Vendor Reviews: Andaman, Photography & Videography

Now that I'm done with my reviews on catering, decor and entertainment, it's time to review three other heavyweights for our wedding - bridal outfits and andaman, photography and videography! Jeng jeng jeng~

Bridal Outfits & Andaman - Ishq by Nora Zee

I first wrote about Ishq By Nora Zee here.

Services: Bridal Outfits & Andaman (Make-up & Hair/Hijab-styling)

Company: Ishq By Nora Zee

Email: ishqbynorazee[at]gmail[dot]com

 Facebook: Ishq By Nora Zee

Website: -

I don't think I need to go into much details for Ishq By Nora Zee because I think it pretty obvious from my first entry on Ishq By Nora Zee and from my constant posts about them on this blog and on Instagram that I LOVE KAK NORA AND ISHQ BY NORA ZEE TO THE MOON AND BACK. 

Maybe I ceritakan sikit lah eh on how it was going through the process with Ishq By Nora Zee and Kak Nora. Let's start with the different outfits and looks we had for our wedding:

This is my nikah outfit!

Super love this customized piece because it is simple and pretty and most importantly white, (okay fine, it was a little creamy), which was our main criteria for our nikah outfits. More pictures of our nikah outfits here.

As for our sanding reception, we got a customized plain icy blue songket (which looks more... light grey, silver-ish?)! Love the songket (we specifically requested for songket), love the simplicity of the pahang cut, and super love the beading work which was fantastic!!!!! 

In all of our kecohness, I forgot to ask our photographers to take a close-up of the beading seh. Meh. More pictures of our sanding outfits here.

Have to say the sanding getup was my least favourite though, mainly because my hair was bunned up and my make-up caked heavily towards the end of the sanding reception... but I don't blame Kak Nora for that lah of course!!! 

We had no choice - my hair had to be bunned up so she can letak the cucuk sanggul (BAH, hate having my hair tied or bunned up) and the make-up caked at the later part presumably because of the sweat and heat and humidity + Kak Nora had to layer the new coat of make-up over my nikah make-up.

That said, Saliheen felt the opposite of me okay - the sanding getup was his absolute favourite! Probably because the fit for his sanding baju was the best amongst the three and that vainpot loved how he looked absolutely segak and the colour complemented his susah-nak-match dark skin. (His least favourite was his nikah outfit because the cutting was too snug for his liking lolz)

Gorgeous little piece designed and tailored by sought-after Malaysian designers, Mimpi Kita for our dinner reception!!!!!

From the front when worn:



From the back when worn:  

I hate that this Mimpi Kita piece doesn't look outstanding when hung on a hanger or laid flat but trust me, the dress falls perfectly and damn lovely when worn on a person okay!!!!! The beading and detailing is crazy gorgeous and the fabric is daaaaammmnnn awesome and delicate!!!!! 

In fact, it was so awesome and delicate, I was so scared I was going to ruin the dress just by breathing okay HAHA. Saliheen loved his outfit for dinner as well, I think this pairing was the only one both of us sama sama loved to the core of our being hehe. More pictures of our dinner outfits here.

Okay, yang I just mentioned tu semua baju-wise ah. Kalau make up-wise, jangan cakap lah - I LOVE KAK NORA'S MAKE UP SAMPAI BOLEH JATUH DEMAM 7 HARI 7 MALAM, CAN?! It's like... freaking live Photoshop, man. My maha ultimate favourite has to be my nikah make-up and hairstyle, of course - you all actually dah nampak gambar ni before but I nak show off lagi pulak :P

 Mehehehehe.

Oh, just one thing - when Kak Nora finished doing my wedding dinner make-up and I saw myself in the mirror, I was a liiiiittle taken back because I wasn't used to seeing myself in dark vampy make-up and I'll have to admit I was a liiiiittle apprehensive about the dinner make-up. But once we hit the ground, I saw myself glamming it up in pictures, I knew Kak Nora did the right thing and I was an idiot and foolish for even having the slightest of doubts. I mean, there is a good reason why I trusted Kak Nora and engaged her services kan!!!

[Side story on the dinner hairstyle: Kak Nora actually wanted to do something different for my dinner hairstyle but my hair refuseddddd to cooperate after a whole day of sweat, grime and bucketloads of hairspray so Kak Nora gave up and twisted it into a sideswept hairdo which worked just fine for me because I like sideswept hair heh heh (Well, my supermother always did say that my hair is degil, just like the person ha. ha. ha. ha. ha. I must have gotten my sense of humour from her eh)]

By the way, just thought I should mention this: I think I have quite a lot of laughing pictures with Kak Nora ah, I don't know why. These pictures below (taken by the amazing Bliss Photocinema) are only a few out of the lot, yang lain aku malas nak gi cari and save and upload hahahahaha.

Lolololol I'm kidding. I do know why I have SO MANY laughing pictures with Kak Nora from Ishq - how can you not have so many laughing pictures with someone when she is damn funny and damn gerek and damn awesome seh?!!! Mesti ada je benda yang nak diketawakan zomg, tak tau itu hari aku tengah kahwing ke, atau kita tengah buat sketsa comedy central tau.

Oh, and because my husband is such a maknenek, he was sooooo excited to get a pak andam for himself!!! We never really saw the true benefits of having a pak andam until our wedding day itself - useful gila lah siak to have a pak andam for the groom!!!!! TAK BEDEK OK. Him, his baju, his tanjak, his samping, his accessories, his face, his everything got the attention that they also deserve. Semua ditanggung beres.

This was a particularly great service for us because Saliheen is such a vainpot for a guy!!! He is more vain than me, actually, I think I've mentioned this quite a number of times. (This dude uses SKII for his daily skincare regime lah okay.) The first time I asked him about switching bridal to Ishq By Nora Zee, one of his first few questions was "Abeh I? Ada baju cantik untuk I tak?" HAIYO GOT LAH, GOT BAJU CANTIK FOR YOU LAH, PRINCESS *grumbles*

Some light moments with his pak andam, Onan, who is also a super awesome and super gerek person like Kak Nora:

(I am damn tickled by someone's comment - can't remember who! - that Kak Nora looks like she can be my sister and Onan looks like he can be Saliheen's brother, by the way. Hahahahahaha!)

And now that I'm done with my "cerita sikit" about Ishq By Nora Zee, we move on to the ~burning~ questions:

Did we regret changing bridals 4 months before the wedding? NO.

Do we think Ishq By Nora Zee is too simple, too safe, too new? NOPE.

If given another chance, would we choose another bridal instead? NEVER NO NOPE NOT BY THE HAIR OF OUR CHINNY CHIN CHINS.

As far as Saliheen and I (and our parents who approved maha approved Kak Nora!) are concerned, Ishq By Nora Zee is damn awesome, and our love for Kak Nora is setinggi gunung Everest, sekuat besi tungsten, seluas lautan Pacific, sehangat bebola matahari dan segala sebagai yang sewaktu dengannya. Amin!

Wedding Photography by Bliss Photocinema

Services: Wedding Photography
Company: Bliss Photocinema
Email: bliss.fotografi[at]gmail[dot]com

 Facebook: Bliss Photocinema

I have NOTHING to say about Bliss Photocinema. 

Except that they are absolutely fantastic, they delivered their services exceptionally well and I freaking love them to the end of the manfreakingkind. Hahahahaha.

We chose Naz as our photographer right from the start because we really loved his work and he definitely did not disappoint us!!!!! We also had a second photographer, Shahdan, because we didn't want a flush mount album and was told that we can replace it with a second photographer instead... and replace it with a second photographer, we did. 

So damn glad we did that because having a second photographer actually helps okay!!! We had a range of photographs which might not have been possible if we only had one + ours was a full day wedding and having two photographers meant they could take turns capturing moments. 

And Shahdan was such a goofball, we cannot tahan!!! Couldn't stop laughing with him and Naz, these two are so happening and gerek to be around. Helps to ease the tension and the exhaustion you might feel as a pengantin on your wedding day, you know? Akak approve seratus persen!

Oh, and one of the perks we got for choosing Naz - this speedy gonzales was the one who worked on our wedding photos so freaking laju macam nak kejar bullet train kat Japan, he delivered our wedding album 2 weeks and 5 days after our wedding!!! (I think I mentioned this before somewhere) Crazyshitballs! We were actually expecting to receive our album only after 4 weeks lah eh. Inilah example of aiming for the stars and landing on the moon (Entah, aku pun tak tau what's the link hahahahaha)

Wedding Videography by CST Singapore

Services: Wedding Videography
Company: CST Singapore 
Email: booking[at]cst[dot]sg 
Facebook: CST Singapore 
Website: CST on Vimeo

The CST Singapore (CST) crew that worked at our wedding turned out to be... pretty awesome :D

I will be very frank and say right now that we were very, very, VERY unimpressed and pissed at CST weeks before the wedding to the point that we almost forfeited our $1050 deposit and engaged another videography company (yes, we were that pissed off). But after getting their warm and fantastic service during our wedding day, the rage has softened... somewhat.

I'd really like to review and share our experience with CST as a whole though, so I'll reserve my full review until after we receive our wedding video. 

For now, let's just say dealing with them pre-wedding was absolutely horrendous because of one particular admin staff of theirs who had shabby administration skills, couldn't be bothered to get her records right and had ZERO motivation to do any bloody work. Which was why during my last entry mentioning CST, you can hear the sound of my blood boiling while reading some of my paragraphs on CST. Haha.

(Your blood will also boil if I told you what she did, okay?! Making your clients wait for you for more than an hour? Not acceptable. Mixing up your clients and missing appointments? Not acceptable. Asking your client for records because you insist "your office does not have records"? NOT ACCEPTABLE. I now refuse to call that particular admin staff by her real name and shall only refer to her as the nickname that my husband and I have coined for her.)

It was a totally different scenario during the wedding, though! It was much, much, much better and restored our faith in CST Singapore - the crew was hardworking, everyone knew what they were doing, they were friendly and really, really patient with us - Saliheen and I kept protesting every time they asked us to say something for the video and kept groaning and dragging our feet whenever they told us to act it up for the camera because we absolutely hated it lolz - and everything was just... really great ah. 

Now all we ask for is for the wedding video to be just as great, if not better! And hopefully... not 7 months late ah.

The only thing that can be 7 months late is... my next blog entry. 

(I'm kidding!) (Or am I.)

The Dinner Reception

And finally... here comes the last part of the wedding - the dinner reception!

It was a freaking mad rush from our outdoor photoshoot back to our wedding venue for the dinner reception because we (and our vendors) only had turnover time of about 2 hours before the dinner reception starts proper!

There was a whole lot of madness that happened between that two tight hours but if I were to list them all.......... I will finish writing this entry only in the year 2020 lah kan. But if there is one thing that I really want to mention and express my thanks for is the fact that I was so freaking glad I opted to top up for fresh make-up!!! Penting wor!!!

My face was thick with oil and grim and what disgusting have yous by the time we returned to the venue - I actually started feeling very icky during the later part of the sanding reception already so to be able to wash off the thick gunk and have fresh make-up for the dinner reception felt SO GOOD.

We have A WHOLE LOT of people to thank particularly for the success of our dinner reception but I'll leave that to the 'Thank you' entry that will precede the end of this blog (Yes, there will be a 'Thank you' entry lol) so let's just jump straight in to the story now lah okay:

Us, getting ready for the night:

And this is us, all ready to get the party staaarteddddddd!

Orang orang kuat! Roll out!

We marched in to Mozella's Love is Endless, as mentioned here.

I look damn toothy in all the march-in pictures, but that's because I was grinning so hard, I was so exhilarated!!!!! I really don't know how to describe the whole experience but it was truly a special kind of joy to see beaming, happy faces of all our friends who made the time and effort to come celebrate our love and happiness :,) 

Us, giving our half-baked speeches lol (I dilly dallied on preparing my speech and ended up with NO speech prepared on wedding day. So I just blurted a quick impromptu one, as did Saliheen.):

Settling down to give way to the video highlights and our speech givers...

Love love love our wedding video highlights, by the way! Well worth the same-day edit top up and the video editor used the song we suggested (Love is Easy by McFly) so it was nice to groove to something we like :D

Ahmad and Nadiah were our speech givers that night. Sayang korang!

Not posting up the picture of Nadiah giving the speech because... she will haunt my dreams as a cik pon if I do hahahahahaha. (Tip to all photographers: NEVER EVER photograph a plus-sized person from a bottom angle. EVER.)

Lainlah kalau it's someone skinny like my brother-in-law.....

(Brother-in-law seh...)

And yes, my brother-in-law ended up giving a speech, too! It was a last minute addition because he told my mamat he wanted to give a speech about two weeks before the wedding. Ngawww. The addition kind of dragged the time for a bit though, and I was feeling slightly anxious about making people wait for their food but I guess it turned out fine in the end? :/

(My mamat specifically didn't want to make our guests wait for the video highlights and speeches to be over before they can makan the food macam Chinese weddings so we explicitly stated in our wedding website AND we made our wedding emcee announce that guests were free to take their food before the ceremony started (before we marched in) and they were free to eat during the speeches as well.

But nobody moved an inch towards the buffet tables pun so everyone ended up waiting for the video highlights and speeches to end before they had their fill!!!!! This one I blame my mamat bulat bulat okay! I told him it's natural for guests to wait until after the video highlights and speeches before they help themselves to the buffet so no matter what you do, it will happen that way - after all, it's only good manners, and I would think all our colleagues and friends have that, right?! 

But nooOOOoooOoooOoo, he insisted that if we give notice and the emcee makes the announcement urging guests to start eating first before our march-in and during the speeches, people won't have to starve through the video highlights and speeches. PFFT. Yet another instance where I am proven right but will this rebel without a cause listen to me the next time we try to sort through a possible issue?!?!?! NooOOOoooOoooOoo)

Ho well. Dah terjadi. At least everyone enjoyed their food in the end! :D

And yes, that's our guest seating chart which I love love looovvveeeee ♥ ♥ ♥

But I wished I had left the description of which group goes to which tables... apparently some guests didn't know where to start bila nak cari their names! 

Actually the initial draft had the description of all the groups e.g. 1 - TNPS, 2 - TNPS, 3 - TKGS, 4 - TKGS, 5 - TP, but the descriptions made the design look jarring + Saliheen and I have mutual friends yang cannot be categorized into a description (Macam mana nak explain eh????? Susah.) so we scrapped that off. Heh. So sorry kepada mereka meraka yang had to spend some time trying to find your names eh hehehehehe

Besides our guest seating chart, one of the stars of the evening was Dessert Artisans' freaking amazing dessert tier, of course!!! My mamat and I were extremely pleased with it and so were the guests!!!!! But of course, reviews will come in a separate entry lah ye, macam tak tau pulak the SOP by now :P

SO AWESOME HOR?! ♥ ♥ ♥

It was SO awesome, someone was caught on camera hijacking desserts off the setup that night.......... 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. EVIDENCE KUAT PE ILI!!!!!

And Nunu, you jangan nak ketawa ketawa eh, what is this I hear about you running around with a plate of Puteri's desserts around the hall????? Hahahahahahahaha!

Oh oh oh, by the way, I should also mention that Dessert Artisans did not just set up our wedding dessert tier that night - they were also responsible for the maha lovely guestbook and guest reception table for our dinner reception tau!!!!! This guest reception table setup came complimentary with the package that we booked with them at last year's wedding exhibition held by Jentayu Gallery (See, this is why people go to wedding exhibitions, you know. To get discounts and freebies. Although we went to that exhibition with no intention of booking anything lah actually :P)

Yummy nak mampos macaron favours from Ola Lola for our dinner guests! ♥

Favours were arranged by my little fairies tau! Little fairies being my sisters, my cousin Mimi and our family friend (who is also my middle sister's good friend) Haziqah - I enlisted their help because I knew my bridesmaids would have their hands full, what with the tight turnover time to clean up and get everything running, and having extra (helpful) hands wouldn't hurt.

I was so happy with them in the end because they were such great help!!! Oh, and apparently, salah satu of them was the one who came up with the brilliant idea of displaying the macaron favours on the table in an 'S ♥ F' arrangement and I totes love it!!! So teratur and pretty!!! Made for pretty pictures for our guests, who snapped pictures of the arrangement and posted them on Instagram!

I would have been happy enough if the macaron favours were just stacked up nicely so this is above and beyond my expectations ♥♥♥

(Side story: When I first enlisted their help, I told my sisters I'll call their group "my little elves". My baby sister, being the cute, naive and maha selenge bacin girl that she is, actually asked innocently: "Huh??? Kakak nak kita dress like little elves during the dinner???" HAHAHAHAHA LEPAK KE APE KAU BUDAK. 

Was almost tempted to rent elf costumes for them after that!!! Tapi takpe lah, nanti orang ingatkan early Christmas dinner lah pulak :P)

And of course, the other star of the reception would be our Hello Forever photobooth, of course!!!!! AKU MAHA SAYANG ITU PHOTOBOOTH TAU!!! But more on that in my review entry, lagipun you guys would have seen the video of all the photobooth shots which I posted here, and reproduce below:

Hello Forever | Saliheen & Farhana from Hello Forever on Vimeo.

Another thing that we were very happy about was our wedding emcee pairing up with our videographers during our dinner reception to walk around and get guests to record video dedications for us!

We didn't catch everyone's video dedications while they were ongoing because we were busy walking from table to table to mingle with our guests when we weren't on the pelamin taking pictures, so now we can't wait to see the actual video footage of all the dedications!!! (We can't wait to watch the whole wedding video lah, period.)

Oh, and in case I didn't make it clear enough - our dinner reception was made up of our colleagues and friends only, by the way. Right from the start, we'd already agreed that we'd want an arrangement that can separate our families and relatives from our colleagues and friends for our wedding.

The main reason for this was because we wanted to have more time to interact with our colleagues and friends during our wedding rather than a quick phototaking session and a rushed "hi! congratulations! bye!", which is something that usually happens when we go for our friends' wedding receptions.

This became one of our best decisions because we were really happy with how the dinner reception turned out and we definitely got what we wanted - we had time to chat and mingle with our different groups of friends, even took photobooth shots with some of them, and our friends didn't have to worry about "kena kasi family members ambik gambar dulu" or anything of that sort. Senang cakap, they didn't have to compete with our relatives for space and attention, and we were very, very, very pleased with that.

And with that.......... THE WEDDING IS OVER, SUCKERS!!!!!!! 

OVER! FINISH! FINITO! THE END! HAAAAABIS!

Aku punya blog entries je yang macam tak habis habis ni.