Still a bachelorette!

Imagine the embarassment of having to walk through Orchard Road as a rabbit, post Halloween, and feeling the stares! (>.<)"

 But HEY! You dont get cute ang mohs come up to you to steal those bunny ears every day y'know?!

To make life even lovelier, we got a free upgrade to the President Suite during the staycation! The girls who made it possible - see below - and awaiting their karma :D

Wedding Montage - Childhood

The bridal shop agreed to help us do up our 'growing up' montage. N & I get to choose 20 photos altogether. So I flipped through the collection of photo albums the other day...My, how precious are these memories!!!

One of my earliest girl friends, Mag! :)

We were supposed to attend each other's wedding but sadly, it is a chinese taboo to attend any white or red events within 100 days of our own wedding :( So sad I couldnt get to witness the start of a new life journey of a childhood friend...But I ll definitely make it for the shower! :)

Indoor shoot

 We didnt really fancy an indoor shoot and wanted to just go all out for an outdoor one with the the nature, the birds and the trees. We were even contemplating one with the fishes but the technical resources werent that readily available - the best we found was a snorkel shoot but N didnt quite like the photo finishing from said studio. We wanted to wedding photos to be as real-life as possible without looking too poseur-ish. I even wanted a trishaw shot because that was a daily ride in part of my childhood!

Posing in front of some made-up background of chandeliers/colored canvases on some kind of victorian sofa/stools while staring dreamily at something placed at a 45 degree angle to the camera just didnt appeal to me. I think I can still live with made up backgrounds and the fancy chairs of sorts.. It actually is the 45 degree imaginery object in the studio that gets to me. O_o" Even if the photo is supposed to depict the level of love the couple has - Oh we are soooo in love, we can stare dreamily in the same direction because we are blissfully drowned in L.O.V.E. *sigh* Seriously there has to be a better way to portray LOVE! What's there to see that is 45 degree to your right inside a studio huh? Not like there could be a bird or a rainbow or a dolphin right? 

So we all along just wanted to go for the candid options of an outdoor shoot. But N really wanted to don on an oriental suit, and me, a fairytale suit. We actually just wanted to jump into one each for a quick shot before setting off to the beach for our outdoor shoot. But the studio offered us another Saturday for an indoor shoot :) yay! to another day of looking fabulous in my long eye lashes. huh huh. So we were in the studio 1 week before the shoot to choose the gowns! That's how efficient  ;) 

Since we already had the desired styles in mind, it didnt take long to sieve out what I want - after stepping in and out of about 10 gowns in the chingchong and dreamy styles, I picked out 2 favorites!

Some of the photos I secretly snapped in my 30 sec alone time in the dressing room for each dress before I call out for help with the zippers ;p

In the CHING CHONG style 

In the DREAMY style 

Scheduling 2 photoshoots within a week from each other + not born with the natural talent of posing = Super tired and I think we did succumb to the photographer's calling to look 45 degrees to our right without putting up a fight. OMG! But that's like the simplest and most idiot proof pose! whahaha! So I guess I better eat my words right now in case I end up selecting some of those very superficial photos for our wedding album! Heh.

::Wedding Preps:: BRIDAL SHOES

Bridal heels guide

So the FB's not only good for archiving good wines for SOS help when you are cluelessly flipping through the wine company's pages of wine menu. So funny how D flicked out her iphone for that bottle and we tried to play matching game with German words. For me, it has served SOS purposes in life-threatening circumstances such as a pre-dive menstrual visit :D And now, pre-wedding photoshoot bridal shopping!!!!

After a quick shoutout on FB for guide to where to buy bridal shoes! And Anna Nucci was having a 30% storewide sale!! Couldnt decide between the two....so...... *shrugs* As they always say, once a lifetime!

We ARE building a 1.5m by 2.55m shoe cabinet anyway... =P  

 

Love the heart-shaped trinklet hanging by the side of the shoe :)

Loves mushy details like that :):)

Life's grumbles

You know how when you are free, you are really free for the whole day because nobody asks you out. But when you are not free, everybody seems to want to go out.

Here's my schedule for coming Saturday. O_o" 

Sadly...we ve gotto skip the joyous celebration of Char's housewarming and Beth's first month. That would still leave us some in-between breathe time. And YES! I am finally staking my claim over this year's Valentine's Day present!! :) Perfect Eyesight!! Am gonna kiss The Bag goodbye though, but I can definitely give up a bag for a chance to see the world clearly! 

Gotta save that moohlah for things in Our Home! We ve shortlisted a door system and the decking wood type for our balcony. That's gonna burn a hole in our pockets..

Over to the real wedding preps, nothing much has been done in the month of March except for shortlisting a bedframe and (still) trying to do up the guestlist.

We are pretty much stuck at the guest list stage because we've ran out of tables!!! :( This happens when you dont have a draft guest list up before booking the venue...but 400 is already A LOT of people! If we could have things done our way, a banquet would definitely not be on our list. I would prefer a garden or a beach buffet wedding, anytime, or none at all to save the hassle. 

We might possibly not be able to accomodate all our friends and collics...it will be easier to host an announcement dinner over at Our New Home with them rather than with the parents' friends and relatives. Negotiation is still in progress. I am keeping my fingers crossed on this. x_x

Work in progress

A quick fixie last night after our movie date ;p
Got a pair of Draw-it-Yourself beary banks a while ago from a gift shop. It comes with a marker for you to draw on anything you want... Both of us will get to decorate our own bears.

But I had chio-er ideas for her... I finally found the time to dress her up using my own tools last night.
Bought her a pair of eyes, twisted a garland of flowers for her crown and gave her a wedding veil :)
I am still trying to think of the outfit..

A major problem though....the man's no good in craft! Wait till you see his bear! LOL!!

Opposites Attract

Our DIFFERENCE

Love is about learning and appreciating tiny details in life and accepting your differences. N is not the sweetest bf on earth. It took me a long time to teach him mannerism of a gentleman, O_o" and I am still not enjoying the fruit of my labour. Perhaps that flower never bloomed.

But if you learn to look beyond these more apparent loving acts like opening the car door, holding the door before it slams into your face, slowing down the pace knowing that you are trying to balance on a 3 inch stiletto while trying to avoid every crack on the wooden plank walk, and appreciate the more intrinsic acts of love, you will realise that HEY! life's not so bad after all!

I appreciate how he d always let me have the first bite of food, willingly trade his apparently yummier choice of food for mine, order my hot kopi on top of his ice cold canned drink - all these are little acts you tend to overlook in life. But the consistent pursue to be treated like a princess (that's for him to give you gentlemanly treatment) often clouds your judgement of your other half. I have (kinda) resigned to fate, though that doesnt mean I will stop grumbling (disclaimer first!!).. I guess men's partially the reason why women become grumpy and naggy. If only they would LEARN!

That aside, we realise that we do have alot of differences. But that just further shows how much we were made for each other.

About a month ago, N and I had a conversation over the financial/logistic planning of the wedding and the house. He drew out a very rough but sensible idea of the proposed timeline for each major purchases and gave me a very good speech in a very.....urm....marketing way. You know, like, we hope to conquer the Msia market by June with 30% of total sales and the Indonesian market by November with 60% of total sales kinda talk. I agreed with all that he said.

A month later, while doing up the budget planning for the whole wedding with our savings/earnings/available resources, I did a projected cash flow for each individual purchases (down to individual household item details), bearing in mind the payment terms (instalments, 50-50, completion) we would be given and the assets that would be maturing at different points in time. I quickly called him and told him about MY plan. And he asked me,

"Why are you repeating what I said to you a month ago????" 

Heh. I didnt realise I was actually parroting after him in MY own way. The accountancy-trained way... ;p

This is also the same man who has been allocated the childhood montage's job but who has cleverly 'subcontracted' it out to SG Bridals O_o" Now I think I should allocate him one of my to dos - bouquet or ang bow box or corsage!

January Updates

THIS

can pay for our wedding expenses

can pay for an all expenses paid Europe trip + the bag I desire and maybe more

can pay for our renovations (all furnitures included)

can pay for the COE of our new ride!!

January has been fabulous and I am grateful for the blessings! We just secured our new ride last evening. It was a tough decision between owning a coupe for a honeymoon couple vs owning a 7-seater for family building. At this point in time, 11 months away from our wedding and any potential family building (with His blessings), we thought a 7-seater would have been great. But that means we will never be able to own a coupe until we are old and toothless and saggy, when the kids have grown up... how many times have u seen a chio car whiz past with the roof down only to see a balding old ah pek behind the wheels?! ;p N doesnt want to look like that. We are only youthful once! So YAY! to our FIRST (and perhaps the last) 2 door ride!

And anyway, a Honda Stream or a Toyota Wish is worth as much as a Continental Coupe, and MORE than a Continental 7-seater now. It isnt wise to get the Japanese 7-seater at the moment.

We also sold my 2-wheels ride in mid Jan.

This chio-ster fetched a whopping $480!! (down $20 from the $500 cos we wanted the lady to take a cab home. Riding alone through Mandai at 9pm isnt exactly very safe with the dark streets). Lucky we bite on to our base price and refused to let go to the many offers at $200-$250 only. O_o"

We also rendered half a day of help last weekend for an event organised by the Parkinson Disease Society of Singapore (PDSS) at TTSH. The disease is basically a brain disorder which affects smooth and coordinated functions of the muscles. Patients suffering from the disease have stiff facial expressions (sometimes they STARE, but they dont intentionally mean it), walks with a shuffle, have slow movement, have difficulty balancing and have muffled speech. 

Research is still ongoing on the prevention, diagnosis and cause of the disease. It is heartwarming to know that there are these dedicated people who care. 

I have always been the wimp with an uncontrollable tear duct. Maybe it is a cancerian trait. Seeing the toothless old man selling tissue laugh heartily makes my heart wrench. I knew I was in for a free-flow when I agreed to go help out. But seeing the zest for life some of them have, and the selfless love from their family members they got, I knew I was in no position to cry. Something held those tears back.

I guess I made the right choice by agreeing to go volunteer half a Saturday. It opens up an inner enlightenment towards life. And money cant buy such experience.

Later on that day, I kinda rescued a poor maltese at Sinaran Drive. It was wandering around by itself outside the private houses. Bearing in mind the JUST DO IT motto I have set for myself for 2011, we stopped the car and went down to check the doggie out. Carried him 3 houses down before a maid spotted the dog and hurriedly claimed him back. O_o" MAIDS. 

Booked my bridal package with SG Bridal. We haggled quite a bit and got a pretty good bargain for Package B but eventually decided to pay for Package A instead. Cos we do not need 2 albums with 15 pages and 31 different poses EACH. The practical decision made in the nick of time! Although it means having one less outdoor scene at the Kota Tinggi waterfall...The album's just gonna seat under the bed next time anyway, we had to be rational. Paid the deposit for my MUA and got a FURTHER discount too!!! MUA pushed down her price by $76 in order to round the figure to a rounded sum! Who rounds DOWN figures to the nearest hundred and by so much?!

Grabbed hold of a CNY imperial robe for my little prince.

Oh my. How handsome is he!

But he is TOO FAT! Cannot button! So I trimmed down his fur (for 2 hours) last Saturday and forego a morning ride from ECP to Changi. The sacrifices mummies make for their babies..But I accidentally cut his balls O_o""

He was enjoying every bit of the blow-drying process. He fell asleep... Z.Z" and seemingly forgot about the cut on his balls. HEH. We went car shopping after that to final confirm our choice...

Tissue cost $2 for 5 packets last week. Inflation? ;p

Today's the last day of January 2011! CNY's here in 2 days' time! Wishing all a fruitful, loved, and blessed CHINESE NEW YEAR!!

Tissue counter: 25 (18+2+5)

Daisies

Got to love the vibrance!!

(For N's mum, who turns xxth today)

Girls JUST LOVE to receive flowers, no???? Although we all claim it is a waste of $$.

I lost about 600 calories last evening - that's about an hour's ride worth of lost. :)

But they have been restored DOUBLY over luncheon. *burrrrp*

Mouth Restaurant-ed again with all the high calorie (aka salted egg yolk) stuffs! I know. at this age, we all gotta watch our diet already... But heck. You should see how the cardiologists eat, those that I had the honour to dine with anyway. PORK BELLIES!! PIG SKINS!!! YEah.. and they are the people who help solve your artillery blockage. ;p

**BUUUUUURRRRRRRPPPPPP**

Some things are worth risking some calories for :)

***a peeka update of Murphy***

Loves how he seems to understand when he is the subject of photography. He'll just keep very still while you point your tool at him! SMART BOY!

And after googling sooo much about doggie tuxedo for my wedding, here's what I chanced upon at Daiso!! READ. S$2 shopwide!!!!

A BOWTIE!!

And Murphy sure knows how to strike a charming pose...

And I think he looks happy wearing it. That's his HAPPY face!

Strap is adjustable with blunt hooks at end. super dog-friendly! :)

Now I m  just left with his coat/tuxedo :):):)

Ring of LOVE 25 Dec 10

We got our wedding bands on Christmas 2010!

Had nothing much to do on Xmas Day and we decided to hang out around Yishun for a tee wee bit, largely drawn cos they have a Wendy's there! It was seemingly a weird place to hang out in cos we bumped into JacQ (and her fiance) inside Sookee and she exclaimed in astonished shock what were we doing there?!?!?! Apparently Yishun is not an IN hangout place ;p Maybe we are just 2 boring foggies, with one of us turning BIG 3! this year, and Orchard Road is getting toooo crowded and happening for us.. :)

Anyway, N decided to pop into Sookee while waiting for me his mighty, always fashionably late da xiaojie to arrive ;p and he kind of decided to buy SOMETHING, ANYTHING on the spot. We decided on something practical for everyday wear :)

AND it came with a FREE GIFT!!

Wedding band holders! I almost kicked myself in the leg for thinking about the wedding pillows SS had been tasked to SEW and for laughing at HIS poor plight. ok. It was very mean to be laughing at N's buddy. ;p But here we are, with a FREE wedding band holder, and there he is, a BIG MAN going to SEW his own pillow. Tell me, who wouldnt be laughing?!?!

HAHAHAHAHA!

Been researching quite a fair bit on the tiny details of the wedding. But nothing's firm up yet.

1. Murphy's coat!!

The smart and suave tux will look really cool! But am worried it ll be too hot and the material too stiff for him.

Something stretchy, soft and snug like this will be a bit more comfortable. Best if it is in cotton but I cant find anything like that yet..

This will look damn cool! He can be the little furry BEST MAN! I wonder if mum can make magic with her machine and fingers - do a whole cotton suit that looks this formal for him... hmmmm...

Can imagine him being EMO throughout though...It's not good to have a glum face at your wedding right?! ;p

Maybe something simple, like these, will do. He can prance around in his full soft and furry glory.

Life's full of choices - they just make your life complicated! HOW?!

2. Corsages

Most likely will be DIY-ing them. Am just thinking y corsages always need to have flowers and made in sucha way that they can only be worn once?

Obviously I cant wear them anywhere else after the wedding..

Something like this will be good. There is still a flower (clay one though) but can be worn as a costume jewellery too!

This would be PERFECT! Simple (yet elegant) for everyday use after the wedding!

Sure hope to get my hands on some materials and start creations soon! But with the numerous post-work commitments...and chronic nua-ness syndrome on days that do not have commitments....betcha this would take a while to commence... *YAWNS*

3. Hand Bouquet

We will be getting our bridal package from JB. So it would be quite troublesome to get my fresh bouquet from there. Seeking alternatives. Fake flowers, feathers, crystals will be fab and something different!

actually kinda like this feather, crystal, rosette combination

Cost quite a huge $$ to fly them in. So I will need to DIY.

But I dunno how to piece them into a ball at the crown?!

N asked me if I have been doing my homework for the wedding.. ALL THESE! and all these while, he only had ONE thing on mind - what should be our wedding car?

O_O"

That's why men are from MARS and women are from VENUS aint it? <3 

Brainstorming II - Sidetrack

In the midst of planning, but all the beautiful distractions taking me off the track! :p

NOW, wouldn't THESE make the perfect bouquets for a beach wedding?

And this, is so pretty!

But the thing is, we are not going to have a beach wedding! *heh*

But I sure hope to come up with some DIY stuffs for The Big Day! :)

Brainstorms

Been trying to do up some interior planning for the house to see what kind of extra expertise we may need to seek and Murphy's definitely in our plan. :)

It might be a little troublesome to transport him back to my house every morning though...but that's what most human babies' mothers do, no? Alternative is to get another tiny terrier to accompany him, which at the moment, doesnt seem too appealing.  x_x

I just lost a war to that little imp who refused to pee on the papers at home for CONSECUTIVELY 30 hours!!! Can you imagine he held all that pee so that he can go downstairs for a pee-walk?!?!?! Can you imagine my heartache for him to hold his pee any longer?!?! So I gave in. Pee-walks, back to normal. O_O" *sigh*

This is him early this morning, after holding his pee for 24 hours and looking very pitiful.

HOW NOT TO GIVE IN?

So back to my happier plannings (of cos Murphy is still included cos I still love him very much), I have many great ideas for our balcony! (yeah. only the balcony at the moment. haha! I gather I still have 4 months to gather our keys, and another 7 months to get it up, so I still have time)

Home will come with one helluva big piece of land-area for the balcony, in comparison to the total land-area ratio anyway. It ll be an open concept - no top grills, window panes, and with a sink-in planter across the far edge.

We can either:
1) pebble it up and plant some fake flowers (like showroom pic below)
2) Rear those tiny fishes for foot therapy (and charge all my friends $xx for coming for fish massage)
3) Board the floor up up

Of which, I found the 3rd option more desirable.

I like this! Can sit and nua with a cuppa and my book/mag/Ipad. Looks so cosy!

Or this! We can sit there and sip wines till we grow old, and our teeth drop and my boobs sag. Yeah, you roughly know the idea.

Or this! We can still sit there and sip wine, but this time with sunnier colors and ROCKING chairs!

Of course, our view will be different..

We will not be looking at mountains nor rivers nor the greens. Instead, we will be looking over a built-up concrete jungle.

So maybe we might just leave things simple back there. We can sip wines in the living room in front of the TV instead. Not to forget that anything we wanna place in the balcony has to be weather proof (no windows remember?)

Maybe we will just get a portable BBQ pit like this and have our family and friends over. And also leave a space to set up a MJ table right there.

Not to mention that soon laundry load will be too much for that pathetic few steel poles in the drying ledge beside the yard (see 1st pic for a 1:100 scale of how 'long' that will be), the balcony might even end up as a bamboo pole area for sunning the clothes.

Now I am back to square one.

It's here!

After a splendid fireworks date at Vivo last night to mark the start of this wonderful month, we had another wonderful news last night! N got home to The Letter! Letter from The Love Loft that we have been saving up for, and it is gonna arrive muuuuuch soooooner than we expected! :):):)

This whiz shot was snapped on 23 October while we were transporting Murphy to the groomers. I thought they would at least need another year to finish up the interior for all the units - painting, cementing, flooring, carpentary, toilets, plumping, tiling, windows...

It was already a good delivery on their part when they pushed forward the TOP date from May 2012 to Dec 2011!

Gosh! The workers are indeed efficient! Now, they are going to give us the keys by the FIRST QUARTER of 2011!!!

Now that the deadline's drawing soooo near, we will be busy in the months ahead prepping our household search for our little nest. Have pushed it away long enough! Cant wait to conceptualise out the ideas for the whole house now! We will be financially verrrrrrry tight though, cos we sorta planned our finances according to the intial deadline. Pray Lord bless us through this journey! :)

Another good news is - The cousin's due TODAY!!! I wonder if she knows about the letter already! :) That'll be DOUBLE joy when I see her and the Little One tonight :)

Have already conceptualised what I wanna make for her baby shower :):):)

OMG soooooo excited!!

December's gonna be a fab month! More happy posts ahead!

Our story - Wedding Venue

One binding promise.

Two different persons.

A common trait. DECISIVENESS! Or rather, IMPROMPTUNESS! :D

Throughout the baby steps towards our own wedding, we realised how much we have in common. Perhaps, we just dislike all the wishy washyness. If you are happy with what has been offered, why bother to go multi placessssss, ask multi people, do multi researchesssssss, and then have a hard time scratching ya head over the pros and cons of each option before deciding on one? Sometimes, after all that trouble and head scratching, you might even end up in square one.

So...YES! We DID IT again!! :) Just like how we bought our flat. Simply, with a snap of our fingers!! Not much discussion beforehand :) Date not fixed. Guest list also not fixed. My parents happens to be out of town the WHOLE week, so I dun even know how many tables they need! Nonetheless, it is a load off our preparations. Am sure the guest list will do fine. It will fall in place nicely :):)

Just last weekend, we were meeting up with SS & YN to free ride on their research of the day. Come recent weekend, we went to a wedding showcase (the ONLY one we ve been to), confirmed and placed the deposit there and then (within 2 hours)!! Even though we were limited by time constraints cos had to rush off to A's competition by 6pm. Made a coupla calls to the 'elderly' da ges and da jies for some consultations, and that was all! :) Bargained quite a bit and TAHDAH!

So YAY to a venue! We will be working hard at the guest list and getting the date fixed up. Sooon. Soooon. Not everyone can accept what we just did. Reverse order! :)

PS. Some people are going to WOW!! at my marvelous decision making trait, displayed once again :) *hehheh*