This is my version of the Singapore Bridal Bible. It's by no means comprehensive, just an extremely curated collection of contacts (I'm very picky) that hopefully saves you time. They are generally in the order that I would recommend them. I very much welcome new suggestions in comments!
Restaurants:
Au Petit Salut www.aupetitsalut.com
The White Rabbit www.thewhiterabbit.com.sg
Royal China, The Raffles Hotel www.raffles.com
Botanic and Horticultural Parks in Singapore, www.nparks.gov.sg
PS Cafe at Dempsey or Ang Siang Hill, www.pscafe.sg
Caterers:
Alpha Gourmet, Elaine Gourmet5@singnet.com.sg
Rumah Makan Minang, www.minang.sg
Penang Place, www.penangplace.com
Peramakan, www.peramakan.com
Love Catering (USA)
Flowers:
Saipua, www.saipua.com
Zeze, www.zezeflowers.com
The Wedding Chateau, Singapore figstreet.blogspot.com
By the Branch, Singapore
Fiore Dorato, Singapore
Invitation/Paper Goods Design:
Bella Figura www.bellafigura.com
Minted, www.minted.com
Hello Tenfold, Ellie Snow, www.hellotenfold.com
Custom Printables Online, www.customprintablesonline.com (monograms and programs)
Hillary King Calligraphy, calligraphybyhillary@yahoo.com, www.calligraphybyhillary.com
Coasters and Labels, myownlabels.com
Carte Blanche, Singapore cardblanche@card-blanche.com
Printers:
Pixeltech, Singapore jacob@pixel.com.sg
Aceprinters, Singapore aceprint.com.sg
Paper Tiger Press, Singapore, www.papertigerpress.com, emily@papertigerpress.com (letterpress)
Mercurio Brothers, www.mercuriobrothers.com, nicole@mercuriobrothers.com (letterpress)
VistaPrint, www.vistaprint.com.sg
Wedding Cakes:
Crummb Cakes, Teo Pau Lin, Singapore crummb.com/blog
ETA Artisan Sweets, Eileen Tay, Singapore orders@etasweets.com
Canale, Singapore www.canele.com.sg
The Patissier www.thepatissier.com/
Dessert Table/Favours:
ETA Artisan Sweets, Eileen Tay, Singapore orders@etasweets.com
Canale, Singapore www.canele.com.sg
The Wedding Chateau, Singapore the-wedding-chateau.com/
Hot Fuschia, Singapore www.hotfuchsiacakes.com/
Baked Ideas info@halfbaked-ideas.com
Yolk Bakery www.yokebakery.com/
The Patissier www.thepatissier.com/
Awfully Chocolate Truffles at Raffles City (favour boxes)
TWG at ION Orchard or Republic Plaza (favours sets)
Make-up (all recommendations by photographers):
Fauzi HN, KL fauzinyc@gmail.com
Jacqueline Law, 91131498
Jennise 91101314
Jesslyn 98463311
Jyue Hui, Make-up room, www.the-makeuproom.com 6220 3437
Cecelia Westberry 92719422
Dress/Veil:
OnceWed, www.oncewed.com
The Bridal Garden, New York www.bridalgarden.org/
Monique Lhullier Wedding and RTW http://www.moniquelhuillier.com/
Saja Wedding Dresses www.sajawedding.com/
Vera Wang at The Link, Singapore or Vera Wang for David's Bridal, USA
WeLoveYu, Singapore www.weloveyu.com/
Central Weddings, HK www.centralweddings.com/about.htm
Silhouette, Singapore www.silhouette.com.sg
Blush Blush, Singapore www.blushblush.com.sg/
Margaret Bridal, Singapore www.margaretbrides.com/
Renee Leong, Singapore www.reneel.com/
Jenny Packam, www.jennypackham.com/
Birdcage Veils, www.birdcageveils.com
JCrew www.jcrew.com
Two Birds Bridesmaids, www.twobirdsbridesmaid.com/
Photography:
* All photography is expensive, so this are my picks purely based on artistry. If you've found a cheap wedding photographer with amazing technique, let me know.
Saiful Nang, Candid Syndrome, KL www.candidsyndrome.com, saifulnang@candidsyndrome.com
Qippy, KL qippy@qippy.com
Sealey Brandt, Singapore www.sealeybrandt.com/
Luey Motion Lab, KL www.lueymotionlab.com/
Gabriel Mendes, Singapore www.gabrielmendes.com/
Eadwine, Plush Photography, Singapore, www.eadwine.com/
Kelvin Koh, Lighted Pixels, Singapore www.lightedpixels.com/
Nathan Wu, Singapore www.nathanwu.com/
Nicole Ong, Singapore www.stickylilfingers.com/
Wedding Planner:
The Wedding Chateau, the-wedding-chateau.com/
Ideas/Websites:
Stylemepretty.com
MarthaStewartWeddings.com
OnceWed.com
BrooklynBride.com
APracticalBride.com
Friday, July 8, 2011
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
One of those days...
I just had a little blank-out moment today, where everything seemed so ugly, so parochial, that I just wanted to escape to a more beautiful, aesthetic world.
Thank God for the internet. While looking for macaron wrappings, I revisited SimpleSong here, to find that it has become a full-fledged letterpress store. I love her clean, simple aesthetic with a touch of vintage whimsy. I love her bold colours in red, mustard yellow, blush pinks with taupe linen strips and the solid blind imprint fonts.
On AiClay at here, I thought I was looking at pictures of macarons, only to be totally killed when I discovered she is one of Singapore's craftiest clay modellers. The range of baked goods that she models is delicious and mind-blowingly complex. If you think you're having a bad craft day, it must seem nothing to her.
At FromSoul on Etsy, I discovered Eunsil from South Korea, who retails packaging for macarons, hand-made kraft boxes and adorable egg cartons that gave me a thousand inspirations for new packaging.
At Food Republic here, David Leibovitz led me to another avocado pop recipe that whet my appetite to make avocado and gula meleka (warm sweet palm sugar) dessert popsicles.
At WhiskerGraphic's K(nots) and DivineTwine, I found these frayed k(nots) for $10, a generous spool of slightly damaged bakers twine for cheap. Perfect though, for wrapping baking boxes. 
From Ribbons and Favors, a unique black toile kraft tissue paper, a really neat touch for packing up those baked goods. 
And on Amazon, the best surprise ever. My favourite bakery in the world, Miette in the San Francisco Ferry Terminal, has published a cookbook. I want it!
Kate Moss gets married in John Galliano
I've always loved her offbeat, casual, rock-edge elegance. Her dress is A+, I love the streamline fit and soft hemline flare, the shirred detail, the flash of gold and bare leg. I love the easy-going style, the pretty hair and the light flower girls dresses paired with ballet flats. Of course I would adore this dress though, it's very similar shape-wise to the Monique Lhullier Claire that I'm occasionally obsessed with.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
For Brides to Be...
I was having a think about what I would and wouldn't do again for our wedding, hopefully these words of advice may have some application to you, caveated of course that everyone has different circumstances and concerns. I hope it helps in some small back-of-the-mind way. We had a ceremony and lunch at The White Rabbit for 120 people, followed by a lunch the next day for family and our parents' friends of 240 at the St Regis, with very little overlap in guests. I know that sounds huge and I wished we could have just done the first event but it would never have satiated the parent's wishes.
Mostly because of the numbers, I would never call a wedding budget-friendly, it was more about being budget-concious and choosing to spend the money on independant or local vendors. We didn't aim to profit from the wedding, nor did we want to pay for, in particular, the more traditional wedding banquet. By dropping many of the things we didn't really care about and concentrating the budget in a few key directions, I'd like to think we got away with a smaller crowd and more focused celebration, that was more representative of what is important to us as a couple.
I would still have ... picked a time in the year that we liked. We're suckers for red Christmas berries, colder weather, roast brandied turkey, all ye merry gentlemen and all that good cheer stuff. It was a plus to have people in high spirits, friends on vacation and yes, towering heaps of flowers in the hotel lobby. On their way out, our guests were seranaded by deep choirs of bells and carollers. Also, more casual acquaintences would reject because they had holiday plans but those who cared enough would be around. Price-wise though, I am glad that we conciously avoided the two weeks before Christmas and similarly, the Chinese New Year period.
I would have .... saved more on my dress. I decided early on that I wanted a dress with a good designer cut, which I could wear the whole time. I didn't care if it was brand new or custom-made and wanted something worthy of passing on, so that the dress could experience more good days out, rather than taking up my cupboard space and yellowing in our heat. I wanted ease of movement rather than traditional veils and costume changes. God knows (and so does everyone else, I sadly suspect) I don't need to prove I've got a lot of clothes.
I have many friends who have differing experiences but I found going to Singaporean designers formulaic, slightly condescending and extremely poor value. My typical experience was, I was given a total of three stiff, sample dresses that they felt I could fit into and sketches that were more masquerade, (or flamenco, or hooker) then stylish. It seemed ridiculous to spend up to $6000 on what amounted to a rental dress without an internationally recognized designer and no residual value- if I really was going to that extravagance, I wanted to waltz into Carolina Herrera or Valentino and buy something that I would normally never afford, without a second thought or care.
So I turned to the internet. I had a great time surfing Vera Wang, Monique Lhullier, Carolina Herrera, Peter Som, Ulla Maaja, 3.1 Phillip Lim and stores like Net-a-porter and Jcrew. On oncewed.com and preownedweddingdresses.com, I found brand-new dresses and once-worn dresses for $1500-3000. At David's Bridal, Vera Wang opened a capsule wedding dress collection with her famous designs for $700-1500. I thought about donating my dress to a store I found called The Bridal Garden (in NYC) that sells and re-sells designer wedding dresses on consignment from the brands, with the profit going to a children's charity. I knew my size from trying on dresses at the flagship stores here and on a vacation in the US, but given the regular, numbered sizing, I would also have chanced it on a close size with local alteration.
In the end, I bought a modern-vintage chantilly lace Vera Wang dress brand new for about $3500 and sold it afterward on oncewed.com for $2500. I had it for two months, wore it for two days and for photo days and received photos from the beautiful Indian-Canadian wedding that it went on to. (That girl then sold it to a Korean girl marrying her British schoolteacher boyfriend, for an even better deal!). It was still a splurge but I did love it. Z. bought an expensive but regular suit from a Zegna sale for $950, which he now uses for work.
Our bridesmaids picked out a dip-dyed summer Jcrew dress, our groomsmen wore their own suits with striped Brooks Brothers ties bought online in a sale and we bought two $80 billowy, chiffon dresses for our flower girls from LifeBaby. I tailored a simple red and peach silk cheongsum in Beijing. I reset old diamond chips into a thin, rose gold band for a wedding ring and bought Z's titanium ring online.
These are symbols of a wedding, not hallmarks of a marriage. Most guys will lose their wedding ring at least once in the first two years of marriage, so don't overspend. My cousin lost his jumping into the sea on the first day of his honeymoon and Z's ring turned up inside our oven after the first year! Every outfit, with the exception of my cheongsum, has been used frequently since that day and to be honest, I don't feel, even today, that any of them were neccesary.
I would have ... divided the tasks more distinctly. Instead of being hung up on "doing things together", I should have separated the work to be done more distinctly by who even cared and given Z. or each set of parents specific things they were wholly in charge of. I felt taxed because I often sought opinion when I had already a decision in mind, or vice versa, didn't achieve a clear and full delegation. Boyfriends and parents can easily be tasked with a multitude of deliveries, cake orders, caterers, sounds systems, rehearsals, wedding dress collections and printing, if the decision is firm and the instructions direct. Parents, rather than husbands, are great helping to write and deliver thank you cards. The big lesson really is to be realistic and only take on what you can manage. Speak to the stakeholders and make them all manage something. You should never feel like you're working, nor that you have to hire a random planner.
I would still have ... spent on printed invitations. Invitations help to set the mood for the party and they have a lot of personality. In today's wedding fatigued society, we really need more of that personal touch. Singapore is also a printing hub so it is extremely inexpensive. We paid an online graphic designer $50 to calligraph an invitation, design a wedding emblem, stickers for rice packets, guest favour boxes and thank you notes. We deliberately used these inexpensive paper and fabric items, in conjunction with specific fonts and colours and some foods like Pelligrinos and Coronas to create pops of colour and create a coordinated look through the wedding. If you can identify a design off a website, local printers can often copy simple designs for free.
One thing that I think brides really need to know is that you have to be honest about how much aesthetics mean and cost, to you. I've had several friends who, two weeks before their wedding, asked me what they could do to "prettify" their wedding. What I really wanted to say (but didn't) is that you can't tack on aesthetic any more than you can symbolism. In our case, the approach we agreed on was focused on being 'natural', 'yellow', 'rustic but stylish', 'edible' and 'communication with guests', but I've heard all kinds of key words from emotional, spiritual and religious to elegant, 'Miami luxurious', geometric, blue, forested.
You have to be real about the extent of, or the lack of, your vision right from the start and then it has to live through every detail and aspect, from the size and venue, to the itimacy of the invites, to the choice of a dress or the vows, or the food or the cake. If you never defined a style, then your wedding will look exactly as it was planned to- practical and serviceable. I'd like to gloss over this by saying oh, every wedding has meaning and is pretty but that too, is unfair, to think that either just 'happens', is like saying white is the absence of colour, as opposed to a deliberate and disciplined choice.
In a concious decision to concentrate the expenditure on the tables, we omitted flowers on the ailse or stage and asked the hotel to line the ballroom edges with plants instead and filled large vases with lemons, which we bought cheap and used to make cake and curds afterward. (Fruit is immensely cheaper than flowers in Singapore , provide a nice burst of colour and can be eaten afterward). I bought fabric to make wide chequered table runners in the wedding colours and printed custom coasters, favours boxes, program and menus on kraft paper.
The cost of printing an invitation, coaster, favour box and thank you card per guest is barely $1.50-2, which buys you so much in terms of control, quality of communication and guest experience but would have bought us nothing in flowers or installations. We bought our own flowers at cost for the bouquets and we told the hotel to concentrate on a just a few varieties of flowers and bought in the wide vases on each table from Ikea, so that guests could take the home the flowers provided.
I would still have ... spent on edible favours. Having received a lot of chocolates and odd trinkets, it mattered to me to have a sizable and edible guest favour, that guests could bring something home and share with their family for breakfast. We researched a lot of baked options and finally gifted small loaves of Auntie Doreen's famous fruit cake, then printed favour boxes in our wedding colours and vintage script, which she packed them into. We used the back of the favour boxes to print a thank you message and because the cakes were substantial enough, we sent them out to guests who declined our invitation but gave gifts. At times, this seemed like more trouble then it was worth but looking back, it's the one $2500 expense that I'm still glad we made. The budget for it was extra but I would say it came out of what we otherwise may have spent on decorations, photography or jewellery.
I attended two weddings, one where the couple had hand-written a note to every guest, to go with the fans distributed at their outdoor wedding. Another made a donation to a cancer society in lieu of favours and on each plate was a small card explaining this, a message of thanks and the link to the organization. The thing about a thoughtful, personal and unique favour is that it is such a nice gesture and people do appreciate and remember the extra effort and gift. It also doubles as a chance to say an immediate, nice thank you, if you're the sort that's going to take 6 months to send out thank you cards *guilty look*.
I wish we would have ... made our parents write a physical guestlist from the start. For about a year after we got married, my parents would meet people and say to me, "we didn't invite them for your wedding". More often than not, I would have no idea who the person was and be fairly sure they would have not wanted to attend my wedding. If I were to do it over, I would have tried for more parental buy-in from the start, rather than trying to make the impossible happen, without a realistic idea of how many people we were expected to eventually invite. The guestlist is not an important thing, it is the only thing. It is the thing that determines your location, budget, expenses, mood, style, your very experience. If your guestlist is 1000, then many things in this list will be moot, there is not much point in music, or favours, or cake, it's just going to all get diluted in the numbers and noise.
We would frequently say to the parents that if a guest did not know them very well and didn't know anyone else at their table, then they should invite them for a get together at a separate occasion. Another very smart idea, which came too late for me, is for each involved party to say what are the three most important things to them at this wedding, (say, personal guestlist of 150, good food and chinese invitations for grandmother's friends), which I would then committ to making happen. This would separate the inherant from the mere suggestions. For the parents, this makes them feel important and heard, while also ring-fencing the concept of relative importance and outlining where they might be stepping on other people's toes.
I would not have.... been defensive about the guestlist. At the end of the day, the best way to see it is that if people are unhappy about being left out, it's because you throw good parties. People are only sorry to not have attended, if they believe the party was good! It sounds so silly to say this but I received enough rabid "I naturally assumed we were friends and I'd be invited" emails that I wished I had spoken to fewer people for the entire year before. You can never please everyone. Just explain that your parents needed most of the seats, your husband and you agreed to invite guests who were close to both of you (funny how many people don't fall into that category), that you hope they don't feel that just because you don't attend a wedding means you're not friends, that you invited companies of people and would therefore rather catch up individually and then, just move on.
I would have .... split out our tea ceremony and done it the weekend before. On the day of, there is so much emotion and time constraint that our tea ceremonies were prioritised to the block of time that came in between other events. The ceremony itself was a bit of a joke, no one remembered their place in the family age heirachy, the old people were sanctimonious and the young people embarassed.
If I could do it over, I would have chosen a time that was leisurely and a place that was beautiful. I would have had a shared meal and hired a portrait photographer for gorgeous black-and white family portraits, not the overexposed, bent over snapshot pictures that we have. Documented family gatherings are a rare and wonderful thing, I wish we would have taken more time and effort to make it a special tribute to tradition and culture. Sometimes I reflect that compared to what it could have been, it was pretty rubbish.
I wish we would have .... had more cake! I'm really glad we spluged on delicious cake. Don't ever let your mom convince you that people are used to seeing fake cake. People are used to seeing it because it's there. But nobody, really nobody, turns down good cake, especially at the end of a meal. We chose a three tier buttercream, lemon poppy seed and raspberry puree cake for 120 people with a large but hollow fourth base tier and I wish that we had paid up for a cake base tier because in the end, the slices were small and people kept asking for more, coming up to me and telling me how good the cake was and I actually do really regreat that we didn't even get a slice for ourselves!
One reason that we picked the St Regis is because they serve champagne and a beautiful dark mousse chocolate cake, which you can have with or in place of the Chinese dessert. We chose the latter, both to save money and time on service because we were concerned that people would take their first dessert as their cue to leave and miss the cake completely. Even my dad commented on people wanting extra cake, although he was very disbelieving before that dessert would be missed.
I would have spent more on .... live music. We had an amazing jazz singer called Mandy Gaines at the St Regis, we found her at Harry's Bar, straight from the Cinncinati Jazz Festival and she really rocked it. By bypassing an entertainment company to engage her, we paid just $400 for each bandmember. At the last minute, she asked us if we would like to also hire her friend, a wonderful R&B singer called Richard Jackson, at a similar, discounted rate. Having not factored this into our budget, we demurred but on reflection, I wish we had done it. Guests whom I feared didn't know that many other people, all enjoyed and bonded over just listening to her psuedo-concert and the majority of guests comments was about the standout music, rather than any other aspect.
I would have spent more on... the best photography. After it's all over, all you have to remember it by are the photos. I totally balked at expensive photo packages and now I realize that even with the huge number of photos that were taken, few were timeless and many were duds. Although we don't look at them often, I now know that I should have spent more not to have more photos, but to improve the quality of the photos. I should also have arranged within the price, for albums for the parents. I intended to put together my own low-cost ones but two years afterward, the parents still want them and I haven't delivered.
Given how little we've (in particular, Z.)looked through the wedding photos, I'm still quite glad we didn't pay for a videographer. He was really against the melodrama of a video and we're both a bit unnatural in front of the camera but I have had friends who've told me that they wished they could replay the moments and speeches of the day, as it passes in a adrenalin-confused blur. I must also say that it's the videos in blogs and sent to me by friends that are moving and really give a good picture of what transpired on the day, it does a much better job of emotional content than photographs.
Mostly because of the numbers, I would never call a wedding budget-friendly, it was more about being budget-concious and choosing to spend the money on independant or local vendors. We didn't aim to profit from the wedding, nor did we want to pay for, in particular, the more traditional wedding banquet. By dropping many of the things we didn't really care about and concentrating the budget in a few key directions, I'd like to think we got away with a smaller crowd and more focused celebration, that was more representative of what is important to us as a couple.
I would still have ... picked a time in the year that we liked. We're suckers for red Christmas berries, colder weather, roast brandied turkey, all ye merry gentlemen and all that good cheer stuff. It was a plus to have people in high spirits, friends on vacation and yes, towering heaps of flowers in the hotel lobby. On their way out, our guests were seranaded by deep choirs of bells and carollers. Also, more casual acquaintences would reject because they had holiday plans but those who cared enough would be around. Price-wise though, I am glad that we conciously avoided the two weeks before Christmas and similarly, the Chinese New Year period.
I would have .... saved more on my dress. I decided early on that I wanted a dress with a good designer cut, which I could wear the whole time. I didn't care if it was brand new or custom-made and wanted something worthy of passing on, so that the dress could experience more good days out, rather than taking up my cupboard space and yellowing in our heat. I wanted ease of movement rather than traditional veils and costume changes. God knows (and so does everyone else, I sadly suspect) I don't need to prove I've got a lot of clothes.
I have many friends who have differing experiences but I found going to Singaporean designers formulaic, slightly condescending and extremely poor value. My typical experience was, I was given a total of three stiff, sample dresses that they felt I could fit into and sketches that were more masquerade, (or flamenco, or hooker) then stylish. It seemed ridiculous to spend up to $6000 on what amounted to a rental dress without an internationally recognized designer and no residual value- if I really was going to that extravagance, I wanted to waltz into Carolina Herrera or Valentino and buy something that I would normally never afford, without a second thought or care.
So I turned to the internet. I had a great time surfing Vera Wang, Monique Lhullier, Carolina Herrera, Peter Som, Ulla Maaja, 3.1 Phillip Lim and stores like Net-a-porter and Jcrew. On oncewed.com and preownedweddingdresses.com, I found brand-new dresses and once-worn dresses for $1500-3000. At David's Bridal, Vera Wang opened a capsule wedding dress collection with her famous designs for $700-1500. I thought about donating my dress to a store I found called The Bridal Garden (in NYC) that sells and re-sells designer wedding dresses on consignment from the brands, with the profit going to a children's charity. I knew my size from trying on dresses at the flagship stores here and on a vacation in the US, but given the regular, numbered sizing, I would also have chanced it on a close size with local alteration.
In the end, I bought a modern-vintage chantilly lace Vera Wang dress brand new for about $3500 and sold it afterward on oncewed.com for $2500. I had it for two months, wore it for two days and for photo days and received photos from the beautiful Indian-Canadian wedding that it went on to. (That girl then sold it to a Korean girl marrying her British schoolteacher boyfriend, for an even better deal!). It was still a splurge but I did love it. Z. bought an expensive but regular suit from a Zegna sale for $950, which he now uses for work.
Our bridesmaids picked out a dip-dyed summer Jcrew dress, our groomsmen wore their own suits with striped Brooks Brothers ties bought online in a sale and we bought two $80 billowy, chiffon dresses for our flower girls from LifeBaby. I tailored a simple red and peach silk cheongsum in Beijing. I reset old diamond chips into a thin, rose gold band for a wedding ring and bought Z's titanium ring online.
These are symbols of a wedding, not hallmarks of a marriage. Most guys will lose their wedding ring at least once in the first two years of marriage, so don't overspend. My cousin lost his jumping into the sea on the first day of his honeymoon and Z's ring turned up inside our oven after the first year! Every outfit, with the exception of my cheongsum, has been used frequently since that day and to be honest, I don't feel, even today, that any of them were neccesary.
I would have ... divided the tasks more distinctly. Instead of being hung up on "doing things together", I should have separated the work to be done more distinctly by who even cared and given Z. or each set of parents specific things they were wholly in charge of. I felt taxed because I often sought opinion when I had already a decision in mind, or vice versa, didn't achieve a clear and full delegation. Boyfriends and parents can easily be tasked with a multitude of deliveries, cake orders, caterers, sounds systems, rehearsals, wedding dress collections and printing, if the decision is firm and the instructions direct. Parents, rather than husbands, are great helping to write and deliver thank you cards. The big lesson really is to be realistic and only take on what you can manage. Speak to the stakeholders and make them all manage something. You should never feel like you're working, nor that you have to hire a random planner.
I would still have ... spent on printed invitations. Invitations help to set the mood for the party and they have a lot of personality. In today's wedding fatigued society, we really need more of that personal touch. Singapore is also a printing hub so it is extremely inexpensive. We paid an online graphic designer $50 to calligraph an invitation, design a wedding emblem, stickers for rice packets, guest favour boxes and thank you notes. We deliberately used these inexpensive paper and fabric items, in conjunction with specific fonts and colours and some foods like Pelligrinos and Coronas to create pops of colour and create a coordinated look through the wedding. If you can identify a design off a website, local printers can often copy simple designs for free.
One thing that I think brides really need to know is that you have to be honest about how much aesthetics mean and cost, to you. I've had several friends who, two weeks before their wedding, asked me what they could do to "prettify" their wedding. What I really wanted to say (but didn't) is that you can't tack on aesthetic any more than you can symbolism. In our case, the approach we agreed on was focused on being 'natural', 'yellow', 'rustic but stylish', 'edible' and 'communication with guests', but I've heard all kinds of key words from emotional, spiritual and religious to elegant, 'Miami luxurious', geometric, blue, forested.
You have to be real about the extent of, or the lack of, your vision right from the start and then it has to live through every detail and aspect, from the size and venue, to the itimacy of the invites, to the choice of a dress or the vows, or the food or the cake. If you never defined a style, then your wedding will look exactly as it was planned to- practical and serviceable. I'd like to gloss over this by saying oh, every wedding has meaning and is pretty but that too, is unfair, to think that either just 'happens', is like saying white is the absence of colour, as opposed to a deliberate and disciplined choice.
In a concious decision to concentrate the expenditure on the tables, we omitted flowers on the ailse or stage and asked the hotel to line the ballroom edges with plants instead and filled large vases with lemons, which we bought cheap and used to make cake and curds afterward. (Fruit is immensely cheaper than flowers in Singapore , provide a nice burst of colour and can be eaten afterward). I bought fabric to make wide chequered table runners in the wedding colours and printed custom coasters, favours boxes, program and menus on kraft paper.
The cost of printing an invitation, coaster, favour box and thank you card per guest is barely $1.50-2, which buys you so much in terms of control, quality of communication and guest experience but would have bought us nothing in flowers or installations. We bought our own flowers at cost for the bouquets and we told the hotel to concentrate on a just a few varieties of flowers and bought in the wide vases on each table from Ikea, so that guests could take the home the flowers provided.
I would still have ... spent on edible favours. Having received a lot of chocolates and odd trinkets, it mattered to me to have a sizable and edible guest favour, that guests could bring something home and share with their family for breakfast. We researched a lot of baked options and finally gifted small loaves of Auntie Doreen's famous fruit cake, then printed favour boxes in our wedding colours and vintage script, which she packed them into. We used the back of the favour boxes to print a thank you message and because the cakes were substantial enough, we sent them out to guests who declined our invitation but gave gifts. At times, this seemed like more trouble then it was worth but looking back, it's the one $2500 expense that I'm still glad we made. The budget for it was extra but I would say it came out of what we otherwise may have spent on decorations, photography or jewellery.
I attended two weddings, one where the couple had hand-written a note to every guest, to go with the fans distributed at their outdoor wedding. Another made a donation to a cancer society in lieu of favours and on each plate was a small card explaining this, a message of thanks and the link to the organization. The thing about a thoughtful, personal and unique favour is that it is such a nice gesture and people do appreciate and remember the extra effort and gift. It also doubles as a chance to say an immediate, nice thank you, if you're the sort that's going to take 6 months to send out thank you cards *guilty look*.
I wish we would have ... made our parents write a physical guestlist from the start. For about a year after we got married, my parents would meet people and say to me, "we didn't invite them for your wedding". More often than not, I would have no idea who the person was and be fairly sure they would have not wanted to attend my wedding. If I were to do it over, I would have tried for more parental buy-in from the start, rather than trying to make the impossible happen, without a realistic idea of how many people we were expected to eventually invite. The guestlist is not an important thing, it is the only thing. It is the thing that determines your location, budget, expenses, mood, style, your very experience. If your guestlist is 1000, then many things in this list will be moot, there is not much point in music, or favours, or cake, it's just going to all get diluted in the numbers and noise.
We would frequently say to the parents that if a guest did not know them very well and didn't know anyone else at their table, then they should invite them for a get together at a separate occasion. Another very smart idea, which came too late for me, is for each involved party to say what are the three most important things to them at this wedding, (say, personal guestlist of 150, good food and chinese invitations for grandmother's friends), which I would then committ to making happen. This would separate the inherant from the mere suggestions. For the parents, this makes them feel important and heard, while also ring-fencing the concept of relative importance and outlining where they might be stepping on other people's toes.
I would not have.... been defensive about the guestlist. At the end of the day, the best way to see it is that if people are unhappy about being left out, it's because you throw good parties. People are only sorry to not have attended, if they believe the party was good! It sounds so silly to say this but I received enough rabid "I naturally assumed we were friends and I'd be invited" emails that I wished I had spoken to fewer people for the entire year before. You can never please everyone. Just explain that your parents needed most of the seats, your husband and you agreed to invite guests who were close to both of you (funny how many people don't fall into that category), that you hope they don't feel that just because you don't attend a wedding means you're not friends, that you invited companies of people and would therefore rather catch up individually and then, just move on.
I would have .... split out our tea ceremony and done it the weekend before. On the day of, there is so much emotion and time constraint that our tea ceremonies were prioritised to the block of time that came in between other events. The ceremony itself was a bit of a joke, no one remembered their place in the family age heirachy, the old people were sanctimonious and the young people embarassed.
If I could do it over, I would have chosen a time that was leisurely and a place that was beautiful. I would have had a shared meal and hired a portrait photographer for gorgeous black-and white family portraits, not the overexposed, bent over snapshot pictures that we have. Documented family gatherings are a rare and wonderful thing, I wish we would have taken more time and effort to make it a special tribute to tradition and culture. Sometimes I reflect that compared to what it could have been, it was pretty rubbish.
I wish we would have .... had more cake! I'm really glad we spluged on delicious cake. Don't ever let your mom convince you that people are used to seeing fake cake. People are used to seeing it because it's there. But nobody, really nobody, turns down good cake, especially at the end of a meal. We chose a three tier buttercream, lemon poppy seed and raspberry puree cake for 120 people with a large but hollow fourth base tier and I wish that we had paid up for a cake base tier because in the end, the slices were small and people kept asking for more, coming up to me and telling me how good the cake was and I actually do really regreat that we didn't even get a slice for ourselves!
One reason that we picked the St Regis is because they serve champagne and a beautiful dark mousse chocolate cake, which you can have with or in place of the Chinese dessert. We chose the latter, both to save money and time on service because we were concerned that people would take their first dessert as their cue to leave and miss the cake completely. Even my dad commented on people wanting extra cake, although he was very disbelieving before that dessert would be missed.
I would have spent more on .... live music. We had an amazing jazz singer called Mandy Gaines at the St Regis, we found her at Harry's Bar, straight from the Cinncinati Jazz Festival and she really rocked it. By bypassing an entertainment company to engage her, we paid just $400 for each bandmember. At the last minute, she asked us if we would like to also hire her friend, a wonderful R&B singer called Richard Jackson, at a similar, discounted rate. Having not factored this into our budget, we demurred but on reflection, I wish we had done it. Guests whom I feared didn't know that many other people, all enjoyed and bonded over just listening to her psuedo-concert and the majority of guests comments was about the standout music, rather than any other aspect.
I would have spent more on... the best photography. After it's all over, all you have to remember it by are the photos. I totally balked at expensive photo packages and now I realize that even with the huge number of photos that were taken, few were timeless and many were duds. Although we don't look at them often, I now know that I should have spent more not to have more photos, but to improve the quality of the photos. I should also have arranged within the price, for albums for the parents. I intended to put together my own low-cost ones but two years afterward, the parents still want them and I haven't delivered.
Given how little we've (in particular, Z.)looked through the wedding photos, I'm still quite glad we didn't pay for a videographer. He was really against the melodrama of a video and we're both a bit unnatural in front of the camera but I have had friends who've told me that they wished they could replay the moments and speeches of the day, as it passes in a adrenalin-confused blur. I must also say that it's the videos in blogs and sent to me by friends that are moving and really give a good picture of what transpired on the day, it does a much better job of emotional content than photographs.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Mucho loving these loft hotel rooms!
Sometimes I think my irrational love of staircases is why I love lofts. This is Studio M Lofts in Singapore, a hotel at Clarke Quay, just perfect for my friends who visit Singapore often. Clarke Quay is centrally located between Orchard Road and Raffles Place, with a beautiful riverside of cafes and pubs. The hotel is newly renovated with peaceful meeting places, a good gym and a glass swimming pool. At $208SGD a night for a premium loft, I thought they were a good deal in the land of rapidly rising hotel rates! (Yes, the Fullerton Bay Hotel is beyond gorgeous but seriously, $550 a night?)
Friday, June 3, 2011
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Into the belly of the beast...
Please don't read on if you do not want to hear a long and ungracious rant- I am so frustrated by the shortage of style options in Singapore. Many moons ago, I found a beautiful, bevelled 20x10cm white porcelain tile at Jausa City Ceramics. This is known in other countries as a subway or metro tile, so called because of where they are most commonly found. Of course, I should have simply kept quiet about, rather than, I suppose, writing about it in a blog post. When I went back to purchase more of that tile for the new kitchen, I was horrified to find that it was completely sold out. This despite being really well-received and ordered (but understandable in the sense that the affiliated factory manufactured from shipment around the world).
What were my options now? Well, not many at all. Not only had Jausa City Ceramics been the only place in Singapore that stocked that tile, (this I knew because of an ardous and painfully long search for them), their stocks of the plain (non-bevelled) Lekka tile in the same 20x10cm size, had completed been depleted and they were no longer manufacturing them in their factory in Sri Lanka. In fact, all their plain, flat tiles were in completely deficit, there were no more 30x10cm tiles either. There were 40x10 cm tiles, both glossy and matt porcelain, which were too wide and long to really create a running brick-like effect and they had a mere 120 sq feet of 13x8cm tiles, which were somewhat small. I reserved 120 sq feet of each tile.
The only consolation was the lovely girl who worked there Catherine, who put up with my dogged determination to find these tiles and repeat visits. She is from Harbin, China and she told me that she too, loves bevelled white subway tiles. Unfortunately she was unable to help me much, despite offering kindly to search out alternative suppliers to see if anyone had suitable 20x10cm or 30x10cm tiles. At least, unlike other people I encountered, she didn't try to tell me that the choice of tile was outdated since the 1960s or equally nice-looking in black. Or give me some tautalogical truth, like Singapore nowadays, only like large tile and homogenous Italian tile- yes, I am already abundantly aware that it is easier to find a neon yellow tile with octopus on it then a white bevelled subway tile, in this country.
Undeterred, I took a jog around Balestier last night, hoping to visit the other showrooms, which I've in truth, already seen before, but on the off chance that I had overlooked a white rectangular tile that they might have and which might suit. Along the way, I ran past a regular bathroom-interior design firm that looked really local and chancing my luck, I went in with my story of the tile search. The unkempt contractor-uncle looked at my pictures and said in perfect Singlish "Aiyah, this tile, don't need to search in Singapore, whole street here donch have, only Soon Bee Huat in Toh Guan have". What about Jausa City, I enquired? "Jausa City, they hept very limited production only. Tell you truth, they are new, they don't dare keep inventory".
Thanking him profusely, I drove halfway across the island to Jurong and Soon Bee Huat truly is the most massive tile warehouse I have ever seen. Things were looking up but not for long. I encountered the two most unhelpful salespeople I've met in awhile. The first was a Filipina whom I suspect was meant to be cleaning up the back, rather than serving up the front, she promptly told me they did not keep any such stock. Frustrated, I searched around and found 40x10cm tiles and 30x10cm tiles but in true fashion, the 30x10cm only came in matt but in cream-yellow as opposed to white.
The only value-add that this trip out brought, is that they offered to cut up the tiles, to the required size at $1 a slice (yes, per cut, not length of cut). Starting to get rather desperate, I searched out a 20x60cm tile which would have been perfect except that it did not have rectified sides. This means that the sides of the tile are slightly curved, rather than being flat and cut at 90 degrees. Non-rectified sides and porcelain glossy surfaces do not allow for the tile to be cut with a straight-edged surface, which makes your tiling uneven and ugly. Most Italian tiles are rectified and most Chinese tiles are not. After many searches, I found a 30x30cm white Chinese matt tile, that could be sliced into three 30x10cm tiles. There were 8000 sq feet of this tile in stock. At $2.60 a sq foot, 150 sq feet of this tile, sliced twice per tile, would cost $690 SGD. It was impossible to find anything that could be directly sliced into a 20x10cm tile. This seemed rather ridiculous.
I was then passed on to a salesperson named Raj. Now, I have never met a slow Indian man, most if not all are extremely sharp and quick on the uptake, particularly with numbers and most with language. Only in India have I met anyone who even approached being, a somewhat slow Indian person. But today was clearly the day that I would be breaking that lucky streak. While on my way out, I noticed a beautiful 30x 60cm staturio marble-like tile, with a lovely white-grey grain and bevelled on the vertical edges, which I thought might be a nice alternative to the traditional white subway tile. Since this tile was only bevelled on the two long edges, it could only ever be cut length-wise into 6 30x10cm pieces, as opposed to horizontally into 9 10x20cm tiles. You would think that this would be a fairly simple idea but it didn't seem to be. Also, this tile was severely in short supply, with some of the remaining 100 sq ft of stock being reserved for an existing job. I told Raj that the issue was the predictability of the production and supply, even if it was in 2 months time, as opposed to the immediate inventory quantity and asked him to call me with some answers. This tile, priced similarly on a sq foot basis but requiring $5 to procure 2sq feet, would cost $510 for 100 sq feet, or $765 for 150 sq feet.
These encounters drove me online in my search for the subway tiles. Other than in Singapore and perhaps Asia, it is the simplest thing in the world to locate subway tiles. In the UK, Tons of Tiles sold this tile for 10.90 pounds per sq m, which isn't bad at all but the shipping, just to the port of Singapore, without clearence, for which you have to get your own broker, costs 400 pounds! LeadCutter Designs has the tiles for 17.05 pounds per sq m and Tile Supply.co for 22.74 pounds per sq m. In the US, Anchor Bay Tiles and BuyTiles.com all have the tile but they don't ship internationally. Mosiac Tile supplies has the tile for US$1.77 each but I have no idea if they ship. Australia's leading tiles stores are apparently Johnston Tiles, Beaumont Tiles and Amber Tiles, all of whom I've emailed and are waiting on for a reply. I've even tried Alibaba.com, despite their high minimum volume orders. Feedback appreciated, I'd love to hear your opinion on what you think is the best option!
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