Dear1 Dear2

It’s finally over!   Dear1 and Dear2 finally held our wedding day in September 2008 after months and months of planning and hard work, of discussions and visits, of brain racking and tongues wagging, What an ordeal!

The preparation all started during the ‘retreat’ end of last year, when Dear1 and Dear2 set out to hold the traditional wedding this year (if you recall, Dear1 and Dear2 have already ROMed in Aug 2006, and have actually already started our twosome living).  Hence, the traditional wedding, or some call it, customary wedding or actual day (AD). is really meant for (Dear1’s) parents.

So, wedding in 2008 means that we have to firstly decide on the date and venue.  At the beginning of 2008, everybody were skeptical about us holding the AD in 2008.  “Huh, now already 2008 and you haven’t book the venue, surely the hotels all fully booked already.”  That was the common response we got from friends and relatives during the Chinese New Year visitations.  Well, that’s talking about hotels.  But Dear1 and Dear2 did not want to hold it in a hotel ballroom.  Why will I want to pay more, for smaller portion of food, not nice food some more, parking expensive, getting to the hotel will be difficult too cos it being downtown (like the popular Orchard Road), all for it being more ‘prestigious’ and look better to hold it in a hotel vs a restaurant?  Not for us, man.

Anyway, first thing first, the date. Dear1 and Dear2 took out a calender with so called auspicious dates (for wedding, move house, set bed, move stove, travel etc) and marked out the dates from May till end of year.  Minus away those dates that are no good, like the seventh month, super peak seasons in December (anyway, that’s too far away already), work commitments, major (Singapore) events, there were only a few dates left.  Fine, these will be the dates that we’ll be using to check with the venues.  You say we can’t secure a venue so late into the year, I’d bet that the venue can’t be fully booked  on ALL my dates.

Next, is the venue.  Dear1 and Dear2 did some research online.  Dear2’s favourite site will be Singaporebrides forum, where many people share their experiences and grouses online.  Taking note that no matter how good or how bad something is. there will always be people who like it and some who dislike it.  It’s pretty much different experiences for different people.  Our main search criteria was size of the venue, cos Dear1 and Dear2 worked out a rough estimates of invitees and there are easily 45 tables required.  Not and easy task, cos restaurants and hotels generally do not have such big sites.  Typical 20 – 25 tables will be an easy find.  Like even our ROM venue, Phoeny Jade restaurant at Clarke Quay, Dear1 and Dear2 were tempted to go back there cos the entire ROM experience (plus other private functions we knew) were all so pleasant, but their capacity of 22 tables poses the biggest headache.  Cut the long story short (CTLSS), based on general positive feedbacks from the forum and other searches, we listed out some potential venues that fit the size criteria.  So on 1 fine day, Dear1, Dear2 and Dear1’s dad went site hopping one by one.  Some were hospitable, some were too small, some too expensive, some just not glam at all, until our last stop at Jade Room Restaurant.  Looks ok – price reasonable, ok reviews, looks grand interior, package has pretty much all the things that saves us headaches on the nitty gritties.

CTLSS, food tasting cum meet-the-parent sessions, further clarifications of the pacakge details, and Dear1 and Dear2 paid the first $3,000 deposit. Venue settled.

Next is the bridal package.  From our renovation experience, Dear1 and Dear2 compared 10 shops before finalizing on 1 interior designer.  Do we want to go through the same process for a bridal studio (BS)?  No way, man. Dear2’s cousin recommended a make up artist, we went for the road show, thinks that this guy is ok, and signed a $200+ monthly installment package.  BS settled.   The rest, we leave it to the make up artist who is a designer cum hair dresser plus knowledge of photography all put together.

From the time we confirmed the restaurant and BS, there really wasn’t much to be done.  The real work really starts from the photoshoot (PS).  Need to buy shoes, buy shirts, choose gowns, slim down, go for haircut, all in preparation for the PS.  And after the PS, was selection of photos, deciding whether to do ‘design’ for the album or not (NOTE: this comes at an extra cost not listed in the BS package price), chasing the studio for the overdue album, spotting flaws and returning the album for rectifications, again spotting flaws and again returning the album for touch up, confirmation of the gowns for AD, exercising,  dieting (which backfired, better just eat as per normal), go for size fitting, selection of jackets for the dads and bro, accompanying mum to buy her gown. agreeing to mum-in-law’s choice of gown and accessories, finding candidates for the sisters and brothers, emcees and in charges, defining and delegating roles, coming up with a schedule of events, deciding what montage to do and the sequence, doing the montages, collating songs to be played during the dinner, informing friends and relatives about the dinner, gather information for the invites, getting quotations for printing invites, sending invites, table planning, getting ready the guo da li, briefing the brothers and sisters, finding photographer, finding video equipment, final confirmation with the restaurant, dieting during the last week, doing sit ups at the last week, going for facials, haircut, mani and pedicure, etc etc etc etc .  OMG, To think that these were all accomplished in a matter of 2 months time.  Kudos to Dear1 and Dear2.

The point is, so much time and effort has been spent on planning a 1day’s event.  Being the relax amd fuss free Dear1 and Dear2, we didn’t really want to spend too much time on it, that’s why we chose to pack all these nitty stuff within 2 months (and stressed ourselves in the process, haha).  Just so glad that the event is over, and Dear1 and Dear2 are just now waiting eagerly for the AD photos and video that capture the memories of this 1 day’s event.

- Dear2

Preparing wedding invitations is really a very major part of our wedding. Back in the old days, the couple just send out invitations to all the guests whom they wish to invite and wait for their reply of whether they are attending or not. Well, not anymore. Nowadays, we’ll call the people whom we wish to invite, thanks to the widespread use of mobile phones. The wedding invitation is only sent out when there is a verbally confirmation that the guest will be attending the wedding dinner. In this way, sending out wedding invitation cards become more of a formality. Our parents still deliver invitation by hand as a show of sincerity, but we mail out most of our invitations except for those that we meet on a regular basis such as colleagues.

It all begins with drafting out a list of ppl that we wish to invite. This tentative list has to be ready even before we start sourcing for our dinner venue becos many venues have very limited capacity, typically 30-35 tables. Any dinner larger than that and the choices of restaurants or ballrooms decreases significantly.

After the venue is confirmed, it is time to call up all these ppl to formally invite them to our wedding dinner. Many of my friends who have invited me before used to SMS me, asking me about my attendence. I, for one, find that rather distant as I can’t hear their voice and feel their happiness. So for me, I chose to call up each and every one of my friend personally to inform them of my wedding and to invite them. I feel that this way is more personal and I wish to express my sincerity in inviting them.

A problem encounter during the callings was that some of our friends are also getting married during this period of time. There’s a saying that if your wedding falls within 3 months before and 3 months after the wedding of the person inviting you, then you should not attend it so as not to clash with their fortune. A few of our friends fall into this category and was unable to attend our wedding dinner.

Meanwhile, we started sourcing for printers to print our invitation. The restaurant included unlimited supply of invitation cards and envelopes as part of the package but we have to find our own printers. A quick survery of quotations revealed that the cheapest price we could get is 60cents per piece. However, I sometime read on forums that some ppl print their cards for as cheap as 40cents per piece, but I couldn’t find the contacts of those. Anyway, the restaurant introduced us to their collaborative printer who is also doing the printing for 60cents. So, to keep things under one roof, we decided to go with the restaurant’s recommended printer. We printed 420 card for $252 which will be settled with the final billing of the wedding dinner. I suspect $252 is before GST, we shall see.

Just as our wedding cards are ready for mail, anyother obstacle stood in our way, the lunar 7th month. It was recommended that it is not so auspicious to mail out wedding invitations during the 7th month. Actually, we encountered this earlier during our renovations too as it is considered not auspicious to start renovation during the 7th month too. Haha… But the lunar 7th month turns out to be August in our usual calendar and this year being 2008, there’s a special day with the date 08.08.08 that many couples would like to wed on.

Come the 8th lunar month, we started mailing out all our invitations to friends that have agree to attend our wedding. It was then that we realized it is not easy to write so many invitations, write so many addresses and paste so many stamps. Each name and address has to be double checked to make sure there is not typos. Phew! Thank you Dear2 for preparing all the cards.

Once the invitations were sent, there’s still an issue of lost mail. For that, we’ve printed extra cards to be resent in case our guest did not receive the cards. So maybe 2 weeks before our actual day, we need to call up all our guests again to ensure that everyone has already received their cards and know how to get to the wedding dinner venue. In case any one did not receive theirs, we would have to write a new card and possibly deliver it by hand to make certain that they received it this time round.

So wedding invitations is a lot of work. A lot of ongoing work, that probably won’t end until the wedding day itself. The way to handle it is to be organised and everything should proceed smoothly.

-Dear1

I hope I got the Chinese characters right. Yesterday was our 过大礼. :D These pictures were taken after the ceremony and are the items that we received in return from Dear2’s mum.

In total, we brought 16 boxes of wedding cakes, 2 bottles of hard liquor, 12 oranges, 1 ang bao to represent roast pork, 1 ang bao to thank Dear2’s mum for all these years of upbringing of Dear2, and 1 ang bao which is supposed to be the wedding gift. The ang bao for the roast pork is a modern replacement for actually ordering the roast pork itself; Dear2’s mum will later use the ang bao to buy some roast pork. The customs is such that Dear2’s mum would need to receive all these items and return a portion of it back to me (groom side). This is to signify that they are not ’selling’ off the daughter, or somewhere along that line of thought. Traditionally, the groom side is suppose to prepare and present all these items to the bride side. But given our modern way of doing things in Singapore where the lines of diverse modern culture traditions, its quite common for the couple to prepare all these things instead of the parents. So in fact, we (Dear1 and Dear2) bought all the items except for the ang baos which still came from the parents. The wedding cakes were bought from Gin Thye Cake Maker, a well known name in wedding cakes. They have 2 branches, in Sembawang and in Bukit Batok, we bought from the Bukit Batok branch @ $7.50 per box. When buying the cakes, remember to take into account how many boxes the bride’s mum actually need and how many boxes are to-be-returned.

Dear2’s mum returned 4 boxes of cakes, 2 bottles of oranges juice in return for the hard liquor, 8 oranges, 1 box of real roast pork, and 1 ang bao with a portion of the wedding gift. And that’s our simple 过大礼. After the morning events, we drove to a few of Dear2’s relative’s place to deliver the wedding cakes and the wedding invitation cards.

We ate some of the wedding cakes for snack after we reached home. The cakes we ordered were those old times 10 piece cake set that we so frequently see when we were young, and we chose that becos it was so nostalgic. Surprisingly, the cakes were quite good! The cake itself was soft and the cream wasn’t too sweet. Yum yum. We also have the roast pork for dinner, ate some oranges for a healthy lifestyle and drank some orange juice over a nice chit chat at night. See! Nothing goes to waste. :D And that’s the modern way of doing things. Getting married is an expensive thing, especially with a lot of redundancies around, so no point buying a lot of the ceremonial stuffs which goes to waste. At least for us, we want to keep things simple and meaningful, and we are very lucky that we have both our sides’ parents’ blessings on this. Thank you dads and mums!

-Dear1