A Fairytale Love - Part II

Continued from A Fairytale Love - Part I

After a quick break in the afternoon, it was time to move on again. Our big night was going to be held at Regent Hotel in Orchard. To me, it was a big night because all the relatives and friends were going to come together (we had over 400 guests!) to witness our love, because it was the moment that I had been waiting for since I was a girl, because it was a night where all my efforts were going to pay off (hopefully). I wanted it to be a night not just for my and my hubby, but for everybody to enjoy. A night when there was no stress from work, no tough deadlines, no worries about tomorrow. A night when we were surrounded by magic and love, a night when dreams would come true.

Just like in the day, for some reason, I felt calm and at ease on the big night. Nope, no butterflies in my stomach. Not even caterpillars. Honestly, I just wanted to enjoy every minute and every second of that special night. I didn't worry about whether the seating arrangement was right, whether I would forget my lyrics later, whether the videos I made with so much effort were gonna come out right. I did previously, very much. But now, I just left everything to fate and let my sisters and the brothers run the show. They definitely did a bravo job at it.

The wedding theme that I chose was L'amour. It was modern and contemporary, making use of two strong, contrasting colours: black and pink. According to Chinese belief, black is an unlucky colour and henceforth many of the older generation would be against using it for a joyous event like wedding. However, we went ahead with our choice and we were glad our families did not disapprove. We did make sure the VIP tables did not have much black though. I really liked the setup of the ballroom and all the decoration that came with this theme. Even the wedding invitation cards were black. Unique, right?

Since I planned for this wedding on my own, there were many things that I had control over and many ideas that I could add in. For example, in line with my fairytale theme, I requested for tentcards to be placed on every table. Each table was assigned a different fairytale character. So instead of the boring numbers 1-45, I designed 45 tentcards containing different fairytale characters. Oh yeah, did you know there were so many? I was tempted to split up the three little pigs and three little bears if I had to, but thank goodness I did come up with 45 names. I just wanted this to help spice things up a little and let the guests immerse in the fairytale ambience. In addition, my background songs consisted mainly of Disney soundtracks like "A Whole New World" and "Under The Sea".

See my lovely sisters each with tiaras on them? Well, that's cos I made my wedding a dress up night and encouraged all guests to come in costumes and anything related to fairytales. However, I realised that while this idea might be popular in certain countries and in certain cultures, Singaporeas were still not very receptive to it yet and only a handful of the really spontaneous ones came in costumes. Still, some friends made efforts to bring wands, tiaras while others got creative and brought items like pillow (as Sleepy Dwarf) and apple (as Snow White).

It was nice to receive warm wishes from everyone present. Reading all their wishes just made me feel how blessed and how loved I was, and still am.

Phew wee! Here were some of our relatives who made the effort to dress up. I hoped they knew how immensely we appreciated it and more importantly, I hoped that they had fun in the process as well.

To my dear friends who took the time and effort to rent costumes, I knew that you did it entirely for me and didn't want me to be disappointed. I was truly very touched when I saw you all. Thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart, for making my night.

Soon, it was time for the banquet to commence.

Since hubby jw is a military officer, we were going to have a swordbearer march in. It was really cool and the swordbearers all looked smart and suave in their uniforms. One of our cousins even asked us where these guys went to rent such nice costumes. *chuckles*

Here were my emcees for the night. Despite they met for the first time that night, they did a really good job at everything. Actually I wrote the emcee script very last minute but in the end they followed every word of it, so I'm just glad it all turned out well. Oh, check out the projector screen on the right. We set up an SMS service where guests could SMS their wishes for us and these would be seen on the screen almost immediately. I thought it was a fabulous idea and a great way to keep the guests entertained.

It wasn't as easy as I thought to go through the swordbearers. Firstly, we were made to do a lasting kiss. Next, my poor hubby was tasked to carry me upstage. Omg, I wished I didn't eat all those creamy doughuts last night and maybe I would have been 2kg lighter.

Instead of the usual cake cutting ceremony, we had this special Unity Tower lighting ceremony where we would light up five candles, one by one, together. These candles symbolized Love, Respect, Honour, Fidelity and Eternity. They were our pledge to each other as we united as husband and wife.

After a quick bite, we moved off to change into our second set of clothes. I had on a green toga, flowy dress while jw was in his white suit. Both were customized for us and I really liked them.

Next came one of the biggest highlights of the night. It was time for our second march-in and we decided we wanted to make it special. Initially I was debating whether or not we should do a dance since we both loved to dance and we took up salsa before. However, we would have to fly 12hours to get from Singapore to Sweden just to meet and practise the choreography. Well, I tried but I have not master the art of teleportation yet. Thus, we made up our minds to compose a song that belonged to us. Though it took us a few months to get it right, we managed to come up with a mandarin hit entitled "Our Fairytale". I wrote the lyrics and jw came up with the melody. Then, we got a friend to help play the piano and we did a recording in his studio. Voila! Our song was born. You can view the music video I did and listen to the song here.

A friend told me that she was on the verge of tears when she listened to our song. Well, thanks for letting me know that our simple song had the power to strike a chord somehow. On the contrary, I was actually smiling all the way while we sang. You know what, it was my debut performance in front of 400 people in the audience! It was one of the moments in life where the only thing you can feel besides joy, is still joy.

After the song, we gave an impromptu speech (I swear, we didn't even write anything down nor rehearse a single time) to thank our friends, our family and each other. When jw said he was grateful that I made this wedding a success and felt sorry that he wasn't around all the time, I remembered I told him "It doesn't matter that you were not around for the past year because we're going to be together for the rest of our lives".

We then had a toasting ceremony where our parents, sisters and brothers would come on stage and everyone would shout till their voices got hoarse. Yummmmmm Sengggggggg x 3!

Last but not least, we gave away the Best Dressed Male and Female awards. The emcees shortlisted two guys and two girls who would then come onstage to do a parade. Then the audience would help to determine the winner by applause and cheers. I must say my friends really astonished me and I didn't even think that they would be as spontaneous as they were. Big big hugs to all of you. So sorry my red packets could only go to one guy and one girl.

We also had a Best SMS contest where we selected three winners who wrote the best messages as determined by the panel of judges (the sisters). The funny thing was that one of the winners was my mummy. So mummy took away a red packet that night. =) Ok, are you starting to wonder if my wedding was a wedding, or a Dinner & Dance, or a joke? No, definitely not a joke. It was just a fun night for everyone who turned up.

We then ended the night with dancing and booze. And more booze. And more more booze. It's Party Time!

All in all, I loved my wedding night and I want to thank everyone who helped to make it a success and for being a part of my fairytale.

And they lived happily ever after...