Hi Everyone!
It’s our last night here in the USA. We’re back in Silicon Valley now so tomorrow I go to work at our new office here and at night we’re taking a flight back to Malaysia. It’s hard to believe we’ve been away for 3 weeks. This is the longest I have ever been away from home (apart from my 3 years studying in London).
So since I’m not going to be able to blog much in the next few days, Shorty and I decided that we’re going to leave you with our long overdue blog post of our wedding dinner. Lots of the pictures here are courtesy of our photographer Wayne, my cousin Michelle who is ALSO a talented photographer and Carol. So rather than go through a whole long story of the night, let me show you picture by picture. This is how our photo corner looked like.
I remember the first time we went to our wedding planner, Audrey Chow from Focal Concepts. She asked us “So what theme do you have in mind?”. We immediately said “UP!”. At first it drew some blank stares but when we explained that it was supposed to be the Disney Pixar cartoon UP, she immediately got it. She was excited about doing it because it wasn’t like the usual wedding she had done before. Most weddings she has done have colour themes or flower themes but this was the first … well.. odd one.. she had.
Audrey (as in Audrey Chow, not to be mistaken with Shorty) and Shorty worked together and came up with some of the best ideas. That photo corner was one of Audrey’s ideas I think and it was meant to be the “Living room” of the UP House. She even sourced for furniture that looked as close as possible to that and added in some personal touches in it. For example, look at the backdrop of it.. notice the little blue ChurpChurp bird? Shorty and Audrey filled the photo frames of the photo corner with pictures of Shorty and I either from our photoshoot or our childhood pictures.
Then comes the decor of the registration table.
We had more pictures of us.
And we had a mailbox with our handprint on it… just like in UP.
Then this I think is another of Audrey’s ideas where she took this picture of us and got all the guests to leave coloured thumb prints on them so they all end up looking like balloons.
Our guest book, was the exact same Adventure Book that Mr Fredrickson had in UP. Then of course we had loads of signs that led guests to thewedding party.
Now we knew UP themed meant we had to have a lot of balloons right. The problem was that… if you had a lot of balloons tied around chairs all over the ballroom you’d end up with a wedding that looked more like a birthday party than a wedding. So Audrey suggested that instead of balloons, we use lanterns… and this is how beautiful it looked by the time it was all set up (but just before the guests arrived).
This is the walkway from the door all the way to the stage.
Shorty picked the door gifts and ended up with these little jars of honey. I don’t really know why to be honest and I’m yet to ask her but it looked cute so okaaay.
On the stage came our backdrop. The theme or the objective of the wedding wasn’t to make it look grand. We’ve been to lots of grand weddings before and wow are they hard to beat. So Shorty and I just wanted a fun wedding. Our backdrop on the stage ended up like this.
Notice the “duct tape” on the side of it holding the map down. It’s kinda how the world map in the adventure book looked like in UP. And if you look closely at the map you’ll see markings on the places that Shorty and I have been together. Or places that she has been without me. And yes my favourite part of the backdrop was how they used real balloons to hold “US” up 🙂 Oh Oh and I nearly forgot to mention. WE HAD AN ACTUAL FLOATING HOUSE !!!
While Shorty and I were hiding in the bridal suite getting ready. Our guests were gathering at the cocktail area already. Some of my friends came from all over. Here’s Hasan from Bahrain talking to Eddie and Adrian from Hong Kong.
I met all three of them while studying at University College London. I used to hang out with them every day! I came down before Shorty to mingle with the guests. Here’s me with Sara and Linda.
And here’s Rina and Wendy taking a picture with Angeline in the background looking really fierce (but hot ok.. hot .. ).
You know the best part about a wedding is that it’s the one time in your life where all the friends you made throughout life will come together in one place.
I had friends from school in Penang, my college friends in KL, my London friends and now my current friends.
They were all together in this one place. Some of them knew each other, some of them didn’t but all of them were happy. And this will probably almost never happen again.
So after all our guests went into the ballroom, it was time for our entrance. First went the bridesmaids with the groomsmen.
And then came Shorty and me.
Words cannot describe the feeling of doing the first walk-in. You walk hand in hand with the woman you love, down a red carpet with all your best friends and fathers friends on the side standing and clapping with smiles on their faces. If there was one moment in my life I could save and revisit over and over again… it would be this.
I gotta say AGAIN that I LOVE Shorty’s dress. It is the most beautiful wedding dress I had ever seen in my life. Thank you again for designing it Gilbert.
Now traditionally once the bride and groom walk into the room, they take their seats at the main table and then everyone else sits down. My mum though wanted something different. She said forget tradition. She said that it was only polite for me to go up on stage first and thank all our guests for coming tonight. So because mummy knows best… I went on stage, still holding my Shorty’s hand and thanked our guests who had come from all over the world for that one night.
Then we went back to sit down on the main table.
The rest of the night went by really quickly. I remember being disappointed with the first few servings of my food. We had gone for a food tasting before and it was really good but that night I didn’t really enjoy my food. I guess it’s one thing to make food for one table… and another thing to make food for seventy. What I did enjoy though was the company of all my other friends there.
After we all sat down my father gave a speech. I can’t include a picture of that yet because my Dad is blog-shy. And then after some food and some performances Angela went up to give her speech as maid of honor.
Then Shorty went away to make her change.
While she was putting on her second change, I was….
Well going around and drinking with my Dad’s friends. And then came my turn to go up and give my speech.
I already posted the content of my speech before but if you want to read it again, here it is. Here’s Shorty talking to her bridesmaids.
And then came Ming’s turn to give his speech as my best man.
After Ming’s speech, the Nuffies had a little surprise for me. They all went up on stage and they all department by department said some words or poems. It was a nice little surprise… enough to get me up clapping by the end of it.
We ended with a group picture.
This is a picture of me talking to my grandmother.
I can’t remember what about but possibly something about great grandchildren…
The night flew by much quicker than I expected it to be. Before I knew it I was at the exit saying goodbye to all the guests that came. I had never in my hands shaken the hands of 700 people before. It was tiring. Took us quite a while… so much that by the end of it even Shorty decided to do without her high heels. People had to bend down to hug her. Hehe.
We were supposed to go for an after party after that but Shorty said she was too tired to. I don’t blame her. It was a long and tiring day… but it was an awesome wedding.
An awesome wedding… of a Fatty and a Shorty.
Read Shorty’s version here.
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PS:
One of the reasons why Shorty and I loved our wedding so much is because it came out not just like how we envisioned it to be… but even better. We couldn’t have done it if we didn’t have the right people working with us for all these things and I think we were blessed to have the right planner, photographer etc etc.
So I want to share our contacts with you. If you’re a bride to be… let me see if I can help you out in making your wedding awesome.
Here are some resources if you’re looking to plan a wedding of yours soon. I’ll list our wedding planner, photographer and wedding dress designer.
Wedding Planner – Focal Concept. They’re a Penang company. Who we worked with though was a lady named Audrey Chow. She’s awesome. Her email is dreychow@gmail.com. It’s so important to have a wedding planner who not only understands how important your wedding is to you but totally understands what you want and know how to build on to it. Audrey was one such planner.
Wedding Dress Designer – Shorty’s wedding dress which I think is the most beautiful of all is done by Gilbert. You can check out his site here.
Wedding Photographer – Wayne from Mocco.my. Wayne and his crew were awesome and I think he managed to capture the emotions of our wedding so well. There are so many other pictures but I can’t post them all. He’s great.
Videographer – And of course, our video grapher was Crazy Monkey Studios. Ask for SK. They did the meme proposal video and the meme proposal sequel. They also did the video for our wedding dinner but they’re still working on that so it’s not out yet. You can also reach them on Facebook here.
Hair Stylist and Make-Up – Shorty seems to think that I look good that night only because Hicky from 76Style did a great job in styling my hair. Hicky was awesome, she was with us all weekend and took good care of Audrey’s make-up throughout. She wasn’t just like a stylist… but like a friend. She helped Shorty with everything she needed. You can check out 76 Style here.
Pre-Wedding Photo Shoot – One Way Ticket was the company we used. They’re new and I heard we’re one of the first couples they did. We didn’t want to go for the tried and true and famous photographers. We wanted to go for the rebels… the new kid on the block that would be passionate about doing a quirky shoot. And do a great quirky shoot they did. You can reach them here.