Tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme

Hello dearies,

Today, I will take you on a stroll down my memory lane where we conducted “Be Our Guest”. A Disney Geek like me will find ways to insert the elements of Disney in my humble life (sorry but not sorry). This post were supposed to be written two years back but I leave it unattended for too long. Timing just isn’t right! Got pregnant with Belle immediately after my wedding and yes, you know how our happily ever after goes. Things just got better daily. Tomorrow will be our “Happy 2nd of Happily Ever After”. The Hubs and I agreed that 14th October shall be our wedding anniversary date because this is the date when we carried out all the traditions and prayers. You don’t even need to guess what are we up to. Hands down it will be a “Disney Day” for us. We have the day planned out nicely. Nothing is not related to Disney. How grateful I am to have The Hubs blending in to his “Never Grow Up” wife. That’s me! Will share more about it later on.

Pandemic has taken a toll on us. Pretty sure this is not how everyone imagine year 2020 to be. Not only the fact that there’s no flying cars but we spent most of our days worrying about economics, worrying about medical expenses and worrying if we would still be able to hold on to our rice bowls. What about me? Dreadfully upset that I am not able to go to Disney Land (my home) – the happiest place on earth, sore about having to cancel our trips, can’t really go outdoor as freely as before without having to worry if the person right next to me is in touch with infected people, and the likes. Masks on is like the latest trend for us. Have to admit to myself that I do miss the freedom we used to have. Two years is not too long but never too short for huge changes in lives. Delays of my career, delays of my plans to go home (Disney Land), changes to my current job scope, sudden attacks to what you have been hoping for. It feels like dreams being crashed but I do understand how dark the World is right now. Hence, I am ready to take up the challenge. So long I have the desires to create my own magic, I know we will be home one day.

“They can’t order me to stop dreaming” – Cinderella (1950).

Decided to blog about this today because tomorrow is our wedding anniversary. I want nothing better than to soak myself with all the magic moments that we have created. All these wouldn’t have happened if our families and loved ones didn’t extend their helping hands. My wedding post will be quite blunt and honest as I feel it is important to show you how things work in the real World. Behind the scenes of all our magical photos, there are many tears shed. There were endless arguments and fights when we first kick start with our discussion. One wanted this and one wanted that. Not talking about The Hubs and myself but this involves both our families too. We both came from very different backgrounds so there are many opinions and traditions.

Here is one simple advise from me. A wedding should revolves around the bride and the bridegroom only. Your wedding should focus on you and your other half. We have to respect our families and elders no doubt. You may take in advices and listen to many mouths. One thing you should know – both of you should be the MAIN decision makers. Don’t let anyone take control of your mind. Just go ahead with what your heart desires. Understand that many of you would attack me on the “filial” part. Not asking you to go against your parents or ignore their requests BUT you should learn to mold these to the best where it is comfortable for both parties.

If you know me, you know I am a very open minded person. Anything relating to Disney with a little romantic spark would be just fine for me. My dream wedding theme is “Beauty and the Beast”. My plan was to skip all the Chinese traditions and stick to just one garden wedding. However, both our families have their concerns so we ended up having two events – My dream wedding (6th October 2018) and a traditional wedding (14th October 2018). Perfect ending to both!

Let’s focus on “Be Our Guest”. We check out a few venues but it is either the pricing are high or the venue couldn’t accommodate to our number of guests. Buddy runs an event company so he came across Harvest 29 during one of his events and told me to try making our inquiries. Everything went smoothly until the end of our wedding. Oh, it was raining for the whole day but thank God the rain stops right before our event. Not going to disclose the cost and the amount we spent as I would prefer we keep it private and confidential. We paid everything. Nothing’s sponsored (except our beautiful wedding costumes)

Harvest 29 is a homestay beautifully transformed from a low cost house into a 1 million worth of valued property. The owner of the house, Anna is someone I knew with the biggest heart. She believes in young people and always seeing the best of every individuals. The birth of Harvest 29 is a heartwarming tale. So privilege to be able to make my dreams come true in this lovely place.

“Rose” is a must for my wedding decorations. Therefore, we need a lot of roses! I almost squeal with delights when I see roses covering up the whole premises. Here are four main things you need to consider when you are in the midst of planning your wedding.

Select your theme

First thing first, you need to know your theme. Any themes will do. There is nothing wrong with dreaming big. Nobody will call you childish or crazy. I always know I wanted “Beauty and the Beast” to be my wedding theme. Hence, it is easy to work along the line when you are deciding for your wedding cake, wedding decorations, table settings and even your attire for the day. You can’t possibly bring the whole story alive but you may abstract certain characters and icons from the fairytale to be part of your wedding. I would suggest you to take icons that is familiar and recognizable. Take “The Glass Rose” for instance. People will instantly recognize “The Glass Rose” from the story.

Select your color

Now that we have a theme, let’s decide on the color. As we know, Beauty and the Beast revolves around Yellow, Blue and Brown. Why not we settle on the three of them? I mean we can mix match and play around these three colors. Not forgetting, the red roses are here to enhance the whole place. Hence, we decided that brown and red would be the main colors for the venue. Attire wise, we would go for a white wedding dress and black suits for the first march in. Beauty and the Beast wouldn’t be perfect without the actual costumes. So blessed that we got to know Sanee, Noor and Kathy from CCM Singapore – The Best Costumes Maker. Our perfect wedding costumes was sponsored by CCM Singapore . Goodness know one day I would love to buy the whole set from them once we are financially stable. It would be fun to dress up in our wedding costumes every year during our anniversary as a record.

Understand your venue (In and Out)

This is the one very important and the most tricky part. Since our event will take place in a homestay, which means the venue is limited in some sense. We do face issues like having to worry our guests won’t have enough seats. Limitation of space makes it hard to decide if we want long tables or remain all round tables instead. Mark my words. We are not in Disney Land so Disney-kind-of-service is not guaranteed. I have to keep updating my wedding planner and chase her for any changes and advices. Every wedding planners will have their own opinions so sometimes they might not listen to you. Remembering how we argue over displaying cocktail tables but our wedding planner don’t buy the idea. Ended up, it is a waste of money because those cocktail tables are displayed right next to the VIP long table. Who on earth would want to pass through your VIP table and settle down there?

If you are planning to have some performances or entertainments, make sure you do rehearsals way before the actual date. When I said rehearsal, I mean a FULL one. Together with your host, performers and crews involved. We didn’t know the sound system was so bad. Thank God we decided to do a pre-recording in Kuala Lumpur or else I cannot imagine how our musical would turn out to be.

Work within your budget

Aha, now we have come to the most realistic segment. No money no talk. When it comes to this, I cannot say anything because I am very bad in calculating my financial. All I know is I wanted everything but not really caring if we can cope with the expenses. Not sure how many of ladies out there can second with me on this? That’s why “We go together like Ming Shen and Viola”. The Hubs on the other hand is more cautious when it comes to spending every penny. At least one of us need to be like this. If not, we would crash.

Maybe both of us really comes from very different backgrounds which is why I am who I am today and he is who he is. Don’t really need to worry about food or financial since young. The Hubs will take note of every single amount that he spent. He really loves me in a sense where he allows me to take control of our wedding. From wedding shoots to selecting our theme, from wedding decors to wedding cake, and even for his wedding suits, he let me do the talk. Can’t disclose how much we have spent here but let’s not dawdle on this as we have enough memories from the day that would last eternity.

My advice to all – Do your research and work within your budget. It is important to know how much you have set aside for your wedding. Know the market pricing and slowly work into your dream wedding. Everything is flexible and convenient now.

Here are some of the highlights for our wedding:-

Selecting your wedding ring itself is a sacred moment. Really wouldn’t advise you to insert a budget on it. You could go ahead and research on the brands and types. Nothing matters most other than both of you finding the perfect pair of rings that would bind two souls into one. I always wanted something simple for I know my own carelessness. The diamond studs wouldn’t last long on my finger. Love&Co is my selected brand from as long as I could remember. Always remember joking with my friends to be sure to tell my other half that I would only accept if he propose with rings from Love&Co. Any other brands apart from this, I would reject. Just kidding. The Hubs proposed to me on top of Mount Kinabalu, Sabah with something else and I accepted it all the same. Told him I wanted our wedding band to be from Love&Co and he gladly fulfilled my wish. We could engrave a maximum of five letters on the ring so I thought it would be cool if I engrave his name on mine and my name on his. That’s what we did. Am glad the ring still fits even after pregnancy.

We decided on a three tiers wedding cake as we wanted all our guests to taste a little bit of our sweetness. Sadly, the cake was left unattended right after our toasting ceremony. We only realized that when the ceremony ended. And it was too late to serve them. What a waste to the cake. We were quite upset because we really wanted everyone to taste the cake as we specially picked out each flavors. My advice to you is that you serve the cake immediately right after you conducted your cake cutting ceremony. Assign someone to distribute the cakes to your guests. Better than you have to stuff the whole cake back into your fridge. Nobody can finish a whole three tiers cake by your own. Not even a cake lover like me.

A good host will advice you that you may add on to the magic by preparing a gift for your other half. After much considerations, we decided to get “Eternal Rose” for us. That would make the perfect gifts. My only regret is that I did not insist on wearing the magical ears for my wedding. Or else, everything would be perfect.

When someone tells you that are not going to feel anything special on the actual day, trust me, it is true. You want to know why? You will be the talk of the day. Well, it’s your wedding so you got to accept it. People are here to share your happiness. They wanted to take pictures with you. I got irritated much that day because my mouth is sore from smiling. Everything seems to be fast moving that I was worried that we couldn’t keep up with the schedule planned. The gown is so long that I kept stepping on it. Even The Hubs keeps trotting on my gown. This is all normal my dear. We can only enjoy the whole thing from all the pictures, videos and memories. Am I not doing it right now? *Grins

There are many things you would worry about on your actual wedding day. Don’t feel defeated and lost. These are all normal. You would wonder when your event is going to end. Suddenly, I feel awkward because so many people are here to congratulate me. As we marched in, I can’t even recall who I have greeted or who shook my hand. This is why registration counter and taking attendance is important. “Thanks for coming” is the only phrase I remembered myself repeating throughout the entire night.

The only thing I am feeling proud of is the fact that I watched my very own self designated musical show coming alive. What makes it special is us partaking in the musical show! It feels surreal but we made it. Feeling like a dream come true.

What a night!

So thankful that The Hubs supported my every decisions. He never once questioned about what I wanted to do. He is such a low profile guy but ended up enjoying the Disney craze with me. One thing that I wished I could done is to create our very own logo that we could reuse every year during our anniversary. The Hubs is not a crafty person but I love doing crafts. That’s why I said “We go together like Ming Shen and Viola” We are off to create our #msnviolabookoflife

Maybe it is not too late to create our very own logo after all.

Are you ready to take your wedding to a whole new level?

Hope you find my sharing useful. Let’s just hope that I have the mood and strength to reminisce over this day on a yearly basis. To all that are in the midst of your wedding planning, just know that you are not alone in this. We all been through this so I understand how overwhelming it can get. I am right here for you if you ever needed my help. To those who have just gotten married, congratulations to you. Welcome to the next stage of life. Things just started getting better! There are so much to learn and explore in married life. Sure wish The Hubs and I have more couple time before our little bun joins us. Oh well, sometimes, things just don’t go the way we planned.

“Happy 2nd of Happily Ever After” to my silly old bun! It is a wonderful journey. Looking forward to many more years to come. Thank you for enduring all my silliness and my craze over Disney. We are off to create many more #disneymagicmoments as a #disneyfamily.

Yes. We are like any couples.

We fought.

We argued.

We quarreled.

We don’t go eye to eye with one another.

If there is one thing that life taught us, it has to be this:-

We are better together! Cheers to our “MS and Viola Happily Ever After”!

“Tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme” – Beauty and the Beast