the wedding part 1

a whole month after the wedding and I realized I need to write about all my thoughts on that event so that I have it immortalized before I start to forget! God gave us so much more than we ever ever hoped or dreamed of. only last year I was thinking of how I wanted my wedding to be and I thought it would be impossible to have a really meaningful wedding full of our closest friends helping us out since Gavin's been away for years and they dont really know him but just seeing how our church family have come alongside us to make this day so truly beautiful really touches my heart so much! I wanted a garden wedding and I thought it would be impossible finding a beautiful place but my team of friends made it so much more beautiful than I ever thought possible! the sand on the ground made it look beach-themed. the chuppah with the pink cloth and fairy lights and little sakuras sewn on looked smashing! yes, most things were DIY and to me that meant so much more bcoz it means there were loving, caring people involved. some things just cannot be bought with money.

one thing gavin and i felt so strongly about was that we wanted it to be meaningful, and we didn't want to buy into that whole commercialist/marketing ploy that since it's your wedding, you ought to spend the most money and buy the most expensive things.

the fanfare started on the Thursday before the wedding when we had the hen's night, it was somewhat of a girly themed party with everyone wearing dresses.

everyone
looked so pretty! some brought nice gifts for me. some were kinky gifts, some were perfectly innocent ones.

and we had tea with scones and other tea time treats although it was an evening party. the food was really yummy and although it was "dinner"time we had cakes and cookies and ice cream. haha.

by now my overseas guests had arrived so it was really like a fun reunion, leon arrived from brisbane, ben from hobart, adele from singapore and albert from the UK.
the moment Ben arrived he was put to work, he had to draft out the master schedule for the day for me because i was panicking and stressing but still getting nothing done.
they took the daunting task of baking the wedding cake out of my hands. i was so tired i gave them the recipe from donna hay and ingredients and i went to take a nap. when i woke up, the butter cakes were ready!
the next day we had the wedding rehearsal at church, then to petaling st to buy the flowers for the bouquet, i LOVED how auntie uma made my RM18 [total!] worth of flowers look like these
petaling st was tiring though! it was jammed like mad. still we shopped around a bit and rachel pressured me into buying more lingerie. i also bought the white shoes for the wedding day [these are the 4th pair of shoes i'd bought for the wedding, long story!]
i had to wear flats because heels hurt my feet so so much and i wanted to be completely comfortable for the wedding so that I'd enjoy this day to the fullest instead of being sucked up into a tight and heavy dress, my feet bound up into tight uncomfortable shoes and feeling like i can't wait for it to be over. i wanted this day to be most "fun" and relaxed instead of stuffy. and I wanted to walk around freely without having to be encumbered by my shoes.

when we got home i was so knackered. gav brought our overseas guests to buy dinner at the ramadan bazaar but there were only leftovers left. albert serenaded us in the living room with his violin since i wouldnt get to hear him the next day. soon after the cell members arrived to start decorating the car. it took HOURS to decorate the car! here's the toyota after their hard work. poor damien had to drive it in to work like this on that day! hehe

i got the idea from a martha stewart magazine from 1999. as for the car, unlike most other people i didn't quite care what car i came in, really. the wedding was not an opportunity for me to "Show off" anything or how rich i am. in fact since im not rich there would be nothing to show off anyway. i decided on damien for the driver since he likes driving and so we used his own car since it's the most practical thing, after all he'd be most comfortable driving his own car right?

meanwhile i still hadn't decorated the wedding cake!! it was already friday night, less than 24 hours before the wedding! i am really the most disorganized bride ever and i kept procrastinating and being lazy so finally Ben and Adeline decided to take things into their own hands and decorated the cake themselves. it was a small round butter cake with 2 layers and jam in the middle, covered with sugar paste icing. Look!!
it was the top white cake that they made, all the little chocolate ones were made by my mum.
they did a wonderful job!! before this I'd looked at some very beautiful cakes from shops like choffles and so on but they were all within the price ranges of RM400-RM1400 which seemed extravagant to me. this one's entirely homemade by my friends/mum and that made it even more special.

Saturday -the big day!!
the whole day started out pretty normally, I woke up in my own bed at home in SS17.
I was so dead tired the night before but today I couldn't sleep in although I tried . so i called fanyin and asked if her dad could take me along to go to uncle hong teck's house [hereafter known as "the house"] At the house, everyone had assembled, matt and yuenching, munkeong and suetbeng, ben and adeline, auntie uma, rach, fanyin and reb, and of course terk too. Gav was nowhere in sight though!
when he finally turned up he shoved his scuffy shoes at me with some shoe polish and told me to polish them. I didn't really polish them properly though! still they looked okay.


meanwhile, the flowers were in the fridge and all the "props" were lined up in a row by the door ready to be whisked away. the house was very busy with lots of people bustling in and out, auntie allison even made an appearance. the atmosphere was very busy and noisy and cheery,
I however was in a bit of a daze and wondered if I should go along too but auntie uma strictly forbade that and so off they went!

the house suddenly seemed so quiet and lonely after they left and I had a few moments of quiet to myself. I sat down with a cup of coffee and looked at the leftover durian puffs in the fridge that fanyin had bought the day before. i hate durian. but my mum loves them so i gave them to her. I took a shower upstairs and waited for mum to take me to the nail salon nearby to have my nails done. [it's called "WOMEN FACE AND BODY", which i told the proprietor, was not a good name. it's a little shop next to leonco hardware on bakuteh row]
I chose to have a french manicure.
the plan was for my dad to take me to novotel to dress up but he took the wrong way and we got stuck in a jam for 2 hours! if only my dad had consulted gavin on this but when i asked him before if he knew the way, he kept assuring me that he did!! the fact was that he knew the old way. i was getting so stressed and worried while being stuck in the car and it looked like we wouldn't get there on time and the photographers and makeup artist were there already!!

meanwhile my wonderful team were decorating the place and making it spiffy. about 4pm
gavin decided to walk to where we were stuck [hang tuah] from jln kia peng to come get me. he really IS my knight in shining armour! there i was, in the car stressing away and at the pudu jail intersection i saw him coming toward me braving through the heavy traffic! he came and opened the door and told me to come along with him. so, there we went, in our sweaty tshirts with me carrying the dress and veil in paper bags walking through jln imbi and going through the back way, past pavillion and into novotel. i was SO glad to see him!

at the hotel, munkeong and suetbeng were just leaving as i arrived and i remember how happy i was to see his pink shirt and brown tie!! it's so perfect. soon, the makeup artist got busy.
and so did the photographers. i quickly hung the veil up on the lamp so that the wrinkles would go off, and my friends got busy too. while i was having my makeup done they [including gavin] were getting ready too. dad showed up awhile later saying that the moment i left the car the jam eased up!

while getting ready in the room terk assured me he was already dressed but when i turned around he looked like this
some of the others were waiting to shower, and gav got ready too. that western superstition on how the groom's not supposed to see the bride at all on the wedding day was totally lost on us!

anyway so after i finished the makeup gav put the veil on

then he realized that his suit wasn't there! apparently matt had taken it, so the boys went down to go to the venue. meanwhile the evening started out for our guests with some classical pieces by dr phang, our violinist. he played beautifully and with lots of "expression".
i hope the guests enjoyed it, even if they were not musically inclined, im sure the whole atmosphere was one of serene sweetness and makes one feel "OOohhh this is so nice!!". i wanted the whole feel of this thing to be sweet, fun, relaxed, meaningful, elegant but not expensively, ostentatiously glamourous.
the place looked just fantastic!! i get really happy when i see a lot of pink!
while waiting, my girls and i posed a little in the hotel room.

then it was time to go.
That piece of paper i'm holding is rachel's printed schedule for all of us!
meanwhile the guys were having their own bit of fun
thengyik's the highest! terk's feet are the highest but that's only coz he bent them, hehe. ben looks like he's being sucked up by an alien spaceship
ok this is the end of part 1, part 2 will come later!