Apologies for the long delay in getting the AD wedding pictures up on the site! We went for a short Thailand honeymoon and got real busy with work back in San Francisco. We also didn’t get our hands on the finished photos and videos from fotowerke (our AD photographer/videographer) until 1.5 months after the wedding.

Nevertheless, here they are! We’ve sifted through the tons of pictures we have, so not all pictures we have are shown here. As you go through the pictures, the ones labeled “FMJ-XXX.jpg” were taken and selected by fotowerke to be included in the printed 4R photo album. The ones with “FMJ-NA-XXX.jpg” were taken by fotowerke but not included into the album. The rest of the pictures appended by another name, like “DSC_XXXX.jpg”, “IMG_XXXX.jpg”, “SXXXXXX.jpg” or “PXXXXXX.jpg” were taken by the other photographers like my brother-in-law, parents, friends etc. =)

We’ve also uploaded several videos. “Video Intro” and “Childhood Photo Montage” are the homemade video and fancy slideshow that we showed before our first and second marches-in respectively. KUDOS to my dearest hubby for his amazing work in learning all the photo/video/song editing!!! *muack*

Our first march-in was to the song “From This Moment” by Shania Twain and the video was our little crazy fun project that we filmed ourselves as a filler for when Shania says the wedding vows during the long intro of the song. The childhood photo montage played just before our second march-in leads into the song “Come What May” from the Moulin Rouge soundtrack, which was when we gave a surprise song duet item as we walked in.

The morning highlights and wedding highlights are produced by fotowerke, nicely summarizing and immortalizing the special moments of our wedding day…

Feel free to comment on the albums by writing on our guestbook. We hope that you’ll enjoy looking through them!

Lastly, a long overdue “BIG THANK YOU!” to everyone who made the wedding day possible, and a truly memorable one! Not to forget our friends from afar who did not make it to the dinner, but sent many well wishes, lovely gifts, loving messages and more… thank you! ~hugz~

Special thanks to:

• All the wonderful people at Bridal Zone, especially Grace (Marina Square) and Ling Ling (Boon Keng).
• Angeline, my make-up artist. Amazing creativity and skills, fun-loving and nice lady!!
• Howard and his assistant, great photography for our pre-wedding photoshoot!
• Celestine and partner at fotowerke for the actual day photography and videography
• Veralyn, Henry, Zhe Pin and the rest of the crew at Grand Park City Hall, for coordinating and running the program smoothly throughout the dinner banquet
• NeoGarden Catering, for the prompt service and good food at our lunch caterings
• Tze Han, my little cousin, for agreeing to ‘open the car door’!
• Dr. Phua Tan Tee, for agreeing to be our Justice of Peace in the solemnization ceremony
• HF and SR, our dinner emcees, for the wonderful job done in carrying the dinner program through
• Our xiongdis and jiemeis, for a wonderful job in helping us the entire day!!!
• Our parents, siblings and families, for warmly embracing us into the family, supporting and loving us!

Hello friends!

It’s one week to our wedding and we’re getting really excited! We’ve been very busy preparing for the wedding since we got back to Singapore a week ago. It’s been a great first year of graduate school in San Francisco, and we really hope to have the time to catch up with you on the day of our wedding.

Just a quick reminder: we’re having our wedding dinner a week from today on 08 August 2009 (Saturday) at Grand Park City Hall. Reception will begin at 7pm. We’ll be holding our civil solemnizations at the start of the dinner, so please be there before 7:30pm. Appreciate it!

Let us know if you have not received the hard copy wedding invites, or if you need to make changes to your RSVP (not coming, bringing a spouse etc). You can get us at wedding@randomtots.com. Thanks!

We can’t wait to see you then!

So Grand Plaza Park Hotel City Hall was renamed to Grand Park City Hall at the start of 2009, as part of a rebranding exercise to consolidate all hotels in the group under a unifying name. Its undoubtedly a good move on the part of the hotel group, but its a bad move when customers like us have to hear it via online forums instead of from proactive hotel staff.

GPCH is changing their wedding themes in May, so we’ll get to choose the ballroom decor later.

GPCH provides free wedding invites for up to 70% of our guests through the printing company T Dragon. They seem to specialize in wedding invites, and pictures of most of their cards are available online through their website. The cards aren’t very pretty though, to be honest, but I guess you get what you pay for. But I do think their cards will do for most people, being plain, simple and sweet. Their ready templates with English and Chinese wordings were definitely helpful. They emailed us the final proof, we asked for some changes to font sizes, they re-emailed us the new proof, we approved via email and off it goes for printing. 2 weeks till pickup.

T Dragon
5 Coleman Street
#03-23
Excelsior Shopping Centre
Singapore 179805
Tel : 6292 8338 / 6333 5761
www.tdragoncards.com

We are finally almost done with the first round of e-invites, less some missing email addresses. Have you replied to yours yet?

I’ve recently been helping out on the SingaporeBrides forum, giving advice (and promoting Bridal Zone!) to all BTBs who are seeking out bridal shops and packages to sign up with. A common question which came out is how to get a good deal for the bridal package… so here are some general tips and advice about how you can come out satisfied with your package at the end of the day, regardless of which bridal shop you end up signing with.

Everyone has their own preferences, desiring some things on the package more than others. Bridal shops are generally willing to negotiate, taking things out (wedding car, portrait, etc) and replacing them with others, especially getting more photos into the album.

1. Before stepping into any bridal shop, be sure to discuss with your FH about your max budget possible and expectations of the package, so you’ll not end up tearing each other apart in front of the bridal shop staff. :p you don’t have to tell the wedding coordinator upfront what your max budget is, to give yourself leeway to add more pictures in the future. E.g. if your max budget is $4000, go look for a ~$3000 package, since almost everyone will add tons of pictures after the photoshoot.
2. While discussing the package details, the wedding coordinator will write on a package detail sheet to keep track of your personalized package. Make sure everything that you’ve agreed upon is written down in black and white. Empty talk does not count! You can keep things open as well – e.g. if you’re not sure if you need to rent their wedding car on ur AD, ask them to keep it as a possible cash deduction (e.g. -$200 if you decide to skip the car later on) or exchange for more photos to the package (e.g. 4 more pics in exchange for the car). But again, have it written down on the contract.
3. Most things are set in stone after your sign your package with the details written down. The one thing which remains open for substantial negotiation is the topping up of pictures, and getting the soft copy of photos back. One major reason we were drawn towards BZ is that we could get the soft copy of all pictures back with a minimum top-up of 20 pictures.
4. When you are done with your photoshoot and go down to the shop to select your pictures, the coordinator will NO DOUBT try to entice you in getting more pictures. Grace tried to get us to add more pictures to our package, but she wasn’t pushy at all. In fact, she maintained that we should see how much we were willing to spend, and constantly tried to give us better deals. We were given various bundle options of topping up 20/30/50 pictures, and with increasing number of pictures she would throw in some more stuff, including reducing the top-up price per picture, and even throw in another big “bedroom” portrait for the 50 picture top-up. We also requested for the full resolution soft copy of pictures back in CD after topping up many pictures eventually (they were only willing to give back the low resolution copy that was good enough for web-viewing with the minimum 20 picture top-up)
5. If you end up topping up a considerable amount (say >80 pictures total) can try asking to split into 2 albums instead of one.

VERY IMPORTANT: While negotiating, it’s alright to bargain for more stuff, and be firm in rejecting offers to top up, but do not get pissy and loud with the coordinator! After all, the bridal shops are also trying to make a living! =) be nice and reasonable about it, and in that way, everyone will be happy and satisfied in a win-win situation!

Below is a list of things that you should ask when meeting your wedding boutique coordinator. I modified this off the original list by Roxy in Singaporebrides and this page in myshopping.sg.

• Album
  • No of photos – this is most impt. As far as I know, can usually bargain to about 30
  • Cost of additional photos – $65 – $80 is standard mkt price. We did managed to get $50 per piece
  • Photo album size – the usual is 15” or 18” album.
  • Mini-album included? BZ gave us the Taiwan storybook mini-version instead of the normal full page 5R album
  • Digital ( magazine ) style or normal full-page pictures?
  • Do they do digital touch up on your photos?
  • Portrait picture – most BS give 1 picture or 3-in-1 as options
• Gowns
  • MTM or OTR?
  • How many pieces are u allowed to have on your actual day? Eg 1 kua/tea dress, 1 bridal gown and 1 evening dress?
  • Groom’s jacket. How many pieces?
  • Can the actual day gown be different from photoshoot gown? Usually no, but in our case, we did the photoshoot way before the AD, so we’ll get to pick again for AD gowns
  • If my customary and wedding dinner is on 2 diff days, any additional costs?
  • Any restrictions in choosing the gowns? Or you can choose any gown in the shop?
  • Need to top up extra for more embroidery or lace?
  • Will BS provide accessories for my photoshoot and also actual day? How many sets can I rent?
• Photoshoot
  • How many changes in style you’ll have? Change in make up also?
  • Do u need to provide transport for photoshoot?
  • If you want to have photoshoot spread over 2 days, how much extra u’ll have to pay?
  • If it rains for outdoor photoshoot and need to reschedule on another day, is there a charge for the MUA and photographer? How many times rescheduling is allowed and when will they start charging? BZ does not charge no matter how many times you need to reschedule cos of bad weather.
  • Able to get back soft copies? And when?
  • Need to pay MUA for $20 collagen & $15 false eyelashes for photoshoot?
  • Fake or real bridal bouquet on actual day?
• Make-up
  • Any additional costs to MUA besides $20 for collagen & $15 for false eyelashes?
  • Need to give MUA transport costs?
  • If MUA needs to reach my house before 6am, any additional charge?
  • No of makeup sessions
  • Same MUA for photoshoot & actual day?
  • If my customary & wedding dinner is 2 diff days, any additional costs for MUA?
• Car
  • free car rental & what make & model?
  • if downgrade to lower make/model, can change for more photos?
  • If dun want car, how many more pieces or reduction in package price?
    Driver provided?
• Others that you may want to bargain for (though not every BS may have):
  • No of 8R tabletop photos (We got 2 instead of one, so each of our families can have one)
  • No of corsages for parents and brothers
  • Rental of teadress for sisters
  • Father and father-in-law jackets
  • Any wrist corsages for bride or sisters
  • Guest book
  • Borrow ring pillow for ROM ceremony

FM & Jas are now happily settled in San Francisco, readying up for classes to begin next week. As such, this site will be on hiatus until Spring 2009 when the RSVP section opens up in preparation for the wedding in August 2009. We’ll return to Singapore sometime over the summer break for our final wedding preps and for the actual wedding ceremony. Until then, you can continue checking up on us through our other blog.

In the meantime, a whole lot more pictures are now available in the Photo Gallery. We selected our photoshoot pictures for the wedding album not long before we left Singapore, to be printed just before the wedding next year. It was certainly a painful decision O_o *bleahz* to have to throw out more than 3/4 of the pictures. Every picture looks great! But (thankfully) all that is behind us now. We’ve uploaded the photoshoot pictures – BUT only the pictures which did NOT make it into our actual album! the final cut is top secret property that will be held confidential until closer to the wedding next year! Muahahaha…

Also, pictures of our post-undergraduate times are up in an album too, featuring our trips to Taiwan, Japan and Sweden, as well as our gatherings with family and friends back in Singapore! Do check them out!

See you in Spring!

Hope this comes in useful! ~FM & Jas

Months before:

1. Exercise regime, especially for the girls
   • Slim down/ build up to look pretty for the pictures that last forever!
     (Jas did her abs exercise diligently, and ate lesser to slim down. Got rid of her little tummy and lost 5 kg!)
   • Exercise to tone up, but dun get obvious tan line. Maintain an even tone, dun go for beach activities before that! (although photoshop will take care of any ugly tan lines. ^_^)
2. Girls will want to start leaving your hair pretty long before meeting your Make-Up Artist (MUA) during trial make-up (depends on how fast your hair grows too, but longer is better than too short, of course; too long can always cut). Hair length around mid-back should be good (the setting of the hair to make the curls will shorten the hair a lot).

1 month before:

1. Grow your eyebrows so your MUA can trim it nicely. Or if you already have shaped eyebrows, maintain them neat.
2. SLEEP WELL. Nothing works better than many nights of good sleep to get rid of eye bags and dark eye rings.
   (Jas guai guai slept before 12mn for about 2 weeks before! ^_^)
3. Guys – time the cutting of your hair such that u’ll have hair that’s one+ week into a fresh cut. Neat but not overly short.
4. Girls – if u wanna go for manipedi, should start letting your nails grow longer, especially if you want to do French. Dun have your nails too rounded when u cut, slightly square nails are best.

A week before:

1. Trial makeup session should be around 1-2 weeks before the photoshoot. Ask your MUA how you should cut/color your hair to get the maximum impact for the PS. Layered hair would be good cos it’s easier to style.
2. Schedule to color your hair about a week before the PS.
   (Jas happened to have bleached golden hair at the last ~15cm of her hair. During the trial makeup, our MUA Angeline said to leave those alone. Then Jas went to Angeline’s shop, where Angeline layered her hair more into a sharp V-shape, and got Jas to highlight streaks of a similar bronze/golden color throughout her hair. These came into very good effect when Angeline styled her hair during the PS. Check out our pictures in the previous blog post for the full glory of her artwork!)
3. Ethnic costumes – should have chosen and reserved it previously, and make sure that the appropriate size is available.
   (We din do that during our trial makeup. but turned out all fine, cos Jas arrived early on the photoshoot day, and got to try the costumes and choose beforehand. The cheongsam was of the prefect size for Jas, so that was quite heng. But if we had wanted to have the kua, then there would be trouble, cos the kuas were all very huge in size.)
4. Groom’s suits – should have been chosen for each outfit to match, and decided beforehand.
   (We din do that but waited for the actual day of the photoshoot where FM decided on the spot what to wear and BZ gave him the appropriate matching suit/scarfs/ties/shoes, but all turned out well. )
5. Facial one week before, to make the face more radiant, and also supposed to make the powder/makeup stay and more longer-lasting.
   • no squeezing of pimples few days before the PS (or powder wun stick!)
   • some pple say can go for body scrub/ face masks before that. But do it at ur own discretion. If your haven been using these kinda stuff, DO NOT try new products at this time for fear of allergic reactions/breakouts!

   (About a week before, Jas went to Angeline for a deep cleansing facial (if interested, call Angeline to make an appointment beforehand) and FM went for a facial at Spa Elements (we had a Citibank promotion card). In general, we just make sure to not eat too much fried/chilli hot stuff. And no chocolates for FM until photoshoot is over! Heh.)

6. Additional: You may wanna look thru pple’s albums, think of some poses u might wanna do. The photographers will have ideas of their own, but probably will ask you to use your own creativity and pose on your own too.

Day before:

1. Manicure/pedicure for girls – for the neater simpler kind, go for French, additional artwork/glittery additions as u desire. Best to do in the evening, so u wun scratch your nails for the rest of the day.
   Guys, just go trim your nails short and neat.
2. Girls – Shave clean! You don’t want unsightly hair in ur pics!
   Guys – if u grow moustache/beard, trim neatly. If not, shave clean.

Packing for the photoshoot:

• Guys
  • white socks to wear with the white suit
  • shirts and ties of all colors, shades and stripes (so that the photographer/MUA can help you color-pick the best attire to match your bride.) Include one white shirt.
  • black leather shoes (the bridal studio should have a pair of white shoes to go with your white suit)
  • if you have your own MTM suit jacket, bring it and wear it.
    Yes, the bridal studio provides suits for you, and they have various sizes to fit your build. But still, nothing shows you off better than a MTM suit (assuming it was well-made) that is specifically cut to your build. More often than not, sleeve length will most likely be too long for you (suit sleeves should end at wrist, while shirt cuffs should end at base of thumb). Anyway, I dare say most guys would need at least one suit to wear on the rare occasions where it’s needed.
    (FM made his a year back and it has seen pretty good use this past year (more wear = value for money!))

Another important thing about guys and jackets is, DON’T BUTTON EVERYTHING! Jackets with 3 buttons in front only need the middle button fastened, while jackets with 4 buttons can have the middle 2 buttons fastened. Browsing through other people’s wedding albums, you can see some guys who look quite toot with all buttons fastened like a kid. Bad karma to the photographer for not informing those guys!

• Girls
  • Bridal shoes
  • Sandals to change into when you’re not taking pics. So you wun get tired wearing ur heels the entire day! (especially useful if you’re going to the beach)
  • Own jewellery if want, pretty (not too expensive) necklaces and earrings
  • Makeup kit – in case u need to patch up a little – but we din use

• In General
  • Wedding rings + engagement rings (if any)
  • Water bottle with drinking straw (although BZ had plenty to offer, and a good stock in the car too. )
  • Camera to capture preparation moments (we have pics for the earlier part of day, but less and less as we go along cuz we’re both too busy!)
  • Props – buy or dig out whatever other items of personal interest that you’re interested in including in the pictures. Many bring their motorbikes, cars, teddy bears, musical instruments etc.
    (For us, brought ring box, sparklers, proposal rose, balloons, rose petals amongst others)
  • Casual wear for the beach, or you can just wear one of your outdoor gowns to go kick water in the sea.
  • Lunch, or you can call-in fast food. Or the groom can go buy lunch from a coffeeshop nearby while the bride does her makeup, although I doubt its advisable to run around sweating with your makeup on. And if you’re interested, ask the photographer to take pictures while you two eat your lunch in the studio.
  • Light snacks if u’ll be hungry – although we din feel hungry at all, and wouldn’t have time to eat anyways due to our hectic schedule
  • Tissue paper/ wet tissue if u want, though we din end up using.
  • Umbrella – in case it rains
  • ~$100 to pay off your MUA for ampoules, fake eyelashes etc.

• DO NOT bring
  • Valuables. It’s a full day of hectic running around, digging for shirts and personal props, endless makeup etc. You won’t have time to look after your stuff. In addition to the bridal shop staff, there may also be another couple doing their photoshoot (BZ has two MUAs and two photogs and two studios, so two couples can take pics in parallel)

Morning of photoshoot:

1. DO not wash ur hair in the morning of the photoshoot! Supposed to leave hair dry for styling!
2. To wear for girls: button down/zip down top, so it’s easy to change w/o ruining ur makeup
3. Have a good breakfast!

We thoroughly enjoyed our photoshoot, although it stretched from 10am to 10pm, and we were tired at the end of the day. Photoshoots are fun: Just relax, be happy and enjoy yourselves to let the natural happiness shine! A great way to ensure pretty pics!

Guest post by FM.

Love. Passionately. originated as a pretty bookmark from Borders that FM gave to Jas for three simple reasons:

1. the bookmark was pretty
2. FM wanted to encourage Jas to read more widely, more often
3. the bookmark encapsulated FM’s ideal of love most succinctly

Admittedly, the phrase was not pasted above our mirrors to be read ten times over every morning and night. Nonetheless, on hindsight, I believed that we have lived out our unspoken maxim to the maximum we can.

When planning for the perfect proposal, my cousin Kris suggested including a personalized EZ-Link card from Singapore Mint. As each of my 12 planned gifts carried a specific, unique message of love, the EZ-Link card was themed as a follow-up to the bookmark. The picture chosen was taken in a public park in Philadelphia, and best epitomizes the spirit of the message to Love. Passionately.

(Unfortunately, the ordering process takes two weeks and more due to the holiday season, and was not to be ready in time to be one of the 12 perfect proposal gifts. Too bad. )

Friends often express awe that our relationship survived the long distance, even without any basis or background to begin with. (Three weeks from First Sight to Steady, another three weeks till our long distance separation.) I guess the best answer I can give in reply is the same old maxim: we simply loved. passionately. we can add a lot more adjectives to describe the love: unselfishly, truthfully, expressively, patiently, supportive(ly), unreserved(ly), blah, blah, blah… But sometimes, in the end, too many adjectives add too much pressure to perform up to an artificial standard that no party is comfortable with, for I believe the quality of love is different between every couple.

So, to all the couples in love out there, I leave you my two cents worth. Make light of all the specifics which you’ll likely forget after a few months of dating. Stick to loving your partner with all your heart, and the specifics will all come naturally. Just

Love. Passionately.

From: Jas
Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2004 3:11 PM
To: FM
Subject: i cannot believe this………

Hey dear…

sobz…. today is a bad day… this whole mad rush at duke, all the work, all the tests and thus all the lack of sleep is getting to me… arghz… guess wat… the bookmark? i really really like it so much, i told u i immediately used it for my seminar book? this morning i was carrying the book in my hand on the way to french class, somehow it slipped out of the book, fell dunno where… i retraced my steps like 3, 4 times liao, cant find it… it either got picked up by someone, or it’s lying buried somewhere in the grass or something… ARGHZ! i’m so so sorry… i really dunno what happened… it just slipped out… and i like it so much… arghz…. i want it back… =..(

and worse still, i gotta lead a discussion next tues, on the first half of the book, in other words, read the book, summarise and post reading notes for the class before the class… arghz… and organic chem test is on mon!!! howhow? i need to read the chapters, do my org chem qns and practise/ revise for the test! BY MON! and the reading notes for discussion… and not to mention i need to do my maths NOW, it’s due 2mr…. arghz…. what’s wrong? y am i struggling so much??? soooooooo tired… so sleep deprived…. oh well………..

anyway, abt the bookmark, i want to get it… really, since i lost it… we’ll talk abt it when i see u online… =( sorry, i really din want that to happen… so devastated when i discovered it was missing from my book… sobz….

gotta drag myself to work…. somehow….

Stressed, tired, and sad little girl…….

i need to pull thru this!!!

From: Jas
Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2004 4:04 PM
To: FM
Subject: twist of fate…. =)

Hey darling…

the bookmark was ALWAYS meant to be mine… my roommate was so nice, she offered to walk out with me along the path to help me look for it… =)=) and this time somehow i spotted it!!!!! yay!!! haha… now this gives me just the badly needed motivation to get my work done!

-love passionately, my work???-

heh… i can finish everything! gringrin… yup…. love ya!

ur little girl, Jas…

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