My Once-in-a-lifetime - Page 2
With us figured out the number of guests, it is time to print the wedding cards. I need to try to save some money on this so instead of going to the printers and have them print out our cards, we are going to find the card online and print the internal wordings ourselves, in this case, we probably can save about another 100RMB more on printing.
These are the designs we found:
 "Wedding invitations")
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Love this and love the colours but the printing of inside is too hard and the card company wants to add in our names in front of the card for extra fees which I am not willing to spend so no way!
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This one is pretty with all the flora designs makes it so spring like but my husband don't really like it because he thinks the designs are old fashioned. Hasn't he heard of Laura Ashley? I think its time to educate him. Haha!
Next up!
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This one is even prettier and at last both of us can agree that this card is simple and nice. But the printing company is unable to cope with our orders for some reasons.
 "White wedding invitations")
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This one is my husband's favourite but I am half hearted on it, I think it is nice but not something I want plus I have seen this before on one of my friend's wedding.
In the end, we chose the one below because my husband happens to find out that someone who works in this printing company and managed to get a good discount for it. We don't even have to do the printing ourselves due to the discount given, it fits into our budget nicely!
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I think something meaningful to both of you. Just remember that the engraving words will accompanied you for the rest of your lives so you should chose it carefully.
When we told everyone we are getting married, everyone was happy for us and we think some of them goes “Its about time!” Haha! Its because both my husband and I have been dating since our university days and now we are in our early thirties, it is considered very late in our Chinese custom to marry this late. Everyone asked me why do I wait so long before I agree to marry him, didn’t I know he is the right one for me or is it that I am not sure of him? Actually, the answer is very simple, I know Wei is going to be my husband but I don’t want to settle down so soon when I still have many things I want to experience. I also believe a man needs to go through certain paths in life and make his own decisions before he can matures and take care of his wife and his family. Wei has shown that when he endured the tough time with me when I had to resign my job to take care of my grandmother. That was the time I knew he can take care of me and we can get married. I did tell him before, he tear up when I explained why I kept refusing his proposal.
Now all is well and we seldom argue over little things, he knows if I nag at him, it is for his own good and he will go along with my advice. Just like when we are selecting our bridesmaids and bestman. I told him we should have one each. He was puzzled because he expected I wanted a whole group of my girlfriends to be my bridal entourage. I replied him that it is better for us to keep it simple and not have to distribute too much red packet to our helpers. More helpers, more we have to fork out. My husband just stared at me blankly and laughed his loud belly laughter and ruffled my hair, indicating I am being silly again. That is also the way he shows me he don’t like it but he will go with it.
In the end, I chose two flower girls who are the daughters of my best friend and a good friend, Lily as my bridesmaid. My husband went with Kong who is his best buddy since high school.
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Cakes, cakes, cakes! I have a super sweet tooth so does Wei. I remembered when we were young and dating during our university days, we couldn’t afford going out to movies or romantic candlelight dinner like some of the youngsters do nowadays. We will take turns to go to different bakeries in town and buy a slice of cake, then we will arrange to meet at the park where we are having our wedding, we will share the cake then as we share stories of our daily lives. Times was so much simpler then. My husband always laughed at me for loving our simple life. He wished he could give us a bigger house, a newer car and better lives. I always told him I am contented where I am with him, as long as he always called me Lao Po (wife in Chinese).
So we began our fantasy search for our wedding cakes…
 "White wedding cakes")
Isn't this so artsy? Its crazy how they design their cakes like an art piece.
 "White wedding cakes")
I love this very much! Such extravagance!
 "White wedding cakes")
Wei loves this as the butterflies are very delicately small.
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We saw this cake similar to the one my husband's colleague had for his wedding. The glitter on the faux diamond just twinkle throughout her garden wedding. So beautiful!
 "White wedding cakes")
This reminds me of a Chinese song, Pearl of the Orient! Hahaha! Very creative!
We love the cakes photos our planner has found but these cakes comes with an exorbitant prices, Shocking! It is way over our budget... End up, our nice neighbourhood baker offered to sponsor us with this:
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It is very kind of him and the cakes are very delicious. Did you have a time where you had to blow your budget?
Locating bridesmaid and bestmen? Check! Now to find an emcee for our wedding. This is tough as we don’t really want to hire someone professional due to cost saving as well as hiring someone who don’t know us will sound very fake since he will be talking to everyone about our love story. We asked around and most of our friends shy from the tasks as public speaking isn’t for everybody! In the end, Wei’s uncle volunteer to fly in and be our emcee, provided that we draft out the speech for him.
This means we have to come up with an emcee speech, our vows and a thank you speech. My husband laughed and said words should come from the heart and not rehearse, if all the words came from memorizing the words, it will sound insincere. I agree with hi but I felt I would be too nervous that day to remember any words or even have anything on my mind. You see, I suffered stage fright from young. I will probably freeze on the spot. Hence, I think I should do my research and write down my words.
I have spent two weekends to come up with the emcee speech, my vows and my thank you speech. The emcee speech is actually very easy as there are a lot of templates out there for me to copy from. It’s the vow and the thank you speech that are different to pen down as it involves emotions and feelings. Like when I was writing down words to thank my grandmother, I had to pause a few times because I kept crying. In the end when I got to thanking my parents, I had to change a fresh new piece of paper and start all over again because the ink had ran all over the paper. Writing my vows provoke another set of fresh tears, I had puffy eyes from crying for two weeks and my friends thought Wei had bullied me! He thought I was silly to cry over such things. In fact, he prepared his own speech as well without telling me because he is afraid of stressing me out. In the end, all in good on the day of our wedding. We are nervous and excited but not too scare until we don’t remember what we want to express.
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As you know, my wedding theme is pure white in color but our wedding planner advises us to match with another color as white stand alone is too dull and too pale. Hence, we decided to pair the white with the green. There are several factors affecting this decision: Green is Wei’s favorite color, green also matched nicely with the park garden we are having and green is a lucky color just like red. Now begin my search for the bridesmaid’s and the flower girls’ dress.
My flower girls dresses hunt:
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Link:https://item.taobao.com/item...
At first, I toyed with the idea of having the little girls wear green. I love this if it is in winter but this green is a bit too heavy for young girls.
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Link:https://detail.tmall.com/item...
This shade of green is way better. Its more like spring and summer to me. Very airy and fairy like.
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Link:https://detail.tmall.com/item...
Then I thought let's go back to my main colour theme - white! I love this look on this young girl, very innocent look. But it will be hot if I made them wear long sleeves.
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So I ended up choosing this for my flower girls but as my lovely endearing friend insist that she already have two very simple yet lovely dresses for her daughters, she did not want me to spend a dime on her girls! So sweet! So here is the final dresses her daughters wore.
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Now for my bridesmaid, these are the selections:
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Link:https://item.taobao.com/item...
This is very luscious green that will match the park surroundings but my bridesmaid thought it will look dumpy on her since she is not very tall.
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Link:https://item.taobao.com/item...
I love this. This is very fun and girly!
 "Green bridesmaids")
Link:https://detail.tmall.com/item...
This dress will matched the airy flower girl dress but since their mother decided they should wear white, I couldn't pair this up for my bridesmaid but she love the cutting and styling on the dress. Following her liking, we managed to find the below dress for her!
 "Ivory long wedding dresses")
So after dressing up the flower girls and the bridesmaid, the bestman will not be such a big problem, right? Wrong! My husband does not want to spend extra money for a tailor suit so we decided to scrimp a little by ordering from online websites to save time and money. Fortunately for us, Kong is not picky, he offered to pay for his own shirt and pants which we declined his offer. We still are able to afford to buy something decent for him. Kong is very enthused about the wedding and volunteer to help whenever he can, whether to do research online or to negotiate with the vendors, he is always there. No wonder he is the best buddy of my husband! He even went bed shopping with us!
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Link:https://item.taobao.com/item...
I love this look but my husband argue that Kong will look funny in a jacket on a hot sweltering day in summer!
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Link:https://item.taobao.com/item...
This is cute but I am pretty sure the best man does not want to be label as cute.
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Link:https://item.taobao.com/item...
Both of us love this one the best however the seller don't have his size. Too bad!
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Link:https://item.taobao.com/item...
Kong suggested this look but we are not sure if we want the black element in our wedding. Anyways, seller came back in reply that he does not have his size either.
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Link:https://item.taobao.com/item...
We compromised and found him this. I think it makes the most sense since Kong could wear this set of shirt and pants after the wedding for his work.
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The bed that Kong helped to move and install. Can't wait to jump in it! Haha!
Both of our mothers are in their 60s. My mother dated my father when she was 17 years old and at that time, it was unheard of. Both their families are against them being together but they survived 15 years of relationship before her family finally agreed to allow her to get married to my father even through my father is just a mechanic and he is very poor. My father had to split his salary between my mother and me; and his parents, all of us live next to each other until my grandfather passed away due to cancer. My father bought a bigger apartment by selling my grandfather’s home and asked my grandmother to stay with us.
Wei’s father is not his birth father. His mother had married at a very young age and the newly wed couple tried very hard to conceive. Only at late thirties, they managed to give birth to Wei but shortly after, his birth father met with a fatal car accident. His mother was struggling by herself until she met his stepfather two years later and they gotten married soon after.
To my husband, there is no difference whether he is his birth father, as he would not have known better if his mother chooses to hide the truth from him.
So dressing the both great mothers in our eyes are a honorable task to be carried out, we had a fun outing trying to find the right outfit for them!
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Ask any of my friends or even my husband, he will tell you I hate wearing heels. Heels to me are an invention to torture women, why are taller women defining as beauty? But on my wedding day, I want to look taller plus my husband likes women in heels.
So my husband stared amusingly at me while I furiously research on shoes that are available online. Even Kong joined in the fun and started to send me links via messages. These are what I have found so far.
 "Wedding shoes")
Link:https://detail.tmall.com/item...
I started off with these kitten heels. I love the suede colour and the low heels that will give me enough balance. My husband pointed out suede is not white and not bridal. But little do I know he sneakily bought it for my birthday this year.
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Link:https://detail.tmall.com/item...
This is another pair that I like, the flower petal design is so pretty and the peek-a-boo design just spelt sexy and naughty to me but I am afraid the heels might be too high for me. I have another pair similar to this in black and I only wore one time before I banished it to the back of my wardrobe. I don't want another pair of shoes to be like it.
 "White wedding shoes")
Link:https://item.taobao.com/item...
What was I thinking?! This one is even higher than the last one I searched for. Even I try it on at one of the shoes boutique, I could barely stand straight, let alone walk.
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Link:https://detail.tmall.com/item...
This one is beautiful too and very tempting to buy even though I know it is impulse buying. Sigh!
 "White wedding shoes")
Link:https://item.taobao.com/item...
Finally, I gotten myself this pair! I have tried it on like 4 times since the shoes boutique is pretty near my house and I love the chunky heels behind that will allow me to walk and stand more comfortably. The ankle wrap is a big plus so I won't trip over myself.
What do you think? Should I cave in and wear heels on my wedding day? Or should my comfort be a priority?
Since we are having a wedding at the nearby park, I would like to carry a little bag of my things such as my mobile phone. My husband thinks it is silly that I need a bag but he has pockets and he refused to let me pass my mobile phone to him for keepsake. This is a chance to let me indulge myself a little after all those planning, I am so exhausted! I never knew planning a wedding would be so tough! I actually sympathies with all the wedding planners out there who had to deal with bridezillas. So far I haven’t had a breakdown moment where I threw a tantrum but perhaps because I have been through so much in my life, nothing fazes me much anymore.
 "Wedding headpieces, veils, cover-ups & brooches")
Link:https://item.taobao.com/item...
This is something similar to the one I already had, I thought perhaps I don't need to spend the money and save it for something else but my bridesmaid told me its too flowery plus mine looks kinda worn out so I do need to get myself something new.
 "Ivory wedding headpieces, veils, cover-ups & brooches")
Link:https://item.taobao.com/item...
This one looks very unique and has roses in a 3D designs. They have it in multiple colours too! Its also very roomy for a small bag.
 "White wedding headpieces, veils, cover-ups & brooches")
Kong had forward me this photo, I think his mother has something similar and he asked if I want to borrow from him. Its too glittery for my taste however.
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Link:https://item.taobao.com/item...
I like the pearly white of this bag but the seller had ran out of stock and I didn't want to take the risk of waiting for the stock arrival. Hence I searched for something similar...
 "White wedding headpieces, veils, cover-ups & brooches")
Ta-dah! I found this little precious ad I love it, its just nice, big enough to put in my iPhone 5s and yet another lipstick and a packet of tissue.