Wedding Guide Asia

The beaming bride and groom

I had the absolute honour of attending this lovely tea reception, which blew my socks off with the wonderful light-filled venue, intimate decor and personal touches of the bride and groom! With a beautiful blush pink theme carrying over from their Akad Nikah and Bersanding ceremonies (check out our previous post on traditional Malay weddings here), Alena and Raphael Couzet decided to go vintage with a ‘Western’ reception to top off their celebrations in style.

Here’s my little chat with the beautiful bride, Alena:

* Pictures courtesy of Anna-Rina Rahim.

Vintage style tea reception

Alena: My sister and I grew up reading Enid Blyton books, so our heads and imaginations were filled with images of an old-fashioned English afternoon tea in the garden of a cottage with lots and lots of interesting candies available for the children.  So for the wedding, I was trying to replicate that ambience and mood.

We started out wanting to give away sugared almonds, which is the classic Sicilian wedding favour (Raphael being half-Sicilian). So we had the sugared almonds specially brought in by his uncle from a Sicilian confectionery shop. Then we added in other candies just for the fun of it.

Guestbook (more…)

Here at WGA, we love nothing more than receiving stories from our real brides (aka you guys!). Albeit one of the biggest constraints of a wedding being the budget, one savvy Malaysian bride Shelby took this in her stride, popped on her thinking cap and got creative…

Shelby’s Story:

It’s a little bit of a matchmaking story as a mutual friend introduced the two of us. At first I was a bit apprehensive as Chew and I come from such different worlds – I’m a doctor who is quite carefree whereas he’s an older, army officer whose idea of a good time is to browse through a hardware store! But, as they say, love works in mysterious ways and the next thing I knew… we were in love and he popped the question just six months into the relationship!

The Wedding:

Planning the wedding wasn’t the easiest as I was working in Perak and he was in Kedah. Yes, it was LDR turned into LDP (Long distance planning!). We wanted something different from the norm so opted for a ‘Paris in Spring’ theme which meant using colours such as deep purple, fuschia and Tiffany blue. Because I had a limited budget, with the help of my bridesmaids, we handmade most of the decor!

DIY Hairpieces
For the hair, I made these bird hairpieces after being inspired by my all-time favourite SATC! Do you guys recall:

Carrie: I wore a bird on my head!
Miranda: Is that what that was? I thought it was a feather?
Carrie: It was a bird.

… Sex And The City: The Movie …

With some mini hair clips, faux birds, fake flowers & some TLC, I made these cute bird accessories for myself and my bridesmaids. If you’d like to try it yourself, please check out my blog for step-by-step instructions :) (more…)

Once in a while, being an avid fan of photography, I browse through blogs to spoil myself with pictures of DIY projects. Sometimes, I find myself blown away by the sheer creativity of some DIY brides. On one occasion, one bride used Oragina bottles as centerpieces to be brought home as favours! Pretty neat huh? But artsy doesn’t necessarily mean breezy, so let’s try to weigh the pros and cons here.

Stationery

If you’re hardworking, crafty, frugal (it’s a good thing in this case) and patient, I say, you ought to be a DIY bride. Many local stationery stores (such as WGA vendor, Czip Lee) retail a wide gamut of high-quality papers and templates at affordable prices. For stationery junkies (such as yours truly), you’ll get to have loads of fun picking out sheets and background cards. In need of some ideas? Check out Samira’s article on DIY Wedding Invitations.

Downside: Have I mentioned it’s a lot of work? But if friends are willing to lend a hand and if you’re really sure of your artistic capabilities then go for it! Just make sure you use templates, unless you want to end up with 25 different designs when working with 25 different people…

Decorations

Departmental stores like IKEA have made it possible for even recessionistas everywhere, to have a fabulous wedding. WGA recently featured some Cheap and Chic Deco from the Swedish household name. Grab a friend and browse through online catalogues for inspiration or see what’s on offer in-store.

Downside: This move is going to need some serious manpower and restraint on your end. Foresee sleepless nights and some nasty paper cuts. Also, don’t take it for granted that family would be ever willing to help. I know someone who wanted hand-threaded jasmine chains on the wedding dais and after the 30th or so, her mother was begging her for permission to just buy some from outside a temple or something. Sadly, there are people who believe that making something “personal” isn’t really worth the effort. (more…)

We’ve had quite a few posts from former Miss Malaysia Wong Sze Zen and they keep on coming!  Quite the ‘superwoman’, Zen is not only planning her Malaysian wedding herself – BUT whilst abroad in Singapore! However, also being cool, calm and collected (and with experience as an events manager) has meant that Zen is so far handling the job well. She shares with us how she made her wedding invitations and placemats!

Zen: I had the invites printed in K.L at a Brickfields printing shop. But the tying of the ribbon and writing of guest’s names was all done by moi! Don’t laugh, but I actually completed a bunch of invites the morning after my Hens Night haha – dedicated bride you could say! The theme for my wedding is the colour aquamarine and birds as the motif. I bought a stamp of a birdcage imprint which I placed on each envelope for added touch.

Zen: The placemats were more time consuming and I had to be quite careful with my stamping and where I cut 0ut the ‘birds’. I just popped by a good stationary store in Singapore and found a stamp print I liked as well as the bird cutting tool. You do need to be patient, detailed and orderly to be able to stamp over 100 placemats by the way!

The ‘bird-cutting tool’ and stamp. (more…)

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending an exclusive Discovery Travel & Living launch of one of it’s latest shows, Cake Boss. Cake Boss airs on Travel & Living every Wednesday evening, 7 pm (SG time) and follows the entertaining Italian Buddy Valastro, who runs the family cake store Carlo’s Cakes in New Jersey. So to get us all in the mood for the show, we had a free lesson in cake decorating!

For all the ladies who are planning their wedding and baking their cake at the same time… this is for you.

Here are some tips from Miss Loo, an experienced Malaysian wedding cake decorator who represented the Cake Boss.

1. If you want to DIY your wedding cake, one method is to buy ready made sugar flowers – so you just bake the cake then decorate it with these pre-made flowers. OR alternatively, take a class in cake decoration and make some simple decorations!

2. For a wedding cake, it takes approx 4 months as you need to make a lot of flowers – which need time to dry. With our S.E Asia climate, its very humid so it takes longer than say in colder countries.

3. Popular wedding cake flavours to go for – fruitcake (if your design is difficult). But usually buttercake as most ppl like it!

4. Remember to choose a common cake flavour,  Durian is not a wedding winner!

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