Monday, January 13, 2014

Cloudy with a Chance of Wedding Bells Part 2

If you have not seen the earlier part of the movie wedding, you can catch them at Cloudy with a Chance of Wedding Bells Part 1 and The Intermission.
Sorry for keeping you waiting (and thank you for your patience), but here's the Part 2 (not too sure yet if this is the final part because the sequel might come later :p) and personally, I think this is the most interesting part! :)

Our wedding banquet definitely started with a bang when Deardo Wong made his SUPER GRAND ENTRANCE looking like this...
Ironman/Tony Stark aside, I love those flower arrangement in the ballroom!!! 
Super 'yau ying'!!! 
Despite finding some of my crazy ideas in the beginning of our wedding planning unreasonable, he became pretty overexcited nearer to our wedding date. And this entrance with him wearing an Ironman mask with the famous Ironman movie theme music playing was entirely his idea and I love it because 1) it's creative and 2) my man is finally wanting some fun for himself at his wedding too, so why not?

And then the entrance music changed to one of my favourite OSTs - theme music from The Artist.
Carina and Tessa walking in as our pretty flower girls! Awww~~~
Yeap, all music and songs played not only during our march-ins, but also throughout the night were music and songs from movies, dating back to 1970s I think! Of course, our flower girls marched-into the banquet hall throwing flower petals out from a Coke paper cup and a popcorn bag too! *wink~* Ah Kim actually tailor-made the girls' dresses and hairbands!

That was followed by Papo and I walking in before he passed me over to Deardo. :) I was wearing my tailor-made gown with a feather head piece I bought from Diva during their sales period and the birdcage net specially made by my tailor too!
Papo waving like a superstar while I was trying hard to not trip over my gown!
:D
Many thanks to the team in Concorde Hotel for the gorgeous purple-pink set-up, and the uniquely long backdrop wordings! 
And then the show officially started!
For your viewing pleassure??? 
While everyone enjoyed their dinner, here are some other stuff we did for our wedding according to the movie theme...
We used these batches as our 'corsage' in stead of flowers. Ours spelled quite well for us actually! 
Mamo, the Datin! LOL!
Papo said he is 'Damn Famous'! Haha!
Okay, since you can't see clearly from the photo, Ducum and Vivian wore 'Drama Queen' batches.
We asked the hotel to remove the married couple statue on top of the dummy cake and we changed it with our very own fake Oscar statue! 
I bought the batches from a shop in Publika and yes, I made sure they were all pretty much related to movies! The not-very-Oscar Statue looking award can be easily found anywhere, but I bought mine from S&J. And oh yea, we also played Eye of the Tiger from the movie Rocky when the food presentation parade came in!

Like any usual (Chinese) weddings, I went back to our room to change quite soon (hence not much of time to enjoy the food) and came back out to the ballroom with Deardo, this time with the very famous theme music from Back to the Future, one of the very few movies that both of us love! 
I really don't know why Deardo looks like this in the photo but this is the only nicer photo of our second march-in!
Cake-cutting with a very long sword!
Oooohh... One of my favourite photos of the night!
I was wearing my second gown from the bridal house. Like I've mentioned earlier, I've never really find evening gowns from bridal houses nice and this was probably one of the rare ones. In fact, I already had my eye on it when I first visited the bridal house, clearly because of the lighter shades of pink and white, but the girl did tell me that I wouldn't be able to fit into it and I'm really proud of myself that after a few months, I can actually fit into it!!! Yay!!! *victory~*
Let the drinking begin!
I'm skipping all the table-by-table 'yum seng' session because well they all look quite the same, even though there were only 12 tables! LOL! By the time we finished the session, Deardo was already half drunk but for some reasons, both of us were thankful of that! You will know why as you continue reading...

We kept our thank you speech at almost the end of the dinner. Of course, we did it the Oscar way! Both Papo and FIL were asked to go on stage to read out the winner of Couple of the Year award (they were actually reading the script Ducum and I created. LOL) to who else but us??? 
Yes, we re-used this fellar, I call him the Golden Naked Man Award!
I know it seems quite lame a way to get us up to give our speech but hey at least we had fun with all these cool gimmicks! :)
I initially wanted to write a complete speech, just so that I don't forget to thank anybody but in the end the preparation forced me to go on stage without any script. So I did what I can and while in the end I think I did left out some people, my aunts and uncle have been complimenting my speech. So I guess it wasn't too bad! :p
Deardo on the other hand couldn't really remember what he exactly said! LOL!
Our thank you speech without anybody telling us time's up like at those award ceremonies! Hehe...

Just for the fun of it, Deardo and I had a first dance at our wedding. There were totally no rehearsal so just us hanging onto each other and sort of moved left and right... Oh yea, we were dancing to Take My Breath Away, a song featured in Top Gun. It's pretty funny though because the song was actually played when Tom Cruise and the main actress (lazy to find out who also) were having sex! LOL! But I personally chose the song after watching one of Glee's prom episodes...


A romantic photo of us, finally?
Another nice shot of us!!!
Kinda awkward though because at Chinese weddings like this people will just continue to talk loudly, 'yum seng' non-stop and won't care about us two so the dancing stopped half way through cos the atmosphere just doesn't feel right... LOL!

But according to plan, the dance floor was then opened to everyone!!!
... But guess who started the party first???
Deardo of course! And his colleague Tony and Malcolm joined in too!
Super love this photo!!! Haha!!!
That was why I said both of us were thankful that Deardo was a bit 'high high dei' (half drunk)!!! Don't think a lot of Deardo's friends have seen him like that until that very night! LOL!!!

Check out who else also joined the dance?
Malcolm and Lea, the East Malaysians taking the stage by storm too! LOL!
We were dancing to I'm Sexy and I know it if you haven't figure it out yet.
Wiggle Wiggle Wiggle Yeah~!
More wiggle and more people wiggling!!! Woot~!!!
Malcolm having fun with the bride! I knew he would be dancing that night! 
My crazy family members having some fun too! :)
Hahahaha... I just... Every time I see these photos I just couldn't stop laughing or smiling!!! I mean, we were quite worry that not many of our guests (obviously I already knew some of them would) would go on and dance insanely at our wedding! Look at all these photos!!! Everyone just seemed to enjoy themselves so much!!! :D

I'm skipping all the photos taken separately with friends and family because you know, all of them look quite the same too even though there were only less than 130 of them! :p Well you can still check them and quite a number of other photos out in my FB albums:

I must say both Deardo and I enjoyed planning our wedding in KL a lot because we were both quite excited about the movie theme concept. We had a lot of ideas but in the end we kept it simple so we don't overspend. There were of course glitches here and there but it all went on quite as planned, which we are both very glad. We wanted the wedding to be memorable not only because of the movie theme, but also because it is a fun wedding in stead of it being serious and too conventional. I think we achieved that objective because we truly enjoyed ourselves and we believe some of our guests enjoyed themselves too! :)

Well good or bad, I have some tips for some of you out there who are planning your wedding:
1) Make sure you hire a trusted photographer & make sure you call them a day before to remind them about your wedding! 
In my case, I didn't really have time to call any of my photographer or videographer a day before but brief has been sent to them through emails, including soft copies of our wedding invites. When I arrived in the hotel, I texted them our room number, signalling we are ready for the wedding! My official photographer thought I was checking-in that day but wedding was going to be the next day. ==|||

2) Make sure you have back-up photographer(s)
There are so many people who are photography addicts and are very opened to the idea of helping you to snap some photos at your wedding! Lea, Jason and Tze Yang did a great job for me as back-up photographers but mind you, a lot of my friends who took photos with their smartphones also have some beautiful photos of our wedding! You might not officially need them, but their photos taken from other angles might turn out nicer!

3) Make sure you have an emcee who know you/your other half/both of you well OR hire someone according to your liking
I've attended numerous weddings (including my own in Taiping) which comes with a too talkative emcee who always happen to be performers who sing break-up songs or sad songs with horrible butt-twisting and body-shaking at people's wedding. Unless if you are going for a typical Chinese wedding then yes, go ahead to hire those people. 
It's Malcolm's show time!!!
Malcolm was my first and only choice to be our emcee simply because we were pretty close when we were working together back then. But most importantly, he has a fun, crazy, open-minded personality which suits the wedding theme so perfectly. He also has a deep voice and speak fluent English. As an emcee myself, I didn't expect professional standard from a first timer emcee like him (who was by the way, quite nervous at the beginning of the banquet) but from the photos you probably know why I must choose him!!!

4) Make sure things are well-prepared way ahead
A night before the wedding, Ducum, Vivian, Mamo and I were still putting some final touches to the stuff for the wedding and although we managed to finish everything up, the uneasy feeling will always be there to remind you that you might have forgotten something out of the rush!
Hard-working bunch of people!
Make sure the communication with everyone at your wedding, including with your groom are aligned. We had a little situation at our wedding when we had to put ourselves together to march-in when Malcolm announced that we were coming in soon, which until now I don't have a clue from whom he got the signal from. And that was one of the few glitches! It is true that as a bride/groom you should learn to let go and let people handle stuff for you, but brief all the people who are helping you clearly beforehand!

5) Plan your wedding according to your guests
Well in our case, the first dance failed because it was not a romantic and quiet Western style wedding but our dance floor part at the end was a success simply because our guests were an open-minded bunch of people who aren't dance floor-shy!
So really, take your guests into account when you plan for your wedding because you will enjoy it more when you see them enjoying themselves too, trust me!

That's all I can think of! There might be a Part 3 when the videos finally arrive in my hands but till then, THANK YOU FOR WATCHING! :)
With love, Mr. and Mrs. Wong? 

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

The Best Prawn Noodles @ Kedai Kopi Dan Minuman Fatt Fatt, TTDI

Not too long ago when I was visiting Ah Ma at Taman Tun, 2e went tapao lunch for her and asked me to share some of the food. That was when I tasted this Prawn Noodles, which is in my opinion probably the best one I've ever tried so far in my life! Oddly enough, it is not really those famous ones that people will recommend, found in a very ordinary kopitiam too!
I've been to this kopitiam like countless times when I was younger (was staying at Ah Ma's place when I was doing my internship back then) but normally for their economic fried noodles and Yong Tau Fu, which is still there. But little did I know that the stall at the front of the shop sells such yummy Prawn Noodles!
My bowl of precious prawn noodles!!! Yumzzz...
Extra prawn paste to give the extra awesomeness...
Clearly, the most important part of a bowl of Prawn Noodles is the soup! And this one here scored with its super thick and flavourful soup and I think it's because of one reason - they use mini dried prawns to cook it, I mean you can literally see the little prawns in your bowl of noodles! OMG super awesome~!!! Best of all, their 'sambal' given to you separately is also the same paste, with loads of those mini dried prawns. So if you need more of the kick, just add more of the paste! Damn syok I can assure you that! 
The ingredients - pork slices, prawns and Kangkung are always pretty fresh too!
Just a closer look to the mini dried prawns... ZOMG I'm salivating already looking at this photo!
Perhaps the only complain I have is that they tend to overcook the noodles so they are always a bit too soft for my liking. That's a personal preference though because Deardo doesn't have any problem with that. :)
The Yong Tau Fu brings back a lot of memories...
Urghhh... Me looking awful and fat. Please look at the noodles or the barley, not me.
The noodles costs RM5 for a small one and RM6 for a big one.
Ever since we found out about this awesome Prawn Noodles, we have been visiting the place almost once or twice a month, normally on a weekend for brunch. In fact, we just went last Saturday! The best thing is, after the brunch, we can just walk to the opposite shoplots for a cup of coffee at Artisan! How convenient is that!
Drooling yet? YOU REALLY SHOULD TRY THIS ONE OUT! 

Kedai Kopi Dan Minuman Fatt Fatt
169, Jalan Aminuddin Baki,
Taman Tun Dr. Ismail,
Kuala Lumpur
(Opposite Peruvie)

Sunday, January 5, 2014

Cloudy with a Chance of Wedding Bells (Intermission)

Since our wedding banquet in KL was a movie-themed wedding, I think it is only fair to give some air time to some stuff that we have specifically did to go with the theme. I'm sure you have read about our wedding invites earlier, now we have more stuff to welcome you at the venue itself.

First of all, as our guests arrived at the hotel, they should register themselves and will receive a 'movie ticket' each.
The original design from Ducum.
Initially we have thought of many ideas as doorgifts(besides the chocolate that comes with the banquet package). We wanted something that is of movie-theme, e.g. a sticker to stick on your arm like at most movie premiere or a batch or something like that.
Printed on brown paper for a vintage twist and tied with pink and purple ribbons, according to our theme colours.
'Tickets' being given out at the registration table, comes with an 'I WAS HERE' stamp too!
In the end due to budget constrain and also based on relevancy and functionality, we decided on a movie ticket-cum-bookmark. Obviously you'll need a movie ticket to watch a movie, but we didn't want people to just dispose it at the wedding itself. So I thought of tying a ribbon at the side to make it look like a bookmark, then all I needed to do was to pray hard that people bring them home and really find them useful! I myself am already using one for the book that I'm currently stuck reading! :)
Copy-writing for the 'movie ticket' was very simple, just the movie title, date, table number (which was left empty till the person register themselves) with a short thank you note at the back.

So after you've got your tickets, the next thing you do is surely to grab some snacks before your movie starts right? Both Ducum and I spent quite some money and efforts on these stuff - Popcorn & popcorn bags, old school snacks such as kuaci, lemon slices, 'San Cha Peng' and Asam. Except for the popcorn, I got the rest all from Taiping and while I thought people would not care about those details, they all turned out to be a hit at the wedding! Seriously! All gone before we knew it! :)
Too bad I didn't have a nicer picture of the snacks because my official photographer came late... :(
Malcolm with the cute popcorn bag Ducum managed to find for me!
On the table itself, there was also a film strip photo frame we got from Ikea with our pre-wedding photos in it and a Clapper Board we got from Material
So, are you at the right cinema hall yet?

Near to our snack table a.k.a album table, we have our movie poster! Not a huge backdrop-size poster but good enough for us! *wink~*
The design was purposely done in a very classic and typical movie-poster way. I however, did put some efforts into the copy-writing. I think a lot of our guests didn't really realise due to the small font used so here you go...
Hmmm... I wonder if people will be interested to watch the movie based on this poster...
Yeap, Lady 'Baba' is probably from Egypt, Steven 'Spillbeer' is probably always drunk, Michael 'Khor' is the Asian version of Michael Kors and Quentin 'Taraktidor' definitely needs a lot of sleep (Mr. Tarantino might agree! LOL!). And yes, the movie is definitely based on an 'extraordinary true story'! Haha! 

And then into the banquet hall, as soon as you find your table, you will see this...
Who was at the Forrest Gump's table???
Taken from Wai Quan's FB. She was at the Little Miss Sunshine's table! :)
Each table is labelled with not only a number, but also a movie poster. Unlike some other movie-themed weddings I saw online, the movies we chose as posters were not only romance movie... In fact, I think none of them was really a pure romantic movie! :p Deardo and I actually spent quite some time deciding which to use based on two criteria: 1) Movies we love and 2) Movies that their posters are pretty famous and iconic.
Here are the list of movies that made it into our list:

1) Italian Job
2) Home Alone
3) Grease
4) The Sound of Music
5) Back to the Future
6) Forrest Gump
7) Terminator
8) Top Gun
9) Ace Ventura
10) Amelie
11) Little Miss Sunshine
12) Ocean's 11

Urm... No prize for guessing which represent Deardo's friends and which represent mine! Way too easy to guess! :p

Ducum also helped customise our menu to be put on all tables. Copy-writing of course, once again comes from yours truly!
Which dish actually makes you drool, huh? 
I don't know about you, but one of my colleagues actually told me she 'stole' the menu home! LOL!
And yes, on both our movie poster and menu, we added a little social media stuff in it and that's a hashtag I created for our wedding on Instagram. So if you have an Instagram account, search for #cloudywithachanceofweddingbells and you will find a couple of photos from my wedding, thanks to some of my contributing guests! :)

I do hope that people have enjoy all these efforts that we have put into the event because I think Deardo and I personally kinda enjoyed the whole process of brain-storming for ideas and thinking of funky ways to make the wedding a bit more fun and cool! In fact, I think these little details are big part of the reason that our wedding banquet was truly unforgettable. :)

There are some other stuff we did when the wedding banquet actually started but let's leave it to the next post when I blog about the event itself!
Now what about a video to end this post? Here's the photo slides-video we made, which pretty much captured our childhood, younger lives and a little bit of our love story. It was played at our wedding banquet and for those who have missed it, here you go~! :D

*Video was entirely done on an iPhone with an app called iMovie.

Thank you for watching! 
Stay tuned for the next part of the movie wedding!

Thursday, January 2, 2014

It's 2014 Already!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR PEEPS!!! 
A very happy 2014 from Deardo and I!!! 
Really, didn't 2013 just past in a blink? It felt like the Christmas party at our house last year just happened yesterday!
Well to sum it up, 2013 was a little bit of a quiet yet busy year. Not much of fun because I didn't do any travelling except for a two-day trip to Singapore but that was of course due to the fact that we were quite busy and financially stuck because of our wedding, which was the most exciting thing that happened to me the entire year.
In 2013, I officially become a married woman. Very surreal of course!
So after a very quiet 2013, 2014 will be a very scary year for me that I was not really celebrating the new year in a way. A lot of changes in life, making my new year resolutions very much harder than the usual ones. I think it is great that I write them down so I can constantly revisit this post to remind myself of them and that the whole world (okay, I know not the whole world reads my blog) will read and will (hopefully) remind me once in a while! :p

1) Take the new career's challenge and own it (boo~yeah~~)!!!
After almost 3-and-a-half year at my current job, I'm ready to move on. It is a brand new industry, brand new environment, brand new job scope and pretty much a very very brand new challenge. It is a field that I am very interested in yet I know from the bottom of my heart the competitive industry makes the job a little bit more difficult.
But when I signed the offer letter, I've told myself, screw it! I'm gonna just take it as a challenge and make the best out of it! I mean, how did I survive myself in KL and Perth alone for so many years? So why can't I do it now that I have more people supporting me? To think positively, I might just accidentally create a great portfolio for myself in one of my favourite industries by bringing brilliant result to the company! So really, I just have to stay positive and take everything as they come! :)

2) Make driving a breeze (wheeee~~~)
I was never a born driver. LOL!
Okay, so this is like a confession that some of you may not know: I HAVE DRIVING PHOBIA. 
Yeap, I got my driving license long time ago but ever since hitting a motorbike in a very minor accident, I have the fear for driving for like, forever??? I did drive a bit here and there, but not long distance and don't even think about parking...
This year though, it has become compulsory that I MUST pick up driving again because 1) Deardo just changed his manual car into an auto one just for me to get back on the wheels again and 2) My new job will require more travelling around town. So really, I DON'T HAVE A FREAKING CHOICE ANYMORE!!!
So professional driving sifu who wanna sponsor me for any driving lessons are very much welcomed! Otherwise, advises and encouragements are also very much needed! Really, I need people to tell me I can do it more often to overcome the fear!!! 
P/S: Next time if you see me driving on the road, make sure to say hi but stay a bit far away from my car, ok? :p

3) Fit into that freakin' Cheongsam!!!
Me in my Cheongsam four years ago...
Four years ago, Deardo bought me my first Cheongsam for CNY and I really love it. Unfortunately that was the only time I wore it, simply because I couldn't fit into it anymore!!! ;(
The truth is that seeing Deardo (and our makan adventures) and also working (and the stress and free food) at the then new place, I've put on 10kg in that three years or so. That's quite a scary number for most girls, isn't it? It was really a personal record to me and it freaked me out for quite some time until I managed to slim down for our big day last year. That was however, only 5kg gone. So that piece of Cheongsam hanging in my wardrobe has now become the benchmark for my diet plan!
So to myself and many other girls out there, JIA YOU! FIGHTING! GAMBATEH NE! :)

4) Make our dream honeymoon a reality 
So after our wedding, many have asked about our honeymoon and you will normally get the same answer from me: NO MONEY YET!
Both Deardo and I have some dream places to go but we have recently decided that our honeymoon should be in the States because whenever we talk about it, both of us got really excited. Be it the Grand Canyon, Hollywood, New York, Las Vegas or the shopping and the Broadway shows!
Well of course, the trip requires quite a huge amount of money and I know deep in my heart that I MUST I MUST I MUST save up for the trip! So you guys, remind me to save up okay??? 
Anyway, looking at the timeline, we might only be able to go next year so some small trips should be in plan this year too, any suggestions? Nearer and cheaper options, guys?

My new year at Pavilion this year, still with a lot of doubts running in my head! 
Like I said earlier, my resolutions this year aren't easy to achieve but they are definitely not impossible too. I will try to stay optimistic and be productive this year! 
What about yours? Any new year resolutions? Any that are similar to mine? Whatever they are, I wish you all the best and let's make 2014 a very very good year! :D