Reviews...

Thomson Wedding (TW)

• We took an average package with them. Wedding and evening gowns are all off-the-rack (OTR). Includes bridal car, indoor and outdoor photoshoot with 6 outfits (2 of which are our own), FOC ROM gown, etc.
• I liked the photographs taken by Dawn. =) She made us laughed a lot during the photoshoot sessions and took many photographs of us laughing happily, not the fake smiles that we commonly seen in photographs. We managed to capture sunset (the salted egg yolk) at Sentosa that evening. End up, we pay extra $$ for extra photos. We have 2 photo albums (one consisting of indoor shots and the other outdoor shots) now. hee.. :o)
• I like my wedding gown. Although its OTR, it has elaborated embroidery. I have some friends and relatives asking me whether it was a MTM. hee...
• I also loved my evening gown. It is bright red and has a very high collar, making me look like vampire. Haha.. but its very different from the other evening gowns we commonly seen.
• To be frank, I think their wedding gown range is better than their evening gowns. There were some hiccups here and there but overall I would still recommend TW to friends. =)

Holiday Inn Atrium (HIA)

• Friends and relatives who had attended our wedding would know where this is. We had our wedding banquet in this hotel. Their banquet was prepared by chefs from Xin Cuisine, a chinese restaurant in the hotel.
• Food comments: Big portions, nice.
• We chose to served bird nest instead of the usual shark fin soup. Some guests did not know that it was bird nest while others were pleasantly surprised that savoury bird nest tasted very good (without the usual vinegar).
• Dessert was also interesting as the yam pudding was in a shape of a fish. Taken with strawberry jam and coconut milk. There was a guest who went back to Xin Cuisine subsequently and ordered for the same desert. But she was told that it has to be pre-ordered. hee.. Yummy...
• We chose the Crystal theme with red roses. When the lights are dimmed for our march-in, the tealights on the crystal stands along the aisle created a nice and romantic ambience. ^_^ Red roses was chosen as my love thinks that since its a traditional banquet thingy, he wanted red to be the main colour.
• The wedding coordinator, Annie, was very accomodating. She helped us to get a projector without any charges. When we had problems with the table arrangements, she also tried her best to help us too.. Great service, Annie. Thanks!
• Full time Captain Jason did not leave us with very good impression though. My sister-in-law helped to foot part of the bill using her credit card. Jason told her that her card cannot use when the card machine prompted him to call and check with the bank. My sister-in-law called the bank to double check her credit increase status and was told that the hotel staff had to call the bank to confirm the amount. It was a large sum and hence it was no surprised that the bank want to safeguard the card holder. Instead of doing as prompted by the card machine, Jason actually told my sister-in-law that her card cannot use. My sister-in-law insisted that he call the bank to verify and subsequently, the transaction went on smoothly. We really hope that he can reflect on this and improve for the benefit of future couples.
• Part-time captain Jeffrey was very different. He was very service oriented. He has been very courteous to us and our guests throughout the whole evening. Even after the dinner when he served us our supper, he was still very helpful. He offered to get something for my love who drank a little more to help him feel better. After going through all the possible options with us, we chose chinese tea and he went off to make my love a cup of chinese tea. He even brought an extra tea bag for his second helping. Nice chap with good service attitude!
• Other than the payment issues with Jason, we were quite happy with HIA and still also recommend friends.

Time flies

My gosh! It has been really really a very long time since I last blogged.

Well, my customary wedding is over. Time and tide really waits for no man. Today is the 'full moon celebration day' for my wedding. Keke.. sounds like a new born baby's full moon celebration huh.. :P

Gratefulness
Our wedding was a success! Credit goes to everyone who contributed in one way or another to our wedding success. We were really very grateful to some of our close friends (my friends and his were strangers formally) who came together one week before our wedding to help us plan the day and evening programs. They have been helping other friends with their weddings prior to ours. Therefore, they are more experienced than the two of us even though they are all not married. Our sisters did their part to help too. Thanks a million, Nic, Ed, JY, XJ, HL, HC & Jol. =)

We had insufficient time to prepare for our wedding because of the super long delay in the renovation for our lovenest. It took 5 months to finish! It started in early Aug 05 and ended just before our wedding. We barely had time to move our stuff into the new house and clean it a little before our wedding comes. Fortunately, a friend of my love was going to Australia and voluntarily lend us her car for approx. 10 days. An even luckier thing is that Ed was able to take time of his personal commitments to help us drive the car around, for both of us have no driving licences. He even helped to shift our stuff. Really glad that we have good friends' help in such time of need. ^_^

Our renovation contractor
The contractor (dun think I should call him an ID as most of the designs ideas are from ME!) assured that he will be able to complete in 3 weeks, to which I remembered myself telling him that he has up to 4 weeks to do everything nicely. Haven't we been nice enough to give him extra time? I was very upset with him for lying to us. Even on 20 Aug when we went down to his firm to select materials, he still assured us that the works can be completed by latest early Sept. Slight delay, but we can still accept.

Subsequent 3 days, no work was done in our lovenest. On 23 Aug, he met us in our lovenest in the dark and told us that electrical works will be delayed as his electrician has no time to come and work on our lovenest. This was the beginning of all the delays. Most of it started with shoddy workmanship.. this led to a lot of defect rectifications.

Because of his inadequate knowledge of HDB rules, he has to get the platform workers (sub-con) to come back to alter the height of the platform in our MBr. The first platform failed to meet the parapet requirements of HDB guidelines.

To put it simply, it was quite a lousy experience with this contractor. His project management skills were so bad that my love took up the coordination of the left over rectifications himself. He made us dwell on our house's problems and left us with very little time for our preparations of our customary wedding. He caused us to be very very stressful in our lives for the past half a year.

Sigh... really glad that all these are over already.

Married!

Time flies and many things have happened in my life since my last post. I am MARRIED! I had signed on this piece of paper together with 3 other men on that special day. No worries... One is my love and the other two persons are our fathers.

I do agree with my love. Everything proceeded very quickly that day and I was left with no time to 'feel' it properly. I was feeling a bit uneasy as I seldom dressed up like that day. At the same time, I was also trying to ensure that my friends and relatives did not feel left out. Hmm.. felt bad for causing my love's buddy to speed all the way to Fort Canning so that we can reach there in time. He was telling us that he could still feel his heart pounding heavily after the lunch that day. Hee... ^_^

The solemnisation part was the most nervous. This is the most important event of the day but yet I do not really know how the whole procedure was going to be.. When it was my turn to put the ring onto my love's finger, I fumbled. I have become so clumsy all of a sudden with the ribbons on the ring pillow. Luckily I was still able to put the ring on my love's finger without dropping it. Hee.. But looking back, it was really a very memorable day. Afterall, it is a once-in-a-lifetime affair.

Really thankful to my gal friend who specially came to help me with driving my folks to the lunch venue and also be my camerawoman. She had actually volunteered her help in the midst of her preparation for her exams (she had one paper on the next day and 2 others in the following week). She is so good in thinking of poses for us that we have decided that we should bring her along during our photoshooting session sometime in Sept 05. :P

Prior to our ROM, we had also settled our banquet venue. We are going to have our customary marriage on Christmas Day this year. Everybody who got to know about this have not failed to exclaimed, ' Wow! What a special date!' They had also think that this date is nice as it can easily remembered. Well, its not a concern to me. As if I will forget... =D

So happy...

So Happy!! ROM stuff are finally settled. I will be borrowing a dress from the BS which I have signed up with and have arranged a makeup artist to come my house to help me with my makeup and hairdo that morning. Really looking forward to the actual day now.

These few weekends have been very tiring. We been around searching for a BS and a banquet location. The first BS we went into did not leave us with really good feelings. Although their gown designs are not that bad, no special feeling was felt when I tried them out. The sales person was too pushy and the packages were rather pricey compared to some of the others we went to. Hence, we moved on to check other BS out.

The second BS we went to was a surprise. It was quite unexpected that we will take a package with them actually. Firstly, I am a person who do not usually commit into decision making immediately. More frequently, I will do my homework, look around and do comparison before I finally give the verdict that it is worth settling for. Secondly, that was only the second shop we visited that day and we went into the shop because someone was at the door saying they having some promotion. We felt that there is no harm taking a look and went in. The package wasn't particularly cheap but the few gowns that the designer chose for me to try out was fabulous. That few gowns were able to give me the special feeling that made me really consider signing a package with them. I guess I realized another of my believe which is: unexpected things or events aren't necessary bad. =)

The past 2 weekends have been spent travelling around, mostly on foot. I guess it was good for me who seldom exercise. After finding out that some of the restaurants were unable to have the number of tables that we need, they were striked out of our list immediately. We went checking out the remaining restaurants and found most of them not suitable for our needs. They were either too big or small. Since I have read somewhere that certain hotels actually served good food along with good service, we decided to pop into some of the hotels along the way. The findings were rather good. We have now a few restaurants and hotel ballrooms on hand to consider. Hope we will be able to finalize it soon. Afterall, our requirements are not that difficult to meet.. we want our guests to have good food and service.

:o)

Still a long way to go

One month and seven more days to our ROM. It seemed like only the date has been settled. lolz =)

After reviewing many options, we decided to go for the most cost effective way. We will look for a bridal salon for our AD and get them to free us a ROM package. In the worst case, I shall look for my dress separately and do up the makeup and hairdo on my own.

The actual day preparations is more worrying actually. We still need to settle the venue for our banquet. Fortunately, we already have several places in mind. I will just have to wait for his guest list to be ready so that we can start to sit down and talk with his parents.

I told my parents regarding the plans to have our customary wedding either end of this year or in Jan 06. My mum was shocked after understanding from me that the banquet venue have not been decided. She is afraid that we might not be able to get the preparations ready in time. Actually, I agreed with her in terms of the timeline. Its very very tight and there are so many things undone.

Really wish to get the banquet venue confirmed asap. Along with it, the BS also have to be selected asap. I think I can only be more relax after these two items are settled. After these two items, we gotta find a contractor to renovate our house already. Sigh... really hope all these things will turn out fine.