Story about family and love.

A couple of weeks ago, I received an email from a renowned wedding website asking if they could feature me as their bride of the month. I was quite thrilled and excitedly checked out their stories on their previous brides of the month.

Being a bridezilla, I immediately looked through my wedding album for similar pictures that I could provide to the website (without having even said yes to them) and then it dawned on me….I neither had pictures of my main dress in full length on its own nor with me in it. I didn’t have a single picture of my beautiful wedding dress train, laid out and not scrunched up. I didn’t have a single picture of myself just looking like a bride in it. I had a lot of beautiful & precious pictures from the wedding but I didn’t have those. And it killed me inside.

Was I disappointed at my photographer? Yes I was. I was so upset I tweeted about it, of which she immediately responded to me so apologetically. She told me the reasons of what happened and I accepted them. Later I deleted those tweets because it was done without any thinking on my part. Anna is a truly wonderful, amazing photographer but due to some awkward turn of events…she uncharacteristically missed out on taking pictures of me in my main wedding dress. What can I say? Shit happens, even to the very best.

Anyway, I spent about three days crying my eyes out and somehow managed to calm myself down thinking I could always rent the dress again for another photo session. Because the dress, is what they in the bridal industry called a “Super VIP” dress….it was a little expensive to rent, especially since I just got a new car too (am sorry, I’m beginning to sound like a real spoilt bitch here but please bear with me).

My closest friends of course knew about my predicament. They were incredibly supportive, consoling me and telling me that in their hearts they will always remember how beautiful I looked on my wedding day. Thank you guys!

Anyway, this is not a story about the missing pictures of a dress. This is a story about my family.

Today, after dropping my car off for re-tinting (that’s another long story) at Jalan Gombak, my brother from another mother M came to pick me, Celine and Gareth up for breakfast. He drove us all the way to Jalan Imbi, making several detours in the traffic jam looking for a particular restaurant before M realised we were supposed to eat at Jalan Ipoh. In my head, I was like…omg M you dumbass I am so HUNGRY!!! Hahahaha.

We finally found the restaurant and had a nice breakfastlunch and then M said he wanted to show us a project he’s working on. So we made our way to the project site. He said it was at Jalan Tun Razak. Gareth turned on Waze on his phone, but M kept making wrong turns and they both blamed Waze.

While we were in the car, Celine was using M’s car USB point to charge her phone. M later insisted to Celine that she had to remove her phone so he could plug in his iPod when they were nearer to his project site.

I thought he had to present something on his iPod or something but then I realised he was trying to play a song. So I asked M, “Bro, why you need to play this music when you’re nearer to your project site?”. He said, “IT’S MY THING”. So I was like,”Hah? OK lor”.

Anyway, after a while, we were near Dewan Bahasa & Pustaka, and in my head I was like, “Gawddamn it these two men are useless at directions”.

I kept telling them Jalan Tun Razak is near KLCC and we need to get back into the city…but M turned onto Jalan Loke Yew towards Cheras as I was telling them to turn into the city! WTF! M kept insisting that making a U-Turn on Loke Yew was the better way to reach Jalan Tun Razak. T_T

As we were on Loke Yew, I pointed out the bridal studio which I got my main wedding dress to Celine. Celine asked me whether I was still upset about the wedding dress pictures and I said, “No lah….just a little sad lor”.

And then Celine said, “Babe, we are heading to the bridal studio to get your dress”.

Blank. “What?”

“We are getting the dress for you so you can take proper pictures in it”

Blank. “What do you mean???”

“We are getting you the dress. Cass is doing your makeup again, Anna is taking your pictures again!”

“What are you talking about???”

I started tearing up. M drove up to the front of the bridal studio. They walked me in and I still couldn’t register what was happening. Then I went in and there was my dress, on a mannequin.

# – My dress.

As I was asking Celine if she was kidding again, suddenly I heard, “SURPRISE!!!”. Out jumped Jayna and Sin Loo from the changing room. At that point, I began to bawl.

# – Not a pretty crier, sorry.

I couldn’t believe it was really happening. I was going to take pictures in my main wedding dress again so soon. I was really expecting to do it on our fifth wedding anniversary or something. But right now I do not need to wait so long because the most awesome people in the world have gone ahead and made it happen for me.

It’s not my birthday, it’s not any special day. But you guys took your own time and money out to plan and do this. For me!?

Thank you Bro M, thank you Celine, thank you Jayna, thank you Sin Loo, thank you Whey Lu, thank you Ee Laine, thank you Ruby and thank you to my husband Gareth for this beautiful surprise. Especially thank you to M and Celine. This is totally up there with my wedding proposal hahaha.

I love you guys so much you have no idea!!

# – Being fussed over by my loved ones – G’s feet, Jayna, Sin Loo, Celine and M’s body. The lady buttoning my top works at the bridal studio.

So all the weird detours earlier now made sense. M and his “thing” about iPod…actually he wanted to play the song “Favorite Girl” by The Icarus Account because it’s the theme song for our wedding highlights video /sniffs

What a surreal, amazing day. I feel so incredibly blessed. A long time ago, I used to think that I could never love other people like I love my family. Well, you really can.

Thank you my sisters and brother from another mother. You are family to me. I love you.

We’re truly married!

It’s been almost a week since we had our wedding reception. It’s kinda weird not having anything to worry about anymore haha.

Am feeling a bit lost now that I really have nothing to chase after, worry about and freaked out over but also relieved and contented.

It’s still a bit difficult to digest that we’ve successfully pulled off the wedding. It was perfect.

It was perfect because all the people who matter to us were there :)

I want to blog about the wedding properly but we’re still waiting for all the pictures from our main photographer.

# – Gareth in his bespoke suit and me in my main dress. We didn’t look too bad, ya? :)

Here’s a short video edit of our wedding morning session…can’t wait for the full video!

Wow, all grown up now!

My awesome bridesmaids, wedding decor and wedding invites!

Thought I’d drop in to revive this blog a bit. Been really busy preparing for the wedding. Yeah, what’s new right?

I am so glad & grateful my bunch of bridesmaids have been clocking in so much time helping me with my wedding decorations. Me being Asian, a bit paiseh to ask for help at first but they all volunteered…I didn’t even have to bribe them with food!

Celine in particular has been feeding me with delicious hasma jelly she lovingly boiled at home for me every week! :)

They are so incredibly awesome, I couldn’t find better girls than this bunch! /sniffs

Looloo, Jayna, Celine, Lainey, Whey Lu, Ee Laine, Ruby, Yuki, Haze, Carol and Li Ling. Thank you! <3 Speaking of wedding decorations, I have decided to eshew professional wedding decorators. Too expensive!! I just couldn't justify plonking down a sum of money enough for a sweet holiday in Maldives towards frilly stuff that will only be useful for one night. Call me cheapass, but that's how I feel! So I've been to Klang for many times getting supplies. Klang is my new favourite town! I love it for its food, but I love it more now for it's cheap, higher quality DIY/craft supplies! I bought a bunch of fabrics, fake flowers (yeah gasp in horror...but my flowers, which by the way look very realistic will never look wilted in pictures!) and ready-made corsages. # - Lainey helping me pick out corsages.

And of course, the girls have been helping me over the weekend, shredding fabrics into streamers and more until their fingers blistered & ached. I feel the love, I really do. HUGS ALL <3 # - Lots and lots and lots of handmade streamers.

# – Whey Lu, Celine, Sin Loo and Lainey. Jayna too but she’s not in picture.

The colour of the streamers are picked out from out wedding invites. Our wedding theme? Retro Technicolour Frenzy!!! Ya, I so totally just made that up heh.

I love, love, love our invites. It is very us!

I love the fist bumps in front because that’s really our thing…we practically fist bump over every gawd damn thing haha.

# – WooHoo. Picture stolen from Chee Ling, our awesomesauce invite designer.

We don’t have a favourite colour so we decided on using most of them. We love sweets so we decided to share some. In fact, we tested several brands and the one on the invite is the tastiest one ok!

And there’s a bit of geekiness too but only the geeks would spot it.

# – The inside of the card…picture stolen from Pinky.

I can’t believe it’s a little over 20 days to the wedding! I still have tonnes of stuffs I haven’t done! I haven’t bought dresses for my two flower girls and I haven’t…okay, that’s it!?

Wow.