09 November 2014

No idea where to start the Actual Day wedding post. Because there are simply too many pictures to post, and I hope I have enough recollection of the day, as we were really rushing throughout the day.

1 week plus  (edit: more than 1 week plus already since I procrastinated in drafting this post) since the wedding has gone so quickly gone by.

It was a really tiring day, with us having to wake up at 3am in the morning and could only get to rest at 2am the next day. That's like being awake for 23 hours!

Pardon the blurred quality of the photos that I would be posting up, because most of the pictures were taken using iphones, and we haven't received the pictures from our photographer yet!

So like I said, I woke up at 3am to wash up and eat my "mian xian" noodles (vermicelli), then wait for my makeup artist to arrive at 430am. 

Here's my makeup artist, Cleo Chang working her magic on me! I liked her works the most, out of the few other makeup artist that I have tried. Her charges are on the high side, but I cannot afford to look meh on my wedding day! Hence, I made the decision to splurge, and burned a pocket in my hole. But trust me, she's really good! And the best thing about her is, she uses airbrush to do the foundation, so its really hygienic, and more even. The foundation would not look like layers and layers of powder. 

I was just finishing up the makeup when the boys arrived! And then there was a short period of chaos in the house. Ha Ha..

Everyone got so anxious and frantic. Even my cousin, who was supposed to go down to open the car door for the groom forgot about his duty, and thus there was a delay in the groom coming up to the house!

And then, came the gatecrash! Not sure of what happened outside the house, but definitely not anything pleasant for the boys!

The poor boys were subjected to the sisters' abuse, one of which was applying cheap mask and make up on the face. I hope their face does not rot after all the "grooming".

And then the husband reading his promises to me (I came up with the promises by the way.) before he could enter the room. Thus far I think he has been fulfilling those promises, except fetching me back from outing with friends (humph!).

Before the husband bent over to give me our first kiss, he had prepared a little surprise for me. And I was really caught by surprise when his friend handed over a violin to him! He IS NOT musically inclined and cannot play any musical instruments, maybe except recorder. 

And he started playing on the violin. His fingers were shaking, but he still managed to play Love Me Tender very nicely on the violin. 

Thank you for the pleasant surprise! :) 

    Us preparing to leave the house back to his house!

Back to his house. Before we entered his house, his family members have to retreat back to the rooms and were only allowed after we entered our rooms. This is done as a tradition to prevent direct clashes between the bride and the groom's family. 

A picture of us outside our room. 

We were then served a bowl of tangyuan each and we had to feed each other with the tangyuan. I think this practice has something to do with uniting the couple together (my guess!)

Thereafter it was  tea ceremony to his relatives and photo taking.

And then I changed into my Kua (Chinese traditional wedding costume) to proceed to his grandmother's place and then subsequently back to my home for another round of tea-ceremony. 

Initially I was quite afraid that I would look too cheena in Kua, but suprisingly, some of the photos which I liked the most are actually those of me in Kua. 

Here's me with my grandmother at my house, preparing for tea ceremony!

And lastly, photo taking session again!

Totally loving how the bridesmaid outfit looked in photos. So colourful and vibrant!

   

Alright! That's about it for the morning session! By then, both of us were really really tired, but were looking forward to the night banquet! : )

Wedding Talk: Digio photoshoot

Our original day of photoshoot was supposed to be on a Sunday, but we changed it to a Thursday after we realised that everywhere would be pretty crowded on a weekend which would result in strangers photo bombing our pictures. 

On hindsight, we felt that we were less prepared and less nonchalant about this photo-shoot because it was our 3rd wedding photo-shoot. We became complacent and we had definitely regretted it thereafter :( 

The suits and gowns were so much better looking and we should have put in more effort into this photo-shoot. But nevertheless, we enjoyed the photo-shoot all the same, even though we were really really dead beat by the time the photo-shoot had ended at 8pm!! That meant that we had a 12 hour photo-shoot (including the makeup etc.)

This time, my MUA was Cleo Chang. You can see her works at her facebook or her website. I've hyperlinked her website and you can see it from here! :) 

Honestly, her services are pretty expensive, much more expensive than other MUA around, but I really like her works. Very natural, yet glam enough for photoshoot/actual day wedding. 

What attracted me to her was the use of airbrush instead of using sponges during makeup application. I was quite turned off by one of the MUA (you can read it from previous posts) and she was so unhygienic, reusing the makeup sponges. God knows how many faces the sponge that she used had come into contact with. Definitely don't want to risk my face having outbreaks right before the wedding! The use of airbrush also made foundation application a breeze and very natural. Not cakey at all!

But if you want to engage her, make sure you book her early enough, as she's quite well-raved and her schedule is pretty tight!

So this was my first look of the day and I absolutely LOVE it. I totally felt like a Korean princess with the hairdo and hair accessory, even though the husband did not agree with me. It's okay. He probably didn't know how a Korean princess should look like. 

My hairdo and the hair accessory. She said she got it from Korea I think. This hairband is definitely something different from the over-used tiara. 

I requested for an updo bun. And I love the way it turned out. So clean and classy. And sweet too! 

Okay, I sound a little thick skin praising myself! But I'm not! I am praising the skills of Cleo!

My gown in full view. Do you like it? I do!

And my handsome husband :) 

It was a pity I didn't take pictures of my second gown, the blue one which I said I look like Miss Hong Kong in. We were too hungry and tired from the indoor shoot and couldn't wait to change out and have our Nasi Lemak lunch, so we forgot about taking pictures.

But my makeup and hairdo was the same, except for my hair accessory. I think Cleo changed it into a tiara. 

And this, was the my outdoor gown. And the hairdo for the gown. It looked quite similar to the one I had for Z'wedding photoshoot. 

And the back of the hair. 

Busy selfie-ing while the poor husband was........ 

Driving us from location to location.... Really appreciate the husband for doing this, because I knew he was tired as well. We didn't sleep very early the previous night, and woke up very early for the shoot. Thank you dear :) 

Oh, by the way, our photographer was Eric. We felt that the poses he offered us was quite limited, but I guess we were at fault as well. As I said earlier, we did not really prepare for this photoshoot and hence did not prepare any props. Thus I guess, there was just sooo much Eric could asked us to do. *sigh, stabs knife into my heart*

What I liked about Eric was he was a very hardworking photographer. We all know how tiring being a photographer was and Eric did not skive at all and wanted to make full use of the time that we had. We were previously asked to choose 2 outdoor locations only, which we did. But we realised that we still had a lot of time left before our evening photoshoot. So we told him we wanted to do another location, but did not have any idea where. So while we were on our way to our second location, Eric had googled and suggested for us to either go to Lorong Halus or Marina Barrage. Really appreciative of his efforts and initiative which made us less stressed up about the third location!

And this was our outfit for our Marina Barrage casual shoot. 

And finally it was our evening shoot. We had to pay extra for the evening shoot but I wanted to go ahead with it because we have done so many day shoots, but not a single night shoot before! And I'm really glad the husband agreed to it, even though a little unwillingly. Hehe, I hope he will not regret when he sees the photos. *crossing my fingers*

Cleo did a change of my hairdo and touch-up of my makeup for my evening shoot. There was supposed to be a crystal hair accessory on my hair but can't be seen from this angle. 

And this was the gown I was wearing. I'm not so dark okay! It was the effects and lighting! :( 

And yup, so this concludes our digio photoshoot, and any photoshoots in the near near future. At least not until our 1st wedding anniversary. I told the husband that I would like to have a photoshoot every year in the future to document our lives together. I hope we can fulfil this!

Wedding Talk: Gown fitting for photoshoot

After a really really long wait (felt like a long wait because I had been looking forward to it!), I finally got to go for my gown fitting at my second bridal, Digio. To their credit, the experience with them had been way above my expectation and I looked forward to every contact with them. 

My coordinator was May. Please look for her if you're planning on going for Digio. She's so friendly, flexible and she tries to accommodate to your wishes and demands. 

So this was a gown fitting for my photoshoot that was on 28th August. I had been looking forward to it because I wanted to see the range of gowns they had! I knew it was not going to disappoint because I felt like a princess already when I tried on their gowns before I had signed any packages with them! And true enough, I was not disappointed and in fact, had such a difficult time trying to eliminate the gowns and ranked them according to my preferences and finally to choose 4 gowns out of everything I've tried for my photoshoot! 

Really tough decision I'd say!

So here were the some of the gowns that I have tried on, there were more, but too many pictures to post hence I just chose some of the gowns that I thought I looked good/ugly in.

This was the first gown I tried that day, and it was love at first sight for the husband!I liked the sweetheart neckline and how it accentuates my slim (*ahem) waist. I also liked it that it was bare-back, that was covered with a see-through mesh and laced lining.
The husband loved the train as he found it special to have a column of lace and sequins in the middle of the train. This first gown was immediately KIVed and put in one of the top three choices, and was finally picked as THE DRESS!

This was the second gown that I tried. I had initially seen a similar design in one of the bridal magazines and they had featured a similar one from digio in the magazine. I had really liked the short-long dress and thus wanted to try it. And I was pretty disappointed. I thought I would looked good in it but it actually looked more like a casual dress to me. Not a wedding gown!

So, noooo to this!

The nth dress that I tried on. I was supposed to find a ball gown for my outdoor shoot. And when I tried this gown, I was super blown away by it, even though the husband said it was "gitu" which means ok-ok/so-so in Malay. But again, I felt like a Disney princess in it and it was in my favourite pink! The pink is not obvious, only a hint of pink which made me love it more, because if it's too pink then it would be too overly fancy, or too kiddish. So the amount of pink in this gown is just right! I can totally imagine any of the Disney Princesses wearing it!

So even though the husband did not really like it, I still chose this as my outdoor gown because that was how much I loved it!

And look at the back!! Backless again! My absolute favourite!

This gown below was also one of my favourite and it had actually made it to the ranks. Love the crystals on the gown! One thing I liked about Digio is that the crystals, the embroidery, the lace and other embellishments for the gown looked expensive and hence the gown wouldn't looked like its from taobao or some "chapalang" websites. 

But, what I didn't like about this gown was that it's neckline was not "m" enough. I still preferred sweetheart neckline because I think it accentuate my collar bone better. 

Eliminated this in the end as the husband preferred the 1st gown that I had tried on. 

This gown was almost perfect. The sweetheart neckline that was "m" enough, it was classy enough, loved the lace of the train. But, it was too plain overall. I liked my gowns to be bling, and this gown was just lacking it. 

So yeah, this was out of the ranking as well. 

Next, came the selection of evening gowns which was an equally tedious feat. The selection of evening gowns was pretty limited as compared to their white ballgowns. 

This gown was one of the few that I tried on first. May told me that this gown was actually made-to-measure for another or their bride. Initially I thought I had looked good in this, but on hindsight, I felt that it made my body proportion looked weird. I was thissssss close to choosing this and thank God the husband forbade me to!

AND THIS! My favourite evening gown of all times!

Look at my curves! Look at my curves! This dress hugged my curves so well and hid my imperfections so well as well! Love this gown!

I totally looked like a "Gang Jie" (Miss Hong Kong)  in this gown la. But nobody agreed with me when I sent them this picture :( 

Sigh people have such high expectations of "Gang Jie" these days....

And yes, I chose this as my indoor evening gown.

And this was the most ridiculous gown I tried on that day! I looked like 2 kinds of person; the first, a Chinese restaurant waitress. Or a slut. 

I had always wanted to try on a cheongsam evening gown, and now I realised, I CANNOT, absolutely cannot carry off this look AT ALL. 

Will never ever think about wearing cheongsams again in the future. 

Yellow gown. I have no idea why the husband want so desperately for me to wear a yellow gown. And being the good wife I am, I complied and I chose this gown as my outdoor evening gown. 

This dress is so meh, but anything and everything for the beloved husband. 

I was contemplating between the above yellow gown and this cyan gown. Thought this would be perfect for a beach outfit. But of course, I ended up choosing the yellow one because of the husband. 

After I think 2 hours of torturous waiting for me to choose my gowns, the husband finally got his turn to choose his outfits! He was allowed to choose 4 outfits as well, and I think he was pretty happy because the selection for men's outfit was pretty wide as well. Different patterns, different colours. 

But guy's outfit being guy's outfit, easy too chose and boring. 

The husband took probably like 15 minutes in total to choose his 4 outfits.

Because z'wedding had a pretty limited range, so the husband was not able to choose fancier designs. And at Digio, since there was a wide range of suits, I encouraged him to choose other designs and colours other than the usual black and white.

And these are the 4 designs that he chose except for the last bright blue one!

So this concludes our gown and suit fitting for our photoshoot with digio. Overall, it had been a really pleasant experience! I was so happy that I was able to go through the racks and racks and different levels of their gown selection. What made it better was that almost all the gowns were so pretty that I had a really hard time choosing my final 4 gowns. 

My coordinator May was so patient for me to slowly decide and choose my gowns. She also helped me by understanding the gowns I was looking for and helped to choose some gowns for me to try. 

Thumbs up, for digio!