Eat, drink and be married!

Ours is the case of an overdue honeymoon - the mini moon was but an excuse to unwind after the post wedding rara and try not to plunge into the harsh realities of life almost immediately after the wedding. (An extended case of denial.)

So then, where for the big H. Not hermes. (Damn the obsessions with all things that begin with H and contribute greatly to Happiness.) Honeymoon, my dear and the husband heaves a sigh of relief. We started planning for it so way in advance, it was almost as if getting married was about the honeymoon.

Basic criteria -

Somewhere that would be perfect for a honeymoon and was known for honeymoons. Returning as a long married couple celebrating the gold or silver anniversary or even as a family was out of the question.

A decent combination of shopping and sand. Sun and sand itself does not work for resort retards like both of us. Throw me in one and all I get is boredom and more boredom. Bali does not count.

The location has to be at least 12 hours away from sunny island, so much so I need to take 2 weeks off. 

Locations, locations and more locations. We went as far off as the US of A to the fashion capitals and finally decided on a specific region. Central Europe.

Greece and Turkey, Athens, Santorini, Istanbul. No prizes for guessing what was the maindraw. I leave you with a goodbye before returning with tons of pictures and memories. :)

I cannot cook to save my life, or at least tried and resulted in failed kitchen experiments. If anything that worked for me, it had to be cookies, no bake desserts and at best, osmanthus jellies that I so proudly try to claim some credit for. 

Honeymoon by definition is a vacation of trip taken by a pair of newly weds within a month or so following a marriage. And since the real honeymoon was months away, I then classify this as a mini moon. For frivolity's sake and of course, finding a reason to make use of the extended marriage leave, we headed off to the land of smiles.

Bangkok has been a favourite for years, decades and remains close to heart. We ate, shopped and ate and shopped and the cycle repeated so many times. In the name of a honeymoon, I booked us a stay at Banyan Tree - no regrets for that.





We shopped, ate, skipped the massages this time round, did loads of chilling and came back to earth with a whole load of laundry, work the next day and some monday blues.

Closet kitty fan in me clicked and made my purchase 1 day after the frenzied purchase. No queues, no mcdees meals, no tempers lost in queues. Now I cannot wait for it to be delivered! #cheapthrills While stocks last starts here, if not join the queues when they're launched!

Song choices during a wedding are mostly overlooked and hurried affairs and thank god for youtube these days that saves us all a load of trouble by the top 10 wedding songs and the likes of it.

It did not quite dawn on us how many songs we had to pick until we did a laundry list.
If I knew that they would be playing sappy chinese songs during the banquet itself, I'd have just my own play list. Also, make sure that your PG and VG aren't using the same songs - well for novelty's sake and some element of surprise.

Here's ours for your reference!

Church (Flower girl + Page boy/ Bridesmaids) - Somewhere over the rainbow

We were thankful to have a church friend play these pieces for us. :)

Church (Bride's grand entrance) - Lover's concerto




Childhood montage - Canon in D/Dreams come true, When God made you

I ambitiously used three and kudos to our friends and families who sat through an 8 minute walk down history with us. :)





1st March in - I wanna grow old with you



1st Dish - Remy drives Linguini from Ratatouille 

We both wanted something less traditional or techno like most couples would choose, just nice that we remembered this particular cute food-related movie which was just perfect!



2nd March In - Love remains the same 

I love shopping. Retail therapy makes sense of payday and I am glad the hubba knows where I love my money hanging - in the closet. Yet when it came to our humble abode, I was stumped. 

We decided not to go with the ID route - yes, time is a luxury in our hands and we are not chasing the deadlines of getting married and moving out at the same time. So everything from scratch and so far, apart from cement screeding which was a lovely result of a tussle with the H and DB, the humble abode is far from complete. In essence, we had to think through every nook and cranny to make sure things were going in at the right time and making sure we knew what we had to get and not delaying installation progress.

I yawn at the prospect of visiting Sim Siang Choon to check out bathroom and kitchen amenities - I succumbed to the vending machine mints to survive our 2 hour trek around the showroom. I shall save the vendor list for bathroom amenities for another entry but you get the drift. 

So then came furniture. It must be the sales that made our purchase decision way faster than expected. March seems to be the month for clearance sales for most brands so mark your calendars for those who need not have the IT piece for the season, April is the month for a completely new collection. 

Here's the few places that we scoured our sunny island for after consulting a number of furniture blogs and magazines.

Marquis
http://www.marquis.com.sg/
16 Tai Seng Street

Think $57k sofas and the rest is eye poppingly exorbitant - clearly not for the budget conscious. The sales folk are as aloof as their pricing is, almost untouchable. Within 5 minutes or less, we whisked out. 

The Design Store by Lifestorey
www.lifestorey.com
16 Tai Seng Street
#01-00/A 

They are stockists for Scandinavian furniture brands and we fell so in love with many of their functional pieces - certainly did not help that they were into their last day for the 30% discount. Two coffee tables and a shoe rack later, I think I am in love with furniture shopping already.  

We also paid their mall retail store at Great World City a visit, there is a wider range of accessories and prices were on the higher side as well. 

Matzform
http://www.matzform.com/
302 Jalan Besar level 2

Trust Jalan Besar to be home to this luxurious furniture playground. They are the parent company of Lush, with majority of their furniture from Shanghai. Very beautiful wood furniture and extravagant pieces like lamb wool chair that felt like a butt treat - prices of course matched. 

It was then that we found out about their other company - Lush-lush, which we instantly became fans of. 

Lush-lush
http://www.lush-lush.com/

73 Upper Paya Lebar Rd, Centro Bianco#03-01


Lush-lush was running a too good to ignore promotion - this promotion runs till 20 April (assuming they do not extend it any further!)

Buy 1, less 10%
Buy 2, less 20%
Buy 3, less 30%
Buy 4 and above, less 40%

No prizes for guessing which promotion we headed for. We first lost our heart to their fortune cookie stools at Matzform and then decided to place our order for these gorgeously designed stools. The best part of this is we could pick from their palette our choice and get them custom made and delivered when we wanted. 

A dining table, tv console and sofa chair later, I say Marcus has to be the best salesperson around. He managed to convince us to make 2 of these purchases without seeing the physical product. Hats and pants off to this dude, very affable service too. 

Commune
http://thecommunelife.com/
9 Raffles Boulevard #02-52


I chanced upon this at Millenia Walk and they even have a cafe to boot! Their range is mostly wood and fabric sofas, minimalistic in design. Very warm sales people and definitely not pushy but the selection at the retail outlet is rather limited. We had our eye on their tables and benches but caved in elsewhere - a pity though, I would love to own something from their store!

Crate and Barrel
http://www.crateandbarrel.com
#03-25 2 Orchard Turn

This was the first place that I fell so in love with - I call it the Ion syndrome that makes the shops so inviting. Certainly does not help that their catalogues are so read worthy and very much a keepsake for future inspirations. 

Beautiful things all come at a beautiful price tag too - on the pricey end and venture only if you have a budget and definitely space to store (reads: landed property and above). The incredibly comfy sofa that we had our eye on would have been a splurge but a reasonable one until the salesperson warned that there were stocks returned because the sofas were too huge for the HDB stairway and lift - hoisting may be the best solution but the costs would run too high. 

They can hold stock for up to 3 months and offered really good advice through our visit.

CB2
http://www.cb2.com/
178A Orchard Road
Peranakan Place Complex

The sister company of Crate and Barrel with a more functional range of furniture, though we did not walk out with any pieces neither were we tempted by any.

Taylor B
http://taylorbdesign.com/
43 Keppel Road
1st, 2nd, 4th Floor

They have containers of furniture coming in weekly and their three storeys are stocked with so many pieces of furniture, I could spend a good after noon browsing through all of them. They are the only one that offered complimentary bottled drinks, mints, oreos and wafers to tide us through this arduous task of furniture shopping - awesome much. There was even a particular visit that they brought in Saybons for a live crepe station!!

Taylor B works on a concept of one piece furniture so no situation of ordering in advance and they allow storage of up to 3 months as well. Their clientele is mainly expats and few locals so we were half expecting the prices to be rocket high too. Thankfully we found THE sofa that matched up to the one we fell in love with at Crate and Barrel at a fraction of the price too and ta-dah, we were made owners on the spot after the one who reserved gave it up. YAY! This place deserves an entire afternoon to discover gems and there are lovely inspired pieces too - we nailed a Timothy Oulton inspired piece! *woots*

At the rate we are visiting them, it is no wonder our home will be mostly furnished by Taylor B. So far it's a sofa, dresser, side tables and wall shelf counting...!

IKEA
Alexandra, Tampines

Budget chic furniture that may not be the most pocket friendly at times, we realised. Case in point a regular sofa chair would go for a tune of $780 (taken off the latest catalogue) and we nailed one at Lush going for $800 after a generous promotional discount. A major shopper alert here. IKEA is awesome for idea browsing but just be sure to counter check the other shops for a better bang for your buck.


Journey East
www.journeyeast.com 
15 Outram Road #03-02, Tan Boon Liat Building

Tan Boon Liat Building is every furniture shopper's heaven - there are 3 shops housed in the same building. This is one that stocks unique pieces with a collection that is restored and one piece only.

Mountain Teak
http://www.mountainteak.com/
315 Outram Road #07-02, Tan Boon Liat Building

Lots of wood once again, their minimalist furniture is made with certified reclaimed teak and not cheap.

The Shop House
www.theshophouse.com/
315 Outram Road #07-03, Tan Boon Liat Building

The Shop House specialises in traditional and contemporary recycled Indonesian teak wood furniture. There is an entire collection available for customization - a major plus point, only if they had sofas not so long! We needed ours shorter than 2m in length but theirs are mostly longer than that. 

Scan Teak
60 Sungei Kadut Drive
http://www.scanteak.com.sg

Fans of orange wood only need apply. 

NOVA Furniture
17 Sungei Kadut Way
http://novafurnishing.com/

Their showroom is huge but the furniture and pricing seem not to match what we were looking for or could afford. 

V.Hive
http://www.vhive.com.sg/
Outlets all over Singapore.

I found their furniture on the high end. 

Yue Hwa
http://www.yuehwa.com.sg/en-us
70 Eu Tong Sen Street

We happened to be in the vacinity and stumbled upon their top floor of furniture. It was a really strange collection of rose wood and European styled furniture. The prices are a tad lower than Laura Ashley's.

Laura Ashley
http://www.lauraashley.com/WaZoZ/singapore/laura-ashley-great-world-city/stry/lauraashleygreatworldcity
Great World City

Very cottage themed, very pricey too. Think $1600 for a wall mirror and nearly $3000 for a cushy arm chair. All things beautiful unfortunately come with a pretty price tag too. 

Iwannagohome
http://www.iwannagohome.com.sg/home.html
Great World City


This was the Franc-franc before they even arrived on our shores, everything is so "buyable" in the store. There are certain pieces that caught our eye but with its location at Great world city, I figure I could grab something similar at a fraction at Taylor B's!

Franc Franc
JEM (Closing end April)
Vivocity (Closing end May)

We all love a good deal or so but the closing down sale of FF was boring. Maybe we were a step too late in the quest for furniture but by the time we made it to both Vivocity and JEM, nothing much was left.  I enjoyed the store mainly for its larger than life furniture and even after the sale discounts accorded, it was still on the pricey side. 


I hope you found the list comprehensive enough, when we have finally put our home together, pictures to follow!

Call it narcissism but we wanted to have our own free reign over our own pre wedding shoot and we had a bit of fun with it. Self directed with very helpful travel mates. :)

We took our shoot across countries and places..which was really fun and replicating certain shots we found online was definitely not as easy as they look!



Raining snow in Engelberg, Zurich. Capturing this was by far no short of finger numbing, toe freezing and everything else but cool.



A random shot by a river in Milan, the then fiance's comment was - why does your hair smell. LOL.



Trying to put some meaning to swept off my feet.



We tried re-enacting the proposal in a more romantic way - how nice would it be if it were an overseas proposal! :P



Kiss without a care on earth. I wish I was more diligent with my outfit choices - carrying more than 1 winter jacket was tedious max.

We also had a Bali trip so this was a great chance to capture some sunny shots too!



Lost in the land called love.



Trying the heart between us, methinks our hands are not nicely shaped for this.



I like how this turned out, very subtle.



Instead of dragging all our handmade props all over, we had some fun with scrabble.



This ended up as the front cover of our scrapbook. Hand in hand we take on the new chapter.

We of course had to take some shots around our own country - but truth be told, parks look similar everywhere!



A tender moment.



The colours turned out quite nice for this and our hand made banner - trying to be romantic in pictures was tres difficult without bursting into peals of laughter.



My caption in our montage was - even if life were a roller coaster, we have each other.



Ending off with another memorable shot - playing with sparklers and exposures.

xx

The cat was long let out of the bag as to how we met - and then it became a nationwide story. Well, if anything I hope this serves as a living hope for those looking for love, it finds you in the strangest places and the most obscure of circumstances. Read about it here.

Until then, do show some support for the upcoming Mypaper Executive 2014!