Ring II: Mobius

Mobius. Yes, mobius because our wedding rings are going to be in the shape of a mobius strip: a band with a twist that makes it mathematically one-sided. Run your finger along the outer side of the ring and you'll end up in the inner side of it. Keep running your finger and you'll end up back on the outer side again. And we like it. No, we love it! In Athalia's own words, it's the "ultimate expression of two becoming one".

Of course, with a mobius strip for a ring, I can also sock an attacker in the face and cause more damage. No? A bit lame? Ok, lemme think of another one. Ooh, with a mobius strip for a ring, it would be easier for me to distinguish my ring every time me and the boys remove our rings to form the Audi logo. No, no, that's terrible. That's really bad. Wise people always stop when they're off form. So here goes.

Stop.

(Onwards to a jeweller.)

March wedding updates

March wedding flurry takes us closer to the wedding march. Here are all the highlights:

Commissioner of oaths - We went to the commissioner of oaths to confirm that we were actually the same people as those in the wedding application forms. I swear, it's a bizarre but fascinating process: "Is this girl in the photo the same girl as her?" "Yes." Chop. Chop. Chop. "Is this man in the photo the same person as him?" "Yes." Chop. Chop. Chop. Done.

The Chinese dinner - We visited seven Chinese restaurants to enquire about having our Chinese family dinner there. Incredibly, all of them had our date vacant (seriously, nobody wants to marry on our date!). Some, you walk in, and you immediately know it's a no. I fell in love with one, and there's also another distinct possibility. Here's to an April of decisionmaking!

The rings - We explored one option, which was prohibitively expensive, went back and forth as the price came down but not down down down and we moved on, explored other leads and we think we've arrived at a decision: a local jeweler. Custom designs. Apparently my stubby finger is a size 15.

The gown - Yes, yes, we sat down with a friend who's a designer and Athalia talked about what she wanted as he (the designer) weaved his magical pencil up and down a piece of paper. One hour later, another custom design was born. Two words: "flowy" and "chiffon".

The suit - Aha. After once declaring that I'll be a one-suit man for life (I'll get married in this suit, I'll get buried in this suit"), I ate my words and decided to get something less businessy and more retro-fitting for the wedding. An afternoon's shopping with Athalia and Shu led me to what we think is the one. Three words: mad skinny retro.

The fabric - More shopping as the wedding carousel cranks up another notch - Athalia, her mum and her gown designer hit Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman to trek through one trillion fabric shops. She came back with a great report, plonking it down for 7 metres of champagney chiffon, 3 metres of lining, and four different swaths of green chiffon (pic) as samples for the bridesmaids' dresses. And all this while I was sitting on my arse!

Actually, not quite.

The budget - We both continue to bring home the daily bread and squint at it as we assemble, disassemble and reassemble our wedding budget spreadsheet. I'm telling you, the similarities between costing for a wedding and a film shoot are amazing.

The rockout friends dinner - Ok, so I've left one of the most exciting ones to the end - just today, we received the confirmation email from the venue for our rockout friends dinner! After a bit of ding-dong with negotiations, all is agreed and we just have to saunter over there with a briefcase full of money labeled "downpayment". That's coming up this week, with much thanks to Eevon, our in-brand wedding planner of awesomeness.

And so, as you can see, March has not been a quiet month for us after all! Quite the contrary - there's been a lot of loud, exultant exclamatory words being bandied around all month, like "Yay!" and "Wheee!" and "Westilldon'thaveaphotographer!"

March house updates

There's an old Malay idiom that goes "Blog yang tenang jangan disangka tiada updates". And it makes perfect sense! March has been a slow month for this little nook in the internet but that's not to say that we haven't been working our crocs and socks off. In fact, it was a deliberate strategy to not post till the very end, and put everything up in one shot. Yes, now I remember. It was entirely deliberate. No? It doesn't work? Ok then, we'll revert to standard method in April. But I repeat, it wasn't because we were lazy or anything. Yeah.

Here are some of the things that went down in our house this month:

Floors - We relaid 95% of the laminated floorboards in the home office, replacing a few imperfectly-cut pieces and finished the entire room's floors! Sawing the end-planks vertically proved to be more Herculean a task than we imagined, but we braved it with aplomb. Victory lap.

Couch restoration - Athalia cracked open our newly received leather restoration kit and began her pet project of feeding our 60s-styled vintage red couch with water from the fountain of youth. The results? More in a dedicated post!

Middle room - We laid the middle room with temporary linoleum flooring and I've moved in, leaving the living room vacant and ready for us to...

Paint the ceiling! - Ohmystars was this a bumper day of labour! Nine hours of painting the ceiling, the skirting where it meets the wall and two beams turned out to be the poster-child of our March adventures in DIY. I think it's the handsomest ceiling in the entire world (pic), or at least will be once we paint the walls, which will tidy up the edges where they meet. And I know what you're thinking now - OMG it's black! Almost. Almost. Nippon's "Flint black" is a dusty, smoky, deep grey-green that's virtually black to the naked eye. Yet, it's not quite black in the blacker than midnight on a moonless night kinda sense.

And so that's the house. But wait. There's more... up next: March updates on the wedding!

Ring I: Prohibitive

So, getting a wedding ring is not quite the same as buying a bag of cheezles. Ignore the fact that after a bit of shopping, all wedding rings, like cheezles, start to look the same - they're not. Nonetheless, after a bit of online browsing, we thought we'd be extra clever and get our rings custom made.

We even found an amazing online jeweler based in Singapore and Thailand whose work involved sustainable support for a community of indigenous Thai mountain silversmiths. Or something like that. She was cool. Her work was way cool. And so, a few emails later, we set up a Skype meeting, got on the phone and nervously talked terms. We were both enthralled.

She understood what we wanted. We talked about the concept. We talked about the material. We talked a bit about design details.

And then we talked about price.

End of story.

A photo an hour: Singapore, 21 February 2010