My TOP 10 Most Memorable Moments of Our Wedding :)

Prior to this I actually composed an essay - yup, an essay of the real drama that happened behind the scenes of our wedding with my reflective thoughts. The last i checked, it was 6 pages long (on Word doc), 2467 words! lol. Then i realised unlike Wordpress where i could privatise some of my posts, i was unable to do so with blogger, so i ended up saving that essay in my draft folder, and emailed the pdf version to my parents and husband hahahahaha... Coz it was very very detailed, overflowing with my real thoughts, fear and gratitude okay.. and those 3 are my most important readers.

Once again i would like to apologise to many of our friends and even extended family for being unable to extend our invitations to all. We have our reasons, and it was a really small and intimate affair. We do hope that all of you will continue to watch over us, cheer us on when we fall, and give us your blessings~~

If I can put a description to my wedding day on 13.12.13, it will be - "His ways are always higher, a taste of God's faithfulness."

Forget about the normal bridezilla moments we see too often on chick flicks, what we went through, the amazing way God works, still made me gasped in disbelief and filled with joy.

At the end of the day, it was a beautiful ceremony, a wonderful celebration, with those who matter to us :)

So, here are my top TEN moments during the big day~

(in no particular order lol)


ONE
When my mum and grandma helped me with my wedding gown.

I actually gained weight from my Taiwan trip and was very worried about fitting into my wedding gown. Thank God for my mum and grandma who helped with the difficult dress, getting me sorted before freshening up themselves. I felt a 'moment', just having my mum carefully tying the strings for me. While I was also multi-tasking with other coordination, my heart was just filled with gratitude and emotions..

TWO

This girl flew in from Singapore, had to wait in the mall for a bit before i could get back to the hotel and arranged for her to freshen up in my parents' room.

Suddenly she came running into our bridal room, hugged me tight and started crying. Made me all mushy mushy and teary.. Love ya babe!

THREE

When the girls came all dolled up and i saw real genuine happiness that they had for me :')
The photographer asked us to act like we were talking and laughing, so we started shouting or yelling or talk random stuff in very loud noise hahahaha..

dang. I was the one laughing too hard. lol
Back to control 'ayu'.

FOUR
The walk in.

Dad and I were talking in great depth and praying that we forgot to cover my face with the veil! lol.. Everything still felt pretty surreal to me at that point.

FIVE
The exchange of vows and the rings covenant.

I was choking when i said mine. So overwhelmed with emotions.
Witnessed by men and God, we became one.

 

SIX
The very rowdy and loud tea ceremony - noises made by my very excited uncles and aunts lol

SEVEN

I prepared a special dedication for my parents, aimed to make them cry coz they said they wouldn't earlier. It was a song performance of 'You Raise Me Up' with a video slideshow to go with... Ended up I was sobbing, and found it difficult to sing some parts, and they of course were a bunch of mess lol

 

 

and daddy came out to hug me :')

EIGHT

Our father-daughter dance.

You know there will always be technical difficulties in important events? Ours did not escape the curse. But still, we had fun (despite several awkward pauses due to the broken music lol)

later joined by our family members

 
NINE
The HORLIAO speech from my dad

I think all of us were highly entertained and impressed by his impromptu speech!

TEN
the YUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUM-seng

At the end of the day,
No one really cares about the invitations, the colour of the napkins, the flowers etc. The people is what makes a real celebration of worth. The people who came with hearts of joy, to celebrate with us. And to all these people, we love you, and we thank you.

To our God,
once again we tasted your faithfulness and we want to glorify your name.

To my parents,
you guys are my heroes. Nuff said.

To my brothers (Joel, Joshua and Ivan),
you guys are the best. Thanks for all the behind the scenes support!

To my extended family and in laws,
your presence was very very much appreciated and thanks so much for your blessing and love gifts.

To all my friends,
i can never thank you guys enough for making my day a special one.

To my husband,
thanks for enduring everything with me, for protecting me, for encouraging me, for teaching me, for saying your vows with clarity and without any hesitation, for looking at me lovingly, for taking this great journey with me...

ps. <message for my 'facebook friends'>  for more pictures, go to my facebook :)

Review: G Hotel Sesame Restaurant Wedding Package

Continuing back from our unpleasant experience with Macalister Mansion, after long hours of browsing and comparing options, Alex and I came across G Hotel and I finally made contact with them for their wedding packages.

To our pleasant surprise, not only were their replies swift, but also very helpful. The only thing that might have caused us some inconvenience was probably the high turnover among their staff, as throughout our interaction and liaising with them between mid June till our wedding date on the 13th of December, we had different people taking over our event - to the point that out of our 3 drives up to the hotel, we were greeted by different coordinating teams/staff. Needless to say, there were some issues on the wedding day itself, but mainly to do with the rooms reservation (might blog about in the future) and also miscommunication in not providing us with the complimentary Executive Suite (which was later rectified), the food and beverage team were given strict instructions to provide the best service they could for our personal wedding. And I have to say, they went beyond our expectations and all our family and guests were really pleased with the whole run through of the event.

So let's have a look at the package we had. Keep it mind that we were only looking for a venue and package that suits a small and intimate wedding of only 60 guests. Thankfully, G Hotel recently started to introduce such packages for their Soy and Sesame Restaurant.

For their Intimate Sesame Wedding package (RM1188++ per table which equals to RM1378.08 per table), it came with

• Sumptuous supreme 9 course Chinese Set

• Free flow of Chinese tea

• Free flow of soft drinks or fruit punch

• Complimentary pre-dinner cocktail with selection of two (02) snacks

• 5-tier wedding cake for cake cutting ceremony

• Champagne fountain set-up with 2-bottles of sparkling juice for toasting

• Complimentary backdrop

• Complimentary usage of multimedia projector

• Red carpet aisle with special flower display

• Fresh flower poises on all dining tables and reception table

• Tea light candles for all dining tables

• Elegant designed set-up for bridal main table with fresh flowers

• Special chair décor for bridal main table

• Complimentary food tasting with one (01) bottle of house wine

• Complimentary wedding invitation cards

• Complimentary guest’s signature book

• Delectable Chocolate pralines to your guests as a giveaway

• Chinese red dates tea

• Complimentary usage of tea set

• A pair of Christofle chopstick

• Capturing the moment at Hotel’s premises can be arranged

• Exclusive VIP parking lot for bridal car at the Hotel façade

• One session of Danai Signature Massage

• Complimentary fitness centre membership for one month

• Complimentary dinner for 02 persons on your 1st Anniversary

• On Your Wedding Night: Complimentary One (1) luxurious night stay at Executive Suite with breakfast 

Sounded pretty good to us. So I paid the first deposit (half of the actual cost), went up to G Hotel for the food tasting with my family, Alex was able to visit the place a day before the wedding, finer details were discussed and carried out with great teamwork, and all in all, we had a beautiful time during the wedding celebration.

This is how Soy restaurant looked like.

 (photo taken from http://www.ghotel.com.my/images/gallery/dining/sesame-soy/10.jpg)

which was transformed into this for our Christian ceremony and exchange of vows

and then we moved on to Sesame Restaurant (connected to Soy) for the chinese tea ceremony and the wedding dinner~

which originally was this..

(photos taken from ghotel.com.my)

and beautifully arranged into this...

 

 

 

I would also love to have pictures of the food, but unfortunately most people might not be as unembarrassed to snap the food. Plus, service is different for the main table and the guest tables. While the guest tables were served a huge portion for 10, while a waiting staff serve them individually; at the main table, we were given and served individual portions with different presentation altogether.

So, I only have pictures of the food taken during food tasting, and also some pictures taken by my brother-in-law with his HTC One lol.

(by the way, while we expected the food to be mediocre or not as nice as the ones we had during food tasting, they surprised us with good flavours and generous portion. There were many compliments for the food served! Kudos to the chef!)

So we began our feast with

Kerabu kwei fei abalone
Vietnam prawn rolls
Baked sliced smoked duck meat
Fresh scallops with asparagus

and then came the Seafood soup of crabmeat and dry scallop with bamboo fungus (which we chose to replace the sharkfin soup)

  (it was so good, everyone thought they were having sharkfin. Very fragrant, light yet flavourful.)

The other dishes of the day were..

 

Fried prawn with cheese and garlic.

Braised sea cucumber with limpet abalone and broccoli

  

Baked cod fish in honey sauce

 Roasted duck with mini mantau

 Pineapple boat fried rice

and dessert were..

Chilled mango with pomelo (left)
Chilled honeydew melon with sago and ice cream (right)

and my uncle (the head pastry chef of shangrila kota kinabalu) also brought along his cake for me (the best cheesecake ever), and instructed the kitchen staff on how to serve us the cake lol

All in all,
I can only say that despite the whole hoohah we had with the hotel in terms of rooms reservation, we were extremely pleased with our decision to choose G Hotel's Sesame and Soy Restaurant as our wedding venue.
The pictures above (if not credited) are all taken with our personal cameras. More pictures of the wedding will be shared later on once I have the copies from our professional photographer ;)