How can you not be excited about the greatest event in the world?

It's June my friends. June. The month of the World Cup. And boy is the fever on!!

World Cup has always meant a lot to me and now it's meaning a lot to Athalia as well. She's a fervent supporter of Germany and Spain. I support what she likes to call "the dirty Italians". Of course, there's the English and the Dutch for me too. Our rivalries are heating up, and I think the only safe ground for our kids next time is Argentina. Or France. Actually no. That might get them killed.

And so, here's a toast to many late nights, many roars of joy, sobs of defeat, and may this World Cup be the best one yet!

Ring IV: Mockups

Having chosen our design and deciding to go with gold, we brought our thoughts to our friendly local jeweler Sofia and look what she turned out in one week! Mockups!

I don't even know if 'mockups' is the right word because these are the actual rings that we'll be wearing, just unfinished. If you look closely, there are red lines where some trimming needs to be done, and red dots where some stones will be placed (on Thay's ring) but by and large, that's it! And we absolutely love them!

I mean, look at them! Could these rings have been forged anywhere other than in Middle Earth itself? Could anyone other than ancient dwarven goldsmiths have done this? I wore it and immediately felt like a king. I mean, if I were to ever sprout a beard while wearing this ring, I'll get shocks from testosterone poisoning and my chest will explode into a million swords! Swords, I tell you!

Athalia: Can I get you a drink?

Fergus: Yes, I think I need to calm down.

Athalia: Ya think?

Fergus: Writing this post is giving me hypertension.

Athalia: Come, let me finish this up for you...

Yes, it's me, Athalia, and I must admit that the rings also had me falling in love. They looked strange on the display tray but when I put mine on, it immediately looked like it belonged. The colour was just right, the mobius twist was strong but not overpowering. And yes, those little stones...

Fergus: I'm back.

Athalia: I see you've stopped shaking.

Fergus: Can I see the picture agai...

Athalia: No, wait!

Fergus: Garrrkk gweargh gwarkkh!

Athalia: Oh dear. Sorry, readers. I think I've to tend to my fiancee for a while. Tata!

Wedding decor: Poms, poms and poms

I loooooove fabric poms. Look at the strings of frilly joy!

They're real easy to make (tutorial here) and can be done while watching TV, sitting around yaking or going to cell. Hehe. Really, it's just drawing circles on fabric, cutting them out, folding them into quarters and stitching six together. Repeat 1,000 times. Piece of cake.

These larger, hanging poms don't even require stitching, just hot-gluing onto a styrofoam sphere (tutorial here).

I plan to make these to decorate the edge of the pews like this:string the smaller poms across the chapel like this:

and stick individual poms around every other place like this:

See why I need 1,000 poms? However, I'll settle for how ever many can be reasonably made.

Best part is, we're going to reuse all these in Muar for the garden dinner - with the addition of fairy lights! I think that it'll look as lovely as this. Minus the tent of course.

Sigh. I love poms.

Fourth birthday of the year

We celebrated my brother-in-law CP's birthday last Friday and to call it anything less than a gastronomic shangri-la would be to lie! Lie, I tell you!

Eating started off with tapas at the cafe in the National Geographic Store and then the real dinner happened at L'Opera. The tortellini, when bit into, gave birth to sensations I had never known before. And I had a Cuban beer, this Bucanero Strong - I swear, this thing was brewed with the spirit of the revolution itself. Castro himself would have closed his eyes just to savour its taste.

Alas, describing food can never really come near actually eating it, and as an object lesson on what gets lost in translation, I shall show you only the most austere, the most sedate photos from our reel. Anything more, my friends, will kill you.

Ring III: Golden

Yes. Our rings will actually be golden in colour. It's fashionable these days to go with "silver", ie white gold or platinum, but I've always thought that a simple gold ring was the most charming and quaint thing. Fergs was initially sceptical about the idea of anything in gold looking good - tsk tsk to him letting modern marketing dictate his taste like that - but after a few "looks vintage" and "that's what our parents all had" pitches from me and some internet pictures, he's fully behind the idea.

Dear readers, let me continue to dispel the notion that gold means a garish, bright yellow Poh-Kong horror:






Aren't these rings so elegant and refined? I later learned that this pale, glossy sheen is called an European finish. My ring will have this finish, while Fergs is going for a matte finish like the ring on the right above.

I can't wait to show you the mock-ups we received!

Monogram

Up until a few weeks ago, the word "monogram" would be for me the unloved, lonely sister of the record label Polygram. But apparently it's not. It seems that a monogram is a logo-like design that usually comprises the initials of a couple that's getting married, bridged by a plus sign or an ampersand. It's big in the wedding scene, or so I've recently discovered.

Which means that I've been handed the juicy task of digging through all 679 of my fonts to pick out some of the more suitable ones for our monogram. Of course, the one we pick (which may not even be in the picture here) depends largely on what message we want to convey through typography. Are we trying to say we are very oldskool vintage? Or very delicate girly, perhaps? How about edgy literary? Pop arty? Subtle? Patterned? Generic?

Still, a lot more goes into a finished monogram than the dull encircling oval I lazily made last night. Vines? Circular lines? Repeat motifs? My education in wedding art design just keeps on going on.

So, what do you do with this thing called a monogram? It seems, quite a lot. Other than getting it on all your printed material, you can further brand your wedding by printing it on your napkins and aisle runner, arranging it on the wedding car or in your bouquets. Or have it embroidered onto the train of the wedding gown. Or tattooed onto the face of the 4-year-old flower girl. Yes, that should leave a lasting impression, especially for the flower girl. Superduperidea!

Evil evening series 01

These were taken from our apartment balcony and processed really long ago. Yes, I was trying very hard to channel Tim Burton. Yes, I recognise that it doesn't really work. No, the originals were actually very yellowy. Heh.

Wedding watch: week 16

Right. Sixteen more weeks to go. That's four months. Gulp.

Anyway, it's taken a long time, but we've finally gotten around to articulating our "Wedding Manifesto", ie guiding principles and ideas we'd like to build this whole project around. Yes, I do think of it as a big, once-in-a-lifetime, oddles-of-fun project. Keeps the stress at bay :)

So, here are some words we'd like to have associated with our wedding. (Warning: umm, wordy post ahead.)

Indie

Basically, we don't want to be blindly mainstream. While this obviously applies to the choice of music, it also encapsulates our overriding approach.

For example, the reason why we didn't visit any bridal boutiques is because we didn't want to just purchase a templated wedding. Instead, we wanted to assemble it piece by piece, with the ability to emphasis the parts that are really important to us and leave out the parts that don't matter. Also, this way we're not bound by current trends or ideas on what looks good or is acceptable. The ability to express yourself the way you want to - that's the indie ethos.

Handmade
This flows naturally from the indie sensibilities above. Also, handcrafted items have that much more special charm and beauty, and the sense of satisfaction you feel after making something yourself is a pretty awesome one.

We also hope that working together on various projects would create chances for the different groups of people we know and love to meet and form a shared connection. I'm excited about some of the ideas I've collected and can't wait to share them in this space. So here's to creativity, beauty and friendships.

Vintage
This one's a bit of a given, isn't it? One day I should sit down and pin down why we're both so inexplicably drawn to previous eras, because all I can come up with right now is that we're old farts at heart. But till then, bring on the old-school charm in a retro polka-dot dress and douse it generously with nostalgia for the yesterdays, oh yeah.

Laid-back

One of the resolutions I actually made this year was to get married with minimal drama. This was deliberately done because big occasions like that have a way of creating friction, especially among those closest to you. It was also a reminder to me to keep any Bridezilla tendencies I may have on a tight leash, preferably chocked to death. So far so good, though I must admit that the real testing period hasn't started yet. Deep breaths.

Also, on the actual day itself it's important to us that everyone present enjoys themselves. This

means careful planning to get as many things as possible done or delegated in advance. The priority is for our immediate families and wedding party to be with us and have fun, not run around and look into things. If it means having to hire help for the more "back room" tasks, that's a price we're willing to pay 'cos you know, money can't buy you presence. Hee hee hee.

Eco-friendly
Okay I know that this is a dirty word for some, so we promise not to go overboard with this. The main measure will be to avoid using styrofoam or plastic disposable utensils during any of the functions. We will also minimise the use of plastics where ever we can, and decorations will be made to be reusable so they don't have to get trashed at the end of the day. This is one of the reasons why I am minimising the use of fresh flowers.

So there you go, ladies and gentlemen. Five lofty ideals to attempt to live out. God bless us!

Fifi and the pig

My first stop motion sequence! I meant to just make a simple animated gif but Fergs fancied it up very nicely with opening and closing credits, plus music. Now I'm inspired to shoot a longer one to do it justice.

Piggy bank's borrowed from my pastor's daughter and the Fifi lunch bag is home to my camera Iris :)

She & Iris - Week 2

Q and I finally posted our second week of photos! Yes, I know it's late but at least it's up :)

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Our fantastic bridal team dinner party of gluttony and laughter

I've always been the kind of person who keeps his different groups of friends fairly separate. I don't always succeed, and most of the time, it's much better when I colossally fail. And fail I did, because this past Saturday, Athalia and I invited our bridal/groomal team over to her house for a meet and greet dinner.

Soon, we'll be introducing you to our team of bridesmaids, groomsmen, family reps and our in-brand wedding planner. It's a group that consists of a complex mixture and overlapping of childhood friends, my church friends, Athalia's church friends, work friends, siblings and whatever plus ones we could get our soon-to-be-wedded hands on.

And so it ensued, this wonderful mash bash of our 0.1 degree of separation people, eating, getting to know each other and eventually settling down for me to clumsily run through some wedding planning while my brains sat at the table eating baked chicken. And all this information, of course, is just a lengthy excuse for me to attach this, the invite we spent four hours making, the real point of this post, so voila!

Because my hobby is starting new blogs

I've started a shared photo blog with my partner-in-camera, Q; most of you would have seen her in the comments over here.

We're going to post three photos we've taken from the previous week every Sunday night, so if you're interested in following the photographic progress of two girls with their d90s, do head on over to She & Iris. Yes, her camera is really called She - it started of as a joke and ended up sticking.

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