right on time

The last thing I'm waiting on... Ryan's bout and it's here!!! Exams' tomorrow and Wednesday then I'll be rushing around like a headless chicken catching up with the list that's just keeps on growing while I've been cramming! Two of my closest friends arrive tomorrow too and we're going to the flower market together on Friday. 4am trip!! Woo hoo!! My parents are coming over in the morning to help out and check into their hotel and we're treating them to a special dinner in Altitude Restaurant in Shangri-la. It's our thank you for giving us three weddings, helping out with this wedding, calling me to make sure I've not forgotten anything, like my walking down the aisle song. :) And also, Mum and Dad has never been to the city at night. Everything's happening already!!!

the flower market trip

I am so glad we went to the flower market. I don't exactly know what flowers I bought though I love them all because I managed to make some gorgeous bouquets (I think so anyway). It was the wild wild west of all weather when we got up that morning. So didn't want to go out into the horrible weather. Seriously, what is going on with our weather?? It's meant to be spring. It rained during our engagement shoot and it's been windy and horrible almost everyday for the past month. Please be nice on my wedding day. Please please pretty please, with sugar icing and sprinkles on top. 

We spent about an hour there, looking at this flower stand and that and this was what we bought back. We spent about $40 there buying carnations (the white ones), orchids (the blur purple bit at the back), and the rest of them, I don't know (are the light pink ones ranunculus??) though I've seen them in a lot of wedding blogs! Please let me know if you know the names of the flowers. It'll be great to know the name of my flowers. Hehe....  

The flowers all nice and ready to be arranged

I spent about 2 hours standing at the edge of the table taking the leaves off the base of the flowers. I should have sat down. What was I thinking?? I ended up with a sore back at the end, so if ever you're doing the same, remember to sit down!! :P 

Our table centrepieces

I was actually trying to make my bridemaids' bouquet with the bunch of flowers we got. It was difficult trying to line them up in some sort of arrangement in my hand so I decided to use what of our vases. This was the result and it looked so perfect as a table centrepiece that I decided this was going to be it! :) I added a piece of Singapore orchid to the mix later on, which is not in the photo. My bridesmaid is going to walk down with a simple orchid arrangement now. We got some really nice exotic looking ones but it didn't match with any of the other flowers that we got which is a real shame because it is really gorgeous. Also, it had one helluva thick stem and threaten to topple my tiny vases over every time I put it in, so I'm really glad that we can incorporate it into our wedding somehow.   

My bouquet

I did not have a clue what my bouquet was going to look like. We got these pink coloured flowers because I thought they were so pretty and when I got back, decided that they wouldn't go with my bridemaid's colour because they are already wearing pink so decided I'll use them for my bouquet since our colours are pink. Oh, and I decided when I got back too that those blueish green flowers are going to be my flowers. I think they are an Australian native flower because there is a strong eucalyptus smell in the leaves. Smell sooo good!! I love it. And I love the colour. They just add another different dimension to the flowers, that extra pop! I love love love love it! I feel my bouquet is a lil thin though so I'll be buying an extra bunch or two to pad it up a lil. 

So there you have it, my virgin flower arrangement adventure. Not bad for a person who didn't have lessons, me thinks.  :> I know they don't look professional but I love them. Oh, and the whole waking up at 4am for the flower market and then standing around cleaning the flowers up and then arranging them - it is so worth it. 

in the mail

My headpiece, bridesmaids' headpiece and the boys' bouts in the mail!! I got them from Chelsea of ohmydeer. Gorgeous, yea? 

just us

Our engagement shoot session was not until late in the afternoon so we made a half day out of Ryan's free day. The weather wasn't the best spring weather but it doesn't matter. All that matters was that we had time to spend together and it was fantastic. We drove north of the bridge to Balmoral and treat ourselves to lunch at the gorgeous Bathers Pavillion.

Bathers Pavillion

The view from our table

 Aoraki salmon with freekeh ratatouille, crab bisque and roast capsicum rouille

Seared snapper fillet on parsley risotto with almond and olive tapenade

Lemon and passionfruit delicious, confit lemon, lemon sherbet

Strawberry ripple cheesecake, mixed berry compote, strawberry sorbet

So stuffed after filling ourselves up with sooo much food. It was glorious, having a few hours just the two of us, talking about the weather, our wedding coming up, our upcoming trip and the future. We should have this kind of day more often!

Oh, I just checked Facebook and there is a sneak peek of us up already so I thought I'd share. :)

♥

flower market

Success!! We finally made it to the flower market today!

girl friday weddings

I caved in.

I don't know if I mentioned this before but I have two exams three days before the wedding. So when I say, 15 days to the wedding, at the back of my head, I also have this voice saying, "...and 11 days to the exams." It has been really stressful. You never expect so much to happen in the very last week - suppliers and vendors contacting you to meet before the wedding to firm things up, to confirm things, to talk about things. And when I'm not filling in templates, I've been worrying about our favor boxes and programs and thank you cards which we'll need to send to the venue a week before the wedding. And when I'm not doing that and trying to study, I'm thinking about my current non-existent flowers and how I'm going to get them and anything else to the venue on the day. A few friends have offered their help but because we don't get access to the venue until late in the evening, I don't think it's fair to ask them to dress up all nicely for my wedding and then go decorate the venue.

So to preserve my sanity and my chances of passing my papers, I called Girl Friday Weddings to help me out. I'll be meeting with them on Monday and then, I'm planning to have one week of non-wedding to focus (ie. cram) for my papers.

Waking up at 4am tomorrow!! Weeeeeee!!

quote from the luck of ginger coffey

Quote from The Luck of Ginger Coffey

Brian Moore

Don't you know that love isn't just going to bed?

Love isn't an act, it's a whole life.

It's staying with her now because

she needs you; it's knowing you

and she will still care about each other when

sex and daydreams, fights and futures -

when all that's on the shelf and done with.

Love - why. I'll tell you what love is

It's you at seventy-five and her at seventy-one,

each of you listening for the other's

step in the next room, each afraid that a

sudden silence, a sudden cry,

could mean a lifetime's talk is over

This reading has been sitting as a draft post on my blogger for yonks! I love it except Ryan this it's a lil bit morbid so we're not having it at our upcoming wedding. Doesn't mean I can't post it here though. :)

productive weekend

I'm knackered!

We slept through the alarm again on Saturday. So frustrating!! It's three weeks to the wedding and I still don't have my flowers figured out yet.

But we got through a lot of the other to-do's on our list:

Favor boxes. Done! This was a teamwork effort on Saturday. We sat around our massive dining table; Ryan, my sister, Cherry and I and spent a few hours stuffing the boxes with tissue paper, hershey chocolates and wrapping it up with our wedding signature patterned paper, a ribbon and our label. I ordered the boxes and labels from myownlabels, tissue paper (inside the box) for cheap from The Reject Shop and ribbons from Lincraft. My patterned papers are from this Petit Pattern book I got from Tate Modern's gift shop when we visited the UK a few years back.

Woke up at the ungodly hour of 4am on Sunday. Yup, we finally did it!! Had our shower, got ready and we were out of the door by 5am!! Thing is, we got there and found out that the market is closed on Sundays!! Can you believe the irony of it?? Brilliant!! :(

We figured since we're already awake, might as well do something  productive. We went back home and printed the rest of our paper goods - menus, readings, programs, seating chart. Since we have almost everything done now, I thought I'll do the big reveal. Voila~

I must admit that this wedding card on Minted was our inspiration. We were in love with the whole design and lusted over it for a good couple of weeks before taking the plunge to put an order in and then we found out that they don't take international orders! I remember even going to the designer's personal website to see if she shipped internationally from there too but no such luck, then coming up with crazy ideas like shipping to a friend and having her ship them to me etc. It has been hard work trying to design our wedding cards from scratch by ourselves and it has been a really long road with many trials and tribulations - learning Photoshop, being confident that what you've designed is good enough, playing with colours on the computer and the printer because what you see on the screen is different to what actually comes out of the printer and the list goes on but I'm really glad that we went through all that. For one, I know how to make my own cards now and also, we got to stretch our theme out across our stationary. As you can see, I used the theme for our thank you cards, menus, readings, programs, the whole deal. Our seating chart (which had to be reprinted because I stuffed it up!) also follows the same theme.

The backings of our paper goods. I used the same papers I used on our favors (read above) except for our programs. I slapped a mad lib on the back for that one!!

via Mimco

We then took a break and had Pancakes at the Rocks with friends and then went shopping for wedding earrings. All this time, I had this idea of accessorising my dress with a pair of simple small earrings. I found the perfect one in Taipei but then had a change of heart in the last week. I'm an earrings girl. There's usually no jewellery on me whatsoever (and I'm trying to change that) except earrings. It's my signature style, you know. So to just have some tiny earrings on me on my wedding day just seems so wrong!

Lastly, a simple paint job on our initials. We got some paint from the shops, painted a couple of coats and there you go, a white R & J.

We're having our engagement shoot with our wedding photographer, Jenny Sun tomorrow. Excitement!!

revealing the veils

Ta-da!! Presenting to you the veils that overtook my life for a good portion of a week. I looked up various tutorials, on youtube, blogs, websites. Anything that had "diy birdcage veil" on it, I was on it. I couldn't decide which style I liked better so I ended up making two veils. I followed this Project Wedding's tute when constructing veil #1 and Mary Ann's tute for veil #2.

What do you think?? I had a hard time fixing #1 in place and I'm not even sure if the way I have it on is right. Looking at other similar pictures, it seems like they have style #1 coming down towards the eyes and whenever I try it on that way, I feel like I'm impersonating Zorro!

Remember him?? Lol... Veil #2, on the other hand, was very easy to put on. That's the one on the right. It sits on my bun and comes over my head all scrunched up around the sides looking very bride-like. I feel bride-like. :)

In terms of cost, I bought a meter of tulle and ended up using half of that to make both veils, even with the many mistakes that I made. I got the tulle at half price too costing me the total sum of $3.50. I was very chuffed with myself!! All those late nights were worth it in the end! :) Twenty days and counting!! La la la...

bloomin petals

How awesome is this song?? I've had this song stashed in the back of my memory bank somewhere and during the weekend, it popped out and went on our list of possible recessional songs. That is, until I listened to the song proper and realised that maybe, it's not so appropriate. Hehe....

I'm glad that I'm done documenting my solo trip. I really wanted to keep my blog going in a chronological order so I can look back at it 10 years from now and go, "Hey, remember THAT amazing solo trip?? Awww, I remember that ..... and oh, this... was soo fun!! Oh my gawd, remember all the wedding stuff that just seemed to be neverending after?? Stress!! Felt like a superwoman afterwards though!" :P

Twenty five days to the wedding and I finally get Ryan back into our world again. The past 3 months, I probably saw him about 7 hours a day?? And that was when he came home at like 12am to sleep before getting up at 7am for work. Yup... 7 hours each day for the past 3 months!! Pretty depressing!! But that's all over for another year!! We got a lot of things done this weekend too. It was the long weekend (Labour Day, woo hoo!!!) and it rained. The wettest weekend in 8 months!! Definitely a sign for us to stay in and tick off some long overdue boxes:

We did sooo much wedding-wise and honeymoon-wise this weekend. I'm mighty mighty pleased!! Some of the things we did, okay, all that we did:
- booked our hotel room for the night before the wedding and the wedding night. Staying at Four Seasons in the city which is perfect as my friends who are flying down will be staying in the same area and it's the perfect area for a First Look. We scoured the area around The Rocks before we booked the hotel, can you believe it, because I didn't want to have to walk very far in my wedding dress to take photos that day!! How prima donna am I?? Lolz...
- completed our run sheet for the day

- designed our seating chart
- Ryan found his reading. Woo hoo!!
- found my walking down the aisle song. Notice the keyword "my", though I did get the "okay" from the husband. Figured I should since it's quite "kooky" (his words again). Took him two days to okay it!! Lolz...

- and also our recessional song, The Luckiest by Ben Folds, which is our song. Ryan surprised me with a ticket to a Ben Folds performance with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the Sydney Opera House back when we were still dating. I found this acappella on youtube whilst browsing through various videos as you do and then found them (I think they're the same people) on iTunes too!! Crazy, huh???

- made a last minute decision to have wedding programs (since we're not having ushers) and then was madly scrambling around designing it in one night
- designed our wedding menu
- created our wedding ipod playlist. This took hours!!! It's not done yet but there is a LOT of songs on it now that we're quite comfortable to leave it until closer to the day. Yippee!!
- constructed all the boxes for our favors while watching episodes of Parenthood. Hehe... preparing for after the wedding! Muahahaa....

- wrote our vows

~phew~

And then we started on our honeymoon plans. But maybe we'll leave that for another day.

The one thing we keep failing at time and time again is the flowers. Waking up at 4am is not very enticing. Especially when the weather has been so cold and wet. I hate the cold!! So, the trip to the flower market kept getting postponed. I'll get us to the flower market this weekend!! For sure!! If we fail again, I'll just buy my flowers from the store on the day and make do with that. Can you tell that flowers are not high on my list of priorities?? :|

penang: my hometown

The view from my room

Back to my hometown again. The last time I was back was last year to have our engagement photos done. Has it been that long that we've been engaged?? This time, I'm back for a friend's wedding. Yippee!! A quick 3 day trip and a blissful luxurious stay at a hotel after 3.5 weeks of slumming it (almost!). It was like, oh my gawd, a hotel!!

Most of my school friends were only arriving the day before the wedding so I took this opportunity to catch up with one of my oldest friends, Andrew, and do what most people do when they come to Penang. Eat, eat and eat. I had my favourite assam laksa every day that I was there and then I had the rest. Nyonya kuih and curry mee, goreng pisang (banana fritters) and goreng cempedak (jackfruit fritters). As you can see, I took loads of food pictures but it's only now that I realise that we didn't take any pictures of ourselves. We brought our cameras out and took loads of pictures of the sights but none of ourselves. Bah!!!

Tom Yam Fried Rice @ Clinic Cafe in Gurney Plaza. I chanced upon this place looking for dinner on my first night there. The whole restaurant has a hospital/clinic theme. The food is served in sanitised trays, the drinks in beakers, the chairs are makeshift hospital beds and the lights are operating table lights. I thought it was pretty cool and it looks like they're popular with the younger crowd.

My favourite dish ever!! Assam laksa. I know it doesn't look all that appetising but trust me, it is the yummiest food ever. If I ever have to pick my last meal on Earth, it would be bowls and bowls of this! 

Curry mee

Lychee and lemon ice dessert

We also did some sightseeing which was pretty cool. Went up to Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion aka the Blue House on the first day I was there. We almost had our engagement pictures taken here but alas, the price they were asking for was just too exorbitant so we had to pass. It is a really nice house though with a lot of history behind it. We also checked out the Peranakan Museum as well as Khoo Kongsi temple (one of the places we had our engagement photos taken!). I just haven't had the time to go through the photos yet. :(

The day before the wedding was a public holiday!! Yippeee dooo!! So I made Andrew and his girl take me out sightseeing. Muahaha... we went to Kek Lok Si Temple which I have not been to since I was a little girl. We used to take all our tourists there and I remembered thousands of turtles or tortoises in the fountains or ponds around the temple but we didn't see any this time around. So sad.... Apparently there was a lot of people stealing them a few years back to sell in the black market as they're classified as exotic animals so I think the temple gave them away?? Which is a good thing but it's bad too because human nature can be so vile!

The temple is going through a refurbishment process and they had all these tiles that people had 'bought' for the temple. It's like a donation and you get to write your name and whatever you want on the tiles. Won't they wash off though in the rain after a few months?? *shrug* Me being pessimistic again.

The Goddess of Mercy

Loads of candles for prayers

And then on the day of the wedding, Penang bridge, which links the island to the mainland (we grew up on the mainland) decided to catch fire. Major drama!! The bridge came to a standstill and the ferry, which is the only other alternative route to the island, struggled to cope with all the people wanting to come to the island. An hour trip turned into 4 hours. We missed about 15 minutes of the ceremony because of the darn bridge drama. :( But the wedding was utter fabulousness. The bride and groom were so happy and they looked stunning in their traditional Vietnamese attire. Gorgeous gorgeous wedding!!

The girls came back to my hotel room for a chat session at the end of the night and I didn't get to sleep until past 3 in the morning. My flight was early the next morning and the lack of sleep really caught up with me on the way back to Sydney. I literally nodded off every time my head touched the pillow on the plane home. 

I'm home!!