So, this is it. We are now just 3 days away from the Big Day and I'm having mixed feelings. In the sense that I'm really looking forward to it, yet I don't want the day to come so soon cos I'm afraid the day will pass by too quickly. :x The going-to-be-a-Mrs feeling is rather surreal now. Nonetheless, I'm sure the day's gonna be a fab one. :)
KU and I spent the past weekend working on the backdrop for our church wedding. Thank God I had KU to help me cut out the letters from the styrofoam board and he even sewed them onto the tulle using fishing line.
On Monday, I met up with SST, Marie and Joyce to go through the programme for the wedding day and their duties over dinner. On a sidenote, I'm really loving the fish masala garam crepe from Out Of The Pan at Raffles City Shopping Centre! Loads of kick in the spices and the fish meat was quite fresh - no wonder it's a chef's recommendation. Plus, the DBS/POSB card promotion (1-for-1 main course and sweet crepes) got each of us our meal at only $9! Ahem.. Anyways, it was great meeting with them and feeling excited about the wedding. :) Thank God for the help of my bridesmaids!
Then yesterday, we had our wedding rehearsal in church. I'm extremely thankful to have the support of the musicians and worship leader who arrived early to practice Canon in D for our processional and the two worship songs. It's really important to me that we have close friends to help us on our wedding day as it's a really meaningful way to share the day together. (though said friends may or may not agree with me. HAHA!) I'm glad too to have my dearest sister on first key and bridesmaid Joyce on second key. :)
The march-in practice was rather nerve-wracking cos I had to keep reminding myself not to walk too quickly. Dad even had to mutter to me, "Left, right, left, right.." while staring down at our feet. Too hilarious! :P And just seeing KU waiting for me at the end of the aisle, while the band played beautifully, almost made me tear. I have a feeling I will cry on our wedding day! Then we worked out the standing/sitting/kneeling segments, and practiced our vows. During this whole time, Andrew, Ron, Joshua and Regina were hard at work putting up our backdrop for us. :) And we are really really REALLY thankful for everyone who came down to help us and be there for us yesterday.
I said before that the wedding has taught me some lessons and has showed me how blessed we are to have all these friends come together to support us for our special day. And this, we can't thank God enough for His grace and love for us. :) Thank you, dear friends, from the bottom of our hearts. We hope that we can one day bless you and others in the same way you have blessed us. :) *million hugs*
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Marriage Prep + Arabic 101
Last night, KU and I had round two of our mentoring session with Uncle WM and Aunty Kat, and I gotta say that I do look forward to these sessions cos they comprise great advice from our mentors and good food! :P Yesterday's topic was on money, a topic which I've always had a problem grasping. :x I love love LOVE shopping and my family and friends can attest to that. Sometimes I love shopping so much that I think I need to seek medical help about my condition - it's that serious!
But I digress. We talked about our perspectives towards money and did a quiz about how we view money and thank God we were on the same page about it. :) The quiz asked questions like "You look up to people who are financially successful", "You really enjoy spending money on yourself and others" etc, and we had to give each statement a score of 1 to 5, with 1 being strongly disagree, 2 being disagree, 3 being unsure, 4 being agree and 5 being strongly agree. Then Aunty Kat asked us why we scored some questions in a certain way and we really went into details of our thoughts.
After going through the quiz, we went through our monthly budget before marriage and after marriage. I totally suck at planning my own finances and yesterday proved it. :x I don't know how, but our combined budget for after marriage gave us a $300 deficit in our accounts. :( So we either gotta redo the numbers or find the $300 from somewhere else. The budgetting also made me realise that I really had it good as a single living with my parents (and still having it til end of the month) - no worries about paying for utilities, housing, conservancy fees, no worries about doing housework - and it also made me realise that I need to start appreciating them more!
Further to this, Uncle WM and Aunty Kat advised that we need to discuss and decide how the financial responsibilities are going to be like even before entering into marriage cos then we ensure that we are on the same page and it will lessen the probability of us quarreling about money. But above this, this sentence struck a chord deep in me: "Never give up dating." After the wedding, many things can and will come in to crowd our lives as husband and wife, and to remain strong in our relationship, we need to always communicate, understand each other's views, be on the same page as far as possible, and keep the romance alive by dating each other. I guess so far we are very appreciative of one another and we try not to take each other for granted, no matter how small the gestures or things we do for each other. Even though I'm rather stressed out about our wedding, I'm still in a state of bliss cos I know deep down that I'm marrying the perfect guy for me and I can't thank God enough for blessing me with KU. :) And I pray that I will feel the same way about him and hopefully feels this way about me 5, 10, 20 years down the road. :) So, T-18. I'm crossing out the dates on the calendar every day. :D
******************************
Today, our HR organised a culture awareness talk on Arabs and Oman for us to get to know our Omani customers better! Our company had recently won a massive (by our terms) contract from Oman and we'll need to interact with them quite regularly for the next couple of years, hence the need to know about their culture.
The talk was boring at the start, but towards the end of the session, our mudaris (that's 'teacher' in Arab) taught us simple Arabic words which we can use to communicate with our customers. By the end of the entire talk, my head was swimming with so much knowledge, but I couldn't remember anything except that 'thank you' is shukran in Arabic. :x
This is strange, but when I was in the shower just now after my gym session, I was remembering some random Arabic words which we learnt this afternoon. So, feeling rather impressed with myself (HAHA), I'm going to show off some stuff here. :D And I'm not cheating, cos I left my list of Arabic words in the office, so yes, I'm impressive after all. *pats self on back* :P
Thank you -> shukran (pronounced shu-ker-ren)
Five -> khamsa
Fifty -> khamsiin
Three -> thalaatha (pronounced sa-la-sa)
Excuse me/pardon/sorry/don't mention it -> xafwan (pronounced ah-fwan)
Hello -> ah-sa-lam-ah-lee-kom
How are you -> kah-ee-fa anta (for guys); antee (for girls)
I don't understand -> anaa la afhan
Goodbye -> maa selamaa
June -> yunya (pronounced you-new)
July -> yulya (pronounced you-lew)
Teacher -> mudaris
And that's all I can remember. Going to learn more tomorrow. Who knew learning a new language could be so fun! :D
But I digress. We talked about our perspectives towards money and did a quiz about how we view money and thank God we were on the same page about it. :) The quiz asked questions like "You look up to people who are financially successful", "You really enjoy spending money on yourself and others" etc, and we had to give each statement a score of 1 to 5, with 1 being strongly disagree, 2 being disagree, 3 being unsure, 4 being agree and 5 being strongly agree. Then Aunty Kat asked us why we scored some questions in a certain way and we really went into details of our thoughts.
After going through the quiz, we went through our monthly budget before marriage and after marriage. I totally suck at planning my own finances and yesterday proved it. :x I don't know how, but our combined budget for after marriage gave us a $300 deficit in our accounts. :( So we either gotta redo the numbers or find the $300 from somewhere else. The budgetting also made me realise that I really had it good as a single living with my parents (and still having it til end of the month) - no worries about paying for utilities, housing, conservancy fees, no worries about doing housework - and it also made me realise that I need to start appreciating them more!
Further to this, Uncle WM and Aunty Kat advised that we need to discuss and decide how the financial responsibilities are going to be like even before entering into marriage cos then we ensure that we are on the same page and it will lessen the probability of us quarreling about money. But above this, this sentence struck a chord deep in me: "Never give up dating." After the wedding, many things can and will come in to crowd our lives as husband and wife, and to remain strong in our relationship, we need to always communicate, understand each other's views, be on the same page as far as possible, and keep the romance alive by dating each other. I guess so far we are very appreciative of one another and we try not to take each other for granted, no matter how small the gestures or things we do for each other. Even though I'm rather stressed out about our wedding, I'm still in a state of bliss cos I know deep down that I'm marrying the perfect guy for me and I can't thank God enough for blessing me with KU. :) And I pray that I will feel the same way about him and hopefully feels this way about me 5, 10, 20 years down the road. :) So, T-18. I'm crossing out the dates on the calendar every day. :D
******************************
Today, our HR organised a culture awareness talk on Arabs and Oman for us to get to know our Omani customers better! Our company had recently won a massive (by our terms) contract from Oman and we'll need to interact with them quite regularly for the next couple of years, hence the need to know about their culture.
The talk was boring at the start, but towards the end of the session, our mudaris (that's 'teacher' in Arab) taught us simple Arabic words which we can use to communicate with our customers. By the end of the entire talk, my head was swimming with so much knowledge, but I couldn't remember anything except that 'thank you' is shukran in Arabic. :x
This is strange, but when I was in the shower just now after my gym session, I was remembering some random Arabic words which we learnt this afternoon. So, feeling rather impressed with myself (HAHA), I'm going to show off some stuff here. :D And I'm not cheating, cos I left my list of Arabic words in the office, so yes, I'm impressive after all. *pats self on back* :P
Thank you -> shukran (pronounced shu-ker-ren)
Five -> khamsa
Fifty -> khamsiin
Three -> thalaatha (pronounced sa-la-sa)
Excuse me/pardon/sorry/don't mention it -> xafwan (pronounced ah-fwan)
Hello -> ah-sa-lam-ah-lee-kom
How are you -> kah-ee-fa anta (for guys); antee (for girls)
I don't understand -> anaa la afhan
Goodbye -> maa selamaa
June -> yunya (pronounced you-new)
July -> yulya (pronounced you-lew)
Teacher -> mudaris
And that's all I can remember. Going to learn more tomorrow. Who knew learning a new language could be so fun! :D
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Painful
For the first time in a long while I feel utterly and completely alone in my pain. I can't even begin to describe how I feel.
The only thing I take solace in now is that Aunty Shirley's condition has (thank God!!) improved tremendously and visiting her is a much more joyful affair as compared to before. That, and the fact that I've lost weight - previously used to be able to wear only L and XL sizes for bYSI clothes, and now I'm an M-size, and the occasional S when the cutting's slightly bigger.
Sounds frivolous, yes, but if these are the only things that make me happy now, then I'll take whatever I can get thank you.
The only thing I take solace in now is that Aunty Shirley's condition has (thank God!!) improved tremendously and visiting her is a much more joyful affair as compared to before. That, and the fact that I've lost weight - previously used to be able to wear only L and XL sizes for bYSI clothes, and now I'm an M-size, and the occasional S when the cutting's slightly bigger.
Sounds frivolous, yes, but if these are the only things that make me happy now, then I'll take whatever I can get thank you.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
The Wedding Prep Chronicles
The wedding is just slightly more than a month away and I realised that I've not immortalised the wedding prep process in any way! O.O I mean, my wedding will happen only once in my life, and I really don't want to look back on 2012 when I'm 60 years old and think, "What did we do for our wedding?" Such things are nice to reminisce about with your spouse when you reach that age, aren't they? :)
So, KU and I are extremely blessed to have Josh & Regina be our church wedding coordinators cos honestly, they are two of the most organised people I know and I know our church wedding is in good hands! We had our first meet up with them in March/April to go through our rough programme for the first half of the day, and boy, were we overwhelmed. I seriously felt abit demoralised at the end of our almost 4-hour long discussion cos there were so many things to do and so many details to see to which we've never considered before. :( So we went back, looked through our scribblings and worked intermittently on them. Unfortunately, I'm ashamed to say that we weren't very diligent about it though. :(
Our second meeting which took place 2 weeks ago went slightly better, even though I forgot to bring all our wedding materials. *sheepish* Thank God my super organised fiance had his wedding folder with him! By then, more details had been addressed - for example, I had my full band in place, and the caterer was booked (though in the end we decided to look for more catering options). I very thick-skinnedly asked Josh & Regina if they could settle the RSVP of our church friends for us and they very kindly agreed. And with that, I felt a lot better. I guess my biggest concern (and hence, headache) was the RSVP of the guests and cos our church guests formed the bulk of our guestlist, having the RSVPs taken from us was a real relief. I was a lot more diligent this time - I've revised the programme further, created the contact list of helpers (both categorised by duties and by surnames) and updated the RSVP list with contact numbers. *proud smile* The only thing left to do is to email the documents to Josh & Regina!
Then recently, KU and I went down to our hotel to meet with our coordinator to talk about our feedback for the food-tasting session. Sidetracking abit, I'm sure our guests will enjoy the food cos the seafood was fresh, the portions were huge (coordinator said the actual day's portion would be the same) and the food was really generally delicious. From the bottom of my heart, we have no regrets booking this hotel for our banquet! :) Anyways, we also chose our wedding theme, table linens and wedding favours. The whole experience was a rather exciting one for me. Our coordinator brought us to this room which had all the available wedding favours, guestbooks, angpow boxes, table linens and fake wedding cakes on display. I went crazy looking at the shelves of wedding favours and I think we chose really interesting and cute wedding favours for our guests! Can't wait for everyone to see them. :) I think it was on that day when I really felt the excitement for our wedding. :P
Then just this evening, KU and I met up with Rev Ong and Rev Luke to discuss our church wedding programme. It was helpful to have this meet up to get to know Rev Luke, who will be marrying us, and to get feedback from both pastors about our wedding programme.
And the thing I'm currently most excited about is my hen night! *beams x 10000000000000000* Supposedly it will be happening real soon and it's gonna be a full day thing, so yes, I'm super super super excited and totally looking forward to it! :)
Time's passing really quickly now that I'm counting down to the actual day. There are many more things to be done, but I don't feel as stressed as before. I'm just trying to delegate the tasks so that there's minimal stuff for us to worry about. Hehehe.. :P On a serious note, KU and I are extremely grateful to God for blessing us with wonderful friends who have volunteered to help us prepare for our wedding and to be on duty on our wedding day. I promise we will return the favour in any way we can. :) Thank you all from the bottom of our hearts.
And I know this is mushy and all, but I simply can't wait to get married to KU and start our new lives together. As cliched as it sounds, I wanna grow old with him. Whenever we hang out with more matured, married couples and I see the loving looks they give each other, I just feel this sense of bliss on their behalves and I pray that we will be like them in future too.
So, KU and I are extremely blessed to have Josh & Regina be our church wedding coordinators cos honestly, they are two of the most organised people I know and I know our church wedding is in good hands! We had our first meet up with them in March/April to go through our rough programme for the first half of the day, and boy, were we overwhelmed. I seriously felt abit demoralised at the end of our almost 4-hour long discussion cos there were so many things to do and so many details to see to which we've never considered before. :( So we went back, looked through our scribblings and worked intermittently on them. Unfortunately, I'm ashamed to say that we weren't very diligent about it though. :(
Our second meeting which took place 2 weeks ago went slightly better, even though I forgot to bring all our wedding materials. *sheepish* Thank God my super organised fiance had his wedding folder with him! By then, more details had been addressed - for example, I had my full band in place, and the caterer was booked (though in the end we decided to look for more catering options). I very thick-skinnedly asked Josh & Regina if they could settle the RSVP of our church friends for us and they very kindly agreed. And with that, I felt a lot better. I guess my biggest concern (and hence, headache) was the RSVP of the guests and cos our church guests formed the bulk of our guestlist, having the RSVPs taken from us was a real relief. I was a lot more diligent this time - I've revised the programme further, created the contact list of helpers (both categorised by duties and by surnames) and updated the RSVP list with contact numbers. *proud smile* The only thing left to do is to email the documents to Josh & Regina!
Then recently, KU and I went down to our hotel to meet with our coordinator to talk about our feedback for the food-tasting session. Sidetracking abit, I'm sure our guests will enjoy the food cos the seafood was fresh, the portions were huge (coordinator said the actual day's portion would be the same) and the food was really generally delicious. From the bottom of my heart, we have no regrets booking this hotel for our banquet! :) Anyways, we also chose our wedding theme, table linens and wedding favours. The whole experience was a rather exciting one for me. Our coordinator brought us to this room which had all the available wedding favours, guestbooks, angpow boxes, table linens and fake wedding cakes on display. I went crazy looking at the shelves of wedding favours and I think we chose really interesting and cute wedding favours for our guests! Can't wait for everyone to see them. :) I think it was on that day when I really felt the excitement for our wedding. :P
Then just this evening, KU and I met up with Rev Ong and Rev Luke to discuss our church wedding programme. It was helpful to have this meet up to get to know Rev Luke, who will be marrying us, and to get feedback from both pastors about our wedding programme.
And the thing I'm currently most excited about is my hen night! *beams x 10000000000000000* Supposedly it will be happening real soon and it's gonna be a full day thing, so yes, I'm super super super excited and totally looking forward to it! :)
Time's passing really quickly now that I'm counting down to the actual day. There are many more things to be done, but I don't feel as stressed as before. I'm just trying to delegate the tasks so that there's minimal stuff for us to worry about. Hehehe.. :P On a serious note, KU and I are extremely grateful to God for blessing us with wonderful friends who have volunteered to help us prepare for our wedding and to be on duty on our wedding day. I promise we will return the favour in any way we can. :) Thank you all from the bottom of our hearts.
And I know this is mushy and all, but I simply can't wait to get married to KU and start our new lives together. As cliched as it sounds, I wanna grow old with him. Whenever we hang out with more matured, married couples and I see the loving looks they give each other, I just feel this sense of bliss on their behalves and I pray that we will be like them in future too.
Saturday, May 19, 2012
There is hope and despair
So I've started counting down to KU and my wedding cos it's only 1.5 months away. There's quite a few things left undone or half done which I will address closer to the date. :x
This should be a happy time for me I guess cos I'll be embarking on a new life with the love of my life, but I have another loved one who is not well, and I really don't feel like celebrating our wedding. I mean, of course I still want to get married but in my fantasy wedding, I have every single member of my family with me, and now that fantasy seems rather far away.
My aunty has been in and out of the hospital for the past month and a half and her condition doesn't seem to be improving. On some days, reports on her condition are good, on other days, the reports leave much to be desired.
We went down to see her on Wednesday and her helper told us that she cried quite abit during the day. My aunty asked to see our wedding invitation and I showed her our church wedding invite. While holding it, she read out the words on the invite. The most heartwrenching part was when she started weeping and she told me, "I may not be able to see it." And it really did break my heart at that thought, cos honestly, part of me was afraid that it would be true. All we could do was comfort her, but our attempts sound hollow to me cos she's the one who is suffering the most, and who are we to say "No lah, you'll be fine?" But comforting words are all we can offer right now, no matter how feeble they sound. We can't even give her a hug like we used to, cos she's hooked up to machines and in pain most of the time.
So for now, we can only keep praying to God for mercy upon her. And to spend as much time as we can with her so that she knows that she's not alone - her family and friends love her. Very very much.
This should be a happy time for me I guess cos I'll be embarking on a new life with the love of my life, but I have another loved one who is not well, and I really don't feel like celebrating our wedding. I mean, of course I still want to get married but in my fantasy wedding, I have every single member of my family with me, and now that fantasy seems rather far away.
My aunty has been in and out of the hospital for the past month and a half and her condition doesn't seem to be improving. On some days, reports on her condition are good, on other days, the reports leave much to be desired.
We went down to see her on Wednesday and her helper told us that she cried quite abit during the day. My aunty asked to see our wedding invitation and I showed her our church wedding invite. While holding it, she read out the words on the invite. The most heartwrenching part was when she started weeping and she told me, "I may not be able to see it." And it really did break my heart at that thought, cos honestly, part of me was afraid that it would be true. All we could do was comfort her, but our attempts sound hollow to me cos she's the one who is suffering the most, and who are we to say "No lah, you'll be fine?" But comforting words are all we can offer right now, no matter how feeble they sound. We can't even give her a hug like we used to, cos she's hooked up to machines and in pain most of the time.
So for now, we can only keep praying to God for mercy upon her. And to spend as much time as we can with her so that she knows that she's not alone - her family and friends love her. Very very much.
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