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?

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!

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…

• 1 OTR Wedding Gown (WG)
• 1 OTR Evening Gown (EG)
• Teadress (cheongsam/kua)
• 2 sets Men’s suit (1 pair trousers MTM)
• 32 photos (impt!!)
• Additional top-up of photos at $50 each, with all photos returned in CD with additional 20 photos ($1000)
• Digital album (18″)
• Mini-album upgrade to digital form, separately designed into storyline form by a Taiwanese company (instead of simply the full page album for selected pictures only) – this is really nice!
• 1 portrait (either 3-in-1, or single big photo)
• 2 table tops (8R)
• 6 pieces of 4 selected pictures (4R)
• 2-3 locations for photoshoot (we’re trying to squeeze in 4 locations) most places only offer 2 locations.
• 6 outfits altogether, 4 studio (WG, EG, 2 costumes), and 2 outdoor. Most places only 5 outfits – 1 WG for outdoor. And if we wanna bring in our own additional outfit, BZ does not take away one outfit, instead just an add-on.
• 5 different hairdos/makeup
• Photoshoot morning to night (after sunset) – not every place does till late at night. Some places which we had inquired at only do till 6pm or so.
• Special case for us: since our wedding was one year away, we could choose gowns for the photoshoot, and choose again just before the AD, so the designs would be new (instead of choosing dresses to hold on for one year before wearing them again!!) and I will have pictures of many many dresses!
• Note: Only caveat here was that we could only choose the gowns for the photoshoot from the older rack, and not the brand-new rack that was only meant for brides who were going to wear the gowns for actual day too. But still, I found dresses which I like a lot!
• Since we’re going to beautiful California for grad school, we managed to bargain for an evening gown on loan from the time we’re leaving until December. If we managed to find someone coming back to Singapore during winter break, then perfect! Can get their gown to go outside to the beaches to take pictures ourselves!
• Wedding car (Merz) included – (-$200) if not required.
• Car decor
• AD makeups (1 day/1 night)
• Fathers’ jackets if needed