here it is.

Now that we've been in there for close to 2 months now, it's finally 98% complete with our little touches here and there. 

Let's see the before and after photos shall we. 

FROM THE MAIN DOOR

FROM THE (current) MAKE-UP TABLE

 FROM THE TOILET DOOR 

Our safe place :)

Bye now. 

Post Wedding 1: Fake Eyelashes.

We have thousands of photos to go through and select those that we like, so do bear with us as we find time to upload them okay.

Our first challenge was getting a laptop that has a DVD reader in it and we finally got to borrow an external DVD reader from the seven-months-to-go-groom-to-be, Nehemiah.

We have four CDs to copy all these images from, and boy so many photos to see!

While I wait for the photos to be copied over, I shall share with you guys girls/bride-to-be on this one thing that sort of bothered me during my wedding day.

Yes, it's exactly what the title says.

Fake eyelashes.

I do not wear fake lashes on normal days. I think in my entire life, I have only worn like for a few times only and other than the fact that they make your eyes feel heavier, they are actually fine.

On my wedding day, my makeup artist, Sam puts on the fake lashes on my eyes and it felt normal. As heavy as I remembered it would be.

It didn't bother me until when she puts on the veil over my head and face.

It was a struggle and the struggle was real.

I could not open my eyes when the veil was over my face. It was so difficult for me to open my eyes without my hands pushing the veil from the inside.

I cannot be pushing the veil from inside everytime I blink, right? Especially not when I walk down the aisle. The only way to handle this is not to blink as often.

The many years of cannot-blink-or-you-lose game with buddies finally have its use afterall. Heh.

So, that's basically what I did until the man opens my veil and I felt alive awake again.

My eyes were like half-closed most of the time okay! It's impossible to have my eyes opened normally because the veil was heavy on the lashes.

I even asked Sam to trim off some of the lashes because they were probably too long. She said if she were to cut some more, then my own real lashes would be gone too.

G.

You see the photos below and you will know what I mean.

Those long eyelashes. This version that she gave me was supposedly the shortest version and I wanted shorter so that it will look more realistic. 

Once the veil goes down, my eyes went down too. Hah. 

Brides who have been through this, I feel you, and for brides to be, I don't know what is the solution to this. I'm sorry. 

I had to tilt my head down so that I don't feel the pressure of the veil pressing towards my eyelids, that actually made me feel as though the fake lashes were going to fall off.

Or I had to tilt it higher than normal if I want to look at people's face or the screen during worship, or Ben when he was sharing. I got photos to prove this point, but I'll just share one. Hah.

Oh, and I did mention about it being heavy right? So, some photos, you can actually see my eyes like half-opened but the truth was I was trying so hard to make my eyes fully-opened. G. 

I dare not move when the fake lashes were not touching the veil, but that made my neck hurts so boo. 

Look at this photo below! My eyes were like half-closing already. So are Vanessa's. Maybe she sleepy la. 

Oh look! She slept already! Tough being the maid of honor okay please. Or maybe her fake lashes also too heavy for her eyes already.

Okay she's awake already. 

HAHAHA. 

I wouldn't recommend fake lashes to brides la, but then again, without it, your eyes won't look bigger so I also don't know what to do. 

 I cannot.

I looked at photos that shows my eyes like that I wanna pengsan!

The first thing I did when he lifted up my veil was I touched my lashes to make sure it doesn't come off with the veil. That would be a disaster!

Imagine the fake lashes stuck on the veil when he opens them. It would be a story to tell though. Hah.

So, here's a little sharing to spare me more time to sort out the photos and upload them sooooon.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Bye now.