It’s our time to shine ladies! The year that we have been waiting has finally arrived. Can you believe it? Its here! I’m excited but at the same time scared of what’s to come but I believe whatever it shall be, we shall conquer it all 🙂
Cheers 2016. Let the adventure begin!
December is practically every (if not most) bride favorite month of the year. Why? Because that’s when everything is on sale! Good bargain! Great deals everywhere! An opportunity to stock up on the gift exchange items.
I’ve made the executive decision to just outsource the service of crafting our gift trays designs to people who actually does it for a living because the thought of spending hours working on the gift trays just does not outweigh the satisfaction of the end product.
Plus, being the perfectionist I am, I already have something in mind and BAM! One vendor who have the same vision as me, is none other than …
Before we even start hunting for the items, we had to compromise on the number of trays. And end up with lucky number 5 for both.
Since it is us that will be forking out for the cost, it feels right that the parents have a lesser say in this segment because growing up with an uptight and traditional parents we’re pretty sure they would request for the girl to exchange 13 trays in return for 11 trays that the guy gave. Well, we are both against that idea. In an era where people fight for equality we felt its just unnecessary. Do you feel the same way too?
We are down to the wire! Down to the single digit!
Nine more months before we hatched ourselves a new title.
Coming back after leaving under a rock for far too long makes me feel a little bit handicap navigating back to this portal. Have I not seen the sun for that long to realized that almost a a quarter of what I’ve read on my feeds are filled with couples on their honeymoon?!
Months away from the computer have been pretty productive for the two of us.
Red: Secured | Yellow: Sourcing
Not only have we secured our major vendor, we even have time to attend for our marriage preparatory course! How productive are we!
Our view of having it done months before the wedding is simply to avoid time constraint. We didn’t want to risk squeezing a session amidst the crunch period and not having to enjoy it.
Others might view the situation differently. They prefer to have it done nearing to the big day mainly because (a) there is a slim chance of forgetting what was preached and (b) the wedding jitters gets more surreal.
Well to each his own, I suppose.
Whether it is or not a compulsory module by the marriage registrar office we personally felt compelled to recommend every Muslim couple to attend for the course.
A few takeaway which was worth sharing was went the facilitator post the class the following questions:
The fact that your actions under the covers can affect your points in hereafter never once cross my mind till that very day. Every individual chase for that ultimate dream of meeting their soulmate again in Jannah so why not for starters avoid what is prohibited in the eyes of our religion.
Well, aside from covering topics regarding halal and haram, the course also taught us to better understand how our own personality and characteristics can compliment with our spouse. There is just so much knowledge to gain within that short time frame!
What we liked about “APKIM Express – 1 Day Session”
My beau is a thrifty man. Having to spend a few hundreds to sit and listen to someone telling you how to run your marriage, is not how he would want to spend his Saturday. Though he felt that the fees were rather too steep of a price to pay, but to him it was by far was one of the best avenue the wedding deposit has been put to good use 🙂
Investment in knowledge pays the best interest.
– Abraham Lincoln –
Few names in the industry which I’m very much certain do not need much introduction to my next topic.
Just the thought of white-satin-crystal-train-lace-back-sheer-veil-mermaid-tulle-beaded-neckline… doesn’t it just make you girls drool. Its every girls’ dream to fantasize about “the dress!” The dress that will turn heads and sure to be a conversation starter.
The key to finding the right bridal boutique is to have an awesome crew to lean on and let them work their magic on you.
Our journey starts with a friendly hello via mail which landed us to their humble boutique. Most of the vendor we met were pretty down to earth except for one who made it to our naughty list. This boutique in particular stood out like a sore thumb for their hostile hospitality towards us!
Obviously, we were not impressed with how she halfhearted welcome us in. Its been bothering me thinking where did we go wrong? Have we met before? Did we step on her toes accidentally? Does our breathe stinks that we deserved such treatment?
A million and one things ran through my head. In the end, I’ve decided to conclude that perhaps its not even about us. Maybe she just had a bad day. Perhaps she woke up the wrong side of bed or maybe her eggs wasn’t served sunny side up just the way she liked it. Everyone have those days, right?
Truly, it was such a letdown to have walked out from such a prestige boutique with a frown. Each day leading to our appointment made me squeal in excitement. Who wouldn’t? Everyone have been raving about how she’s able to make you absolutely stunning, which undeniable we agree with the masses as well. But unfortunately for us we didn’t get to experience the same treatment as everyone else. To set the story straight, no, she didn’t hurled vulgarities and neither did she screamed at us to leave the premises, but we just felt that she could do more on the hospitality department.
Come, let me tell you of our account of what actually happened on the day of the appointment…
We have to admit that we were behind schedule by a mere seconds because the venue was located at Oxley and who knew such place even exist. When we set foot in her boutique, she was busy chatting away and left us hanging at the door. Well, none of which bothers us anyway. Even after they change our appointment date for the umpteen time, I was still not mad instead I felt blessed to even be in the same room and breathing the same air as her.
Once we were ushered to our seats, things escalate pretty awkwardly. Typically we would give the store owner the honor to initiate the conversation, in providing us with a brief introduction of what to expects if we were to sign up a package with them. Instead, we were accompanied by the sounds of crickets. With that, I took the opportunity to ask her the series of questions we had in mind. But what came as a shocker was how she handled answering all of our questions. It was either with a single syllabus or replied in a crude manner like; “I believe you did not do your homework and read up on the FAQ which I’ve sent to you.”
Oh no she did not just accused me, did she?! I was little agitated with her attitude. Look here lady! There is only so much FAQ sheet can cover. One could easily misinterpret what was written and thus the reason why appointments are being set up – to clear doubts, to make payment and to do fitting for bridal wears.
For the record, I even took the liberty to MEMORIZE all the 21 questions of the FAQ sheet that was handed to us as it’s only fair not to waste anyone’s time by having to repeat the same set of questions which have already been answered. Totally understand her point of view.
Furthermore, her (unwelcome) crude comments simply did not end there. When inquired about how the customized designer package works, she brushed off the question with; “do you have any designer(s) in mind” for which my answer was “none at the moment” and she continued “if none, then I’d suggest you can just skip this option.” Ouuuucccch!
She wrapped up our session with; “Oh so you came by just to interrogate me.” What a bummer to end the meetup with such a sassy response. For someone who has don the hijab you are no exception to provide a decent amount of professionalism.
I mean com’on we are first timer at this sort of stuff give us a break will ya. Our appointment lasted for “good” 10 mins. The mister shook his head in dismay and say; “don’t worry love, soon we’ll find one that you’ll be comfortable working with.” He knows how disappointed I felt about the whole incident. But everything was short lived because true to his word, that evening we had another bridal appointment and we were crossing our fingers tightly, hoping for a miracle to descend upon us and it did! We had a blast meeting with the ladies from…
We left petisolek with our belly full of laughing gas. It was truly a 360 turn around of emotion for a day of bridal-hunting-adventure. One thing for sure, you can never go wrong having to engage them to be part of your matrimonial day. We are indeed truly blessed for the day ended with a happily ever after for the two of us.
Pretty much psych up and super stoked just the thought of being married.
Typing this post up makes it even more surreal that in time to come, a brand new chapter will soon unfold.
We have been toggling with the idea of crafting our very own wedding cards for quite sometime but in the end we succumb to our laziness. Definitely, the pros of having it done ourselves is of course, we get to decide the exact color and tweaking the design to our liking. But (of course there is a “but”), you need to have the world to stop spinning before you could get some time to start crafting. Personally, we felt that its tad too time consuming (well this is basically us giving excuses). Hence, we scrap on the whole idea and opted for already made ones.
Lo and behold!
When we did start sourcing for wedding cards we were pretty impressed with the many great designs out there. Of course, beautiful designs comes with a price which I believe that if you put cost aside, impression triumph cost because the wedding cards in my opinion is the first impression that everyone would have of your wedding.
Great design cards speak volumes about your love story. Therefore, since there is a tendency for me to go over our stipulated budget, the man will always keep me grounded (because girls you have to admit that we can go out of hand with the wedding preps). He will constantly give me gentle reminders that…
– Its just a card. Why should there be a need to pay so much for a piece of paper
– At the end of the day it will just end up in the bin
And if all else fails, he will use maths to counterattack my rebuttals and add on point 1 and 2 to get his message across
– 70 cents for 1 piece of wedding card times 1200 sets for 2000 guests equals 840 dollars. Why would you want to spend it on a piece of paper when at the end of the day your card will end up in the bin.
There you have it ladies and gentleman. That’s how you win the argument!
Anyway, when it comes to wedding invites many suggested to head over to our fellow neighboring country to get it done simply for the fact that its in ringgit. If we do have the chance to cross rivers to get our cards done the only one that we would go for would definitely be…
Its just so pleasing to the eye, don’t you think so? BUT again we have to give the idea a miss.
With the new toll charges and having to hear story that you have to make 2 to 3 trips back and forth to correct the mistakes on the wedding cards its just sound so exhausting. If I have to make that many trips, I guess I’m better off investing my time crafting for my own wedding cards. Hence, we are back at our drawing board, this time round in search for local talent; who is as equally capable and talented.
We ended up engaging thekad for her services.
What we like about the vendor are the following few factors:
(1.) She resides in Singapore and lives up north near to my residence.
(2.) Charges wise its pretty decent which comes together with free color customization service.
(3.) Her designs are beyond the norm. Simple yet edgy but at the same time she’s still able to accommodate to those who still prefer the traditional designs.
(4.) A family oriented business run by the siblings.
Even though they are relatively new, with 10 years of experience in the industry but to us a family firms that remain successful tend to be the ones committed to more than just profitability. Hence, it gave us the assurance that we can put some faith and trust to them and if they do make a boo boo on our wedding cards, its not so agonizing to make a trip back and forth since she resides a stone throw away from me 🙂
Now, who say our locals does not have talent.
With that, I shall end the post with one more tick to add on to our checklist.
So before the curtain calls for twenty fourteen, we managed to clinch another deal for our wedding! One more vendor off our bucket list which means we have one less burden off our shoulder. Hooray!
While most couple took only few days to decide which kompang boys to usher the groom for their wedding it took us many many months before we decided on the one. Not because we are choosy but its due to the fact that we have not attended that many Malay wedding to know who are the good ones, the average ones or the ones to avoid.
So instead we turn to you guys, our internet friends for reviews. You guys are awesome because you have been our eyes and ears the entire time during this journey, whom we also find inspiration and steal ideas from. Haha! Thanks to you guys our efforts on finding the perfect kompang boy-band become less of a hassle. To be frank, we did not even put much effort in finding them because there were only a handful of names being circulating around the net over and over again. Since, the same name kept on appearing on many many blogs we assume that they would be good. But we do have to read up on alot and by alot I mean a truckloads of reviews before we concluded our hunt.
So our search were narrowed to four: 
So among the four big players we have decided to go for the Akrab boys!
We were introduced to Izhar, one of the representative for the group. What got us to place our deposit on the night we met him, was his humble character and his down to earth nature made us so comfortable for us to work with him. Meeting Izhar made us realized that no matter how big the Malay Community is, we are still closely knit by a common faith because he practically knew everyone that we know! Haha! Long story short, transaction made and its a done deal!
Cup-Wao-Mim-Per-Alif-Ng. Kompang! Checked!
Saying Auf Wiedersehen to twenty-fourteen brought a tinge of sadness to us as there were just too many happy memories made in a short time-frame of 365 days and having to say farewell to it, kinda bring a little swell in our little hearts.
Personally for us, we are just so impressed on the accomplishment we have made at the age of twenty-six. We are truly blessed to have given the opportunity to be able to celebrate six years of our courtship together. Though the ride was a little bit bumpy, we are just contented that we managed to pull through the obstacles together.
Some of the highlights of last year event that’s worth mentioning here, would be, having to graduate from a University of my choice. After three donkey years of slaughtering under piles and piles of notes, essays, projects and datelines, Alhamdulillah, I overcome it all. The sweet boy of mine was there throughout the entire time; witnessing the screams and cries, checking out for my grammars and plagiarize sentences, staying up late with me and knocking at my front door in the middle of the night just to surprise me with a tub of ice-cream. He may not be the most expressive sort of person to say “Hey honey, here’s an ice-cream to distress. Take a breather, you deserve a break” but he sure know how to pull the right strings to my heart, even if it means “Nah, ice-cream for you!” Hahaha.
Soon after graduation was over, lady luck rang me up over the phone and offered me a job. A job neatly packaged with an awesome monthly salary, fantastic benefits and the most friendliest colleagues to work with. Going to work never felt like a breeze for me. The fact that work is located near our future home make everything seem so sweetttttt.
As the year draws to an end, more surprises and good news popped like mushroom on steroids. For which we are forever indebted and grateful for HIS blessing. We couldn’t help but felt a sense of gratitude for everything that HE has done and about to plan for us because we knew and trust that what HE has laid out for us is for the best and that whatever HE does I’m sure will work out pretty well. With that said, here are some of the memories that we have built together that not only consist of life-changing events but also memories that is simply worth reminisce, such as:
– surprise proposal to Maldives (which is worth mentioning for the umpteen times!)
– making our relationship officials in the eyes of our old folks and relatives
– news from HDB that we are now officially owners of a flat in Buangkok
– news from school to announce that the boy will be graduating with honors
– learnt the hard way that you cant apply the technic of steering a bus to riding a horse
– learnt that its impossible to find a hair clip with your snorkeling gear
– discovered that when hunting for mattress you are encourage to lay down and try on the bed
– meeting up close with Mufti Menk
– having to swallow my first (and last!) sushi
Everyday for us has been adventure of new discovery. There is a saying that goes like this; “Perceive life just like a book; where you don’t jump to the end to see if it’s worth it but instead enjoy life and fill the pages with amazing memories.” Today is the first blank page of my 365 page book and on the very first line of my page this is what I scribble on it…
“I’m getting married next next year!”
Since I have some time to kill, I’ve decided to do myself a favor and create a checklist so that the both of us do not veer off course with the wedding prep mayhem. Following closely to “Hitched” wedding planning itinerary I’ve decided to recreate a similar version for a malay wedding which I’m hoping might be potentially useful to some of you out there.
Do leave us a thumbs up or your comment(s) if you think I might have missed out something from the list. Some of the icon serves various purposes of which I’ve explained in detail on the “to-do” tab.
Till next time.
After a few rounds of batting eyelashes, pouting lips and stomping of feet, the mister finally succumb to the request of his missus; which is to put our initial plans of finding the perfect venue on hold (which we still strongly feel that we should find a venue first as it provide us with some sense of check and balance that keep us grounded of what we need to do systematically). Oh well…
Since our last post on wedding preps, we were busy getting quotes from different vendors with regards to photography and videography. And we are happy to say that we have finally ended our search. Yeayyyy!
We went through a whole list of vendor and scrutinizing their work before narrowing our search to our favorite two. Credibility, workmanship and working around our budget were key to our search. We start off this journey with zero knowledge about anything. We went in with the mentality that it will only burn us a few hundred bucks on our pockets, at most a thousand buck. Reality kick us hard on our behind when we first received our first quotation.
Some were even charging exorbitant price for a day’s event which totally doesn’t make any sense at all. Indeed its true when they say the price of wedding nowadays is not cheap at all! Hence, we had to switch gear and look for packages that was worth our purchase while at the same time not jeopardizing the quality of the end product. So here are some of the vendors that make it to santa’s good list:
Com’on! Tell me what’s there not to love about every single one of those pictures.
Trust me, we sure did had a hard time narrowing our choices. It took us weeks before we made our finalized decision. With this we can officially say that we are can checked 2 tasks off our checklist. So which of the two vendors that were picked. *drum rolls please*
We are pleased to inform that we have entrusted the responsibility of capturing our happy moments of our big day to Bliss & Videosmith. These two boys and their big guns will be the reason of our smiles when we reminisce back to 20082016 someday.
Much Love,
From One Veryyy Contented Bride
Source: Hitched
Boy O’ Boy! Its already November!
I’m having the worst wedding jitters and panic attacks ever! Even though our wedding is a year and nine months away! Oh! Have I mentioned that we somehow have decided on the official wedding date? The date that we have chosen is significant to us as we will be celebrating our 100 months of courtship with our friends and family! We are looking at twenty-oh-eight-twenty-sixteen! Keeping my fingers cross that everything will, Insya’allah go smooth sailing for both the ceremony as well as the planning. Amin!
Back to the story, the reason why I’m having the jitters and attacks are partly due to the fact that twenty-sixteen brides-to-be are really hardcore and stepping up the game! Most of them have already secure their vendors and I have yet to secure even one yet! Booohoo! Slow down your horses ladies!
But I do know where they are coming from. By securing the major vendors they would just then have to concentrate on the nitty gritty stuff come 2015. We on the other hand are still stuck at deciding on the venue. Both of us believe that without the venue, it is as good as no wedding. So, earlier this morning, I was chatting with the Mister to ask if I am a horrible bride because I’m being difficult at deciding on our wedding venue. Its hard finding a venue that can fit and feed 2000++ guest comfortably.
For the whole month of October, is not that we have left the blog in the state of idle for no apparent reason, but because we have been busy sourcing, asking and sending emails for quotations from numerous potential venues in hope that the place that we have shortlisted as “the one” will be able to cater to such a huge crowd and at the same time does not jeopardize the theme that we had in mind. I’m giving myself an ultimatum to decide on the venue till the end of December. The reason for the hold up is simply because one of the wedding venue that we are looking at is currently under renovation and will only open their doors to the public in early 2015, their revised rates however are only release late next month. Rarrr! The waiting game is such an agonizing ordeal!
Here’s the thing, I’m a perfectionist at what I do and hence you can say that maybe just a tad OCD in making sure that I execute it well especially the fine details of my big day. The boy on the other hand is the practical sort.
Since the wedding flutters is getting on my nerves, I had to forgo my mantra on wedding venue being the priority and try to convince him that we should at least start to book the video/photographer which does not correlates with the wedding venue, decor or the caterer… well I’ll update you guys on the next blog if I’m able to convince him successfully.
XX,
Bridezilla
I'm the nicest rude person you'll ever meet.
by AppleLove
Sitting on the fence of stars
Towards forever.
by Ameerah Sarpari
Journey to becoming Mrs SB ♥
#aaweddingstory
#fazlyzawedding
Two souls but a single thought, Two hearts that beat as one.
16.1.16
.. for beauty is found within
together since 071110 // engaged since 271214
∞
Like Finally It Happens......
love life
Live every moment. Laugh everyday. Love beyond words
Behind the scenes of A Bride
Our 7th year mission
True love stories never have endings, it goes on
#SYAxFIRweds
est. 2009
a journey that doesn't rhymes
-"you don't have to like it, you just have to do it."
When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with a person, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.
14.01.2017
Bittersweet tales of a bride-to-be
no one is you & that is power
"We accept the love we think we deserve."
planned a wedding, happily married and becoming parents.
Sometimes silence says a thousand words
with god's grace
“Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s unbecoming everything that isn’t you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place."
Kepak.B.Bing 
