just another wedding-related weekend

Remember my mat and I already planned  to settle several wedding-related tasks on Saturday? 

We ended up completing only three tasks over a period of 12 hours: 

(1) sent my sisters' kain for nikah reception to my tailor;

(2) finalize the dinner reception guest list and assign their seat numbers;

(3) firm up our itinerary - it's not ready to be finalized though, because we want to run through it with our main vendors and our orang orang kuat first. Mana tau ada details that we might have missed.

Ah, well. Three completed tasks are better than none, right?

Kita lagi boleh sempat pergi majlis orang kahwin in between okay. Hehe.

The wedding that we went to last Saturday was held at Warung In The East - very cosy air-conditioned venue perfect for smaller receptions. It's located on the ground floor so it's easy to spot when guests drive pass + elderly guests and guests in wheelchairs don't have to worry about having to naik turun tangga or having to wait for lifts to transport them up and down. We drove to the location though, so I'm not sure how accessible the venue is via public transport.

The air-conditioned part of the venue was packed when we reached so we went to the non-air conditioned area outside to have our meal. Didn't sweat as much as I expected, probably because the non-conditioned area outside is shaded. Yay for that! 

The only thing that spoiled the experience a teeny weeny bit: There was a school event going on at the nearby field and they had speakers blaring louder than the sound system for the wedding - we were distracted by the event and didn't really concentrate on the music and announcements inside haha. (To be fair, I don't think this would be an issue if there wasn't any school event on that day!)

For a more thorough review on Warung In The East from a pengantin's point of view, you can read it here (written by a ex-bride who used the restaurant as her wedding venue)

Food by Doulath Catering

Food was decent - the rice and ayam masak merah was not to my preference but tasted just fine, the sweet and sour fish might have been better if it was hot... I liked the daging rendang the most! The rempah very nice and the meat was sooooo tender!!! In fact I think theirs is one of the tenderest I've ever tried at majlis orang kahwin seh! Hur hur. I super liked their kuih muih too... the ones I tried semua sedap! There were roti kirai and mee soto stations as well but didn't try them out.

Their buffet line presentation was pretty good by the way - very simple, neat and had proper food labels. There was always someone behind the buffet line who wiped up kuah yang tertumpah and made sure food was constantly topped up. Heard their package prices are one of the more affordable ones in the market so I guess if you want something affordable and fuss-free, they're a catering company you can consider.

Decor by Wedding Meets Design 

I've mentioned Wedding Meets Design before here! I was informed by one of their partners that they've started offering chiavari chairs in-house so if you want to save yourself the hassle of engaging decor company and chiavari chair supplier separately, you might want to consider their decor services! The decor they did that day was very nice and elegant - I especially liked the lace parasols which they used as part of the decor... tapi lupa pulak nak ambik gambar! Aiseymen.

Anyway! Berbalek kepada my preparations for my own wedding ye.

After my mat left my place at around 11pm on Saturday, he did some more work on our itinerary sampai 3 in the morning (aku adelah laze around watching Alcatraz sampai 3 pagi hahaha) and I am proud to say that he has done a fantastic job!!! Aku sungguh suka and very bangga okay with his attention to detail. Thank you for taking charge over the itinerary and making it even better, bb!!!

He improved it even further the next day (Sunday) and before korang accuse me of not contributing my part for the planning, I spent my Sunday afternoon trying to finish up our wedding website okay. Didn't get to finish it up (maybe because I was distracted by CSI and Running Man episodes hahaha) but I think I should be able to get everything up and running before the end of this week? 

It's not as snazzy or cool as the website I mentioned here but we'll have to make do with our current one, given my limited tech skills and zilch website design background (My mamat jangan cakap ah, everytime he uses the computer, I can't help but chuckle and call him Grandpa.)

Sneaky peeky of the webby! (Sorry, tiba tiba rasa macam nak jadi irritating hahaha)

Can't wait to get this over and done with so I can concentrate on other tasks. 

By the way, did your well-meaning married friends tell you your wedding to-do list will beranak pinak nearer to your wedding? Our well-meaning married friends did, and guess what? BETUL LAH SIAK.

the nitty and the gritty

We've pretty much made it through the second stage of preparations so my mat and I have started on the nitty gritty stuff like preparing our songlist and planning rough outline of our itinerary!

We have 10+ months left (already?!) to our wedding day but in terms of wedding planning timeline it's still ~pretty~ early to start preparing our songlist and itinerary. But hey - no harm starting early, right? Won't kena penalize, right? Bukannya potong markah, right? Right??? Hur hur hur.

Anyway we know we'll be busy busy busy bumble bee running errands and meeting vendors and all that jazz when next year comes so we wouldn't want to hastily come up with a half-arsed itinerary for our orang-orang kuat and vendors to work with at the last minute.

Plus, friends have told us that we might "burn out" three months before the wedding i.e. dah malas nak layan benda benda kahwing kahwing ni semua sooooo I guess it's better to have at least 70% of the plans figured out while we still have the time and energy and mood. Betul tak kak?!

Our wedding itinerary is still a Work-in-Progress but thought I'd share sneaks!

[The last one is mainly for our wedding emcee - pretty important and useful to give your deejay / emcee a list of all the family names that he needs to call out for phototaking during the wedding itself, yo. You know, stuff like "Mengundang Encik Wahab sekeluarga untuk bergambar dengan mempelai..." "Ingin menjemput Cik Emah dan sekeluarga untuk naik ke pelamin untuk bergambar dengan pasangan mempelai hari ini..." - cannot be he one day come down your reception, one day know all your relatives punya nama nama kan?!]

Very excited for this Friday because we'll be meeting some of our Orang Kuat to watch Nani's wedding video over supper! (Damn woman keeps squealing about how much she loves her wedding video and made me really pumped to watch it too!!!!! Yak-dush!!!) Which also means we will have the chance to ask them to:

(1) Start cracking on what kind of outfits they want to wear for our reception;

(2) Start cracking on their quotes/speech for us (Time to update 'The Orang Kuat' tab on this blog!);

(2) Let us know which of their self pictures we can use for the Orang Kuat list! Heehee.

[Yes guys, we are putting korang punya gambar in the square columns in the list. For, you know, easy identification hahahahaha what what?! Our vendors and some of our family members don't know how some of you guys look like, right! "Oh, kena collect from/pass to "Ahmad"? Si Ahmad ni... mana satu eh???" Hence, the gambar... *twirly hand gesture*]

Next to-do item on our list that I'm especially excited about pulak is our Save The Date! I've always wanted to do a video for our Save The Date but we've already established earlier on that it'll be a waste to splash money on a Save The Date video, which is why I've pestered my youngest sister to do one for us. She's not a professional so we're going to keep it reaaaaally simple and reaaaaally basic if we do end up having one. My sister has been practising on this specific skill that I've asked her to learn though (hur hur kakak pembully!) and hopefully it'll come out decent.

At first our target was to send out the Save The Date on his birthday - which is two months before our wedding - but we realized that that will beat the purpose of having a Save The Date, which is to give a heads-up to our friends so that they'll keep that date free for our wedding.

Which meaaaaans... we might have to record the footage before Ramadhan next year so it'll be ready by the time we want to give notice to our friends! Uber exciting stuff!

(App: Wedding Caddy - app that can be synced with a site version so you can access it both ways!)

It's going to be a wedding-related weekend, guys! Cepat sebelum gua burn out! OVER AND OUT!