Tea Ceremony

Traditionally, the couple serves tea to the groom's family only after the marriage, serving as the bride's symbolic introduction to the groom's family while the bride serves tea to her parents before the ceremony as a thank you for taking care of her for so many years. Jas and I aren't all that traditional so we opted to have our tea ceremonies together before our solemnisation. Despite the very packed day we had, we insisted on having a tea ceremony because we thought it was vital we thanked our parents for everything they've done for us. 

The family members sit in chairs, while the newlyweds kneel before them and serve the tea. It is served in a special order, starting with the groom’s parents, then proceeding from the oldest family members to the youngest, including the paternal grandparents, maternal grandparents, aunts and uncles, siblings, and so on. In return, the newlyweds receive lucky red envelopes ("ang baos") stuffed with money or jewellery. 

My Chinese isn't so good so Jason had to translate a lot of it.

He didn't know he still had stickers from the gate crash on his shoes!

And then younger siblings have to serve tea to the couple! Clearly, I'm super happy that my brother has to kneel before me! 

Gate Crash

Ok, I have come to terms with the fact that I'll never be a famous blogger, key reason being - I don't do it very well. Yes, I'm very lazy! But once in blue moon, I get this surge of determination to start up this blog again (hey, 60,000 views, I must be pretty interesting right?) and today happens to be one of those days. Not sure how long this determination will last.. I guess only time will tell! 

I finally got down to blogging about my wedding (that was 5 months ago). We've been featured on Female Brides and the Wedding Scoop so I thought it's about time I blogged about it too.

Here goes. 

Just woke up, barely functioning on 3 hours of sleep, and looking like a swollen tomato.

Don't know how these two look so good in the morning

These were worn by my grandma on her wedding day. I really wanted her at the wedding but Jesus wanted her back sooner, so I guess wearing her shoes was enough. It really made me feel like she was a part of the biggest day of my life.

Never a dull moment with these guys.

That's us, trying to look as normal as we can

Spanky looking smart in his tux

"hey guys, waiting for the groom to show up is getting boring"

My GORGEOUS family. 

Grandma would be so happy to see everyone in our nonya outfits.

#Selfie with my greatest friend, Mal! #alwaystimeforaselfie

Kisses from the husband!

Truly, #AJxielebrate was the #bestdayever 

Till next time!

XOXO

Photos by Yu Hsin of TinyDot Photography

Wedding Music

As I'm typing this, I'm listening to my wedding playlist. Even though I wasn't around for most of the dinner and didn't get to enjoy the music, it makes me happy listening to it. 

So I was left in charge of the music selection which at first was a real daunting task. It sounds easy, sure, but try putting a playlist of love songs that both young and old would enjoy and you realise it's not as easy as it seems. Also, when you're planning a wedding, you have 49028432 other things to worry about so a small thing like picking music suddenly seems like a huge deal. 

Here's a couple of problems I encountered. 

1. Mixing different genres in a playlist.

It was weird to me that "Come away with me - Nora Jones" was followed by " Never Let Me Go - Florence + The Machines".  I asked couples who've gotten married before me and they all said not to worry about it cause everyone wouldn't be paying attention to the music anyway but this isn't the case with me! Every time I attend a wedding, I scrutinise their playlist! But time was running out and with 3 days to go to the wedding day, I decided I just had to let it go.

2. Downloading/buying songs and putting them on a CD/iTunes

It's a lot of work downloading each song if you don't already have them on your iTunes! I don't have any songs on my iTunes, cause this Mac is used solely for design purposes and my other mac is so full of useless junk, it doesn't have any space left for anything else. And really, who wants to pay $1.99 a song? They tell you to prepare about 50 songs so that's $99.50! And if you've planned a wedding, you know that EVERY CENT COUNTS. It's SO expensive. 

3. How do you line up the songs? 

Do you start with all slow songs and progress to more upbeat tunes? Then the first half of dinner would be pretty sleepy? Do you alternate between slow and fast beats? WHAT DO YOU DO?!

The solution : 

-wait for it-

SPOTIFY

Seriously, Spotify was such a life-saver. They have wedding playlists so lots of love songs to choose from. I didn't want to use just anyone's playlist, cause really, some song choices made me cringe so I made my own. It's so simple to use, I had my playlist done in under half an hour all for $12.99 a month (which you can unsubscribe after the wedding). As for the line-up of the music, I just used their "shuffle play" option and it turned out pretty good!

So if you're planning a wedding,

I'd highly recommend you try Spotify.

Saves a lot of time and money if you're like me and don't have a list of love songs.

And if anyone was interested in our wedding playlist, 

you can search Spotify for AJxielebate 

AJxielebrate

So the big day is over and I'm reeling with excitement to show you guys our wedding photos but I haven't collected them from our photographer so that's gotta wait so I thought I'd just share a little bit about the day without giving too much away. 

Let's start with the night before. 

I was surprisingly well-prepared and cool-headed the night before the wedding, so much so I agreed to have dinner with my bridesmaids, despite many people's warnings. "You should have an early night", "You should be trying to tie up loose ends", etc. From the beginning, I decided I was going to do things my way (it's MY wedding right?) and I kept firm on that throughout, I wasn't going to change a night before the wedding! 

Gonna side-track here for a moment.

So I'm not sure if the dinner with the bridesmaids was meant to be a surprise cause all three of them messaged me at once and Hannah had already told me the dinner was at Salt grill and sky bar (I think that's what they call it) but Carol was acting really weird, trying to keep me away from there by distracting me with shopping. Or maybe the balloons and confetti were the surprise?! I'm still unclear! Lol. But it was lovely!! I had a crown and a sash too!!

Back to the story

Carol stayed over with me that night. Thank goodness. It was all kinds of comforting with her beside me. The nerves and excitement kicked in at about midnight, with the sudden realization that THE DAY was finally here. Obviously, I didn't get to sleep until 6, which only left me with an hour of sleep. 7.30am came too quickly. Surprisingly I woke up even before my alarm could go off, and like I was on auto-pilot, I got out of bed, washed up, woke Carol up, ate a banana, laid out everything I needed and got ready for my makeup person. If you knew me well, you'd know this was an amazing feat for me. To say that I'm not a morning person is a huge understatement. I loathe mornings with a passion. 

Before I give anything away, I'm going stop here. So annoying right? I apologize. I promise I'll write again soon.

But I will leave you with this - overall, the mindset I had about the day was it was going to be great regardless what happened. It could rain, I could've fallen while walking down the aisle, the ring pillow could've gone missing (which it did, by the way).. None of it mattered anymore. I had mentally prepared myself for a non-perfect day. I knew as much as we had planned, as much as we had prepared for the day, something was bound to go wrong (damn that Murphy) but I was ready to leave it to God and focus on the bigger picture - I was finally marrying my best friend.

Pre-Wedding Day Out

Jas and I decided we didn't want a bachelor party or hens night so our AMAZING friends Mal and Nick (thank you thank you thank you!!) treated us to a pre-wedding day out! 

It began with a 2.5 hour spa near ROM cause we were there to pick up our marriage cert

Then lunch at din tai fung at MBS where they surprised us with a trip to Phuket?!? 

I seriously am soooo blessed to have these 2 crazy people in my life!

And as if that wasn't enough!! We went to the Dreamworks exhibition!! 

We also stopped by the creatures of the deep(pretty sure that's not the name of the exhibition), which obviously failed in comparison to the Dreamworks one!? But still fun nevertheless

How gorgeous is this?! It's a glass skeleton formed by unicellular organisms!? God is amazing!? Creating all these tiny wonders!

And how cute is this baby fish?!

Ok back to more wedding planning!! By the next post, I'd probably already be MRS. XIE!? (Oh god that sounds old) 

Bye!