The Wedding - Post Action Reports Part 2

Part 2 - Actual Day
Oh must mention, our ad photog, the night before, called me and ask me if i can send over another copy of the program schedule etc to her because she lost/misplaced/dog ate it the one we gave to her quite some time back when the list was prepared.
I was like "???!??!?!!!?!" ... good lord... shows u how professional she is now doesn't it ?

[ADVICE] Get the chance to talk to your AD photog... if she/he seems inexperienced or doesn't even know how to get to your meeting place, chances are its not worth the $. Get someone else. If you can't get someone else? make sure the photog has all the information he/she needs (i.e. maps, tel numbers, etc). Else make sure you get friends as backup photogs. More photogs, the more photographs u get, the better...

So early morning i woke up, got ready. One of my coat's button came undone so had to sew it up. Mom to the rescue.. On wifey's side, from what i understood, the makeup artist came late. REALLY late. Our schedule was lined up really tight due to the constraints we have from the artshouse (short time window to do anything) so we had to squeeze and make sure everything ran on time. Again this the case of our side is all settled, but other pple can screw things up...
It was raining quite heavily as well thus the makeup artist was late. So once my brothers were ard, we ate some breakfast and then headed off to wifey's place to pick her up. I drove out before i realised i forgotten the bouquet of flowers! so we drove back and pick it up. :p

[ADVICE] As soon as you can, put all the items you need to bring into the car or with your brothers.

[ADVICE] Make sure your breakfast consist of easy to pop-in-your-mouth items and won't stain your teeth. Tao Sar Pau is a bad idea :p

[ADVICE] Prepare umbrellas, especially in the car

[ADVICE] If you have prepared the best of your abilities and other pple proceed to screw you up? Chill and smile.. because its their problem not yours and there is nothing you can do about it... so might as well enjoy your day :) Of course arrange for backups. Backup photogs, backup makeup artist .... hopefully your bunch of frens that are there (i.e. brothers and sisters) can take on some of these roles..

[ADVICE] Always have a sewing kit and lotsa pins ready in case of wardrobe emergencies

[ADVICE] try to confirm again those that are driving have cars on the day itself. Else you might find yourself with a transport crunch!

When the car arrived at her place, it was pouring. Eugene (wife's brother) came and open the door. The umbrella sheltering him was rather small so poor eugene got drenched :(. After some time-wasting (cos she wasn't ready and the videographer wasn't downstairs yet) we got to the lift. The customary cheering and shouting we went upstairs and prepared for the worse.. :P
Now originally i had a plan: my brothers would distract them while i go 1 more floor upstairs and then run thru the corridor and come down the other staircase and then surprise them. This would have worked if the sisters had setup "challenges" along the corridor. Luckily for me there wasn't :) So the sistas did their "thing"... the brothers did their "thing" and i got in and "took" my wife.. something like that.. hahah.. Then it was going back to my place for the tea ceremony. Here in there was another issue. Apparently our ad photog din manage to get a ride with my best man.. luckily she got another fren to come wif her (to take pics) so she got a lift. HOWEVER, neither really knew how to get to my place (faint)....so i got my best man to give directions whilst i concentrate on driving ourselves safely to my place.

[ADVICE] Try to get your ad photog aquainted with whoever is the best man or the brothers. Again see my previous advice about ad photogs....

[ADVICE] Make sure you hang on to your ang bao feverishly and bargain! but don't be unsporting though else it spoils the whole experience :)

Reaching my place, we took pics, had the tea ceremony. Here i have to thank my brother for making sure the line moves swiftly. I think he must have been quite stressed about the whole thing but its good that everything went quite quickly. Afterwards, its on to the wedding venue and our wedding itself!

[ADVICE] Get someone to be in charge of the tea ceremony and make sure he/she knows who's suppose to be next in line to take the seat etc.

When we reach the place, we had heard from various pple that the place was in a mess, we are surprised that there are still pple hanging ard outside etc. We kinda expected that more pple would have been seated and waiting by now. The outside portion seemed rather hectic. I can't comment much as we were busy chatting with frens, saying hi, congrats, when is your turn ah? etc :P ...But all in all things still got done and soon it was time to get pple seated down and ready for us to enter :) The MCs did their jobs well, the JP got ready at the table and we got ready to walk in. The doors were opened a little too early though and thus our first 2 sisters got basked in the white light for some time before wifey gave the signal to move and so our brothers and sistas walked gracefully admist soap bubbles floating everywhere to take their place in front of us. We waiting and i must've looked so anxious till wifey nudged me and we walked down the aisle :) We waved, we smiled, we laughed and our mickey mouse hands must've been a sight! Mom montioned for me to look behind and we did and waved to the crowd. Just what we wanted.

[ADVICE] Try to ensure that the pple in charge know what the sequence of events is like. However if things are too spontaneous, then play by ear :)

[ADVICE] Make sure you have 1 overall-in-charge of everything and that he/she is some multi-tasking guru. Things CAN get very messy and hectic but as long as the engine is humming along. things will be fine :)

[ADVICE] At this point, you should NOT be controlling anything. Leave it all to your capable brothers and sistas and trust that you have briefed them sufficiently and they all know what to do and most imptly, they want to see u happy and yr dreams come true... :) If not.... then... erm.. good luck to u! ehheehe

So the we took our seats and the JP started speaking... Honestly? I started glazing over and trying to think of what to say (we have both decided to wing our vows....).. wifey swear she saw me glaze over as i did not acknowledge her when she looked at me *sheepish grin*... Then thewe stood up and took our LEGAL vows. Here the jp made a mistake. He mispronouced my name. At the very first time, i was contemplating if i should ...er....correct him.. but i felt maybe shouldn't disrespect him. Wifey later told me she also was very amused and was wondering if she should correct him too. If you look at the video of us, you can see our bewildered faces :) Sigh.... my name has been mispronounced for so many times that's why i took up the name Eric. Well that was part of the reason... another part is because it means "princely" :P So then we made our own vows... wifey sang a song to me (have i told u i love her voice? hehehee ) and then i sang a little bit too and then VIOLA... hubby and wifey... *giggle*

[ADVICE] Make sure one of the brothers go thru with the JP the name pronounciations.. MAKE SURE ... else can be quite embarassing....

[ADVICE] winging vows is fun and can be very spontaneous... however think it thru in yr head before the words come out of your mouth and get recorded for all time :) Please pple, make sure it goes thru the big brain...

Oh our parents then proceeded to come up and sign on the dotted lines to officiate the occasion. Then we had our thank you speeches, we showed a video of the anime that one of Josee's students did. Apparently she is a fan of our blog and had drew us a booklet of our special moments :) We just had to show it and invite her to our wedding. So glad she could make it hehehe.. and then after that, it was photo taking session. We had decided to stagger the photo taking so some pple can go have the food whilst we take pictures in the nice chambers itself with the different social groups. This was a bit messy as it is not easy to get so many pple to come together quickly and smile and take pics. Experienced photog is a MUST. Our ad photog here wasn't too bad. Then take more pics and stuff and we proceeded out to mingle.

[ADVICE] Again, if yr ad photog is experienced, she/he can handle this part. If not, then get one of your brothers/sistas to be the floor manager so to speak :)

Mingling was the main objective of ours. We wanted a setup where we can walk ard, talk to pple we havent met and have pple talk amongst themselves generally be at ease rather than set them down with 9 other pple whom they may or may not know and then kinda lock them down there. So mingling we did. So much that i din really get a chance to venture into the catering area. So much that we din get anything to eat though we heard the food was great (YAY!) Initially our timeline was rather tight but one interesting side effect of not providing tables to sit down and eat is that guests tend to leave early or leave once they are full or have mingled enough. So surprisingly 30 mins before we were thinking of asking guests to vacate the premises, most have already left on their own accord. We had the chance then to talk to those that stayed till the end and i think we had a good time :) I hope they did as well!

[ADVICE] Make sure u designate someone to gather all your impt things for you to bring back home (i.e. wedding cert, ang bao box etc)

[ADVICE] Again, leave it to your overall in charge to process everything else you might be ovewhelmed.

[ADVICE] If possible, purchase or loan a portable Harddisk from your friends, the type that can slot in memory cards so you can immediately copy the pictures taken by your friends to look at without waiting for them to get back to you.

So the wedding part was done, we adjourned to wifey's place to do the tea ceremony there. Things moved on pretty quickly then. We had some food there and i got to eat mother-in-law's famous mango pomelo dessert! OMG its to die for :p wifey had some po piahs. So the job was done for the ad photog, videographer and my "brother". We drove on to visit my great grandma. Then afterwards i went to top up the petrol for the mini, clean it and return it to my fren.
day was done! well mostly. we had a family dinner in the evening and wanted to go salsa but we decided to pack our bags and chill instead. The next morning we got up bright and early and reach the air port @ 4am ish for breakfast with the families again before we flew off to USA for our HONEYMOON! :)

more coming later in part 3 :)