Planning the Wedding Door Games

Door games form an integral part of a Chinese wedding. When the groom arrives, he and his entourage will be blocked at the door by the bride’s family members and friends. This is to symbolize that they are reluctant in allowing her to be married off. The groom and his supporting buddies will thus have to pass through several obstacles before he can finally get to his bride.

But for many people, these wedding door games, designed to trick the groom and his buddies, are the fun part just before the Tea Ceremony. I had 5 “sisters” (Chi Mui) to execute the door games while Sze also had 5 “brothers” (Heng Tai).

However, we were also warned by a few relatives and friends to know the groom well enough before planning the tricks as not everyone would be as sporting. Anyway, our door game plans were quite reasonable:

Hang an orange in a stocking on the belt to hit another orange on the floor

Eat dried bee

Brush teeth with fermented bean curd

Sufficient Angpow $$$

Hula hoop

But somehow, more tricks got added on the wedding day itself, probably thought up by someone else:

Drink Guinness Stout from a straw

Sing a song

More video clips and pictures of the wedding door games can be viewed in our:

- Video Gallery:
Alcohol Straw, Orange Balls, Fear Factor & Dental Care and Ang Pow Toll

- Photo Gallery:
Traditional Ceremonies and Traditional Ceremonies – More Photos

Planning for the Tea Ceremony

Mom bought a tea set for our Tea Ceremony. So, we did not have to worry about looking for one. On the morning of our wedding day, Sze had to leave his house by 9am and depart from my house around 11am after all the door games, prayers and Tea Ceremony.

My elder sis, Fiona, planned for the food to be served that morning to welcome our guests and, the groom and his convoy. She was also in-charge of serving the tea and safekeeping our Angpows during the Tea Ceremony, together with the help of Naomi, my other sis.

In the olden days, the bride was not allowed to return home within the first 3 days after leaving. However, to make life more practical nowadays, many couples would be driven 3 times around the house to symbolize those 3 days so that the bride could come home anytime for convenience sake and so that all the ceremonies can be completed on the same day itself. Upon completing the 3-round trip, the couple would then have a meal with the bride’s family to symbolize their return home for a visit.

After undergoing all the ceremonies at the bride’s house, the same tea set and sweet Longan Tea would be passed on to the groom’s convoy to bring back for his family’s Tea Ceremony.


Upon reaching home, Sze arranged for his cousins, Khoon Leng and May May, to help serve the tea and safekeep the Angpows during the Tea Ceremony. After that, the ceremonies would proceed with Khoon Leng’s little son Breaking Open the Potty, followed by a buffet lunch.

More pictures of the Tea Ceremonies and Breaking Open the Potty, as well as a video clip, can be viewed in our:
- Photo Gallery: Traditional Ceremonies
- Video Gallery: Opening The Car Door & Breaking Open The Potty

Guo Dai Lai

For the Guo Dai Lai ceremony, Mom said that Sze’s family only needed to deliver lots of Tau Sar (Green Bean Paste) Biscuits and oranges plus a bottle of whisky. A Nyonya basket would be ideal for the delivery of such gifts on this occasion. But as we do not foresee the basket being used anymore after the wedding, we resorted to borrowing one instead.

Fortunately, Sze’s 4th Aunt was agreeable to lending us a small Nyonya basket, which we are thankful for. In addition, I also decorated my sister’s gift basket with red organza ribbons as we needed more baskets to present the Guo Dai Lai gifts. In fact, Mom was actually quite impressed with my DIY gift basket. It turned out to be pretty useful as my sis could use it too during her own wedding later on.

The baskets were used to deliver the Guo Dai Lai gifts consisting of 2 dozen Tau Sar Biscuits and another 2 dozen oranges, a bottle of Johnnie Walker whisky and an Angpow for Pin Kam (Bride Price, often incorrectly called dowry).


Both the baskets were also used again to deliver a similar set of gifts when Sze came to pick me up on the morning of the wedding day.

Traditional Wedding Items

I also found info for our traditional wedding items in the malaysiabrides forum. Many couples in KL buy their traditional items from Petaling Street or Kinrara. We were not able to find the shop in Petaling Street, so we went to the Xilinmen wedding boutique in Kinrara instead.

Xilinmen Auspicious Services is located in Pusat Perniagaan Kinrara, Taman Kinrara, along Jalan Puchong and is quite easy to find. They have got everything that you need for your traditional Chinese wedding ceremonies.

As with many other couples, we too got all the traditional wedding items that we needed from Xilinmen, such as red cloths (to hang over the doorway of both family homes), “Hei” character stickers, red clogs, a set of baby tubs and potty, etc.

The baby tubs and covered potty.

However, I did not buy the red umbrella and red lamps as I do not find them practical. But you could buy all those items there if needed, as well as many other things, including various types of sewing items.

Canopy and Furniture Rentals

While I was looking for the food caterers, I was also looking for the canopy and furniture rentals at the same time as they go together hand-in-hand. I checked the malaysiabrides forum and found that Chee Kwong Rental Services offered various types of canopy (with fluorescent lights and fan), table, chair and tablecloth rentals at pretty reasonable prices.

Chee Kwong Rental was also quite flexible with the delivery and pickup of the items. Due to their busy schedules, they would deliver a day earlier and pickup a few days later, at no extra charge, of course.

When we attended a Hari Raya open house celebration of Sze’s cousin, we found that they also used the same rental company. This showed that Chee Kwong Rental Services was a popular rental vendor for all occasions.

Catering

We needed food for our wedding lunch reception and also for Sze’s wedding eve dinner gathering. So we started out by making enquiries about various catering services from the recommendations that we received from relatives. However, with only 1.5 months to go, many of the caterers were already fully booked on our wedding day.

Fortunately, we did not have to look too long to find 2 different restaurants that we were happy to engage for our food catering requirements:

1. Dapur Nyonya Restaurant
Dapur Nyonya was recommended to me by my boss. It is jointly owned by his friend and is located in Bandar Puteri, Puchong, which is nearby our house. We went to the restaurant to try the food… and I loved it! In particular, I really liked their Nyonya Curry as it was very different from any other curry that I have had before.

We went over the menu with Alan, Dapur Nyonya’s restaurant manager. We made several changes to the menu and finally agreed on a catering package, which came standard with some nice decorations as well. This took care of the buffet lunch for our wedding reception at home (after the morning’s Traditional Ceremonies).

2. Samosa Café & Catering
We have had dinner twice previously at the Samosa Café in Taman Connaught, Cheras. During our meals, we spotted a small booklet on the table, offering various catering menus. They looked quite interesting and the food there was reasonably good.

Samosa Catering was quite flexible with their menu. So we decided to hire them to do a simple buffet dinner catering for Sze’s wedding eve gathering. The only setback was that the food and heating trays had to be picked up from the café as delivery was free only for larger orders. But it was not a big problem as Sze’s Dad and brother were around to help out with the transportation.

LCD Projector

I had been looking around at LCD projector rentals but they were all quite pricey. The rental rates depended on the ANSI Lumens, which is a measurement of the projector’s brightness. The least expensive rentals would have the lowest luminance ratings, but they might not be bright enough for a nice and clear projection.

I asked Sze if he could borrow the LCD projector from his office but he was pretty reluctant as the portable unit at his workplace was old and not as bright. I too could not borrow any from my office as there were no portable projectors there.

Next, I tried asking for the LCD projector from Mr. Koh, a client of mine. I had previously seen the projector in his office, so I knew that it was a pretty good unit. My client agreed to try his best to help out but he could not promise anything.

In the end, I am thankful that Mr. Koh managed to obtain the LCD projector and lent it to me for an evening. :)

Wedding Music

As I was compiling the music for our wedding dinner reception, I searched online for ideas and found many samples of wedding songs on amazon.com. I went through those music samples every now and then to make a playlist and shortlisted quite a number of songs.

Sze was supposed to narrow down the music selections but he had little time for that. But after much delay, we got to choose a bunch songs whereby the most important selections were for our wedding reception ceremonies:

- March-Down ceremony: Canon in D (by Pachelbel but added with a funky beat and accompaniment).

- Unity Candle ceremony: You Light Up My Life (by LeAnne Rimes).

- dinner hall March-In ceremony: I Love You (by Martina McBride).

- First Dance: (I've Had) The Time Of My Life (by Bill Medley & Jennifer Warnes).

In addition, a CD of various songs was compiled for use as soft, background dinner music while a non-stop medley of several rock & roll songs was compiled on another CD for guests to dance to after dinner.

(We had not anticipated our guests to be so outgoing, and bearing in mind the time limit set by Bankers Club, what we thought to be sufficient for the dance CD proved to be inadequate as the guests simply wanted to continue dancing and the CD had to be repeated several times!)

Video recordings of our March-Down, Unity Candle ceremony, dinner hall March-In and First Dance can be viewed in our Video Gallery at:
http://www.zenetlife.com/wedding/video.htm

Dinner Program

A wedding dinner program was important as it would set the agenda for the entire evening. Just as the menu took care of the food “agenda”, our program would decide on the order and timing of proceedings before, during and even after the dinner.

Equally important would be who to put in charge to coordinate each itinerary. A friend of mine who did not look into such details ended up not even knowing who played her wedding march-in music too early while the groom was still on the phone. Consequently, she had to rush out to find him as the parents-in-law had already marched-in ahead of them.

We also discussed our dinner program with Shangkar, the Bankers event manager, and took into consideration his recommendations. In the end, this was what we decided on:

- Cocktail reception with live pianist and pre-wedding album display & slideshow.

- March-Down ceremony.

- Unity Candle ceremony.


- (We had not originally planned for this but Kin Yuen, the best man, spontaneously arranged an orderly dinner hall March-In since we already had the music for it - guests first, followed by the bride’s parents, groom’s parents and lastly, the bride and groom.)


- Dinner starts, with the Bankers staff having their own food presentation ceremony.

- During the 4th dish: Cake-Cutting and Toasting ceremony (cake to be served together with dessert).


- During the 5th dish: Groom’s Music Performance.

- During the 6th and 7th dishes (we had requested for the fish and fried rice to be served together): Chen Chen & Sam’s Music Performance, and a multimedia Presentation “Gift” from a group of 8 student guests.

- After the Presentation: Table-to-Table Toasting (the 8th dish to be served in the midst of those numerous table visits).

- After dinner: Guests to be invited to the dance floor to witness the wedding couple’s First Dance.


- Guests to join in on the dance floor and continue dancing while the bride and groom (together with their parents) proceed to the reception area to bid farewell to (non-dancing) guests.

- (It turned out that we only bade farewell to a handful of guests while the rest were either on the dance floor or were just hanging out at the reception area enjoying the nice atmosphere. With so many guests still staying back and not ready to call it a night yet, we took Shangkar’s suggestion to perform the Bridal Bouquet Tossing ceremony).

Dinner Venue Decorations

I was quite particular about the wedding dinner decorations at Bankers. I didn’t want to overdo the deco but yet, I wanted something with style. Fortunately, Sze left the deco all up to me, so I had the freedom to decide on what I wanted the place to look like.

I had done some research and I already had several ideas in mind. 1st of all, I wanted our theme color to match the classic wood environment in Bankers. We saw some photos of a few previous wedding dinners there and found that light purple blended in very well with the Bankers interior. The color was very unintrusive and gave me a nice, warm feeling. Even Shangkar, the Bankers event manager, loved that color.

Now, wedding without flowers would be no wedding at all. I wanted a floral centerpiece with a pillar candle and 2 bouquets at the base of the staircase railing with netting to cover the spotlight.



(Nobody could imagine what I wanted, so I did the centerpiece myself. Bought the flowers 1 day before our wedding and DIY the bouquet myself. But that was not such a great idea as I did not have time to relax at all.)

Shangkar would also scatter rose petals and place tealight candles on the stairs, window ledges and tables.



We saw from some photos that too much deco could crowd out the classic and elegant environment in Bankers (which would then defeat the purpose of choosing this venue). Hence, we decided to keep our deco relatively simple (when compared to those photos… hehe).

Although Bankers did provide chair tiebacks, we did not take up that offer as they did not match our theme color. So we sourced for the tiebacks ourselves. We went to meet Hassim at one of his wedding events. We chose the tieback color we wanted from his color palette but we missed each other and did not get to meet. Everything was done through the phone and we would then bank in the money for him after our dinner event was over. Unbelievable as it may sound, this business deal was all based on trust!

More photos of our dinner venue decorations at Bankers can be viewed at:
http://www.zenetlife.com/wedding/dinnerrec/dinnerrec.asp
http://www.zenetlife.com/wedding/AddDinner/adddinner.asp

Makeup Artist

Looking for a makeup artist (MUA) did not take too long. Although I had been monitoring the forum for contacts, I did not really need to check them out. This was because I already had several contacts of my own.

When I went for our pre-wedding photo shoot, I enquired about hiring Ivory Romance for their makeup services but that arrangement did not suit me. Ivory’s MUA would give me a makeover in the morning at my place but in the evening, I would have to go to their studio to get my face colored, which would be quite inconvenient on such a busy day.

A friend of mine then recommended her MUA, Vivien, to me. I checked out her pre-wedding photos and I thought the makeup was very natural. I also checked out a few other MUAs but they were all not suitable. So I decided to hire Vivien as my MUA. She was charging a standard rate of RM600 (in 2007) and we made arrangements to meet up to show her the way to my place.

I found Vivien to be a petite and nice lady. She would do the makeup in the morning at my place while she would come to Bankers for the evening makeup session. I explained to her that she could do the usual natural makeup in the morning but I wanted bolder makeup for the evening as that would look more prominent in the dim Bankers environment. Vivien was quite receptive to my request as she never really had much of a chance to apply more daring makeup until this. I paid her a deposit before she left.

(Btw, Viven did a great job with my makeup on the wedding day. She also did some makeup for Mom on that day. Mom, Godmom and Sis were all very impressed with her skills. They even thought of taking makeup lessons from her!)

Photos of the evening and morning wedding events can be viewed at:
http://www.zenetlife.com/wedding/dinnerrec/dinnerrec.asp
http://www.zenetlife.com/wedding/TRADC/tradc.asp

Photographer and Videographer

Our wedding was getting closer each day. Everything and everybody were being booked fast for the year-end wedding peak season. We really need to confirm a photographer soon before it’s too late.

I had been checking the malaysiabrides forum everyday in my search for a decent photographer. I read about Jim Liaw and was quite impressed by his portfolio, but his quote was a little too high for us. I also contacted Louis Pang from Sabah but it was a similar problem. In addition, we would have to pay for his flights, accommodation and allowance too, which would add up to a big sum. By the way, both photographers’ fees range from around RM4,000 to much higher amounts.

Soon after, I short-listed another 3 photographers, whose rates were closer to our budget and their styles to our liking too:
Kok Weng RM1,100
Aivee RM1,000
Kevin Han RM1,300

It took us several days to decide on the most suitable photographer. But in the end, we decided to opt for Kevin. So, what made us choose him? Although Kevin had the highest rate, we still picked him over the others because of his very natural lighting and nice photography. And especially in a dimmer environment like Bankers (our wedding dinner venue), his wonderful lighting would be crucial, and that made the decision quite easy when we compared their photos side-by-side.

(Btw, Kevin did a great job on our wedding day. 2 of our photo albums taken by him can be viewed at:
http://www.zenetlife.com/wedding/dinnerrec/dinnerrec.asp
http://www.zenetlife.com/wedding/TRADC/tradc.asp
We also heard that he has already increased his fees.)

We would not hesitate to hire a photographer for our wedding but a videographer was optional. Fortunately for us, Sze’s brother from Canada, Kin Yuen would be attending our wedding, and he would be bringing a brand new video camera along with him… yay!

(Turned out that Kin Yuen was too busy to be the videographer on the wedding day as he was also the best man. So Sze’s cousin Boon took over the job instead. We were very impressed with his commitment as he was working like a full-time videographer! We had not expected this kind of dedication from someone who was just doing it for free. We were quite thankful but at the same time, we also wanted him to have time to sit down and enjoy the dinner. That was one of the reasons why we hired a photographer, whereby Kevin was an equally committed professional.)

Bridal Room Furniture

We needed a new set of bedroom furniture as the number of “residents” in the room would increase to 2 (single upgraded to double… hehe). We looked around the Cheras and Puchong areas for a reasonable bedroom set.

Our room isn’t that big, so we decided not to get a king-sized bed. A queen-sized bed would probably be a more practical option. My sis, Fiona, had previously suggested that we get the bigger king-sized bed so that we could share the bed with our baby too when we have one. I thought it wasn’t such a great idea as a big bed would make our room more cramped. When baby comes along, we’ll see what we can do then.

As we were looking around, we came across a bed set manufactured by Batu Emas. Apparently, it was made of solid wood and looked good. Of course, it was also a little more expensive.

We continued to look around and found this shop called UMI Furnishing Design near Sze’s house in Puchong. The shop owner, Francis Chew, was a funny guy. He seemed quite honest and recommended several bedroom sets to us. We felt comfortable and our confidence in him grew which led to trust.

After thinking it over, we went back to the shop the next day and paid a deposit for a bed set which we mixed and matched from the catalog. In the end, we were quite happy and satisfied with the choice of bedroom furniture that we purchased.

Guest List, Card Distribution, RSVP and Seating Arrangement

It wasn’t too difficult for us to come up with our guest lists. Sze had been wondering how to get started and fortunately got his cousin Su to fax us the relatives guest list which she used for her sister’s wedding just a year earlier. It made a great reference as we were also inviting the same people (i.e. relatives).

As for me, I already knew exactly who I needed to invite, so I had no problems in coming up with my guest list. The only other question was to decide on which of our friends and office colleagues to invite.

The most tiring part was the distribution of invitation cards. Most of my relatives’ cards were distributed by hand one month before the wedding dinner, so we had to go from house to house to invite our honorable guests. Sze had the advantage of having his Muslim cousin Harris, organize a Hari Raya open house party at around the same time, so he took the opportunity to distribute most of his relatives’ cards at that gathering (which saved us many trips). Of course, colleagues were the easiest as we were all working in the same office while we also had to meet up or visit some old friends in order to “summon” them. ;)

After the card distribution, we had to find out if our invited guests would be able to make it for our wedding reception. Although some did call to confirm their attendance/non-attendance, not many would RSVP. So one week before the wedding, we would call most of them for confirmation.

Seating arrangement wasn’t that difficult either. We just seated our guests according to their relationships. Most of the juggling was to fit into each table, 10 people who got along the best. As we had used MS Excel spreadsheet program to help keep track of our guest list and RSVP status, cutting and pasting their names to slot into each table ensured that we didn’t miss out on anyone.

Wedding Favor Ideas

We first thought of giving each of our guests a pair of chopsticks as a wedding favor. The varieties of Thai-style chopsticks were quite popular and were becoming increasingly common as wedding favor items. However, we would rather source for more unique chopsticks directly from Thailand (instead of the commonly imported varieties sold locally) but since no one was going there, we looked around and found another suitable wedding favor – heart-shaped soaps.

My sis told me that no one was going to cherish our wedding favor. Her boyfriend took home a pair of chopsticks from a wedding dinner and it had been left lying in a corner ever since. When I imagined my own chopsticks being treated that way, I felt that would be such a waste.

The little pieces of soap came in multiple colors and since they were more likely to be used than chopsticks, we decided to change our wedding favor to the heart-shaped soap instead.

I like organza bags as they look classy. Since I had some maroon organza ribbon left over from our DIY invitation cards, I thought we could make bags out of that. My Mom helped me sew the ribbon into little bags. We then inserted the soap into the organza bags and tied each bag with thin, pink satin ribbon.


Good idea? We just hope our maroon organza bags will complement the light purple theme of our wedding dinner reception (more photos available in the Photo Gallery).

Dance Practice

Oh dear… this was the most difficult task of all in our wedding preparations – practicing our first dance. Neither of us were dancers but we wanted to make our dinner reception a fun event. So, we decided to provide a little surprise “entertainment” by having our first dance at the end of the dinner and then have the audience join us on the dance floor soon after.

We didn’t want to have a proper ballroom dance because if we got our steps wrong, it would be quite obvious. We wanted something more “freestyle” whereby even if we made mistakes, they wouldn’t be too noticeable… hehe. We also wanted a faster song as it would sound more lively, fun and different from a typically slow first dance. Besides, it would probably be easier to get the crowd to join in too later. So, in the end, we went for the song, “(I've Had) The Time Of My Life” by Bill Medley & Jennifer Warnes.

We started practicing our dance steps in early August 2007. Although we tried to work on it everyday, that was easier said than done. We missed practice every now and then ‘coz we were sometimes too tired or just didn’t have the time.

Being unskilled dancers, we had to take it slowly and choreographed the dance steps to fit our limited ability… hehe. The main thing was that the steps had to feel natural to us as we learnt them from a couple of videos that we found online.

As the wedding approached, we became even busier and missed practice for extended periods… we would forget our steps every now and then, so we would try to squeeze in a short practice session occasionally. Anyway, we just did our best and tried to have fun too!

Photo Selection

On Thursday, 26 July 2007, we went to Ivory Romance to see the result of our photo shoot. We were attended to by our photographer, Ah Mun. His job was to help us select matching shots to fit into our photo album and to also convince us to upgrade our album into a fully digital design album. Personally, I thought their digital designs were decent, not impressive, but on the other hand, we would also get more poses in the album. Hmm…

Cost was not the main issue in not buying his sales pitch. I believe that if the digital designs made the album look truly extraordinary, then it would automatically become a must-have, a necessity that no matter what, we would still want to upgrade our package for that awesome result. But that was not the case… and moreover, I don’t really like indoor photos that much.

As for Sze, he let me decide as he didn’t have a preference. Fiona was also with us to help in selecting the photos. We wanted more poses but didn’t want the digital designs. So, we came up with the idea of upgrading our mini album from identical poses (which was redundant anyway) to different poses, with a digital copy of all the photos (no touch-up) on CD-ROM. Poof! There goes the fat commission for Ah Mun - he wasn’t thrilled but helped us to finish up the process. Our album would be ready on 28 September 2007.

The physical mini album was not impressive but that was less important – the crucial point was that we would get the digital copy of the photos in JPEG format. That was like getting the film negative in the old days and we could then do anything we wanted from there. We didn’t want the bridal studio’s slideshow either as we wanted to do our own - the video slideshow of our Pre-Wedding Album has been posted earlier in the Video Gallery.

Pre-wedding Photo Shoot

It was Sunday, 8 July 2007. Our appointment for the photo shoot was at 11am. Even though lunch would be provided, we were afraid we might get hungry (oops… you now know that we’re both big eaters)! So, we prepared some food and drinks to bring along for tea time.

By the time we arrived at the bridal studio, it was already 11.30am. Risley, our make-up artist, took an hour to get us (actually, it was mostly me) ready for the first session – our outdoor shoot.

We went to Muzium Telekom and its surrounding area at the Jalan Gereja-Jalan Raja Chulan junction for our photo session.


We were afraid there would be many people staring at us during the shooting. But it was a Sunday and thankfully the area was quite deserted. A few girls staying up in a nearby apartment block were watching us and waved when we looked up. A short while later, someone looked out from a passing car and said, “Hello!” We waved back. Well, guess it wasn’t so bad after all to be watched by others during our outdoor shoot. :)

In the midst of our photo session, it started to rain. So we didn’t get to take as many outdoor shots as I would have liked. We then proceeded back to the studio and had lunch there.

Next, we continued with the indoor studio photos. We had many different poses in various settings till we lost track of what we did.


We ended the photo session with the Rococo Rose backdrop, the traditional Chinese and the Japanese costumes. The entire session finished at around 9.30pm. It had been a long and tiring day for us.

Buying Shoes

A few weeks before the pre-wedding photo shoot, we went shopping for Sze’s shoes. His old shoes were already scratched and worn out. Being as fussy as he is, it was not easy to find a suitable pair. For weeks, we went around to many places but just didn’t find anything that both of us liked.

One day, we took my 6th Uncle from Kedah out for shopping as well as to meet with Naomi, my younger sis who was working at The Curve at that time. 6th Uncle wanted to enjoy relaxing in a massage chair, so we left him at Ogawa.

We continued our window shopping and wandered into Metrojaya. While looking around, we came across a black pair of long and unique-looking shoes. It was a Valentino Rudy of Italy. Sze thought it looked quite nice and different while I thought it looked much better than the other shoes in the store. Ah, agreement at last… so that was how we settled on Sze’s Valentino Rudy.

As we continued window shopping, I also found a pair of shoes for myself at Edward Forrest. I wanted a pair of silver shoes as they would easily match any dress. But unfortunately, they didn’t have my size… as usual :(

Before long, the weekend of our photo shoot was already approaching. I had totally forgotten about my shoes. When Sze reminded me about it, I panicked as there was only one weekend left!

Fiona, Naomi and me then went to Sungei Wang Plaza to look for my shoes. While we were looking around, we went into an evening/wedding gown shop called SA Creative. So instead of a pair of shoes, I bought a knee-length dress for my wedding dinner. Many brides might not accept the idea of having a short dress for their dinner reception, but I really liked it, more so when I think of how the skirt will float when I make a turn during the dance… hehe.

Time was running out fast for me. I started going into almost every shoe shop in Sg. Wang and finally found a pair which was quite decent. I took it immediately to get it over with. Moreover, Naomi was already complaining of feeling hungry, so we ended our shopping trip with lunch at Kim Gary.

Selecting Dresses for the Pre-Wedding Photo Shoot and Wedding Day

On 14 June 2007, we went to Ivory Romance to choose our dresses and coats for the photo shoot and wedding. It was 3 weeks before our photo session.

I tried on a number of dresses in various colors. I chose a cream colored wedding gown and a beige evening gown as I prefer creamy colors instead of plain white for the wedding. The rest of the dresses for the photo shoot needed striking colors to stand out better, so I had a variety of white, cream, blue, red and pink. (The dresses can be viewed in the “Choosing a Bridal Studio” blog, Video Gallery and Photo Gallery).

Meanwhile, Sze chose a single-breasted black coat as they didn’t have the double-breasted coat in his size (it was either too big or too small). He would then buy a white tuxedo shirt from them on the day of the photo shoot and change his clothing to match whatever I would be wearing during the photo session.

Choosing the Butterworth Dinner Venue

We had already booked Bankers for our KL wedding dinner. It would be jointly hosted by both Sze and me for any of our family members, relatives, friends and colleagues who were in the Klang Valley.

However, I also have many relatives who were in the Butterworth area. As such, my family decided to host a separate wedding dinner for them there. I’m not familiar with the area and don’t really know what‘s good over there. Thus, we asked my Mom to help out.

Mom and Dad were staying in Sitiawan. So it was not so convenient for them either. Now, 8th Uncle was a Butterworth resident and knew the town better than any of us did. So, he recommended Hock Mun Restaurant, a more popular venue for wedding dinners over there.

Since many of my relatives also had their wedding dinners at that restaurant, Mom agreed and he booked the place for us on 27 October 2007 (2 weeks earlier than our Bankers dinner). With that, the search for our Butterworth dinner venue was completed.

Invitation Cards

What kind of cards should we go for? Wanting to be different, our dinner invitation card would need to have an extraordinary design. So we decided to have a DIY card instead.

Another reason for having a DIY wedding invite is to make it more personal. The effort that we put into the card would give a different feeling to the invitation if the recipients know how to appreciate it.

So what kind of extraordinary design should we go for? Since we would be doing it ourselves, it had to be simple to make yet special. We bought plain A4 paper, red A4 cards, thin maroon satin ribbon, tracing paper and 2.5” burgundy organza ribbon.

The most important part of our DIY card was of course, the invitation message. We designed that first and made it simple and easy to read, bearing in mind that there would also be older Uncles and Aunties who might have difficulty reading more fancy cards.

I printed the invitation details with a color laser printer onto the plain A4 paper and used the red A4 card for backing (each A4 sheet fits 3). I then tied a thin maroon satin ribbon through a hole punched at the top to hold both the paper and red card together. Next, tracing paper was folded over the paper and card to act as a semi-transparent cover, much like an envelope. Lastly, a wide 2.5” burgundy organza ribbon was tied around the tracing paper to hold it and make the recipient feel like he/she was getting a “present” (instead of a “summons”… he he).

 

Of all the stationeries that we bought, the most difficult to find was the organza ribbon. But after a hard search, we finally found it for a bargain price at Bunga Reben in Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman. This shop sold all kinds of wedding stuff and I enjoyed looking at the many other items on display even though I did not buy them. On the other hand, we got the tracing paper from a large art shop nearby Central Market.

Choosing a Bridal Studio

Our next mission was to look for a bridal studio to take pre-wedding photos. I like the idea of having 100% outdoor photos, like how it’s done overseas. But in Malaysia, people expect to see studio photos as well. So, we decided to follow the norm.

We went to a few bridal studios to compare their photo packages. The 1st studio that we went to was Touch Wedding Studio in Jalan Loke Yew. Even though they had good quality photos, I didn’t like the way they categorized their dresses. They separated the wedding gowns and evening dresses into a few categories: Normal, VIP and SVIP. Depending on the selected package, I could only choose dresses from certain racks. This made me feel rather limited in the choices that were available.

Next, we went to Classic Bridal & Photo Studio at the other end of the block. The photo samples were not that impressive while the sales girl was too long-winded and turned us off.

We also checked out San Diego Bridal Studio in Jalan Ipoh. The dresses didn’t impress me at all. They tried to close the deal by throwing in many freebies but we just said that we didn’t want to be rushed into making a decision.

We had earlier gone to Ivory Romance Bridal Gallery, which is also at Jalan Loke Yew. Having compared several bridal studios, we felt that most of them offered similar photo packages - the main differences being the dresses and the photos. I was attracted to Ivory Romance’s wide selection of dresses, which although were categorized into new and old, nevertheless still offered a pretty good range. In addition, Sze also liked their photos the best.

We didn’t want to waste too much time checking out similar packages elsewhere, so we went back to Ivory Romance with my sis Fiona to help us negotiate a better deal as she is pretty good in that. She managed to help us get some extra freebies with additional 4R photos to give away to family and friends. In the end, we signed up with them after a long evening at the studio.

Later on, I read on a forum that Ivory Romance has a bad reputation. I got a little scared but we had paid quite a high deposit. Then I thought, “What difference would it make if we chose another studio?” I believe the other studios are no better either as they all have the same attitude problem. Since we are only supposed to get married once, we are just one-time customers to them. As such, good customer service is not important. We would just have to keep our fingers crossed that everything turns out well when the time comes. (More stories on how it went for us in the coming blogs.)

Choosing a Dinner Venue

We looked everywhere in our search for a suitable dinner venue. This was definitely not an easy job. We spent weeks calling the hotels and club restaurants to enquire about their wedding dinner packages.

A few places that we were initially interested in include Concorde Hotel, Equatorial Hotel and Royale Bintang Damansara (RBD). But of the three, only RBD was available on our wedding date. I tried making arrangements to meet with Angeline, who was RBD’s sales manager, but we couldn’t meet on any of our available times. This was because we could only visit her after work and she was only willing to wait till 7pm. Both our working places were not near to RBD, so we’re pretty sure we wouldn’t be able to make it there before 7pm. In addition, Angeline also doesn’t work on weekends, so that’s not helpful either.

We decided to drop by RBD to have a look anyway, even without meeting her. We checked out the banquet hall, which was beautifully grand and new but there were 2 big pillars blocking the view in the middle. We also got to try the food at the restaurant and even met the friendly Chef Tony.

I continued to check the malaysiabrides forum for possible dinner venues and found Saujana Subang. Despite my friend Stephanie’s bad review (which she told me when I was previously working in ICOM), I still called up their sales person, Jackie. She gave me the package details and it seemed rather attractive but alas, it was not available on the date that we wanted. We also visited the Legend Hotel but the function rooms were just too small and old too. We’ve been coming up against all the BUTs, but that’s just the way things have gone for us…

And that’s not it either… I ended up asking for quotations from almost all the hotels in Kuala Lumpur. I then removed those that were not available or not suitable to narrow down the choices, which makes the selection process easier.

Later, we somehow came across Bankers Club. Not knowing that it is strictly for club members only, we dropped by to meet Shangkar one evening without an appointment. He was not in and the receptionist advised us to make an appointment first. We asked to see the place and she showed us around the club premises a little. Fortunately, we were satisfied with what we saw in terms of environment and concept.

The following day, I called Shangkar again to make an appointment and after talking to him, our interest in selecting Bankers as our dinner venue grew even more. We found that the attitude of the sales person mattered a lot - we were not too happy with RBD as Angeline wasn’t flexible enough to even meet us but Shangkar was very accommodating in person (although he’s quite unresponsive to emails).

I must admit that Renaissance Hotel’s Jeffryn also gave me a very good impression but we chose Bankers Club in the end for several reasons:

1. Concept (neither a typical Chinese restaurant nor a hotel banquet)
2. Flexibility (I can even personalize my own cake!)
3. Environment (real classy and cozy ambience too)

Of course, there was always a negative side to everything - we would have to purchase the wine from Bankers as they do impose corkage. However, we were willing to accept that condition as everything else was to our satisfaction.

Choosing the Date

Sze had already proposed and so, what’s next? We didn’t discuss about when to tie the knot for a while, for about 2 months. Definitely, both of us have thought about it but didn’t really bring it up for a serious table talk.

I don’t remember how exactly we started the topic but we planned to get married in either end of 2007 or middle 2008. Why? These timings were actually chosen to accommodate Sze’s brothers. 2nd brother from Toronto might be able to attend in Nov 2007 while eldest bro from Ottawa might be able to come in May 2008.

After a few discussions, and taking into consideration Mom’s reluctance in waiting for too long, we decided on the earlier time of November.

It is a Chinese custom to see a Sifu (Master) to pick an auspicious date for marriage, especially for the traditional ceremonies. It doesn’t really bother us if we didn’t see a Sifu to choose a suitable date (from calculating our Chinese birthdates for a good match). However, Sze’s parents are keen to do that.

We needed an auspicious Saturday in November and we even checked Lilian Too’s website for a suitable date. However, the Sifu could only come up with various dates in December, October or weekdays and Sundays in November… there were just no Saturdays! Dissatisfied, we suggested, “How about 10 November?” He said that would be ok though not amazingly good. Well, it was settled then - 10 November 2007 was a good date for us as it’s a Saturday, convenient for the guests and a reasonably auspicious date too.

Informing the Families

What do you do before you even start to plan? We need to inform our families. My Darling Sze informed his family first and they suggested that we get a date chosen. Our preference was for either November 2007 or May 2008.

One morning, before taking my shower, I had a chat with Fiona, my elder sis. Somehow, I managed to blurb out the wedding news. She was surprised and discouraged me from getting married now (she wanted me to wait till after 2 years). However, I informed her that the decision had already been made.

I called my Mom the same day and gave her the news too. Mom thought that a year-end wedding was way too long to wait for (it was April when I told her then). This was because she said that she could arrange a wedding in just a few months time! I didn’t believe that and I’m glad I didn’t listen to her as it was not easy just to find a suitable dinner venue.

My Mom then informed my Godmother. Thankfully, Godmom was pretty excited upon hearing the wedding news.

The Wedding Plan

Planning a wedding has been the biggest ever task in our lives so far. It was a once-in-a-lifetime event, which must be executed smoothly, without any major problems. This also meant that we needed to have proper event planning and management. But with very little experience, as with most couples, we started our wedding plan with much enthusiasm and excitement.

For starters, a checklist is a definite must. Below is a to-do list that we went through in planning for our wedding event. We will post a blog about each item in the following list every weekday, for the benefit of anyone who needs a reference in planning for a wedding, or for anyone who simply just wants to read about what we went through.

1. Informing the Families
2. Choosing the Date
3. Choosing a Dinner Venue
4. Choosing a Bridal Studio
5. Invitation Cards
6. Choosing the Butterworth Dinner Venue
7. Selecting Dresses for the Pre-wedding Photo Shoot and Wedding Day
8. Buying Shoes
9. Pre-wedding Photo Shoot
10. Photo Selection
11. Dance Practice
12. Wedding Favor Ideas
13. Guest List, Card Distribution, RSVP and Seating Arrangement
14. Bridal Room Furniture
15. Photographer and Videographer
16. Makeup Artist
17. Dinner Venue Decorations
18. Dinner Program
19. Wedding Music
20. LCD Projector
21. Catering
22. Canopy and Furniture Rentals
23. Traditional Wedding Items
24. Guo Dai Lai
25. Planning for the Tea Ceremony
26. Planning the Wedding Door Games