Showing posts with label Cloudy with a Chance of Wedding Bells. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cloudy with a Chance of Wedding Bells. Show all posts

Sunday, March 23, 2014

One Last Entry on Our Wedding!

So now that you have read almost everything about our weddings, including everything about Cloudy with a Chance of Wedding Bells, our wedding in Taiping, my Vera Wang-inspired wedding gown (which is still on sale by the way, please do e-mail me yo~!) and also the wedding dress I designed for our morning session and church session in Taiping, I'd like to conclude my blog posts on our weddings by sharing some other stuff involved in our wedding.

1) The Evening Gown
While in KL, we still have gowns from the bridal house we have engaged earlier, we didn't really engage to anybody in Taiping for our outfits. We basically D.I.Y everything - I wore the short wedding dress I designed and tailor-made in the morning, then put on the Vera Wang-inspired gown for the march-in at the our wedding banquet at night.
While we didn't have a second march-in, I reckon my gown would be too bulky to walk around for the toasting session of 50 tables (duh...), so I decided to find myself a straight cut evening gown. Knowing that I never really like those typical evening gowns from bridal houses which are mostly dark colours, I went straight online to look for a budget gown and finally found one at My Dream Gown.
The gown comes in sky blue with some lace details on top and straight down at the bottom. It was simple yet beautiful and I totally love the colour! Best of all, the gown only cost me RM380. I can assure you that it's quite hard to rent a gown with that price! 
I had doubt of course, although I ordered it with my measurement that I might not be able to fit into it but thank god it was okay (I left some time frame in between so even if it didn't fit I had enough time to alter)! My relatives and I were all really impressed with the quality and the workmanship of the gown (it's made in China) too! :) 
My advice here is, go online to look for gowns! You'll be surprise to find some gorgeous gowns with a much lower price! 

2) The Wedding Shoes
Here's the thing, I looked around and it is obvious that brides love to go for designer's shoes. In Malaysia there is the very famous Christy Ng which I have referred to but nothing catch my eyes at all! And then the search went on to other smaller names...
Until I saw blogger Kim who got her wedding shoes from Payless and even from Bangkok I went hey, famous blogger also never buy expensive designer's shoe so why must I? I think to me the most critical point is that I really don't find those designer's shoes any attractive. Perhaps because my requirement is that my shoes shouldn't be that typical kinda wedding shoes so I could wear them again for other occasions. 
So yeah, I eventually found my first pair at Nose when it was on sale. So it cost me I think slightly over RM80! The Fuchsia heels was perfect to my liking because of the colour and the fact that it wasn't too lacy or girly, yet has a little details in the design were the reasons I fell for the pair of heels. The chunky heels also gave it a unique kick!
Then I bought a same colour pair of heels from Zara also on sale at RM99 as back-up. The pointed-toe and unique cut made it looks really edgy and sophisticated (have I mention before that I have always love Zara's shoes?). In the end I wore it with my short dress for our morning session in Taiping and it has certainly gave the vintage styling a modern twist! Love it love it love it!!! 
So really, personally I think it's not necessary that you have to find an expensive shoe for your wedding! I think you have to pick something you really like and something that goes well with your gown/dress in stead of blindly searching for one at some designer's website. :)

3) The Hair Pieces & Earrings
Because of my short hair, I've been quite obsessed with hairbands, clips and hair pieces (some call it fascinator) because they are the only stuff I can use to decorate my hair! But because of that, I'm very particular with what are going on my head on my wedding and I certainly don't trust the bridal house giving me nice stuff. In fact they were trying to give me a princess crown hair piece which I quickly asked to change because it just doesn't suit me at all, don't you think so? Shirlexa? A princess? No way~!
So I was smart enough to buy a few hair pieces from Diva and H&M and am glad that almost all of them were utilised at our weddings! They are all bought at some bargain prices too! Of course I spent a little extra money on the tailor-made birdcage net hair piece but it was worth it since I've even used it after that at our annual dinner! :)
Most of the earrings I wore on my weddings were also from my own collections while the one that I was wearing at the morning session in Taiping was a wedding gift from 3e and family from Diamond and Platinum.
It is very important that you have your say in what you are going to wear at your wedding because people like your make-up artist or the person who pick the accessories for you from the bridal house doesn't know you. Hence, it is very dangerous because they are going to choose something that doesn't reflect your personality or give you something totally outrages to wear! So really, tell them what you want and don't let them mess you up on your big day!

4) The Wedding Bands
We went to a few shops, including the famous ones like Love & Co. and Tiffany & Co. to look for our perfect wedding bands. I wanted them to be something that is beyond just a round ring yet it was really hard to find something interesting and suits my finger because they are really small (yes, I have really small and short fingers).
We eventually settled with this pair of wedding bands from Diamond and Platinum, the same shop where Deardo bought the engagement ring when he proposed to me. Made of diamond and platinum, it has a little criss-cross details in the design. We paid a little over RM5k for the pair of rings and are until now very happy with the quality. :)

There you go! Finally, I've completed all blog entries on our wedding! I hope by sharing my preparations, wedding days' chaos and fun, as well as where I got my wedding items actually inspire and help you future brides out there to get your wedding done! :D

Friday, February 7, 2014

Cloudy with a Chance of Wedding Bells (The Finale?)

Of course, it's not the finale! There are more stuff that I haven't blog about our wedding but for the KL wedding entries, this shall be the last part.

Our wedding video is definitely the perfect way to summarize the wedding itself. Excuse us for our long speeches because one of us was drunk and the other one didn't have a speech prepared. :p


Although I won't say our wedding video is perfect, but both Deardo and I are very happy with it because of some good quality of cinematography, visuals that were well-captured (even lovely moments that I missed on the day itself) and of course the songs that were chosen by yours truly went quite perfectly with the video. :) I truly love how the video really presented our wedding just the way we wanted the wedding to be - no ji muis and heng dais or gate-crashing games yet it can still be such a beautiful, memorable and fun wedding! :)

Engaging JC Studio for the videography of our wedding is probably the best decision I've made for our wedding. They are very easy-going, committed and their work is simply awesome (though they took three months to finish the post-production of our video)! So many thanks to Jonathan and his crew and to you guys who are getting married, book them!!! 

Once again, thank you for watching! :)

If you have missed other entries on our wedding in KL...
Cloudy with a Chance of Wedding Bells!
The Thank You Post
Cloudy with a Chance of Wedding Bells Part 1
Cloudy with a Chance of Wedding Bells (Intermission)
Cloudy with a Chance of Wedding Bells Part 2


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? 

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!