Our wedding 6 Dec 2014- DIY preparations

Ok, now we are offically married. Like, for real. We chose the wedding day to be on our 9th year anniversary. So next year will be our 10th year anniversay and 1st year wedding anniversay. So touching hor, sob sob.

We decided to have a small garden wedding for relatives and close friends. The venue was the beautiful Glass Pavilion at Amara Sanctuary Sentosa. Becuase it is a garden wedding, there are lots of decor ideas to play with. I spent months and tonnes of hours in front of the computer getting inspiration and deciding what we can achieve realistically.

We are still waiting for the photos of the actual day so this post will be about our DIY projects. I am proud to say that two of us managed to do so much and I think the whole wedding looked beautiful.

Maybe Dear will have nightmares looking at the pictures. We spend almost every weekend running up to the wedding in his room cutting and pasting papers. The most work was done for the pre-wedding photo scrapbook. Dear didn't want a conventional photo album, plus it's pretty expensive. So I thot of the idea of making our own photo album.

We spent lots of time finding a album that we would like to work on. Then we spent lots of time looking for backgrounds and decor to print to use. We had to cut them, and if they dun work well, we would look for new backgrounds and print again. The whole process got a bit painful. But we did it!

Some of the works in progress for the scrapbook

We also DIY-ed table decor. We catered a dessert table vendor as part of the decor outside. So after planning the decor at the reception areas, I felt that the magical feel should still be felt by the guests after they walk into the restaurant for lunch. The exteriors and interiors must wow the guests.

I found some flower arrangements that I liked but they were too expensive. In the end, I adjusted our plans and decided to DIY. It's like 80 percent cheaper than the quotes from the florist!

This was the flowers used for the VIP tables. We bought IKEA vases and jars, flowers from wholesaler Sing See Soon and made the tags ourselves. I downloaded it online, printed it, cut it, and punch a hole with a craft punch from Daiso and tied it with rope from Daiso. There, that was a lengthy sentence and that's how you get the rustic garden table decor done. Easy and cheap! The bulk of the effort was really in the conceptualising of how to do it easily.

We upped our level by even making sure the pens on the solemnisation table matches the theme. There are other decor stuff that you will see further down the post.

 

 

The day before the wedding was a huge rush too. We really rushed to the last minute. Dear and I met to settle the house renovations, buy flowers and extra pegs, then we went to collect the helium tank we rented for the flowers and went down to Sentosa to DIY our wedding favours.

I came up with the brilliant idea to spice up our wedding favours by designing our logo and printing them on sticker paper to be cut out and pasted on the favours.

 

Since this is an extra item that I wanted and Dear was busy helping with the scrapbook, I did all the cutting out myselves. I cut out 94 stickers by hand. Mai siao siao hor. 

After finishing up the wedding favours at Sentosa, we split ways. I went home and Dear went to pick up our rented wedding car and drove it to the bridal shop to tie the ribbons. Dear was still tying up the lose ends of our decor after he wenrt home. Good job, Dear!

 

The next morning, Dear woke up super early to pick me up.

Riding in the morning light with the top down.

After going over to Dear's place, we made our way to Amara Sanctuary for make-up and preparations. Beautiful hor.

Side view of the venue. Solemnisation would be here. Actually the shape looks like a chapel, doesn't it.

Took this photos the morning after the wedding. The resort has peacocks walking around frequently, quite cool and adds to the feel of the place.

Dear and everybody else who came early started to set up the decor for the venue while I stayed in the hotel room to do my make-up. But it started to rain, and only stopped for a while before it started to rain again. The rain only stopped 15 minutes before the ceremony, I think. So it all turned out well in the end. Dear was the one who was stressed about getting everything ready, poor thing.

Instagram prints of our pre-wedding photos that we wanted to hang at the trees outside the pavillion but had to shift it in becuase of the rain.

Our photo album table. Actually I also don't know why got so much space. Dear sent me this photo during the set-up and I didn't notice the final decor when I walked out. I hope this wasn't the finished product!

 

DIY table flowers to be used in the restaurant. Yes, I have blue, pink and green versions of the tags. Flowers all bought and cut ourselves, with the help of friends on the actual day.

So pretty right. I learnt that there are two types of baby breath- one that is bigger and look more like a flower and the other smaller kind that looks more mundane. We (ok, actually it is me) told the guests to bring the jars home as a souvenir if they like, since we don't want to be left with 28 jars anyway. And we were only left with 8 at the end of the day! Super popular sia, another thumbs up for me. :)

 

We spend most of the lunch talking to the guests and time flew by. We didn't get to eat at all. Booo.  Lucky the restaurant manager was very nice to notice it and told us that they will save food for us and send it to our room later.

After all the guests had gone back, we shifted to the courtyard suite as our wedding coordinator was very nice to upgrade our room. Yay!!

The exterior of the courtyard suite

 

The porch area before we step into the suite. 

The room. So glad that we got upgraded as we have so much barang barang. We needed more space to be comfortable walking around the room.

The toilet. Kinda old school royalty feeling but I liked that it was spacious too.

And this is the door that leads to:

 

The outdoor jaccuzi! We used it at night after we finally settled down. Once we managed to settle down, we called the restaurant to deliver our food and it was almost 6pm by the time we ate. Lunch became dinner and it was almost 12 hours since we last ate! Super famished! But we are glad we managed to taste the food from lunch as we heard thast the food, especially the cod fish was good. Dear loved the cod fish.

After eating, got time and energy to take photos. My bridal bouquet. Think this is the only shot of it. The photographer didn't managed to take a photo earlier on. Fits the blue and white theme nicely.

My bridal shoes which I only wore for the solemnisation and changed out after that. Kind of a pity that I wore it for only a short while and dun think anyone noticed it, yet the shoes cost over $100 : (

The shoes I wore during lunch. It allowed me to be on my feet comfortably but downside is that I think I looked pretty casual in photos. Sigh. But I think I would have been in quite a grouchy mood if I had wore heels through out the lunch.

And finally, a sketch of my bridal dress! It was a pain choosing a bridal studio, but once I found the one, choosing the dress was a bliss. In fact, the first dress I tried turned out to be the right one. This was how we managed to settle on our bridal studio.