Happy V-Day everyone!

Mr. & Mrs. Quah

WE DID IT!!

4th December 2011: WHAT A DAY TO REMEMBER =)

Thank you everyone for your continuing support, encouragement, help, advice, guidance, smiles and gifts! It was a beautiful day of joyous celebration, blessed with good weather, superbly kind and patient friends, cheerful parents and delicious food...

Looking forward to a lifetime together =)

Final Briefing Done!

The final briefing with our pals helping out at the wedding was held last Sunday. It started messily enough due to unexpected venue issues, but thank goodness for friends with good sense of humour and high levels of tolerance! Actually, we're super thankful to our friends for putting up with so much and offering to help us with so many things! This wedding would not be what it will be without their input and advice and helping hands.
Here's a big shout-out to (in no particular order):
Jon, Jean, Nitya, Rachel, Ting-Ting, Justin, Alexa, Adrian, Mark - Thank you so much!

So anyway, the schedule is more or less done, as is the mass booklet. We went for the final gown-fitting and everyone is super excited, thanks to our super enthusiastic designer Jeff from La Vie! He's added a few more touches to Sherm's evening and bridal gown, and totally reshuffled my suits order. I'm happy too!

We collected the Made In Candy customized candies yesterday and will be doing packing them in the coming few days. Come Wednesday morning, we'll be submitting the administration forms to ROM. Some sound testing will be done at the hotel on Wednesday, followed by the church rehearsal in the evening. The caterer's site-inspection will be done just before then too. We'll be doing a mock-up of the decorations as well so as to provide our helpers a visual aid.

The only thing left to do is slide-editing for the church, and a complimentary 75-min spa from Grand Park City Hall's Spa Park Asia! haha.. (how did we manage to find time for THAT?)

Looking forward to being Mr & Mrs Dax Quah!

10-DAY COUNTDOWN

Highly stressed.

Absolutely no sense of humour left.

Panicking about everything.

Swamped with things to do (both work + wedding).

Lacking sleep; no appetite to eat.

Welcome to the world of a bride-to-be!

=0

Solo Soldier Shermy!

Dax has gone off to Vietnam to attend a family member's wedding, as well as to have his stag night with a few friends...

It's up to Shermy to man the fort this week, so she's doing what she does best... getting frazzled by the impending wedding! ONE MONTH LEFT TO THE BIG DAY!

Haha... among other things, settling the scheduling for the run-up before then... arranging to meet the gown-makers for a final fitting, altering the tea-ceremony cheongsam, ordering customised sweets for the church favours, trying to set up a final briefing with the helpers etc...

Can Shermy do it without Dax?!

Come back soon, you!!!!

过大礼 / Guo Da Li

The gift exchange or guo da li (过大礼) was carried out last Saturday morning to great success! The two families have officially agreed to the wedding!
Thanks go out to Auntie Dolly, Gideon and John who helped me out as Matchmaker and assistants. We brought over the gifts of Ang Baos, Traditional 伍色糖 / 饼, 2 bottles of XO, some seeds, oranges and a suckling pig as well! The bright and gleaming home of Shermaine's parents was such a welcome, with everyone dressed up as well.
Each item was introduced and the significance explained by Auntie Dolly (in English!), while broad smiles were seen throughout. We were served some cakes and drinks while Uncle Danny proceeded to cut the torso section of the suckling pig, and Auntie Karin repacked some of the edible goodies to return to my family.

Along with part of the goodies we brought, we were also given the following items to bring back: bedlinen, pillows, bolster, quilt and quilt cover, as well as Ang Bao for my parents and 2 grandmothers. These items that were previously agreed on between the 2 families during the food tasting session at Park Palace Restaurant.

The exchange signifies the agreement by both sides of the family to the wedding. It's official!

Full Steam Ahead!

Things are moving pretty quickly! We're down to the last 3 days before the big Gift Exchange - the Guo Da Li! Recently, both our families met at Grand Park City Hall's Park Palace restaurant for the food tasting and ironed out all the specifics of the exchange as well as made our choices on the final menu for the big night.

The past week and earlier have been spent gathering recommendations and doing research as to where the buy Suckling Pig, Teochew traditional biscuits called Wu Se Bing, and other things. We've also received our Chinese Dinner invitation cards (see sample above) and will soon receive the Church invitation cards. Today, Deepavali, was spent writing out names and addresses for some of our invitees.

Following the Guo Da Li, we'll be sending out the Dinner and Church invitations to our guests. Apart from the collection of our finished Wedding Bands, our next big project will be the photo montage and arranging for the gown refitting before the actual day itself. It's all coming together quite nicely! Oh yes, and we've been doing lots of research into Italy for our Honeymoon too!

Just today, we were browsing through some photo albums that Shermaine's mom put together about her daughter. There were quite a lot of photos of Shermaine in her younger years, up till about 10 yrs of age. I think its quite endearing to see so much of her current mannerisms and behaviour manifesting from age 2 onwards. =D Adorable!

Success!

You have successfully filed a notice of marriage online with the Registry of Marriages (ROM) on 10/10/2011 11:10 AM

Your e-filing a notice of marriage is successful.

The History Of Teochew Wedding Cakes!

(Lianhe Zaobao SUNDAY - Translated by bobafett81)

In the olden days, the Teochews usually married people from the same villages back in China. During engagement and wedding day itself, they will distribute 10 over kgs of peanut candies, sesame candies and other candies to relatives. Those elaborate weddings would even get hundreds of 月劳 饼 (Lao Bing). The teochews would put these wedding cakes, pork, dragon phoenix candles, wine, wedding invitations and other presents in 2 bamboo baskets. A pole would bind these 2 baskets together and they would be carried back to the female's parents house.

In the Teochew province back in China, they value the variaties of the wedding cakes. Usually, there will be a Tau Sar Pia 豆沙饼 with 4 candies (Gong Tang, Mi Run, Soft Candy and Soft Cakes) 贡糖， 米润， 软糖， 软糕. This 5 variaties became known as 普宁喜饼 Pu-Ning Wedding Cakes. The Hokkiens also had similar wedding cakes, but had Tau Sar Pia with 4, 6 or 8 candies wrapped in red wedding papers. Pu-Ning Wedding Cakes were more expensive then the common teochew wedding cakes 月劳 饼 (Lao Bing). Therefore, the common cakes were more popular and when the Teochews came to Nanyang (Singapore), the tradition of Lao Bing for wedding became common.

During the Japanese Occupation in Singapore, 泰茂栈饼家 Tai Mao Zhan Pastry Shop was set up at 连城街. Majority shareholder Mr Xu Shu Ting was the 1st generation management, who was previously a Teochew grocery shop manager. In 1943, he cooperated with 3 Teochew pastry chefs to established the pastry shop. Other than the Lunar 1st and 8th month, the chefs were busy baking wedding cakes for customers. As the teochew cakes were oily and has a nice texture, it was popular among the immigrants in Nanyang. Chefs at the pastry shop increased to 10 over peoplpe, and other Teochew goodies like 油酥饼， 咸豆沙饼 came out from the oven. Many customers bought their cakes and pastries from this shop.

Looking at the way things are going, we will likely be getting the most traditional Pu-ning style cake box to give to the bride's relatives, as pictured above. It is also known as the "Wu Se Bing" or Five-coloured Sweets/Biscuits, as my dad had specifically requested for "the most traditional one", the "poh leng biah" (Teochew dialect for Pu-ning biscuits)...

Need to find a reputable and traditional Teochew baker to acquire these goodies... have shortlisted Gim Thye so far, but theirs is amazingly pricey... hope we can find a better substitute, or it's going to be more $tre$$ haha!

No Grecian, its gonna be a European Honeymoon!

Will it be winter in Prague? Snow-capped architecture!
or Beer in Munich? Where's my beer wench!?
maybe Sounds of Music in Salzburg? ~I am 16 going on 17......
or Romancing in Venice? ~Wheeeen thhhe moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie!
or Romancing in Rome.. err... I mean, Vaticanizing in Rome!

Oh the choices! I love the European Honeymoon options!!