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| My husband!! |
Gosh I have been married for almost two months now. Married life is great so far, I still need to get used to calling someone "my husband" hehe.
We are now planning for round two in Singapore. You would think that I'm (almost) a pro now so everything is a breeze. Oh well, in many aspects I do have to admit that Singapore bridal shops and
hotels do pretty much everything for you. The difficult part to me would be the scheduling of events (sticking to timings), the logistical aspects of it and arranging the seating plan for so many people. For English weddings here in the UK, you have to pretty much do and source everything yourself. Mainly people want to cut costs down hence lots of DIY stuff which suits me actually since I love crafty stuff since young. We initially settled for a venue near Greenwich Park which is an English Heritage manor house and we were told if we rent the place, we would literally be renting the hall and nothing else. We needed to source for our own chairs and tables (yes no kidding), our sound systems, our lighting, our caterers, our cutlery... whoa! So overwhelming - it sounds like a full time job already. Bringing out our Singaporean mentality into the thought process, we decided to have it at a hotel so they can help us with however much we want them to. Which is a great idea because I ain't a full time wedding planner (although I'd love to now!).
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| Our beautiful venue in Hertfordshire: Pendley Manor Hotel |
Come to think of it, the stuff which I had to do were...
- DIY our flowers: bouquet for me and bridesmaids, and the table decorations (saved us GBP300 by doing it ourselves. It was fun and I could choose whatever flowers I wanted which was real cool).
- personalised name tags for all 40 guests (comparing to a Singaporean wedding there is no way I can stamp 300 names. I would give up by the time I reach 50...) I shopped so much stuff online it was unbelievable. Our porter was asking us what is going on, everyday there is something for us.
- arranged for our wedding cake (liaised with the local village baker for the flavour and design, did a bank transfer to her account and prayed she would deliver the cake on time and that it would be yummy);
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| Lemon cake in the colours of our theme |
- liaised with the local village florist for the balloons (3x big and 42x small, tassles and what-not). Again did a bank transfer to her account and hoped she doesn't forget delivering 45 balloons on the morning of my wedding.
- decided on our wedding favours (macaroons) and sourced for a baker online and chose one based in Manchester (just because I think she has a very pretty English looking website). The transaction was quite cool: I emailed her enquiring her rates and available flavours. After shortlisting five flavours, she said she could send me a sample via first class delivery so it arrives the next day. We picked it up from our porter and enjoyed them over a cup of tea, surprisingly all intact. We decided on the two flavours and I told her our wedding colour scheme green and pink, so we agreed on the colours of the macaroon shells. I did a bank transfer to her account and gave her the address of our venue. She promised they would be delivered the day before the wedding and that's it. I thought a lot were done by trust because I could have transferred GBP150 and not have the favours turn up on the day which would be a major freak out.
- decided on what table decorations to have and bought more stuff online, such as the pink polka dotted buckets, candles big and small.
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| I gave 2 pink buckets away and still have 5 sitting at home. Not sure what to do with them now! |
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| love my MR and MRS signs which we had at the back of our chairs during the civil ceremony |
- did a personalised wedding guest book for us - "our story" - with our photos and beautiful lovey-dovey quotes (I spent 3 nights doing it and K thought I was a bit crazy)
- did our Order of Service cards, including lyrics of worship songs. To save money, I ordered only the cover and secretly printed the inserts at work.
- ordered sky lanterns online. This was the only thing that didn't quite turn out how we imagined it to be.. haha.. so nope, won't do sky lanterns again. It might be well banned in this country soon anyway.
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| All busy lighting up 20 lanterns |
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| A good pic before they came crashing down! lol |
- travelled to Teddington to do custom made wedding accessories and had to travel there 3 times, each time 45min on the train from Waterloo train station
- ordered pink pom poms from Singapore because they are 3x more expensive here
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| Completely in love with the Oak Room. On normal days, this is the breakfast room cum restaurant |
- we took dance lessons! This was the fun bit, to learn something together. Our teacher was this bubbly Scottish girl called Lindsay who came round to our place for 5 lessons. We picked the wedding song L.O.V.E by Nat King Cole and she came up with the steps. On lesson 4 I told her my dress is big and she said ok no worries. I told her "no, it is
really big. I think we need a full dress rehearsal..." and she was shocked *cover mouth* because the dress is meant to be a secret. We were glad we did the full dress rehearsal because when she saw me in it, she went "oh alright, yes you are right, it is really big!"
Amongst all, spent a bomb which... I have stopped tracking expenses midway into the wedding. It just got too depressing.
So yes that was our planning for the English wedding in a nutshell. It was a lot of work and at many stages I was almost pulling my hair out. Thankfully K is a chilled out groom and he was very encouraging along the way so we didn't have too many differences. He made noise on how much stuff I was buying (like most husbands?) and was initially opposed to the idea of having a videographer. When the DVD arrived last week and we watched it together, he looked at me and said "wow I am glad we got a videographer. What a great idea!" Tried not to roll my eyes HAHA It does sound like an awful lot of prep work, but I'm glad I did them anyway because as I said, I love doing some stuff to start with :) And of course having supportive K, and also my maid of honour Gabby who helped me with literally everything. I owe lots to her for this wedding. She made appointments for me at the Chanel make-up counter and took notes, so she could do a nice make-up for me for our pre-wedding shoot and on our actual day, again saving us some money. She also took a day off work and woke up at 5am to meet us at the wholesale flower market, what a selfless friend.
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| But on the other hand, I spent a bomb at Chanel :( |
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| Thank you Gabby! |
So I mentioned that our online gallery is now live, thanks to Hajley and team.
http://www.hajley.com/kian-and-belinda-2/
I am gonna share some of my favourite photos. We have almost 400 photos, all too beautiful I am seriously torn...
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| me and my papa |
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| we both love this shot which we made as a cover for our Thank You cards |
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| I was a nervous wreck and all my girls could say was "drink more to calm your nerves Bel!" |
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While I was fretting in the room, the boys were enjoying a meal of MacDonalds in their room!
There is this long running joke of how much K love MacDonalds and yes he did it again! |
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| Love this praying shot with the girls |
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| Adore the detailing at the back of my dress |
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| Walking down the aisle with my papa for the civil ceremony |
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| Stealing glances |
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| Saying the vows |
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| Husband and wife! |
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| Signing the registrar |
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| End of the Christian blessing in front of guests |
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| Emerging to bubbles |
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| On the oak stairway |
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| Spotted one of the blue peacocks roaming around |
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| Walking |
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| Love this lamp post hehe |
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| Bel vs peacock |
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| Transforming the room for dinner |
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| at dinner |
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| Cake cutting |
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| Best man Chun Lei's speech which was very funny and apt |
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| K giving a speech to thank everyone for coming. Not bad for an impromptu speech! |
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| Writing our wishes on the sky lantern |
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| lol my wish |
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| the start of a new beginning |
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