ONE23456

Well, whenever there’s an entry, something significant must have happened. This time round, the date to note is 31 Jan 2015.

“180306 My First Love . My Only Darling 310110” This is the message etched onto our champagne gold rings which we wear day in, day out.

For the past 5 years, we have been spending this anniversary with each other, but this year is different as we have a bundle of joy in our midst to celebrate together with us!

We went back to where it all began, Shangri-la Hotel with the dreamy Waterfall Terrace and the pond full of colourful Koi. The place where we held our ROM reception has been converted into a Cafe called The Waterfall but the charm of the place and the memories of us walking down the terraces to friends shouting and throwing rose petals is still fresh in my mind. We had high tea with Cutie at The Rose Veranda, sipping TWG tea and having nibbles of the buffet line. Cutie is having an infant high tea buffet of her own too, mainly having bites off slices of fruits.

Happy Wedding Anniversary!

Cutie with her buffet spread

“Wow, a family protrait that looks nice for once!!!” — Darling exclaimed

Cutie had a new bathing indulgence as introduced by Darling… …a Literal Milk Bath! And we are using Real Milk….Breast Milk! Hahaha yeah! So No fear of Cutie drinking her bath-tub water already, since it’s breast milk anyway. Ever since Cutie refused to drink the frozen expressed breast milk, they are left in our freezer, taking up precious space for our ice-creams…haha, so what better way to use them but to use them for Milk Shower! Maciam Empress Dowager, we have Mini-Princess Charlotte enjoying her Breast Milk Bath. Priceless smile…

Preparing to enter her bath tub full of Mummy’s Milk

Enjoying her first Milk Bath

The last 3 weeks has been a culinary roadtrip for us. First we went to Rose Veranda for our Anniversary high-tea, 1 week before our actual anniversary, then 1 week later, we visited the Botanical Gardens where we had brunch at Food For Thought. The botanical gardens is also another memorable place for us since it is where Darling received her first bouquet of 99 roses from me, back at the day when Au Jardin was still open for business. Food for thought is quite a child friendly place with their own in-house playground, complete with a slide. It’s spacious to accomodate strollers and baby chairs inside and food is not too bad. Parking is a breeze as the carpark is just outside the restaurant. After brunch, we had a stroll inside Botanical Gardens, exposing Cutie to the many big trees and green leaves and colourful blooms along the way. Weather was hot though and Cutie fell asleep quite fast in her stroller. Haha, in the end, it’s only darling and me enjoying the scenery, pushing Cutie in the stroller. According to darling, THIS is the image of a blissful life! Husband and Wife, pushing a baby pram with a sleeping baby inside, strolling through the park….if only the weather is more cooling…

Darling with her Anniversary Bouquet comprising of flowers from her ROM bouquet

Cutie and Mummy having a very interactive feeding session

Cutie loves to crawl around now and she is standing up more easily too. She can walk really fast forward holding on to our fingers. Of course she don’t know what is fear…haha venturing forth to every corner of the house. She will also attempt to squeeze into any holes (under chairs, tables, TV consoles). Cutie even managed to find a way to climb out of her teak chair! (Which I congratulated her for… Haha, I think it takes creativity and imagination to maneuver her way out of the chair and she deserves the credit!).

Cutie with walker

Go Forth My Cutie! Have no fear! But please do it in our presence lah!

Next up are some cute pics that we took along the way with Cutie and there’s a cute faceoff between Cutie and Joshua!

Cutie trying to test if Mummy’s teething necklace is made of Gold

This pic resembles a Young Darling to the MAX

“Don’t U dare take my Diapers! Only left with these 2 packets on the shelves!” – Charlotte

PeekaBoo I found U hiding underneath my Stool!

Angelic and ever-so-innocent look…

Cutie and Joshua Face-off…David vs Goliath

ONE Cutie Baby Charlotte, 246 days old, 35 weeks.

ONE23456. Question answered. =)

Can’t wait to have a family hug with my darling and Cutie later!

ROM album-Fruit of our labour

Hi and happy holidays to all readers of our wedding blog!
This is going to be a showcase of the scrapbook album we made especially for our ROM ceremony at the Shangri-la Hotel waterfall Terrace! Enjoy!

Page 1 is actually our cover page

Cover page of our scrapbook album

We bought an acrylic album to house our scrap pages, so for the cover page, we wanted something glam! Heehee, silver is natural choice. We went to buy some more bling bling gems to brighten up the cover page, by sticking them onto the acrylic cover, while we stick the cover scrap page on the inside of the acrylic cover =)

SGH days

This first page of the album is also the first scrap page we did together! And I feel it’s the most meaningful piece of all. We met and started our story in SGH and so, this page is dedicated to SGH and us =)
Fate brought us together. We choose to be friends with each other and we suddenly realized that we are uncontrollably in love with each other…and the story continues… …

Meaningful words

I always love to stroll with darling especially at night when it’s quiet and cooling, and this following scrap page is inspired by the night =)

Can you feel the love in the air

The photo of us holding a candle and the “be mine” bear was taken on our first year anniversary. We were having a vacation in Japan at that time and the photo was taken in Tokyo. The photo below with the bridge was taken the following year when we went to Seoul. It’s taken at the riverside after we took a stroll. The entire feeling is of love and romance. Can you feel the love tonight?

Apart from walking, we loved to kiss each other too! Keke, a pity darling is too shy to kiss me after we exchanged wedding bands =p

Happy Valentine

The photo on the swinging bridge is taken in KL when we visited the garden behind the KL tower. We stayed behind the crowd and took the photo when nobody is watching =D
The photo with Mickey is of course taken in Disneyland! This is Tokyo Disneyland =) And I even managed to wear matching colours.
We loved kissing each other and the quote on the scrap page is so appropriate…hehehe

Kissing zone

The next scrap page is designed to enhance the Hanbok costume we wore while we were visiting Seoul! The one I wore is supposed to be the one worn by The Emperor! The one worn by darling is…I dunno man ??The concubine?? I think it must be worn by the most beautiful lady in the palace! That must be the case!

宫

Darling has this pair of oriental looking purses which she bought from Shanghai years ago, which she found during spring cleaning, and Yes, we thought it looked like cheongsam material and so cut it out to become the background for our big heart! Then we found this red lace in Spotlight to complete the heart. To make it even more oriental looking, we decided to finish off by tying a “jade pendant” together with the bushy bushy red threadtail =)
We topped it up with a “宫”
The finished product is exactly what we envisioned it to be..truly oriental!

The next page is one of the simplest page to do =) We bought this very nice paper with all the love and hearts but somehow, cannot find a way to enhance the “sweetness”. Finally, we decided to cut up the paper and reassemble the pieces, viola, our scrap page is done!

Sweet true love

The pictures show the soft toys given by me to darling =) The pictures all taken on darling’s bed.
As for the flower on the top left hand corner, we cut out a white flower base using white cardboard paper and added some colourful lace bought from Spotlight =) We even managed to use the heart-shaped photo frame as part of the design on the bottom right hand corner! This frame is bought by Darren and Sze Yin as a gift for us when they returned from Thailand.

My heart beats only for you

I am always fascinated with waterfalls. I love to look at how magnificent the forces of nature are and I love water =) Waterfalls are nature’s way of rewarding those who took the effort to trek her forest terrains and makes all the hardwork worthwhile. I am trying to expose darling to waterfalls…heehee, coz before she met me, darling has never seen a waterfall before. Now I am going to bring her to see waterfalls with me!

Life is Beautiful

The waterfall on the right is the Biryong waterfall in South Korea Seorak mountain (Darling’s first waterfall!) and the one on the left is found in Ko Samui, Thailand.

we will find waterfalls together

We had a big headache with the following scrap page too. This frog prince design was supposed to create a fairy tale feeling but we have no idea how to decorate it initially! By buying another paper of a darker green tone, we decided to play with 3D effects and yup, the overall feeling of the design is still quite appealing =)
“Far Far Away castle” is thought up by me leh! Of course, darling gave me inspiration. =p

Far Far Away Castle

The green paper with the 3D effect

The picture on the left is taken in Japan with the golden pavillion, while the picture on the right is taken in Taiwan Taroko gorge.

The following scrap page is designed with the image of Buddhist scriptures in mind. Remember the pictures of Buddha and the Deities you see in books? They seem to always be surrounded by flowers and stuff, so we seek to re-create that effect using the paper! Smart darling managed to find the paper that brings out the effect perfectly! Both the Buddhas are situated in Ko Samui, Thailand.

Sacred love

We also used dolly paper to add to the sophistication, notice the different paper on the right third of the scrap page? That is red dolly paper. We also pasted stickers of lotus flowers on the left and right of the scrap page. We are quite impressed at how it looks when it’s completed. Yay!

This is a fun scrap page to make as we tried out new ways of doing things! We did a little bit of craftwork as well. Darling has this good suggestion of using cardboard to create the “country” feel, especially so to enhance the background of the photos. Notice the top left photo? The walls inside the photo appears to “extend” out of the picture into the cardboard. The photos are taken in Taiwan, when we went for a hot springs dip in Beitou!

Hot spring is warm and fun

Darling has this wonderful suggestion of doing up a clothes line to “hang up” our clothes while we are having a dip in the hot spring
Initially she wanted to “make” an underwear for me, but the result was horrible, so I had a towel to wrap instead while darling has this pink lacy dress hanged up =) Darling also tied the knots herself using twine bought from Artfriend. Those butterful knots with the flowers are all tied by darling! Such nimble hands!

The final scrap page of our ROM album is a theme on butterfly lovers. This is where we first tried out the “pop out” effect using foam stickers.

Butterfly Lovers

We tried to create the effect of butterflies in flight motion and it seems not too bad =)

The whole experience with the scrapbook is wonderful! We got to spend time together and cooperate on a single objective. In the end, we are both quite amazed at ourselves…we didn’t know we can create so many ideas out of paper! Scrapbooking is fun!
And of course, the guests at our ROM are equally impressed =)
I love you darling!
Maybe we can try to have a scrapbook wedding album next time?

ROM couple album

Hey this blog has been quite busy very lately with all the updates! Haha. I also write till shiok! It’s like spilling out all the secrets which we have been holding back during the preparation of our ROM. All for the sake of the surprise factor! Heehee.
Today, I shall review the truth about our ROM couple album!
If you have been following, we signed up with Venus bridal studio, located in Taman sentosa of JB. We wanted to have beautiful pictures taken of us, but wants it to be a bit more “wow” than the ordinary wedding pictures. We are not having an actual wedding yet, just the ROM first, so we decided to have a “couple makeover” instead =)
We initially wanted to transform ourselves into something unrecognizable, like me dressing up as darling or darling dresing up as dar dar…lolz, just joking. We wanted to present a different side of us to our close friends, to make it all the more memorable for them and us. It is also to show appreciation to them for being our close friends, by giving them something unqiue to savour.

Just to recap: We had a total of 5 outfits
1) spanish
2) peranakan
3) cheongsam
4) our own outfit –> which we chose to be a blast from the past retro with a pink pokka dot outfit complete with male suspenders
5) our own outfit –> which we chose to remember the time we first met by wearing our work uniform and darling specially sourcing out the vintage SGH green uniform for the shoot!

spanish dance

spanish royalty outfit

In this set, darling is transformed into a curly haired babe wearing the multi layered dress complete with a tiny hat as a hair accessory. She has this royalty feel when she is posing for the shoots. I am wearing this frilly willy shirt which is kinda fun. This set is pretty but not our favorite as you can see that it only occupies 2 pages of our album.

Darling transforms into the little nyonya

This set is one of my favorite as I love the way darling lie on the sofa. She looks so cute and adorable!! We are also trying to imitate how the old peranakans would pose for the family portrait by remaining a solemn face…lolz…I think I still look comical.

re-living the old Shanghai life

black and white nostalgia, me trying to be cool

artistic modernistic feel

This set definitely has the “wow” factor…ok, at least it wowed me. I love to see darling dressed up in oriental style cheongsam, with the high slits! Ah-Wooooo…brings out the wolf in me!
Darling definitely has the sultry look! Lolz, and it makes her all the more sexy!
I am in this white suit which is quite stylo, in my opinion. I even had the chance to act cool for once…lucky it didn’t turn out too bad!
We loved the set with the photographer using a single light source and playing with shadows, creating the artisitic feel. We saw a similar portrait hanging on 1 of the walls in the bridal studio and we knew we must have a similar looking set! Haha, this is definitely something refreshing for us as we definitely do not come across as artistic people. Darling has a different dimension of sexy in this set. I love you darling, you are so dynamic!

Finally we have the own outfits!
In the retro set, the photographer is trying to get us to pose as what a retro couple would pose, with tiny details of how we need to hook our feet, stand with the tip of the toes on the ground and to adjust spectacles from time to time. He even brought along an umbrella. Of course we did our own homework by trying to synchronize our colour combi. Darling insist that my suspenders are a must to re-create the retro feel. And darling is spot-on yet again! Check this out… …

When we first set eyes on each other

Going out and sharing a tiny umbrella...we look kinda stiff, Lolz

We will go out together rain or shine, always under the same umbrella

No matter where U go, I will find you and hold your hand

Trust in me, we will open the doors to a whole new world together

Old movie theater dating

Hug me and never let me go

I will keep you smiling always

Hold me in your arms, life is beautiful

The last set is actually a “re-enactment” of how we first met. Lolz, of course we didn’t do the things we did in the photos lah. No lying down on each other, no playing with stethoscope lah, just plain simple, innocent love. Darling went all out to source for the trademark green SGH uniform. That was the uniform darling was wearing when she mesmerized me in the ward =p
The uniform actually belonged to her 2nd sister. Well, thank goodness she still kept the uniform, and that darling can fit into the uniform! We had a lot of fun for this set. Our photographer is kept entertained as well as it’s his first time taking pics for couples in uniform. He is too used to taking pics of couples in gowns etc with his various standard poses, so we posed a challenge to him =p. Well, all went well and we came away with some pretty cute and fun photos! The page layout designer even managed to help us design the layout page with such a cute background! This is one of my favorite pages in the album, apart from the retro pages.

Fun and love at work

So this is our ROM couple makeover album. This is our first time taking a photoshoot together. It has been tiring having to smile all day, it has been troublesome going in and out of JB a few times to get things done but everything is worth it! The album is truly beautiful and we are very satisfied!

The story of Darling’s gown

Darling’s gown wasn’t like what u see in the photos at the start… …

We had a free ROM “package”, so to say when we signed up with our bridal studio, so initially, we thought of going down to find a suitable gown for our ROM. The bridal studio has limited selection for ROM gowns and the excuse they gave was they specialise in actual day wedding gowns and evening gowns, and that ROM gowns are usually kept as FOC items, so they do not place much emphasis. Hmm….how true is that! We looked up and down and only managed to find 1 presentable one…
This is darling’s gown No. 1 –

version 1 of darling's gown

I chose this black suit with mandarin collar, which is also the most presentable of all. I only had 3 to choose from, white, black or grey….

Darling and I are not satisfied at the gowns…we both felt that there must be nicer ones out there! With this motivation in mind, darling started to scout the internet, looking for home based boutiques which can offer more selections at competitive prices! Yup, she did find 1 located at SengKang. It is a lady from China who does import from China, Taiwan, Malaysia etc…
And now we have version No. 2 –

darling as a mermaid bride

Darling says this makes her look fat fat, esp at the waist but I don’t think so leh…Hmm…girls definitely look at things differently from guys.
Anyway, she has bought the gown and is deciding whether to wear this or to look for another one. All girls want to look extraordinary on that special day mah, so yup, off we go to look for another gown. What better place to look than through the Net? Through recommendations from bridal forums, Darling came across this freelance designer who makes wedding gowns at reasonable prices. So darling made contact. It’s Quinn. U all can google it. The lucky one who will get a chance to tailor make darling’s gown will be Quinn!
The best way to get a perfect gown is to customize it and darling did just that. She looked through the Net, scouting for designs which she liked and saved them up. She then told Quinn what are the details she would like to have and the kind of feel she wants to create. We wanted something that is Non-white, since we are going to wear white anyway on our actual day wedding. Darling liked green and coincidentally, it’s the old SGH uniform colour, when I first met darling. So it shall be a green gown with a togo!
This is the final ROM gown, version 3!

The fial version

The gown still has a bit too much of a “pong pong” feel at the front, so we got Quinn to make some ammendments, and the final one is the one darling wore on the actual ROM day!
After darling’s gown is settled and sent for making, it is dar dar’s turn to source for new wedding shoes, needles.
Darling has a nice tall shoes, so I figured I should need something to prop me up…the answer?
“It’s walking tall” shoes!
Then we went to the Oscar tailor in Peninsular plaza, as recommended by Quinn. Lucky there is a wide selection of colours I can choose for my shirt and we found 1 matching colour! We decided on grey for my suit as it will be special and it also complements the minty green gown =)
My suit set –

me with my suit

All set, we are ready for our ROM.
SO this is the story of how darling’s gown came about =)

Us doing the march in

2 weeks OMG 2 weeks!

Well, the countdown begins. 2 weeks… …
Dar Dar will have a wife and Darling will have a hubby in 2 weeks time!
Busy Busy…with work, with preparations, with being stressed. Haha. Weddings are stressful events, no wonder there must be a honeymoon after the wedding! The process of planning has been fun and fruitful, now we are at the final stage liao, tying up loose ends, waiting for the execution of the plan!
We are going to collect Darling’s gown today, after several rounds of fitting and trimming, this shall be the most wonderful gown ever!
Sylvia has kindly volunteered a love cake…heehee, thanks Ah Via!
Now eagerly waiting… ….
Lolz, wedding vows are still in the process of writing, our scrapbook is left with guest signing pages.
We are collecting our album with Venus on 24th…
Can’t wait to piece everything together.
This shall be the most wonderful wedding solemnisation ever! Hahaha.
I’m Lov’in it, We are Lov’in it

stress = good?

Feel really stressed lah, it’s like ? less than 3 weeks away to our big day?!
I have to really buck up liao! My task is to come up with photos and songs for our montage! If only I can stay awake the whole night! Oh my piggy head!! I wanna have some medicine to stop my pigginess! Hahaha, red bull maybe?
We have finished 10 pages of our scrapbook and met our initial target! *applause* *clap clap* Now I can’t wait for saturday to come, so I can go to buy our clear acrylic album! Hahaha, fell in love when we first saw it in Laine’s papertierie, hope it’s still in stock! I am really proud of all our pages! I think they all look fantastic and creative for amateurs like us! Heehee, we will definitely post them up page by page when we done our ROM and finished our honeymoon…promise k!
We have finalized our photoshoot album design, picture to use for our big portrait, as well as the 8R photos for the display on our tables!
A lot of appointments to attend for us…haha, like suddenly we became the VIPs, with our busy schedule!
This sunday we are going to collect Darling’s ROM gown! Then we will have to fix a date to meet Melanie at Shangri-la from the 16 Jan onwards. We have fixed to go on 24th Jan to collect our photo album and photos from JB, and we have to go ROM building on 26th Jan to collect our ROM documents. Whoa, that’s the celebrity life for u!
We are even planning to go around to have photoshoots of the places that matter during our whole ROM preparations, such as Fairies Inc, somerset shop where Darling bought her wedding shoe, picture of my tailor’s shop, JB starbucks, just to name a few.
Everything is so exciting yet very stressed. Hope darling is not too stressed by it all and decide to give it all up! NO DON”T DARLING! DAR DAR is here to shoulder the burden!
I have to start the montage liao, my next week’s resolution, shall go week by week planning. Lucky we have our honeymoon in Bali all planned before hand…at least we can look forward to the plunge pool under the starry night sky next to the natural valley and river at our backyard. We can laze around in the pool or lie on our chairs, listening to the insects, wind and river gushing, smelling the natural scent of the valley and forest..AHHH life is meant to be enjoyed!
Pardon me for not updating as much, but be rest assured… … after our ROM, we will have tonnes of posts! Haha stay tuned!

We are born!

Hello everybody! Thanks for dropping by our blog =)

Enjoy your reading and hope you like the story of Zhiwei and Weixian AKA Dar Dar and Darling.