And the 1st Prize Goes To.....

***And the 1st Prize Goes To.....***

This is going to be a long entry. There's just so much I wanna thank God for but yet even typing this blog entry I can't help but be in reverend awe of my God, my unseen partner in my life.

So please be patient with me as I jot down every thing that God has done for Chris and I since we started planning our wedding. I wanna write somethng down so that as time passes, I can always look back at this entry and know that I serve a faithful God. After Chris proposed, we started making plans for our wedding. Before we begin, we asked God to be our wedding coordinator and to use our wedding as to how He would like our wedding be. We want Him to be in charge of everything since afterall, He was the one who brought us together. Here's the details of why at every stage of our wedding, God never fails to surprise us and is ever so faithful and proactive in being our wedding coordinator:-

1. The wedding venue: We searched for many places for an outdoor wedding and a few places came to mind. Asian Civilisation Museum, Chjimes, Armenian Church and Fort Canning. I rang them up and somehow or rather it was either the capacity of the location that could not fit our requirement or it was totally off our budget. The formula for two people (II) to get married in Singapore (S) is this -> S+II = $$$. So we called up Fort Canning and they told us about their Marquee and the prices and the capacity it could hold. It was prefect! Budget, capacity, location seems brilliant. So we made an appointment to head down there to check it out. Here are some pics of the Marquee.

We thought hmm.... it's not too bad.. quite close to what we both have in mind as our ideal wedding. Met up with the wedding coordinator, Sophia Beh to discuss what services do they provide and it seems good. When we were about to make a reservation, she told us that another couple have reserved the place for their wedding on the same date already. Sophia said she'll check with the other couple since they have not place a deposit as yet if they were willing to let go of their reservation for us and she will revert to let us know. We continued to pray after that meeting with Sophia for God to act on our behalf and sure enough, few weeks later, Chris called Sophia up to check on the status of that reservation and Sophia said that the previous couple had given up the reservation for us. Yay! Praise God! =)

2. Lobangs (a.k.a good connections in Singlish meaning) - God sent a number of friends with brilliant suggestions and ideas to share with us and how to have a stylish wedding without breaking your bank! =) I knew an ex-colleague who owns a floral shop and he was the perfect person to approach to decorate our wedding venue for our actual day. Jason can work magic I tell ya! He gave sound advice to help us cut cost and I mean which florist will do that?! There were many people who gave us good advice as well, TY & Ink, Karen & Soo Guan, Evelyn, Nicole & Wilfred, my bro & sis-in-law, my mum, Mabel, Joan etc. We can't thank everyone enough for all their advice and their help!

3. Reina & Miriam - These 2 sisters prayed for my Mum to relent on 28th March 2008 cos my Mum wanted some auspicious date and said 28th March 2008 was not a good date rarara... and I was having rather difficult time trying to convince her. These 2 sisters interceded for me and voila, my Mum turned from being against the date to focusing on helping us with the wedding. Hallelujah! Thank God for these 2 sisters! They were really good support considering that I was also facing some stress from work as well as from some friends pertaining to wedding arrangements.

4. Chris and I thought that it would be nice to have a semi-real cake rather than an entire dummy cake for our wedding. Yes! You can say that we want to have our cake and eat it! Hahaha. We were toying with the idea of having cupcakes in replacement of a wedding tier cake but realised that it is really expensive to order them from some bakeries. And its truly not possible to bake it on my own... I think I will go into a panic attack just thinking that on my actual day I still don't have enough cupcakes made or my guests complaining that the cupcakes taste awful. So I rather spare myself that unneccesary nightmare. We continued searching for a less costly baker and on 3rd August 2007, when we went down to Fort Canning to place our deposit to secure the Marquee for our wedding, we got to know from Sophia that they have included cupcakes as an option in the wedding package with a minimum top up fee which was still relatively cheaper than most bakeries we went to. Isn't God amazing?!

5. Fairy lights - We thought that the Marquee though was nice (at least to us) but sortof lacked something. So we thought hard and figure that it would add to the atmosphere if we added in fairy lights underneath and at the sides of the Marquee and when we asked one of the wedding coordinators at Fort Canning, he said that this could be done at the cost of a whopping $2000. WHAT?! Just for fairy lights? He explained that if we want it up, they would need to hire people to put it up as well as take it down from the Marquee since it is not a permanent fixture. Oh well.. we thought... we just have to stick to our budget and see what else can we do within our budget to spruce up the Marquee. We thought to ourselves that we probably have to work with Jason our florist on that to see if he can help us in anyway and still not exceed the budget we set.

Guess what? On 29th September 2007, we went for a wedding show at Fort Canning and this is what we saw:


Fairy Lights at the side of the Marquee! It really does add atmosphere to the place afterall!!

I thought maybe they put up the fairy lights cos of the wedding show today.... ye of little faith! We saw Sophia and asked her if the fairy lights were just for the show and she said no its a permanent fixture! Goodness! At this point in time, I was very touched by what God have done for our wedding. It's like Chris & I just talk about our ideas, our dreams for the wedding and God just acts on it. Some people may say its coincidence but I know it is our God moving on our behalf and getting our wedding ready step by step.. little by little... with all these surprises!

6. 2 weeks before the wedding show on 29th September 2007 at Fort Canning, I had my first fitting at my bridal studio - Di Gio. The evening gown that was made to measure turned out nicer than I imagined and it was a total relief to know that I didn't cringe my face cos the entire design was suggested by the designer and we just went along with it but kept praying about it in hope that it won't turn out to be something totally different from the drawing the designer drew to show us. I tried on the wedding gown again and though it was nice..somehow I don't know why I did not feel confident in it. I told Chris I feel fat in it and I am not sure if I can pull it off to be able to look radiant in it though the gown was truly lovely... but I just didn't feel as confident as the first time I tried it and we both liked it....Not sure why. I began to worry... "Cham! What if I still don't feel confident in that gown and I can't find anything else I like and the deposit has been made for the wedding package already!". I told myself... not to fret and perhaps its my insecurities as a bride to be that's acting up.

So on 29th September 2007, I woke up and did my quiet time with God and told him my fears of the wedding gown (again!) and I told him I'll be going to the wedding show later.. there's a lucky draw... can we win some jewellry or something? Heheh... Honestly... when I said that to God... I was just being myself - plain cheeky and didn't had any other notions in mind. Strangely, I thought I heard Him say "You'll walk away with something at tonight's wedding show..." I teased God and said "heheh..yah.. door gift!" But I didn't think much about it yet throughout the whole day and even at the wedding show... I had a strange feeling that something's gonna happen.(Chris and I @the Legends Fort Canning Wedding Show)

At the wedding show, we were waiting for things to start and Chris and I were chatting. I didn't mention to him anything about what I heard during quiet time earlier and he said "There's 18 prizes to be won tonight.. I wonder if we'll win anything." I was like "U reckon?" and he responded with a "Yeah, I think we'll walk away with something tonight...". At that juncture, I told Chris about what I heard from God that morning. Before we could continue our conversation further, the wedding show started. Here's a few pics of what we took at the wedding show. This is our first wedding show... (prolly our last too! hahaha... we went for this one to get a feel of how is it like holding a wedding at the Marquee at Fort Canning, the Legends).

(decoration before the models strut their stuff on the catwalk)

(Pretty nice wedding gowns, suits and quite chic cheong sams I would say)

At the end of the wedding show was the lucky draw where they announced all the prizes. Our draw number was 8132. A number of times they nearly called out our number but missed by the last digit. So all 17 prizes were all dished out and we weren't called as yet. We were about to leave thinking that it can't be us already as there were a good number of couples there as well who have not won when they announced "And the first prize goes to..... 8......1.........3............2!". Chris and I looked at each other in disbelief and realised that "Hey! That's us!!!".

We went up to collect the grand prize of a bridal package worth $9,888 that includes 1 made to measure (MTM) wedding gown. 1 MTM evening gown. Both to rent. 1 MTM cheong sam to keep. 1 MTM man's suit to keep. 30pics bridal album with things like free this picture, that album, plus outdoor and indoor shoot with hair and makeup styling... free actual day hand bouquet, etc. We were totally dumbfounded I tell ya!

We wanted to sell the package away since we already have a package and the evening gown was already made. But somehow or rather.. we both felt it is really God's blessing for us and we much prefer to utilize the prize and it sort of solves the "problem" of me being worried that I will not be able to find a gown I like since I can make to measure my wedding gown now with this package. I went home that night... tired but very touched by God. I mean, we don't deserve this at all and we weren't expecting anything. To be honest, if I had no choice but to end up with only the gown I don't feel 100% confident in it.. I would still stick to it cos I mean it's still a pretty gown but there's so much to making a wedding perfect because deep down Chris and I both know that it's knowing that our guests enjoyed themselves and us enjoying ourselves celebrating our matrimony that makes a wedding special...at least to the both of us. I mean as a girl I would like to fantasize about my wedding but I am not that unrealistic either... (really.. believe it or not.. heheh). And knowing about the fairy lights alone was more than touching already.

So I just wanna say to God that we can't thank Him enough for playing such an active role not just as our wedding coordinator and in our lives. Though He is our unseen partner... yet His presence, His actions, His surprises of what He did for us shows us how real He is! I must say that throughout this entire wedding planning and all, we've both drawn closer to Him and that itself already made our wedding sososo special... and we know that it is going to be special even if we didn't win anything, we didn't had fairy lights, cupcakes, all the fancy razzle dazzle to a wedding... simply because He is going to be there!