Wedding Favor

Ah hah! Here comes the part that I’m going to talk about the wedding favors we prepared for our guests. The part that gave me quite lots of headache when we were still clueless on what we want. At first we’re thinking of luggage tags since our theme is “Love is in the air”. I emailed a number of sellers from Alibaba and man….. the quotations replied all gave me a mini heart attack!

Then we narrowed it further down to something edible! Mints, chocolates, candies, cakes…. Since you know, it’s not “zhor-teng”, just makan and buang the wrappers. But what food? And also the packaging? Haih!

In the end, we thought what my mom suggested was cool and different hence went for that idea.
FOOCHOW TRADITIONAL WEDDING CAKE!

Image source: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTHaW7I2KshIVuPVVxnkCDy4scWdeHq1btfE8-BQcwSaKIcQXsYQQvao917Lgp3n4L7ccpa8DQUJUwS23EA2wtFMwMDBi0VXhXn3Jk9zvjSsKFh7pH5y7n8SsvPSZUxJCGtQ7OgQ/s400/DSC08524.JPG

It looks something like the above picture but smaller size. According to my mom, different “pangkat” gets to eat different size. They have size 1, size 5, size 9 those (if I remember correctly) and grandparents eat the biggest size! (Which means bigger/heavier pieces of gold ornaments to be given to the newly weds as well)

And so when we went to Sibu for our mini reception, we brought back 4 big boxes of leh-piang, 15kg each! That’s 850 pieces of cakes! *pengsan* We sent them all into cargo and had to hand carry all our bags. Lucky it was just our dirty laundries. Even the driver who drove us back to Brunei thought we bought car spare parts because of the weight.

As for the packaging part, we went to several companies that do printing and we’re either not happy with the material or the sizes, or the prices. Last last, when I was in Japan in June, we went to Kappabashi, which was just few streets away from our hostel and man.. they don’t call it KITCHEN STREET for nothing! You can get almost everything there! And it was at one of the shops that sell Japanese tea cakes (和果子) packaging and utensils. I love the quality, the material and the print! And best of all, it was way way way way way way way cheaper than any boxes/bags I checked from the past month. I only had the size to worry for now but I didn’t care, I got them anyway and prayed to God that the bags would fit the cakes!

 

Cakes done! Wrappers found!

Next, tags!

I designed and printed those tags myself after getting a few comments on which lines were better.
1) Keep calm and eat wedding cake, or
2) In case of emergency, eat cake

And most of my friends preferred the second one. So I made a little amendments and printed a “suitable for vegetarian” logo beneath the words so our Muslim guests wouldn’t need to worry about the halal issue. And also for the vegetarian guests as well.

Bought some nice glittery turquoise color paper from Technographic again and borrowed Sheepy’s printer and printed them out. Cut them one by one and asked my little brother to punch a hole in them one by one.

Then came the worst part, PACKING!

If it’s not for my lovely buddies who helped me out, I think I may not be able to get it done on time. And also, I was lucky to have that 6 days gap between the tea ceremony and the reception, it was a much needed breather!

Pardon the lousy quality, it was taken with my lousy iPad’s camera with bad lighting.

Yup, that’s 7 of us (including me myself) doing the packing. Mom and Bobby put the cakes in the bag, the girls put in the tag and tied it and SL kept switching jobs depending which production line was slow. Esehman~

Saw those boxes behind Kelly and Theen?
That’s the boxes we brought back from Sibu containing the wedding cakes.

We had dinner before packing and they went on a “glutinous rice balls search” because they wanted to eat it for supper, after seeing me eating them during my wedding day. They went to 4 shops and semua nadai! Ended up buying frozen chips and nuggets and asked me to air fry them. Kuli kang had to be fed.

Again, pardon my super cannot-make-it face.

Finally we finished everything at 11+ pm and man… it was super tiring!
Those you saw on the table were like, 1/4 of what we packed!

Here, a clearer picture.

I’m not sure how many of my guests got my humour about the “Emergency” and “Extreme Hunger” part but we couldn’t care less. I know those cakes were really popular among the elders, and honestly speaking, we don’t know where all the leftovers went to!!!!! But nehmind la, as long as everyone is happy kan~

There, the wedding favors we prepared for our guests that took us so much time.

Fun Shabushi Restaurant

Gadong Central has become a FOOD heaven seriously! You can almost get whatever cuisine you want over there. And Bobby and I decided to try out the new Jap restaurant over there named Fun Shabushi.






It was empty during our visit probably because it's on a Friday and it was already 11am... We were kind of worried that we couldn't make it (No thanks to the traffic in BSB!) but woohoo, we felt like super VIPs and booked the whole restaurant wtf.

The first half of the menu consists of ala carte Jap food like sushi, udons, tempuras and so on. And the second half is the menu for Shabu Shabu! Quite interesting. Usually if a restaurant mix them together, the Jap food choices are limited and not so exquisite one lor.


We definitely had no time for shabu shabu so here's what we ordered.





Aburi (lightly grilled) Salmon Pasta - $12.80
- It was quite dry





Hotate Cheese Yaki - $8.20
- Bobby loves scallop and for this one, it will be better if they removed the innards as well. But the cheese was heavenly!






Una Tama Nigiri - $4.60
- Pricier than most places but I swear, this unagi was the best we ever tasted! Freaking good!





Tamago Maki - $1.80
- I like the sweetness in those eggs.


Maguro Nigiri - $2.80
- I tasted better one than this... Can't find good maguro in Brunei lor... (Sorry, standard naik because the maguro in Japan was too good that it spoiled me too much)



Salmon Carpaccio - $12.60
My favorite of the day!


Tofu Steak Agemono - $4.80
(No picture)
Bobby loved it... It's was just ok for me.

Wakame Shiru - $1.80
(No picture also)
- Soup. period.


Overall, we quite like our first dining experience over there and the price are pretty reasonable as well. Next, SHABU SHABU!

We were rather amused by this couple seats cubicle and definitely going to try this seat out. Fun bah facing the wall eating the same pot sharing saliva. Hahhahahhhaa. But only with my husband lah~

Yip Yips Angpow Box

Even during the very first discussion with my pretty decorator, I told her I will take care of the “Angpao Box” myself because we (as in Bobby and I) already had an idea what we wanted.

We didn’t want bird cage (eventhough it is beautiful) because people told us that it’s a total b* to put in and take out. I don’t even want to start with those mainstream expensive angpao boxes sold in the internet that are basically boxes decorated with ribbons and cutesy couple plushies.

I love the Raving Rabbids angpao box I saw from the internet so much that I told Bobby that I wanted something like that, but not with the Rabbids lah.. though I also love those menacing rabbits!

Source from here.

Then Bobby thought, why don’t we use Yip Yips? If you follow my blog long enough, I hope you remember we once joined the HSBC Run and we dressed as Yip-Yips!

Once upon a time in May 2011….

It’s an awesome way to recycle the fabric.
We didn’t even need to redo it!

 

And so we bought two plastic cylindrical containers as above…

Took out the fabric out and taped them properly to the container and stick those white styrofoam balls and then black cut-out circles for the pupils.

As easy as pie.

And then I made the speech balloons and ta-da!

 
Our one of a kind angpao box!

Binary Solutions I.T. & Computers

Finally a computer shop for you guys in Temburong! I remember back in the days when I was working as sales in a local computer store, I really pity the folks from Temburong because they either had to drive all the way to BSB or use boat to bring their PCs back.. and mind you, a 17” CRT monitor is a total b* to load, unload and carry around. I seriously cannot imagine myself trying to balance myself while boarding the boat and carrying the big box of system unit at the same time!

And for now,

 

 

And now Binasol is having a special promo for their opening on desktop!

 

 

Cheers!

The bridge between two hearts

was the title of our pre-wed video

Due to lack of videographers in Brunei, and also those we enquired had really bad services or reputation.. or overcharged (imo), we found a really awesome one from Miri. Good price, great service and awesome work! Huge thanks to FussyKelly who introduced her to me! *muacks muacks*

We did the filming in …. September or October I can’t remember. I gave her a few locations, and she suggested some as well. And when we wanted to film the ending part in Jerudong beach with 30 beautiful helium balloons, the weather got so bad, so windy and was about to rain, I was supposed to release them slowly in the air and instead of them flying beautifully, the balloon strings got tangled up and I had to release one go….. and was blown horizontally and trapped under a tree…..

30 balloons x $1.50 each … gone.

And we had to reschedule for another shooting. Kasian my videographer.

For the second time, we did the filming in Miri. And my awesome videographer drove us around to really nice places and mind you… super far as well! Bobby and I already K.O in the car hence I couldn’t imagine how tired was her with all the equipment and driving us again.

 

Juliana, my videographer, reminded us to get some insect repellents before we head to the beach and I was damn hero confident that I won’t get attacked much, because…. I usually don’t attract mosquitoes one..

Damn… HUGE… wrong …. freaking…. gigantic….
MISTAKE!

Both of us, no…. all three of us kana attacked till so kick that I had to wear long pants or skirt for quite a while. Macam AISKRIM ＰＯＴＯＮＧ KACANG!

Damn you sand fleas of ESPLANADE!

 

 

Hours and hours of travelling, getting ready, NG-ing, and finally the polished output. I’m glad she didn’t put in the part I was muttering or looking awkward because I really had no idea what to say!

Bobby, on the other hand, was so well-prepared! He showed no awkwardness, no shyness, and spoke fluently during the whole shooting. Everyone was amazed because he was just so quiet all the time and suddenly, he talked 10 minutes non-stop summing everything up.

ＤＩＡＭ ＤＯＧ ＢＩＴＥ ＤＩＥ ＰＥＯＰＬＥ．．．

 

Juliana added some scene taken during the proposal night, courtesy of FussyKelly. It actually made the video complete. And Chaugy commented both of us sound very Singaporean….. Errrrr… AErrrrrr….. no comment.

Nah, enough of ranting, here’s the video.

The Bridge Between Two Hearts from Nonnie King on Vimeo.

 

Ｉ ｓｔｉｌｌ ｆｅｅｌ ｐａｉｓｅｈ ｔｏ ｓｅｅ ａｎｄ ｈｅａｒ ｍｙｓｅｌｆ ｉｎ ｔｈｅ ｖｉｄｅｏ．
Ｓｉｅｎ， Ｉ ｃａｎ ｎｅｖｅｒ ｂｅ ａ ｓｕｐｅｒｓｔａｒ ｌｉａｏ ｌｏｒ ｌｉｋｅ ｔｈａｔ．．．．

My 2012

Seriously… 2012 is my laziest blogging year. And hence, my new year resolution for 2013 is to blog at least once a week! I used to blog so often that if I had no idea when did something happen, I can just check it from my blog because I basically documented everything over there.

And now… I can only remember the major things that happened.

Like got proposed in May, Japan trip in June, pre-wedding photography in August, video in September (I think?), registered in September, Hens Night in November, Tea ceremony and reception in December.

Half of these events are wedding-related!

which reminds me…. if I should blog about my wedding.

Hehehhehee.

Maybe to make my (blogging) life easier, I will post a photo and give a caption and maybe a brief sentence on what happened.

Aiyooo… really lazy lar.

kthxbai!

Our Wedding Invitation

Phew, part 1 of our wedding was done, which is the traditional Chinese tea ceremony. And yes, there were like 9847593847234 other couples married on that day that we had no choice but postponed our wedding dinner reception nearly a week later. But then again, it’s a good thing considering we have more time to prepare and short gap to breathe.

So, about our wedding invitations… We had THREE different wedding invites! One is the F.O.C one from OGH, typical red Chinese bombs that we could only choose the cover of it and just input our info into the ready template. And then there’s another one for our second reception, the pure vegetarian one. And lastly, the one that we anticipated the most because we had been trying to finalize the design and our ideas since months before our wedding.

We didn’t want it to look typical. We wanted something different, something people will remember and match our theme. You guys have no idea how many discussions we went through until the finalized product. We… correction.. I went to a lot of printing companies to survey prices for the cards and also wedding favour packaging, and lucky for me, I found the perfect one in Tokyo last June and it was way way way cheaper than those quoted in Brunei! And also, honestly, I didn’t have much faith in printing companies in Brunei because of the many many horror stories I heard and also its either I couldn’t find the quality I want in those samples, or they are way over our budget.

Last last, I asked my beloved videographer where’s good to print and she recommended me Unison. Talked to Kevin about what I had in mind and showed him a few samples and this and that. I guess Kevin could sense my fickleness when talking to me because I went all, “I want the paper to be cream color, but not too cream. Not too soft, not too hard” and in the end, he asked me to find the paper myself. Hahhahaha. Smart move! We found really awesome papers from TechnoGraphic at a good price. Bought some more papers for our customized wedding favour tag too. Yes, I think you can say I am a super DIY bride and prefer personalization and all my friends were like, WHY ARE YOU DOING ALL THESE YOURSELF? Honestly… to get my mind occupied and not to think about other things that frustrate me.

Okay, I realized I yapped too much already. Here’s how our cards look like!

 
Front and back

It’s a cream + a little glittery.

As you can see, there’s the Billionth Barrel monument’s silhouette and also a nodding donkey on the left, and the SOAS mosque on the right. That’s right, because I’m the girl girl from Seria and he’s a Bandar boy. When I say Bandar, it means Bandar Seri Begawan, not Bandar as in the Kianggeh/ Yayasan area ya.

For the back, we picked a very common boarding pass idea, with an additional QR code that has a message inside.

And that’s not it! If you think we are just going to put it inside an envelope, then you salah liao…

The most interesting part of this wedding invitation is actually the “item” that “contains” the card.

Roll the cards into small cylindrical shape and tied a ribbon to it.

Zoom out a bit….

Now, can you get the picture?

Yeap! MESSAGE IN A BALLOON!

This wedding invitation is a limited edition because
1) It’s super tiring to put the card inside the balloon and pump the air into it!
2) I made quite a scene bringing the balloons out in public while passing them to my friends.

But it was really fun!

The feedbacks I got were all super encouraging and positive. Everyone loves it!

But they all did have a problem with it… the question was,

“TO POP OR NOT TO POP????”

A collection of Ig’s postings from those who received it.

Atul’s steps-by-steps guide in popping it. Hehehehhee

 

 

 

So… guess our theme?

I’m actually pretty nervous about the reception this weekend and pray hard everything will fall into places nicely and all the guests will have a good time enjoying the night.

Will blog about the morning tea ceremony once I have more photos and more on my super cool mom and me as the most relaxed bride ever. (Was very relaxed because my job was to wait to be fetched and every other thing was beyond my control.. whereas for the reception, I planned most of it and I am so going to freak!)

kthxbai!

Hens night part 2 (with the bridesmaids)

Yeap, I have another hens night party with my bridesmaids the day after in Miri after the one in BSB with my colleagues. Well, actually… I will have a third one with my besties (48 & SL) when she’s back. Let me enjoy my last singlehood with my friends before I tie the knot (though I am already married legally…) I’m going to miss my freedom of going out anytime and anywhere~

*sobs*

Anyhoos, we decided … more like “I” decided that we should give Citrus a try because I love their menu when I first went there with Bobby in 2009. They moved to a new location and we thought we would have a hard time finding the place but we didn’t! 

My favorite number.

Had to pose with the “I’m taken” sign because hey, it’s my Hens Night!
Was wearing a pink headband veil because SukChin made me and the rest of the hens were wearing bunny ears. We caught a lot of attention from other customers but we didn’t really care. No one knows us there anyway~

Comparing iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S.

My lime and lychee something? Super sour but I like it.

With Chaugy the most cuddleable!
She tells the best joke.

With the young mama whom no one can tell she’s married with a kid. Haih, give me baby face please. As for the height, no thank you.

Btw, I made the sash myself.
*karit*

Bought 1m of pink satin fabric for $2.50 and made 4 sashes out of it. I then printed the words on A4 paper and glued them on the sash. *tada* Cheap and chic sashes! It’s going to be a one-time thingie so I don’t want to spend $20+ on it just for one night. Ya ya… call me alcheapo.

 

Pingko, Engstar and Shay. All single and available.
For more information, please email me at iwannabeamatchmaker[@]busybody.com

 

FussyKelly and Vai

I told them must wear or at least has a pink element in their attires and they all go find “loopholes”. Kek-sei-ngo! Telling me, “Nah… my underwear is pink!” or “See, this little flower on my shirt is pink!”

Oh oh, I also made them all wear eyeliners. Hehehhehehhe.

Us having a “You may kiss the bride” moment

 

There’s not much photos from me so I am only posting the one I have in this post. So bear with me, finishing soon liao ah.

 

 

After dinner, we then went to sing Karaoke in this very … “obviously got “ ahhem special service karaoke place but it was worth the experience. Hhahahaha. I’m guessing we were the only female customers around and the rest were all erm… China dolls. But the room is really big and spacious though.

Fussy ordered me a naked man cake but was disappointed with it because it wasn’t what she had in mind. And worse,when they took it out from the car trying to surprise me, the naked man fell apart and they had to fix it in my attendance. LOL. Grade A for Effort girls!

Very… the… obvious….

It’s a card saying, “Time going in the room”, “Time exiting the room”, the other two I don’t get it. And the last one says… “Mummy’s signature”

 

We had an award night going on~

Seeing the above photo, I also feel like I’m the “Mummy” and those bunny girls work for me.

Note: They were actually having a hard time filling up the “Advice Cards” but I can’t show them here. It’s very “Salty and Wet” 18SX!

Damn old liao. By 1am, everyone was super tired and wanna go back already.
Old bones.

So we all quick quick sang all the songs and proceeded into the next session, our AWARD NIGHT!

Fussy got crowned Little Miss Late

Vai was the WORST JOKE TELLER. Seriously, everytime when she tried really hard to impress us with a joke, we ended up not laughing at her jokes, but at her cuteness ! She’s super funny!

And I don’t know why am I “LITTLE MISS FICKLE”

Mou-tin-lei ahhhhhh!!!!

 

Of course, a lot more happened that night, and the day after but I’m only sharing this much.
Bye peeps.

Will try to blog more about my wedding preparation, invitation and so on…