8.00+am: My daddy generously offered to give me a lift to Bridal Zone, especially since I had so much japalang (misc stuff) to bring like the props, my shoes, towels, water etcetc. Left the house early, in case there was a slight jam on the expressways. But all was smooth, and I got to Boon Keng early at 9.30am.

9.30am: Went up to BZ and there was oredi someone in there. Since I was early, it meant that I could choose my costumes then!

Kimono: There were a few colors to choose from: Dark blue/ light blue/ red/ green/ beige. I tried the dark blue, light blue and beige ones, and decided on the beige one. Looked really sweet in that!!

Chinese traditional costume: I was pretty decided on getting a cheongsam instead of a kua. Took the red sleeveless cheongsam to try, and it was just the right size for me! Perfect!

10.00am: Angeline arrived around then, and started working on us.

1. Make up of my face and put on hot rollers on my hair.
2. Me went to change into jap kimono while she works on FM.
3. FM got his hair styled into a cool funky dude! And even had added streaks of gold to his hair! (matches my highlighted hair!)
4. FM changed into his shogan costume. My turn again.
5. The rollers were off, and my hair was curly wurly. Bunned up my hair in 4 different buns, and then a whole array of ribbon/hair chopstick/pins were stuck into my hair with a silver mesh around my head. OMG, super kawaii neh!

11.30am – 5++pm: Indoor Studio shoots. We had initially thought that Vincent was our photographer. But turns out they switched us for Howard instead. But no big deal, so we din ask further. As long as the pictures are nice! Angeline also assured us that he’s the more casual, fun-loving sort.

• Shoots for 2 costumes: ~ half hour each
• Shoot for evening gown: ~1 hour
• Shoot for wedding gown: ~1 hour for 1st hairdo, half hour for 2nd hairdo. Oh, we also took our lunch inside the studio to eat, and take some fun pictures with it at the same time! My homemade egg mayo sandwiches, and the fruits!

Each time we were done for each style/set, would come out to change outfit and call Angeline for a change in style. Especially wanna highlight the styling that Angeline took for my dark purple evening dress and my red+white wedding gown!

• Evening gown: Simply amazing transformation that Angeline decided to do. Was a loud and wild makeup style, with purple and silvery-white eyeshadow and purple lipstick. Complete with a equally wild matching hairdo with lotsa curls and twirls. And my colored hair came into perfect use for this as the golden streaks weaved in and out of the twirls… I could be the next Lee Hwa advert model!
• Wedding gown: This one was REALLY sweet and beautiful. Angeline noticed that we had bought a bag of red rose petals (we wanted to bring it out to play during our outdoor shots) and took advantage of that. Bunned up my hair, and taking the pretty petals to poke one by one into my hair. So I ended up having a lovely crown of roses on me! And she even got a needle and thread, and make a rose petal necklace for me. Complete with the white veil pinned to the back, it was a superb job done!

~5++pm: Finally done with indoor shooting, and rushed to change into my first outdoor wedding gown, the off-shoulder one. We were already late to go out for our outdoor shooting! Anymore delays and we’ll be cutting terribly into the available time. (plus we wanted to rush to 4 places if possible!!)

1st location: Botanic Gardens – Blew the heart-shaped balloons there, and took some pictures with that, as well as with our roses petals. Went to:

• The gazebo (old bandstand) where there was a big open grass field, a nice little brick corridor with flowers/vines grown over the top to take our first set of pictures
• Few shots along the path and the park bench
• BZ’s signature shot location at the waterfall in Ginger Garden.

We felt that this was a little rushed, but I guess it couldn’t be helped since we were already late.

2nd location: Tanjong Beach, Sentosa – Howard recommended going to Sentosa beach for a sandy beach. And so off we went.

• Took pictures on the beach, some with our balloons, sitting/lying on the beach, him carrying me, us playing/jumping etcetc.
• Went into the water for some playing/kicking-water shots.
• Meanwhile, Howard’s assistant (Zhongyi) had been busy laying the rose petals in a nice big heart shape.

After we were done, went to the nearby toilet, to clean up a bit, and change into my other outdoor gown, the halter one.

3rd location: Esplanade – By that time, could tell that Howard was getting anxious as time was slowly ticking towards the usual knock-off time.

• Snapped a few pictures with the Esplanade in the background
• Walked over to the white Anderson bridge which crosses the Singapore River, took our sparkler pictures there (which was quite a failure apparently).
• Walked over to the Fullerton/Esplanade area, and so we walked over to the Merlion park area. Gosh were there lots of people there. And a lot of them stopped and starred at us while we were taking pictures. One guy even asked if he could take a picture of us (but we declined).

After those shots, we thought of going down to Merlion park itself to take, then Howard replied about it being the last few shots… so we stopped short there, and started asking about Biopolis, instead of going on with the Esplanade area and ending there. Rather have a few shots of Biopolis…

Howard made a call to the driver, and after discussing for a while, they gave in to us! Our deepest gratitude to all of them for accepting our request. We hopped on the car, and zoomed off to Biopolis. Found out that the driver uncle had a son who was dating a girl in A*STAR too, one year younger than me studying in Imperial now. What a small world!

4th location: Biopolis – How much we love our workplace!!

• At the big BIOPOLIS sign and statues at the front of the Biopolis complex
• The skybridges
• The dandelion

And we were done! Happy happy! Proceeded back to Boon Keng studio. Finally… upon reaching, we gave each of them an angbao as a little something for extending their time for us. And went up, changed, and packed up everything.

10.00pm: Home-bound for a good shower, and rest!

In this modern era of technology, and with our friends spread all over the world in various countries, the best way to spread the word of our upcoming wedding is of course, via the web. Perfect too that FM is quite into the programming and site stuff (he’s long been toying with the designs of randomtots.com, which progressed from his personal site to our joint site after we got together. Check it out!)

A good collaboration and partnership of the darlings never turns out wrong. After about 3 months of on-and-off work, the site is almost done! FM being the technical specialist, and Jas the writer. While reminiscing about our past cherished memories , Jas churned out one post after another: first was the love story – how we met and got together, our 3 years of long-distance relationship, graduation from college (to mark the end of the LDR!), the proposal. At the same time, it was time for Jas to dig out the archived photos and select the good ones for the photo gallery. Dearest FM was always the editor of Jas’s posts, and he was given the painful job of cutting down the number of selected picture collection! Heh.

Meanwhile, FM was hard at work getting the site framework up, working with all his frames, boxes, alignment, colors and pixels etc. while Jas chipped in a teeny bit with some ideas of the site design. He definitely learnt a lot of CSS during this process! Good job and a big thank you deardear for getting this pretty site up! *muack*

So here’s presenting to you, our dear friends, in celebration of our upcoming wedding, the almost-completed Love.Passionately. We hope that you’ll find our story heart-warming, our pictures interesting, and our wedding preparation guides helpful for your very own big day in the future.

With Love,
Jas & FM

OMG! Woke up today and felt totally surreal… can’t believe that the photoshoot is over! Our day ended up being a full 12hours… 10am-10pm. Long and tiring, but definitely fun and quite an experience! The adrenaline carried us through the whole day, as it was one shot after the next, a pose after another. but when we finally went back to Bridal Zone, changed, and stepped out of the Luzerne Building, we knew that we were tired after the looonnnggg day…

Reached home yesterday night, and spent a good long time cleaning my face of the multiple thick layers of powder – foundation, eyeshadows, blush… as well as removing my fake long fluttery eyelashes, together with the mascara. =P Seems like eternity before I finally cleared my face of everything. Haha… and I was back to the plain old me. *gasps* after a whole day of looking at my transformed modelish look, it was kinda strange to see myself back to my natural state. ^_^

FM keeps commenting that I’m already floating amongst the clouds after a mere photoshoot, can’t imagine what it’ll be next year when it’s gonna be the actual wedding. hmm… but pple excited mah. Wedding is after all a once-in-a-lifetime thing! Heh. And boy was the photoshoot fun. During the session, we managed to sneak a look at some shots on the camera itself, and the few shots we caught the previews of were amazing! Waiting anxiously to look at the pictures! We scheduled our appointment for the Monday 2 weeks later liao (21^st July). That’s the earliest that they can get the photos ready. So once we pick the photos, they can get the design out, and we can look at our first draft layout before we fly off to SF!

Tomorrow’s the photoshoot! Really excited about it… thinking about how everything’s gonna turn out. Fantastic, or fabulous?? definitely tiring… but let’s hope that our smiles will still be natural at the later half of the day after all the smiling in the better half of the day!

Spent a little time today packing the stuff we need for the shoot. Just to list a few…

Props:

• the proposal gold-plated rose
• the heart-shaped balloons+ ribbons to tie
• the proposal ring box + engagement ring (nicely polished the day before!)
• the wedding bands + box
• sparklers+lighter

Other things to bring:

• my nice earrings and necklaces which may come into good use
• my pretty white 4” heels
• towels to dry off after the beach session
• water bottle with straws

In the late afternoon, I was off to Tampines for my little Mani-Pedi nail pampering! Found quite a few forums with pple commenting on a good manicurist in Tampines. This lady Susan who works from home. Found her website, and called her to see if she was free. Perfect! She had a slot in the evening at 630pm, so I’ll end at 830pm, then can go back, pack up and go sleep! (also saves me any chance that I might scratch my nails during the day )

Susan was nice and patient, and she explained the steps to me when I asked. and ask me to decide on the shade I wanted. Choose the more natural look, instead of the more pink one for the fingers for french, and a pinker color for the toes. And after all was done, I told her I saw someone’s nails with added ‘blingbling’ crystals on each of her nails. Simple and nice. So she did that for me. Susan definitely did a pretty good job! Thanks lots for a gd experience!

Also, went to the supermarket earlier this afternoon to buy some stuff. Planning to make sandwiches for us tomorrow morning to bring along! Either for lunch, or if we end up buying from outside, can keep for teabreak in case FM gets hungry.

Food basket consists of:

1. Egg mayo sandwiches – egg mayo + tomato + lettuce sandwiched between pandan-flavored Bonjour bread. Yummy!
2. Kaya toast – kaya + margarine spread on the bread, and lightly toasted for the slight crispiness.
3. Fruits! Apples, grapes and persimmons!

FM doesn’t know what I’m making. Shh… hope he likes it!

Hmm… wondering if the photographer will allow us to go to one more outdoor location tomorrow… really would hope to. *cross fingers* Usually it’s 2-3 locations only, but hopefully we can negotiate and increase it to 4. ^_^

Our 4 locations in mind:

1. Botanic gardens – for the signature shots of Bridal zone @ the waterfall, and the sun rays shooting in amongst the trees.
2. Beach – any sandy beach, for the sunset!
3. Esplanade – our fav dating haunt
4. Biopolis – what linked us together in the 1^st place… lol. And of cos, our 2^nd home when we come back *bleahz*

Darling’s gonna turn up with 10 long-sleeved shirts tomorrow. Haha. BZ said bring 4, so can change pattern to match when I do. but cannot decide what shirts to bring, so bring everything lor! Anyway, the more the merrier right?

Except for tomorrow morning’s food preparation, I’m all prepped and raring to go!! Yay, photoshoot!