Our Wedding Date is 25 Feb 2006!

Really have to give credit to Jianhao for pointing out a serious error on our website! Our wedding date is 25.02.2006 (NOT 25.06.2006!!!) The wedding site has been published for more than 2 months already... I wonder how DC and I could have missed out on this? Hee hee... Anyway, this was not the first time the wrong date was released... DC had accidentally informed all his friends via email that our big day was on 05 Feb 2006!?! Luckily he stated on the email that our wedding is on a Saturday & 05 Feb is a Sunday. We were so blessed to have observant people (like Yuchun) to verify with us on the date! I have to also thank God for letting me bump into DC's friend Kelvin in the canteen. It was through him that I learnt that Oops, DC did it again!

So folks, please note and remember that our Wedding Date is 25 Feb 2006! :D

River Hongbao

10 min fireworks:

It's Chinese New Year Again!

It's Chinese New Year again! The days really whizzed by unnoticeably especially for the past half year...

This CNY holds a special meaning for me... It's the LAST year I'm getting ang baos from the elders! Yes, I'm getting married soon and next year, I would be giving out ang baos the the 'young' ones.

Like last year, we went to my Ah Ma's house in the morning. I saw some cousins that I have not seen for a long time and Wow! My little cousin has grown up and she's now taller than me! Met some of the elder cousins there... it's a rare chance for us to get together and so I seized the chance to announce my upcoming wedding to them... Too bad the bridal cakes and invitation cards are not ready yet...it would be good if I could distribute to them today!

Next, we went a few places to visit DC's relatives. At his cousin's place, DC's cousin's gf commented that I have lost some weight...Lately I received several similar comments from my friends...Hmmm...have I really lost the weight? But how come I felt fatter instead? Anyway, I do feel good after hearing that remark! :P At his aunt's place, we did a "Lo Hei" and feast on the superb cooked food. The finale for today's celebration was the cocktail and dessert that we had after dinner... the choc cake was the best that I've ever tasted and the Gin Tonic was the most bland drink I've ever had. For the whole day I've been eating and drinking(to our fill)...
I won't be surprised to find myself still full tomorrow.

Meeting up with the Hotel Coordinator

We met our hotel coordinator Michele to discuss the wedding details for the actual day. The session was much shorter than we had expected (which is good). We gave Michele our feedback on the food tasting and picked our choice of wedding favour. We had also selected the table cloth (Red for VIP tables and Gold for other tables), seat sash (Gold), wedding cake design (the Oval), the menu design and the flower arrangement, etc. The wedding favour and the flower arrangment are very unique and nice. No wonder DC loves them so much! :) We were able to make a selection easily, thanks to Michele's recommendation. So far so good, we are very satisfied with the service rendered by the hotel and the things that been arranged for the wedding. Let's hope that all is as smooth on the actual day!

Food Tasting

The food tasting was held in the Oriental Atrium Suite 3. There was only one table in the middle of the room and we were the only people (10 adults and 1 kid) in the room... The room seems too big and silent... the atmosphere was a bit awkward esp in the earlier part where there was no music played until the first dish was served.


I have very high hopes on the quality of the food after reading the good comments in the Singapore Brides forum. Generally speaking, most of the dishes served were up to expectations. For one of the dishes, the chef took the wrong order and added the wrong ingredient for us. But hey! 错有错着, we quite like the food that was prepared and decided to take this dish instead of the originally ordered one, it was yam instead of prawns. The dessert was more controversial... my family didn't really fancy the desert whereas DC's family like it a lot. The chef came into the room after the dinner and gave us some suggestions on the dessert.


The captain and the waitresses were very pleasant and polite and we were happy with the table arrangement and the cutlery used. However, the waitress serving us seems to be taking forever to apportion the food. We also felt that the waiting time for the next dish was too long and so we requested to shorten the waiting interval to 2 mins instead of 10 mins... just enough for us to fill in our feedback about the food. The dinner started at 8pm and ended 2 and a half hours later.

The menu:

1. The Oriental Hors D'oeuvres:
Topshell
Jellyfish
Roasted Eel
Prawn Salad
Wakame Seaweed

(Some of the ingredients gonna change ...)

2. Braised Shark's fin with Dried Scallops

3. Duet Seafood Combination of Prawn and fresh scallop in Szechuan Sauce (This was served with yam instead of prawns)

4. Stewed duck with Red Dates in Red Wine Sauce

5. Braised Sliced Abalone Mushroom and Sea Cucumber with Seasonal vegetables

6. Steamed fresh garoupa in soya sauce

7. Fragrant fried rice wrapped in Lotus Leaf

8. Double Happiness a.k.a Chocolate Mousse

Tea Dress Selection

Went to our bridal shop for the fitting of my tea dress, the guys' blazars and my sisters' evening gown. I actually wanted to get a gown (instead of the kua) for the tea ceremony and preferably it can double up as an evening gown for the cocktail reception. In the end, we settle for the kua because DC prefered the traditional costume to all the gowns that I've tried on. Indeed, I also think I look better in the kua than the gowns.

The guys (my dad, brother and brother-in-law) chose their blazars easily... it was my sisters that took the bulk of time selecting their gowns.

We have also selected our hand bouquet for the actual day and the ribbon color for the cars. However, when we requested to collect our photo images earlier, they could only give us 1 week before the wedding day. I really don't understand why they need so long to get the images ready? Hmm... in view of this, we may have a problem getting the montage out in time...

My birthday Treat

Just met up with a very good friend on 19 Jan. He treated me to a chinese restaurant at Chinatown, my birthday treat.

Haven't meet him in months... he had lost weight. As updated by him, he had recently suay suay gotten chickenpox and had rested at home for weeks. Anyway, I'm very glad to know that he was doing very well in his work. He is the type of friend that is very well-liked by his peers and is utmost thoughtful and caring towards his gf.

To my very good and special friend,

"Thanks for your treat! I have an enjoyable evening!"

Wonderful Birthday Gifts!

I have received some great presents for my birthday this year! I must really thank all those who had remembered my birthday and all those who had given me my wonderful presents!
In particular, I want to thank these people:

1) CS
Thanks for the pair of earrings you gave me. This present's got a lot of meaning to me because it's handmade by you and believe me, it's very pro and nicely done... just the color I was looking for! Hey, you can consider setting up a booth in Bugis or maybe our canteen A and start selling them. I can offer to be your model. ;P




2) TTL
Thanks for the birthday gift hor! Haha... you should know what is it. I've already thank you on the Net... now you cannot go back on your words liao. Haha..


3) DC
Thanks for the new watch!

A bit about nothing

What do you know? We have taken 2767 photos with our camera since I bought it in Nov 2004. Mine's an Olympus C-5060 Widezoom. I have just bought an external flashgun to complement it last month. Wonder how much more files my harddisk can take?

The First Dinner At Home - A Warm Dinner

15 Jan 2005

We had our very first dinner at our new place today! The dinner was prepared by DC's parents... We had the following for dinner in chinese style:
1. Soup
2. Char Siew & Roast Meat
3. Mixed Veg (Brocolli & Carrot)

I simply love DC's parents' cooking! The soup was especially great! All of us took a second helping to the soup!

This dinner felt especially warm because today happen to be my lunar birthday!

What Happened to the Font Size of our Webpages?

Went into our wedding site and was bewildered to find the images gone out of alignment... The default font size had gone smaller. What happened? This is strange...

Re: Wedding Card Template

Wow! We got the amended template from the printer today! That's definitely faster than what we expect. Gone through the template. Yup, the contents & format are according to what we want.

The cards may just be ready next week! Hmm...Guess it's finally time I give all my guests a call and confirm on their attendance...

CP's Birthday

Yeah, it's my birthday today! However, it felt like a normal day today... no special wish to go out to celebrate at all... maybe I'm just too tired these days...


We(DC & I) had a simple celebration yesterday. I was on half day leave and arranged to meet him at our new place. He was not there yet and I had to wait for him at the void deck. When he came, his hands was full of bags filled with stuff he brought from home. I offered to help out and actually saw my present in one of the bags! Oops! surprise gift exposed! HaHa...

My gift was wrapped very nicely by DC. I love the strawberry shortcake wrapper very much!. It is circular and felt very light. I was guessing in my heart that it could be a cocktail glass or mug... along this line.



On the bus to the Oriental hotel to collect the cards, I noticed him looking at a receipt that was in his bag and curiously asked him what was it. His expression gave him away... I knew that it was the receipt for my present. From far, it looked a bit like a jewellery receipt. So, I changed my guess...it should be a piece of jewellery.

After we're done with the shopping, we settled down at the Coffee Bean at Funan. There, I casually told DC my sis told me he(DC) wanted my brother-in-law's hp number from her. His expression gave him away (again!)... I knew immediately that my gift is a watch and there's no doubt about it.

He made a birthday card for me with his heart-felt words on it... I was touched by the things he wrote (It's a secret! ).

His gift was perfect! My boss had been telling me that my current Casio watch (DC gave to me 6-7 yrs ago) looks outdated and kept asking me when I want to change it... Now I finally can. :)

Thanks, DC! Your gift is great!

Wedding Card Template

We finally gotten our wedding card template yesterday, after 6 days of waiting. We were thinking that everything should be fine but soon after we opened up the attachment, we knew that it wasn't going to be so easy... at first glance, some mistakes could be spotted, e.g. website & email address were incorrect and the chinese name of DC's Dad was not completely in 繁体字.

Hmmm... So even the most simple things can go wrong! Not wanting to delay the printing of the inserts, we quickly collected the additional wedding cards that we requested from the Oriental and rushed down to the printer to pass the extra pieces and inform them of the amendments. Hopefully the cards can be ready before Chinese New Year.

D.E. Stamps

We have just purchased our stamps from SingPost's MYStamp service. These stamps (I call them D.E.Stamps, which stands for Daniel & Evelyn's Stamps) are special stamps personalised with our wedding photo in them. Here's an image (edited by me) of what we ordered:



I have to really thank my sis for this great idea! It is such a creative way to make use of the stamp to announce our wedding! :D Even celebrities Glenn Ong and Jamie Yeo use them on their wedding envelopes!


Below is a short description of SingPost's MyStamp Service:

"MyStamp is a unique service that allows you to personalise your stamps with your favourite photo. Your image will be printed on a tab next to a Singapore $0.23 or 1st Local postage stamp."

Wedding Cards Collected

DC collected our wedding cards from the Oriental Hotel on 6 Jan 2006. Here's how the cards look like:

The Pink:


The White:


The white cards is essentially the same as the pink ones although you can't see the printed motifs in the picture. We choose mostly pink cards as we thought the design and color are nicer and more unique.

On the next day, we brought the inserts to the printer... Just when we thought 1 more task was done, we realised that Oops, there was not enough cards to give out to our all our guests. In the end, we had to request for additional cards from the Hotel... that's it! We had to run another trip to collect the cards and to send them to the printer's again.

(From DC - In between, there is the usual bickering ... CP wants to do this and that, I just want to cut costs!)

Cake Making Session

On 6 Jan, DC's mum and us went Mayer@Great World City for the Kueh Lapis making session in the evening. Wow! There were a lot of people, mostly elder housewives and Oh Boy! they were all enthusiasts... This is the first time we've been to such a session. It's interesting to watch the instructor teach but definitely no fun trying to bake a Kueh Lapis! It takes a lot of patience to wait for each layer to be baked before the next layer can be applied! Altogether, it took the instructor more than 2 hrs to complete the cake. However, it's worth the waiting 'cos the finished product was simply marvellous!


(From DC - I do feel that the kueh lapis is only 3 out of 5 stars ... but because no rum was added as one of the people attending the course is Muslim ... and the kueh is still very hot, it should be left to cool first.)

During the Photo Shoot

Some DIY shots. I seriously think I don't look the part in the traditional outfit ...

Wedding Shoot Preview

Here's a preview of the photos ... that which has caused us much unhappiness during the selection ... but overall, we are very satisfied with the way the photos turned out! I also like the way the makeup artist did CP's face and my hair as well. I have never seen her look so good in makeup before ... the previous ones were quite crap.

Parents Meeting Session

Happy 2006!


Today DC's parents met my parents at my place to discuss about the wedding essentials. Although this is not the first time DC's parents visited my parents (we live in the same neighbourhood, our parents always met by chance while marketing or at the lift lobby), I couldn't help but to feel nervous... I woke up especially early to get myself ready even though I knew they would be coming only after 1pm.

To me, getting married is no small issue, it's a lifelong commitment. I don't want to take any chances. I would do whatever it takes to make sure the marriage will last?.. even if it means performing traditional chinese rituals that don't seem to make any sense, but of course, these are subjected to our parents' wishes. ;P

The discussion went on very smoothly, both sides wanted it to be a fairly simple affair... there were no fierce negotiation of details such as the amount of dowry and banquet size. An auspicious date was selected for the presentation of the betrothal gifts to the bride's family. Both DC and I know nothing about the chinese wedding customs, so we listened on throughout... As understand from the elderly, the gifts usually include a dowry of a token sum of money, different combinations of jewellery (for example, the 4 items of bracelet, earrings, necklace and ring), bridal cakes, mandarin oranges and liquor. Some more traditional families (just like mine) will include two pairs of candles, one in the likeness of a dragon and the other a phoenix.

I've also learnt that betrothal gifts are not entirely kept by the bride's family... Some will be returned to the groom's family, such as the pair of phoenix candles, and a few boxes of bridal cakes. The rest of the cakes are distributed along to the bride's relatives and friends, as part of the invitation. Interesting isn't it?

It was also pointed out by DC's parents that it is a Cantonese tradition for the bride's family to provide the groom with a new pair of pants... this sounds quite senseless to me...

Anyway, after this meeting, it's time for my parents to get busy (with the preparation) lor...