Bridal Get-up Updates

Since Mr A decided to get a professional videography team in to cover the solemnisation, I decided that DIY hair and make up is not going to make it. So I called Sephora at ION Orchard to make an appointment – $100 for hair and make up – and I hope they’ll be able to do a good job with my face and hair.

In other news, I bought my wedding shoes!

The Shoe

Pretty right? It’s definitely not going to be tall enough to lift the front of my dress off the ground though. In any case, I sincerely hope I’ll be able to walk down the aisle in this… Thanks to my stupid ankle, I may have to do so in flats T__T Hopefully it won’t come to that.

Nails

Got my nails done en route to the doctor’s yesterday! Accomplish many things in one day – check!

4 more days to go!

More DIY projects!

Over the past two days, as I rested my ankle at home, I found some time to complete my DIY projects for the solemnisation party 🙂

Mr A’s Boutonniere

This is Mr A’s boutonniere. Nice? I thought so too 😛 The tutorial for the boutonniere can be found here. Of course I think their boutonniere was a lot nicer, not least because the colour of all their materials looked better. But still I think I did a pretty good job!

Pompom Backdrop

The weekend, and part of Monday afternoon, was spent making garlands for the backdrop!

No, doudou is not going to be part of the backdrop – he is an invited guest! But, yes, those are all paper pompoms that I’m stringing together to make garlands for the backdrop. It turns out that I will be utilising less than half of the 240 paper pompoms I bought! Oops, overkill much?

We tried fluffing up one of the garlands and it took much less time than anticipated, so I had to call off on the fluffing session the girls were supposed to help out with! XD

Table Placards

I also found time to make the placardss for each table, according to *drumroll* our whatsapp group names! 😛

I kid you not. Spot the functional group name! 🙂

Ring Box Lining

Finally, today, I took a little time off to sew the lining for our ring box, and a matching cushion cover for the ring cushion (upcycled watch cushion from my mum). The cloth was the remnant cotton from when I made my billboard earlier this year.

 

The only thing i’m not too happy with is that I overlooked the need to iron the cloth before I stuck it onto the inside of the lid. But otherwise, I think it turned out nicer than I expected it to when I embarked on the project.

Of course, the handwriting on the cover is not mine – the ring box itself was bought off Etsy 🙂

All in all, the solemnisation table decor is now complete!

Except… not really ^^” because I still have to remove the clips from the flowers and print photos for the frames. Oh well, work work!

Collection of Documents

Last Monday, Mr A and I went to ROM to collect our documents 🙂 Yay!

I’m not too sure what I was expecting, but the place looked… like a civil service building XD seriously! I was like, …that’s it? XD

It’s very efficiently run though, and with an appointment, we were called on within 15 minutes (10 minutes?) of arriving at ROM. At the counter, we were required to present our ICs and photocopies of our dads’ ICs. The highlight of the session was having to raise our right hand and read our statutory declarations.

I have to admit, I put on my English Teacher Reading Voice to read it. Belatedly, I wondered how the officer must have felt – he must hear a lot of very unnatural reading voices every day. Felt super embarrassed to have read in a pro voice but stumbled over a few words. Even Mr A noticed!

But whatever – we took turns to read the declaration, sign on a few forms and ta-da!

The photo came from a photo-booth, complimentary of ROM! Not too impressive, but a good memento!

Another item off our checklist, hooray!

Sun, Sweat and Smiles

We have survived our engagement shoot! I have never ever imagined that outdoor shoots were such sweaty affairs.

The day started at 7am for me; DIY make up, hair etc. And then the much awaited balloons arrived at 8am! They were super pretty 🙂 but too bad I didn’t have the sense to take pictures of them at home *sigh*. Mr J the photographer came around at 845am and then we were ready to roll!

Our first location was at my place, where we took slice-of-life shots in my bedroom, and on the couch. I felt that the shots quite accurately represented various aspects of our lives. Haha.

Like sleeping in, or watching TV and getting fat. It felt super awkward trying to pose “naturally” and some of that may have shown in the pictures, but most turned out beautifully!
The next stop, at 11am, was Bishan-AMK park. We drove over, picked a nice spot on the grass and began our midday picnic. Slowly, we got fried under the sun, but had to smile through the heat.

Just as we lay down to take a few “lying on the picnic cloth” shots, Mr A suddenly said, “oh no” and pointed to the sky. Where we saw a bunch of colourful balloons. Slowly floating further and further away.

Yes, those balloons. That we agonized over the logistics for. I must have tied the knot too loosely around the picnic basket (removed the weights from the bunch to separate them into two bunches) and the balloons just floated off while we were posing 😦 thankfully we managed to get a good shot with them.

We wandered around the park a little more to get more varied shots. Everytime Mr J asked us to converse and joke with each other to get natural looking shots, the conversation topic inevitably returned to the balloons, which made for some really sad/funny moments.

Retired to macdonald’s for a breather and met up with Ms A, who rushed down from work, before going over to L’etoile Cafe at Owen Road to continue.

By the time we arrived, the priority was to cool off, clean up, change and get something to eat. Mr J’s idea was to get some eating shots, but those turned out to be too unglam. In the end, we ate, shot, and then ordered cake to shoot and eat.

Finally, full and somewhat rested, we made our way to Esplanade where we spent so many evenings paktor’ing. I changed into my wedding dress and Mr A changed into his suit. The heat was not so bad thanks to the breeze, but that same breeze really blew my hair around and I ended up with a really natural, but not very attractive windswept look. Plus the glare made it really hard to open my eyes in the shots, so my expression looked really weird in some of them.

The plan initially was to either go around to MBS or go to the merlion. Either way turned out to be too tortuous for my feet and I was really super tired. Mr J asked if we wanted to proceed to Keppel Bay or Sentosa Quayside Isle to capture the sunset over the yacht, but because we were so tired, plus we really didn’t know how the sunset would look in the haze, we decided to call it a day. Quite a pity actually, it would have been nice to have some shots at the yacht park. And for no additional cost too. Hahaha. Oh well, the experience is just as important as the product, and I would say that staying further would have really pooped me out.

All in all, quite happy with the experience and shots so far. The pictures I’ve shared are a sneak peek, and were delivered a mere 2-3 days after the shoot,with some preliminary editing for colour and framing. Can’t wait to get our touched up shots and start planning the photobook!

Look forward to our shots, guys! Just slightly more than a month left to the big day!

How We Got Engaged

The Context

As my friends were very aware, for the whole of 2014, I had been wondering when Mr A was going to propose. While awaiting the proposal, of course I was not one to sit still. Instead, I was reading up on venues and wedding costs, which made it seem like I was super eager to get hitched. Which, you know, was not too far from the truth.

But I digress.

The Set Up

Mr A, being very aware of this baited me throughout the year. Looking back, this formed an important part of catching me off guard for the real proposal.

For example, as early as Valentine’s Day, he tricked me into thinking I would get proposed to on 14th Feb by sending me this picture.

In case you can’t tell, it’s the “ee” from “Destinee” the Lee Hwa diamond. Being the overeager girlfriend, I thought it was a ring when he confirmed it was a bling bling. Well, it wasn’t, but it was the third pendant he got me, once every alternate Valentine’s Day. Very happy though, that he keeps up this little “tradition” 🙂

Then I confirmed that he had nothing up his sleeve because we went ring shopping together between April and May, and finally went to Jann Paul to get my ring made 🙂

Because I knew he would have collected the ring sometime in August, during my birthday, and subsequently during each important relationship milestone, I would wonder if he was going to propose. Haha.

And he didn’t disappoint! In the sense that he would continue to bait me. By pretending to have something up his sleeve, or “practicing” at home.

Finally, it was time for my trip to Korea. He kept joking that he was going to fly over and propose while I was in Korea, and got me suspecting if he would propose when I landed. Not too disappointed that there wasn’t a proposal at Changi when I landed though, by then I had taken all fantasies to be what they were – figments of the imagination of an overeager girlfriend.

That’s how Mr A completely blindsided me with his proposal!

The Proposal

While I was in Korea, Mr A had casually mentioned a staycation with the EEE bunch which I did not think much of. When I asked where it was held, and what time we had to be there, I was completely appalled that we were only going to arrive the The Fullerton Bay Hotel at 7pm. What a waste of an entire afternoon we could be spending in such an atas hotel, right?

So I kept insisting that we had to go early – could Mr W possibly authorise us to check in early on his behalf? Mr A was completely thrown off – not that I knew – and had to cook up all sorts of excuses to turn up late, because the set up was not ready!

Eventually he convinced me by scheduling a haircut that very afternoon by claiming that the hairdresser was only free in the late afternoon. And he paid for my hair treatment too, which would have been suspicious normally, but you know what they say about looking gift horses in the mouth.

When we reached Raffles Place, Ms H picked us up at the station, pretending – not that I knew – to have only just arrived, and we went up together. Upon opening the door to the room, and seeing that the room was pitch dark, I finally caught on to what was going on.

Following the dramatic entrance, a bouquet of flowers was presented to me, and I was welcomed by an entire party consisting of my family, bestie and the girls, the gumi and the EEE peeps. And balloons, cake, wine, MARRY ME balloons stuck to the wall.

In my defence, the sight was really touching, hence resulting in the non-stop stream of tears.

Mr A gave an impromptu speech. Someone presented me with a piece of tissue. Mr A proposed and I said yes! Of course I did!

Mr A presented the ring and tried to put it on… unsuccessfully. Haha. We thought he was given the ring in the wrong size, or that I had gotten fatter, but after I tried to put it on for myself, it fit beautifully 😀

Then, Mr W passed Mr A his guitar and Mr A performed an acoustic rendition of 好不容易. Cue more tears from me.

Following that, the party began and there was cake, wine, plenty of cozy conversations with friends and family.

We stood at the balcony to watch the light show at MBS across Marina Bay, enjoying the moment, and when we turned back to head into the room, everyone was gone.

Wow. We were alone and engaged and very happy. Took a walk along the bay where we had spent so many evenings just enjoying each other’s presence.

Conclusion

The proposal, not sure if Mr A was satisfied by it, but it’s a huge 10/10 for me! Although there were a few hiccups – my insistence to go early, spotting Ms S in the middle of Mr A’s proposal, finding a used condom under a couch – the whole proposal was everything I could ask for, sweet, cozy, and a complete surprise!