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!

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!

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!

3 more weeks of work, one more presentation during lab meeting to present my work so far, and I’m done with work! Also, end of work = photoshoot on 8 July. *yay* Pray hard that weather will be good that day, nice, sunny and breezy. =)

Trial make-up session is scheduled on 27th June, one week before PS. Will meet Angeline, the Make-Up Artist (MUA) to discuss the style I want for the shoot, the color tones/hairdo etc. that I prefer… and also, will get to pick the final 2 outfits for the photoshoot! Hoping that BZ has a few options for each of the costumes, traditional Chinese cheongsam/kua, and I’m looking at choosing a Japanese kimono. ^_^ We’ll see how it goes… Will definitely take pictures and post them up soon!

With the photoshoot and wedding coming up, this extra motivating factor gave me the perfect excuse to embark (for real) some dieting/slimming regime few months ago. =P Just a little lesser than usual for my meals, and some exercise (especially a 5 BX abs exercise I learnt back in Duke during a fitness class) and of cos, a certain level of discipline. =P I lost 4 kg in 3 months! Endured a little nagging along the way from my dad and FM to eat more and not starve… *bleahz* but simply replied and assured them that I was still eating and not abstaining/skipping meals. =P

These 3 weeks… should try to sleep earlier and get enough rest. Heh, good to remove my eyebags and dark circles yar! And after PS, before leaving for the states, can go and cut my hair shorter liao. Been keeping my hair long for the photoshoot, so gives them room to set and style my hair.

Hmm… should I go for manicure and pedicure? =P been leaving my nails long for the PS. And need to make appt on Monday the day before PS to color my hair, and do treatment. Will ask MUA about what color to do my currently bleached-out ash/golden hair.

Things not done yet: look for AD photo/video, download more wedding songs, settle on specific march-in/champagne pouring/montage songs, and scan old pictures for photo montage That’s about it!