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

To Tim

Imagine that. One decade on, he still has the same sweet smile, exuberant curiosity and zest for life over in Birmingham.

Wishes from the other two.

Wednesday Wedding Watch: Week 26

Okay, I skipped last week's watch. Please don't sue me. There wasn't a lot to report that week, and I was lazy. But hoo boy, did pieces suddenly fall into place across the end of Wednesday and across Thursday. Lots of good, good pieces which so nicely, all begin with "P". Perfect.

Pastors - we nervously approached Fergs' pastor, Ps Lee Choo, to speak at our wedding knowing chances were slim that she'll still be available but miraculously, she was. My pastor, Ps Gwen, will officiate us.

Place - BCM has given us the green light to use their chapel and we've secured the date. I know I've appeared cool about this, but I've actually waited for this confirmation very eagerly. But dang, we've not started work on our save the dates.

Planner - We got one, uhuh-uhuh, who volunteered, uhuh-uhuh. Our first meeting was on Monday and across baskets of bottomless tostada chips, we covered so much ground that I'm in awe and shall now refer to her here as The Mighty Planner (TMP). Of course it's a woman. I wouldn't trust a man with this.

Party - With the above in place, we're planning a dinner meet up for TMP, the bridal team and other miscellaneous bondservants to get acquainted with each other and all on the same page. That should happen first weekend of March.

And that's my update. Posting has been light this week but we'll have something up on Friday before the long, long weekend.

Till then, Peace!

Thank google it's Friday

Welcome to a brand new column on TGD! Posted on Fridays (duh), this will be a round-up of interesting links to look at that we've collected over the week. Dive right in!

From Athalia:

Back in 2001, Steve Jobs defined what computing would be like in the next decade, and then he went out and did it. Now the rest of the industry has to play catch-up. Did I ever mention I want a Steve Jobs shrine in my house?

Wedding eye candy: a vintage-styled inspiration shoot. I'm liking the bride's headpiece and the bouquet much much.

Two magnificent lofts. The second one in particular really speaks to me. Incidentally there's a poll on the home page asking "What style will you embrace in 2010?" and the second option - eclectic, layered and whimsical - is so, so what I want right now.

I don’t usually dig poetry, but this one is a really good read. Go on, read it!

From Fergus:

We all know what it's like to be single. But do you know what it's like to be a single New Yorker Orthodox Jew?

Adidas is the biggest giant in football. However, I'm convinced that they've sacked all their designers and replaced them with a bunch of clueless dogs.

Our wedding colourboards and inspiration boards

Good morning friends!

Okay, our colourboards are finally done! We've spent quite a while fixating on them, tediously swapping colours around, throwing knives at each other and eventually settling on the final three. Colourboards 1 and 2 are quite similar - this is not a coincidence. Our main idea was always to do something within this family of colours. Colourboard 3 is more of a wildcard - like flukes and unplanned babies, this one kinda ... just happened.

So here we are, appealing to your good eye and putting it all up, together with a poll at the end to let you help us decide on the colour theme for our wedding! Do share with us your comments as well.

Colourboard 1

Colourboard 2

Colourboard 3

poll by twiigs.com

Welcome February

Woah, where did January go? Here we are, new banner in tow, in a new month that promises to be packed with festivities, DIY antics and wedding talk. Besides that, this is supposed to be the month where Fergs finally gets to take a break after a back-breaking last few months working on his TV program. Key word here is supposed.

So to start off with a bang, our colourboards are coming up in a matter of hours. Cheers and stay tuned!

What is a colourboard?

It's only just come to my attention that one of the nifty things wedding designers do is to come up with colourboards. Athalia's been talking about colourboards for weeks and so I've gone into some of these wedding blogs, picked my way through all the gown-gown posts and hunted down what these colourboards are ... and my word, they're fun!

They're these little colour panels, and you typically choose about two to five of them to make an attractive colour combination, and then dictate with the will of Mao and the voice of Churchil that everything that crawls within one mile of your wedding needs to be "in brand" with your colourboard. Put differently, everybody adheres to the theme.

And they have the sweetest names for their colours. You won't find no "Blue" or "Green" in this subculture, no, instead you get colour names like "Liquorice" and "Pecan". I absolutely love it.

Man: What colour is your car?

Fergus: Aloe.

How cool is that? Okay maybe not aloe. But so excited was I, I immediately leapt into the mighty task of making one myself without realising that across town, Athalia was doing the same. She even went one up on me, having put together an "inspiration board". Whoa whoa wait. There's the colourboard right? Then what's an inspiration board? And why don't I know any of these things?

It turns out, an inspiration board something like a collection of photos that you find and put together as an illustration of what all your wedding photos would look like if you stuck to your colourboard. Or what they won't look like if you dictated it with the will of Louis XVI and the voice of Prince Sihanouk.

I swear, I have been living under a shell.

And so, in the very near future, we shall be posting our boards. And that's where you come in - your comments on which boards you prefer can and may nudge our decision. Keep coming back readers. We absolutely love you.

Wednesday Wedding Watch: Week 28

elcome to our Wednesday Wedding Watch!

We've decided to start a weekly wedding countdown, because isn't it a great idea to make this whole project more stressful? It'll be posted on Wednesdays because I like alliterating words, and it's basically a summary of the ground we've covered in the past week.

So as you can see, there are 28 more weeks to go. (Unless our application gets rejected.) And what have we done so far? Well it so happens that it can be summed up nicely in three Bs:

Budget - I came up with this exercise where Fergs and I each filled up a budget separately, then we compared amounts. Guess what? We're within RM500 of each other! There's still some fat to trim, but at least we've got a rough one down.

Boards - You can call them colourboards, inspiration boards or mood boards. Fergs has two whole posts on this so hang on tight for that in a very short while.

Blow - Not the drug kind, the kind that makes you want to cry. The photographer I had set my heart on isn't available. I love her style, but she'll be out of the country. I know there are other alternatives, but I need a bit of time to mourn. Then I'll get back on my feet and start hunting again.

So that wraps this week's Wednesday Wedding Watch. See you in seven days!