Photos from the Blue Wedding

Many years ago, I already had an inkling that Y.'s wedding was going to be challenging, given that her favourite colour is blue. Blue roses, she told me a long time ago, blue and cream.


I also didn't know that her wedding was going to be in LA and that it would be winter and that she was going to through me for a loop by suddenly saying that the curtains in the dining room were red!


That being said, running around the LA Flower Mart was the best experience ever. I contemplated trying to persuade Y.'s to change her mind about the colour scheme because we found these gorgeous dark purple-black dahlias. Arranged with triangular petals, these were full and textured. There were also pale pink zinnias, dahlias of peach, rose pink and red colours, pale peach amaryllis and tall budding foxgloves. It would have made for the most lovely, girly flowery, temperate wedding.


I had intended to make blue, cream-white and purple bouquets, filled with hydrangeas and lilacs, which is pretty much what has been popping up on some wedding sites. However, on the day itself, we found two things that changed the picture. One was these huge bunches of riveira blue hydrageas (which we later realized were white sprayed with a dusky blue) and the idea to have accent colours of dark, bright red to match the curtains and the setting. We still had the lilac, blue, cream colours but there were accents of red in every design.


We made 2 large arrangements backed with tall, wild eucalyptus for the ceremony table, 10 table arrangements including one large square arrangement for the head table, 5 corsages, 5 boutennierres, 1 bridal bouquet and some flowers for the cake in coordinated colours for under $200, much cheaper than Singapore primarily because of the hydrageas which were $1 per stalk. Y. also wanted a very simple binding, so we alternated the cream and blue ribbons, then pinned them at the base of the flowers. Thinking about it, we could also have intertwined them in a V-shaped pattern.


I snapped a photo of this awesome vintage sign and fonts in downtown LA, a day later. Love the shapely cursive!

Photographers in Singapore

The first photographs from Vicki and Tom, pulled from their website, are not of the wedding at all! We took them on a night-tour of Singapore and there were some really lovely long-exposure shots from the trip, these are two of them. They are home and working on the wedding photos though, so we are in excited anticipation of seeing some of them later this week.

Photos from Noah's angle

While waiting for Tom and Vicki's photos, I thought I would post these photos of my nephew, Noah. I think he had as good a time at the wedding as we did! Maybe even better, he got to stay with his Dad at the St Regis and by the looks of it, had gorgeous bathtimes with that huge standing tub and bathrobes, went to the Zoo, the Science Center, the Tiong Bahru Food Market (whereupon he encountered a squat toilet!) and during the wedding, he gamely participated in the tea ceremony, the lunch reception and took pictures with the band!

The first photo is Colin and I in the first part of the first dance, more on that to come. My favourite photo is definitely the last one, I love how he is framed by all the bedcovers and how happy can a little boy's face look!

The 5-second round-up for the day

Wedding Dress-Up

One great thing about the wedding being over, is that I can finally talk about the wedding dress. Z. had not known, until the day itself, which dress I had chosen and actually, for the longest time, I didn't know which dress I had chosen!



I was lucky in the sense that there were few dresses that really suited both my taste and the occasion. I knew right away that I didn't want a large dress but rather a soft, streamline dress, so that knocked out about 90% of the options. Then, I had visited a few made-to-measure bridal salons here but they were depressing experiences, each more sequinned and pretentious than the next and all of them made me feel (and in some cases, verbally suggested that I was) about 3 sizes too large for the average Singaporean dress, which was inveriably a satin embriodered bustier. There were a few bridal shops in Singapore that I wanted to check out, Margaret Brides, with their sweet wispy dresses and Renee Leong's collection but a lot of the top designs were also reminiscent of styles from US designers.

It wasn't hard to decide that I would stop doing that and by a dress off-the-rack from the US, where I was a very predicatable size. There was also only really one dress I loved, the simple, girlish Monique Lhullier lace Claire dress, with it's basic dipped front and back, paiseley lace and beautiful silhoutte. There were some other dresses I considered, the Monique Lhullier Scarlet, with it's daring keyhole back, an empire shaped Victorean Vera Wang dress with assymetric dark crystal beading down one shoulder and a vintage, slightly flapper looking lace and matt sequinned Vera Wang.


In the end, I decided to go with the dress that was a little more detailed, a little more quirky, I think, a little more me. Since it was from the 2007 Fall Collection, the dress was actually fairly rare now and in the US, had stopped being carried in-store, even though in that year, it had been lauded as one of the two "best of Bryant Park" sort of thing. The funny thing is, after I decided that, I suddenly started seeing the dress everywhere! It was on the web and in Martha Stewart and even in Facebook, each time on a very beautiful bride, so I took that as good affirmation!





For the tea ceremony, I didn't want to wear the dress (especially since Z's family wanted to have it at the parents) so I tailored a very bright red qipao in Beijing. The change-out or bridal shower dress I'd found quite by accident, while shopping in the Hong Kong Chloe outlet much earlier this year. I love it's deconstructed look and didn't even think about how I really couldn't justify yet another white dress!

Flowers for a wedding

One upshot of making your own flowers for your wedding, is that you get to choose what goes into the bridesmaids bouquets. I really wanted to give them something perky and cheerful to carry, something in the white and yellow theme and something that contained a cabbage rose (to round off C.'s fascination with that flower).


So with that in mind, T. and I went shopping a few weeks ago and pre-ordered a huge bunch of flowers for the White Rabbit and the bouquets. In the end, our seemingly huge order, actually only came up to $200 for a bridal bouquet, 5 bridesmaids and maid-of honor bouquets and leftover for the cake topper and also for the little White Rabbit table vases. I also spent $25 on 50 lemons for filling vases in the White Rabbit, a rare way to add yellow. I'm not sure what I'm going to to do with all those lemons now, I think er..make lemonade? Or lemon-themed desserts? I guess I could make it into pots of lemon curd for the girls.


Anyway, in turns out that even with pre-ordering, you can't really guarantee that you will want what you get and I did buy a couple more bunches to supplement what I had ordered (and because a couple of beautiful new flowers caught my eye). First case in point was the hydrageas, they were white, full and just beautifully fresh. Big tick. Second was the peonies, they were white all right but still bud closed and hard. Uh oh. The next day, I discovered that it's better if the peonies are closed because they open overnight and they were absolutely fine. However, when they opened, I noticed that they were actually tinged with pink on the edges and right inside the stamen, the petals were rose pink. Next time, I wonder if one can ask for Pure White Peonies.


Likewise the alstromerias where I was hoping for a full glorious white and yellow spotted bloom- the ones I got were still budding and really green (to be fair, they opened a bit more the next day) and the white eustomias seemed a bit ragged (but usable). By the next day, they definitely were better but on the spot, I wasn't that happy. The nursery service was good though, they got the flowers ready on time, even called me to remind me to come and allowed me to reject anything I didn't want- I rejected these slim yellow stasis-like flower because they seemed very sparse and unneccesary and the nursery was ok with that.


We had agreed that there would be two smaller bouquets for the bridesmaids who were walking down the ailse carrying their babies and two large bouquets for the girls who weren't. There would be a larger bouquet still for E, the maid of honour, with the same flowers. Mine would be coordinated bouquet but with slightly different flowers and the boutennieres would use the same sort of flowers and pick up on the same colours. The idea was the keep the style fun and delibrately a little vintage and wild, light and suitable for a summery, California-casual garden wedding. (Sidenote: one can also make perfectly round posies, using spherical florist sponge) The funny thing is that with the berries, eucalyptus and the silverweed, I thought it did look just a little Christmassy, though the colour wasn't as "in season".


Putting the flowers together was faster than I thought, with a sharp pair of shears, it took maybe an hour and that was while trying to preserve my manicure. Two things I learnt, which I'm really grateful for- one is that I learnt to make boutennieres! I had some concept of this before but now I'm confident I know how, in time for Y's wedding at the end of the year.


I struggled for a bit with safety pinning the boutennieres (whereupon C. helpfully said, you know, it's not Too Late to get A. to make these!) before we realized why boutenierres are always pictured with little tailor pins. Actually, making them is really easy and the binding with florist tape is easy to do.


We made several different varieties with white and yellow renunculus and then a yellow fresia one for Z. They are fairly fragile though and need to be kept refrigerated all the time because unlike floral bouquets, they don't have open ends.


The second thing I learnt was that unlike before, where I would tie the ribbons binding the bouquet together, I realized that if I use small-headed pins and a hammer, I can actally neatly and deeply, pin the ribbons into place. If you look carefully with at the pictures you can see the ribbon details through the jam jars.


This allowed for thick and thin ribbons on the girl's bouquets. I alternated thick tan velvet ribbon and thin white and yellow striped ribbon on the bouquet stems. One could also use lace ribbon or strings of seed pearls. Those can even be used on the boutenniers though I chose to keep the ones I made fairly simple and at least, a little more masculine.


I wanted to wrap these grey felt alphabet keychains onto the girl's bouquets, I had found them in Australia and each of them had one in their name. Alas, I was all done wrapping and hammering before I was reminded of this!


Long ago, I had said that I would arrange the bouquets since I needed the happy pheramones from the flowers. The thing is, it's really true, the smell of the fresh dewy flowers, eucalyptus and crisp leaves is quite heavenly. I didn't expect it but I felt really happy after messing about with flowers, happy and relaxed (maybe it was relief).