Thank our Lord – Perfect Photoshoot day!

FB status update: Carpe Diem thanks everyone who had prayed for our smooth photoshoot yesterday. The weather was perfect for our photoshoot yesterday and our chemistry with the photographer and make-up artist was good!

Note to all couples-to-be: Never ever book your gown selection date just a week (or even less!) before the photoshoot day.  For us, understanding the requirements from the MUA and of the gowns from trying them the previous week led to a mad buying spree rush during this week.  Try not to subject yourselves to that kind of stress (and extra charges from our vendors who had to rush the production of stuff required)!

I woke up at 5:30a.m (My SO was awake from 4:30a.m!) from the excitement of the day and was unable to sleep again until my alarm rang at 7a.m.  Thank God for my dear mom who had the foresight that we probably wouldn’t really have a good lunch and so prepared a good breakfast for us.  Yumz!  Because we had already packed the stuff required for the previous day, we simply throw in stuff that was neglected the previous day and reached our bridal studio at aound the agreed time of 9:30a.m.

My SO’s very good friend came on time as promised and he brought hot drinks for us!  What a wonderful, wonderful friend.  Thanks Steve!

Our responsible make-up artist (MUA) Joann (P.S: Pls call her directly and do not contact her at her e-mail address.  She’s unable to access her e-mail at this point!) was already there.  It was comforting to see her there before us. She started on my SO first before I went into the makeup room wearing a button shirt (Very important step for all brides putting on your makeups before putting on your gowns!  You don’t want to muss your hair) 

I asked for her plan of the look she was planning for me for the day.  After a little bit of negotiation, she got started.  Friendly and chatty, her deft fingers put on our makeup fast as we chat.  Before I know it, she had given me an updo, part of a princess look (complete with tiara and elbow-length veil) which matched my photoshoot gown.  I couldn’t quite believe my eyes when she was done.  I was transformed! I can’t believe how gorgeous I look!  (Hehe, my skin is very thick hor…)

We set off at 11a.m and as we drove, our moods got as grey as the storm clouds which gathered above.  In a very short while, it drizzled before it became a storm.  As we cruise along Thomson Road we saw pedestrians hurrying along the roads as they try to rush their way out of the rainfall.  Our moods got to an all-time low and I could sense my SO feeling really lousy driving in front.  We decided to continue driving to our photoshoot location to Upper Pierce/Upper Seletar Reservoir before making a decision when we’ve reached.  I prayed silently to our Lord who is also the authority over nature to give us good weather while Steve prayed audibly.  I also quietly discussed with Steve at the back for alternative photoshoot venues. 

Miracle of miracles, as we neared the Casuarina Prata area, the rain petered down to a drizzle.  Winding down the curved pathways of the road, the period of the rainfall slowed  until it stopped completely just before we got into the carpark.

Many lovely lovely photos were taken for 2 hrs or so until we leave and break for lunch.  My SO suggested going to the cafe where his mother worked to eat.  Steve, Ah Kok, our photographer (who is nice, amicable and very encouraging during the photoshoot.  The photos he was showing me from the camera seemed to be nice.  I highly recommend his services!) and I went in and I waved enthusiastically at auntie (my SO’s mother), she looked really blur for a moment and then suddenly broke into laughter when she was able to recognise me.  I must look really different!

After lunch, we went to French Bridal where we changed into our evening gowns.  The rain poured during then even till the time we were going to the 2nd location for our photoshoot.  Very thankfully, this location is an indoor location so between phototaking, we were peering through the window to see pedestrians hurrying by with their varied umbrellas in the downpour. 

Thanks be to God for perfectly scheduling our photoshoot so that it is not affected by the thunderstorms for the day!

The rain stopped and did not start for the day when we were making our way to the bridal studio to change our makeup.  To cap it all, our last photoshoot at Changi Village Boardwalk caught some vestiges of the sunset…. lovely and nice! I can’t wait to see the photos!

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Carpe Diem prays for good weather on Friday!

(to add… and a smooth phototaking process with lots of nice photos!)

Update: 18th Nov: It rained between 2:45p.m – 4p.m today.  Hopeful it will at most rain like this on Fri!

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Carpe Diem’s keeping her fingers crossed that the unsuitability of current bridal trend for her will really be a blessing in disguise

Gowns Selection

Things to prepare:

• Camera (They will allow photograph of gowns that you have confirmed ONLY)
• Comfortable footwear to kick back and relax (They have heels of an appropriate height which we can put on to see how the gown will look on us with heels on.)
• Arrangement of chit chat with photographer to discuss programme for the day
• Arrangement of trial makeup with makeup artist so that she knows what the bride looks like and is able to give her advise/opinion of what the bride needs to prepare for the wedding photoshoot!

I started this day with mixed feelings.  Partly because I did not exactly have a positive experience with them the first time and being concerned that they may not have gowns that would bring out the positives in my skinny frame.  At the same time, there is the gnawing hope to be a good-looking bride on my big day.

I brought my netbook (which contain photographs of designs of gowns that had caught my fancy), a button down shirt (because I thought the trial makeup is a full bridal makeup and I thought I may want the make up artist to match the makeup with my clothes.)

There was a little misunderstanding in the beginning but we proceed to the changing room soon.  As I had feared, the trend for bridal wear nowadays does not suit my frame totally.    The first wedding gown barely suit me, the second gown looked like it is wearing me.  Only after rummaging a long time in the back room was the staff able to find 2 gowns that suit me.  Surprisingly, the gown that had not yet been worn by any bride was the gown that suit me the most.  Wow, wow, what a blessing in disguise!

We then went on to my evening gown.  The first 2 gowns had designs that suit me, but their colours were very bland.  After trying a couple more, the 3rd gown appeared to be the one that suited me the most.  Everyone there (and what alot of everyones) agreed on this one.

After the gowns for my actual day were decided, it was time to look for gowns for my photoshoot.  The co-ordinator suggested that I go for gowns that are different in look, a suggestion which we decided to go for.  After all, freshness is the key!

In the end, it turned out that having a body frame that bucked the trend is a blessing in disguise.  It may be the reason why I got the gowns which are not frequently worn by other users and reduce the amount of time I take to select my gowns as there are limited numbers of them available.

With the gowns selected, my to do list had grown!

• Get wedding shoes (at least those that are suitable for my photoshoot)
• Buy…. (that’s for me to know!)
• Wear comfortable shoes
• Bring a button down shirt

Whee! I can’t wait for my photoshoot next week!  Pray for good weather and nicely altered clothes!

I must say that I had a more pleasant time this time round than the previous time when we talked with them.  The staff Pei Si was very patient, and she was accommodating in bringing gowns according to our requests.  She also gave opinions of what she thinks suit me and to find gowns that match these requirements.  Grateful for her advise today.  I hope the good working attitude does not just come from us having to make an additional 30% instalment payment towards our package on this day.

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Carpe Diem suggests for couples-to-be intending to host less than 30 tables to take a look at Megu at Singapore Flyer. Many interesting choices of wedding decoration colours and ideas, good food and a team who appears interested in making the wedding event a memorable one. Kudos so far!

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Carpe Diem is annoyed she’s growing skinnier and skinnier. How can she fill out her gown?

Megu’s Wedding Fair

The event was supposed to start at 7p.m but we were there very very late.  Mainly because I was so tired after a day of my master’s course, partly because a vehicle was blocking the lane to the flyer’s entrance when trying to remove decorations from the trees outside…. grrr…  As a result, we missed their set up suitable for outdoor weddings.  So disappointing

However, we were delighted by the new colour themes they have introduced through this wedding show.  My SO and myself have kind of made the choice of the colour theme we want as a result of attending the wedding fair. 

We were also pleasantly surprised on being seated, to be served a full course of western set dinner.  It appears that they are big on promoting their Western Set Menu for weddings.  The food was very yummy.  Such a pity though that the option of serving a Western banquet is not open to us..

The biggest surprise of all was talking with Pauline Parry, the main invited speaker for the event and who runs a business, Good Gracious! Events doing event and wedding planning in the US.  Because of our extreme tardiness, we had missed the talk, but the MC for the evening gamely introduced her to us.  We were pleasantly surprised to hear that the Megu team had just undergone training with her on what it means to plan and organise wedding events and parties.  The MC was also passionately sharing on what it means to give people the wedding day of their lives and we just feel like we will be well taken care of by their team. 

In our nice chat with Pauline, she had opened my mind and changed my mindset on what it means to host a wedding dinner.  Given our character, I believe most of the plans we’re thinking of for our day will be really conservative, but I’m getting excited to know how it pans out.

What a fruitful trip.  The introduction of colour schemes and decoration ideas as well as chit-chat with Pauline Parry had really been an eye-opener.  I’m starting to look forward to our wedding day!

Exploring home furnishings

We had taken leave for the day so that we can take some time off work to simply spend time resting or looking after ourselves, as opposed to taking care of affairs of our work.

As we waited for his car to be fitted with new brake pad, we popped by the nearby Ikea and decided to just walk around to just see-see-look-look.

Inevitably, we started to discuss the furnishings that should adorn our future home and this is when we realise our preferences are really different.

My SO would want to avoid heat while I cannot stand the cold.  He wants the extra room to be furnished as a multi-media entertainment room while I prefer it be outfitted as a quiet room for reading and relaxing of the mind.  My SO also likes resort-like wooden type of furniture while I prefer malleable leather which still provides firm (not hard) support.  We could not reach an agreement over a thing as simple as an office chair for our future work desk.

My sense on moving forward is that I will probably be the shopper for items in our new home.  But dear God, I need help – like lots and lots of creativity and home furnishing magazines in order to cater to both our very different needs!

Response after watching Battlestar Galactica: Razor

Battlestar Galactica is a story of a military ship which had miraculously survived after an enemy race had destroyed their entire star system leaving only them, led by Commander (and only much later in the episodes promoted to Admiral) Adama, and only a whole fleet of survivors who are on their way to find a habitable planet – earth.

Along the way, they miraculously came across another battlestar which had survived, Battlestar Pegasus led by Admiral Cain.  And with their meetings, it showed how these 2 ships had differed in their belief systems which had led to 2 fundamentally different ways of organising their ships.

1 example in point, the crew of both military ships had reunited joyously, they were happy to find other comrades who had also miraculously survived.  And as the joy of the initial reunion gave way to bonding sessions, that’s when the differences surface.

Both ships contain a prisoner from the enemy race.  While the crew of Pegasus talked crudely and nonchalently of how they had raped their prisoner, Galactica’s crew were shocked and 2 of their female crew members walked off in revulsion.

Another example could be seen in their treatment of civilian ships – while Galactica took under their care the majority of civilian ships they had come across (except with a minority which had to be abandoned as they lack key components that would undermine the whole fleet’s movement and potential escape from enemies through space), Pegasus simply stormed the civilian ships, grabbed the talents (threatening to and actually) killing some of their family if they do not comply, all the parts of the ships that could be put to use on their battlestar and then leave them to fend for themselves against their enemies.

While the majority of the episodes show the journey of Galactica, this particular episode show the journey from their side.

It led me to ponder about the differences in their perspectives that had led to fundamentally different decisions made in their lives.  Adama decided by the end of season 1 episode 1 that the war was over, the race of man has lost and they visualise their new goal to find a habitable planet so that mankind can survive as a species and grow from there.  As a result, all their actions are on defending themselves, trying to evade attacks and basically putting the preservation of the race, and their way of life, the values they should stand for, as their first priority in making most decisions that require sacrifice.  “The decisions made must justify why the human race should survive.”

Faced with the same information, Cain decided on something different – the war is not yet over and as long as their battleship stand, they will make every Cylon (the enemy race) regret the day that had destroyed their star system.  There is no meaning to their life, they simply live for the enemy.   They actively seek every Cylon enemy and lives are easily sacrificed if only to inflict greater damage and pain to the enemy.  Physical death appeared to them to be a release.  “Only after we have survived, could we then think about living as a human race.”

The ultimate difference?  The former have a goal for themselves while the latter’s goal is related to the interests of the enemy.  While Galactica sought to live for themselves driven by their desire to find earth, with the enemies only being a considerable factor, Pegasus did not hold an aim which relates to themselves, but only seek to survive for the enemy – to inflict pain, shame and degradation to them.

Isn’t that the same for our own lives too?  Whether we believe that:

1. there is real, true, physical life after the inevitable physical death and that it is something to hope for? or
2. that the inevitable end of this physical life as we know it signals the total annihilation and termination of life.  There is nothing to aim for after life as we know it.  Period.

If the former, the questions that naturally follow would be “What would give that whole life (including the portion after physical death) meaning?

If the latter, the natural question may be “Is there meaning to life?”  And the feared (though errornous!) conclusion may be “None.”

The 2 sides of a man behind his wheel and outside of his car

Can a man (and I really mean male here generally) behave one way when you’re interracting with him person-to-person yet be a bully, a despot on the road when behind his wheel?

I mused about this as I witness the drama unfolding in front of me.

My family and I were enjoying the ice-cream at Udders in Goldhill Centre next to the 3-laned road, Goldhill Plaza.  Typical with Singaporeans who want to save on parking fees in land-scarce Singapore, 2 of those lanes although drawn with jagged lines which indicate “Do not park, wait or stop here” were jammed with parked cars leaving only one lane for traffic to crawl through.

Near the mouth of the road leading to Thomson Road, a Merc had just vacated his “parking lot” and a Lexus is trying to move diagonally from the centre lane into the “lot” when he was probably startled by a taxi’s horn.  The Lexus moved to the centre lane and his “parking lot” was then quickly taken up by the taxi which was just trying to drive through into Thomson Road.  Suddenly the Lexus moved his car diagonally blocking both the centre lane and the right most lane, right in front of the taxi.

When the taxi tried to reverse, the Lexus did the same thing, making sure that his car parrallelled the taxi and when the taxi moved forward, the Lexus duplicated his stunt of moving his car diagonally, blocking both lanes.

Very obviously, he was trying to block the taxi to prevent him moving into Thomson Road.

As the Lexus redid its stunt a few more times, the road by then had become filled with cars trying to move into Thomson Road.  Very soon, the road was filled with the chorus of horns all blaring at the Lexus to give way.

We thought that would have been the end of it when we saw the Lexus and the taxi moving into Thomson Road.  That is the main road isn’t it?  Surely the Lexus would not be so foolhardy to attempt his stunt then, but attempted it again he did.  By then, the collective jaws of my family and I had dropped.

We did not quite take note of how that drama ended.  Definitely, it is easy to judge that the driver in the Lexus had been so overtaken by anger of the perceived taking over of his jagged-lined indicated “parking lot” he had lost his reason and rationality.  Regular instances of how drivers made anonymous by their tinted windshields and windows had exhibited irrational even violent behaviours are shown on our roads.

I wonder, if I were to meet the driver of the Lexus face-to-face, without knowing him as the driver of that particular Lexus, whether I would have formed an impression of him as “genteel”, “humble”, “polite” perhaps even “magnanimous”?

And this is definitely one area in which I am very proud of my SO for.  In the 2+ years of sitting in his car, he is the same man, outside of his car and behind the wheel.  He will practice defensive driving to protect himself and his car passengers, he will even take strategic measures to prevent road bullies and despots from getting their way, he may even comment “That is very dangerous driving.”, “*sighz* (about a driver who had just shown him the middle finger)”.  But so far, he has never cursed any bullying drivers or yelled expletives at them, at least as far as I have witnessed.

In fact in cases where his parking lot was simply taken over by rude drivers when it was obvious he was simply waiting for a car to vacate, he had the magnanimity to simply move on and look for another parking space rather than let his mind obsess over the parking lot he had lost.

Once, we drove past a red sports car where we had noted is just in front of a parking lot in which the originally parked driver is preparing to move out.  We of course presume the lot would soon be taken over by the driver of this red sports car.  We moved ahead by about another 7-10 parking lots where we soon encountered another car leaving its parking lot.  As we were reversing into this (our) lot, the red sports car drove to just behind the parking lot and kept blaring his horn at us.  We were really shocked.  But without batting an eyelid, my SO drove out of that parking lot and moved to the first lot that appeared to have been missed by this red sports car.

We figured that the driver of the red sports car was so busy keeping his eye on us to make sure that we did not get a lot before his, that he had failed to notice the vacant lot right behind his car.

Although we had lost our “rightful” place, we had a wonderful evening enjoying the beautiful night scenery of Marina Barrage rather than spending our time arguing (or horror of horrors, even fighting?) with the driver of this red sports car.

Moving towards a “Gracious Singapore” was a much-debated issue in parliament a few years ago.  Sadly, a few years on, we’re probably even further away from the magnanimity of the (older generationed) Kiwis or the open-minded Americans (well most of the well-cultured ones anyway.))

It is thus a point of reflection whether who we are is shown more by how we show our face to others?  Or expressed when we are cloaked and anonymous within our cars?