Actual day wedding gown and evening gown shoe dilemmas

Mum has informed me that my tailor made wedding gown is finally ready. I'm actually a little impatient to wait for her to bring it when she comes in early October and so decided that she will post it to me first. The box will probably be really big as she will send it together with the 3-hoop petticoat, which even when folded is pretty bulky and not to mention how much space and weight the actual gown itself with the, embellishment, beads and long train will be!

Here's a sneak peak of my wedding gown. Now I had previously put a $200 deposit for a wedding gown at Nifi Bridal in Oakleigh, but I made sure to tell them NOT to order the gown first in case I changed my mind. And true enough I did! So luckily I managed to go back and exchange the deposit, added on extra $85 for 2 sets of bridal veil. One will be a 2-tier short one with a tear-drop crystal at the end and the other will be a long one to match the length of my train.

Now that the gown was sorted, I couldn't help but somehow have second thoughts about my shoes. Initially I was adamant that my wedding gown was definitely going to be white in colour but after trying on countless gowns, I realised ivory was the way to go.

Since my gown and veils were all ivory, I started to wonder if I needed ivory shoes as well because the impulse buy I did last year in Nov was a white one. I found this online shoe shoe in New York with reasonable prices and they ship free to Australia - ShopNewYork. Here are some of my picks:

Romance Alfani High Heels	Milan Rampage High Heels
Ginnie Nina High Heel Sandals	Nina Annora High Heel Sandals

I browsed for silver heels as well because I needed a pair to match my dark blue evening gown with silver embroidery. I emailed these shoes to mum to have a look to get her opinion. She mentioned that my shoes were gonna be hidden under the gown most of the time and it didn't really matter if they were white, they would still match anyway.

Mum made a fair and logical point and suggested that maybe I should just wear the white one I bought last year and not waste it. Well I guess I'll have to ponder about that and stick with the one I have if I just can't find another suitable one. Though I really do need to get a pair of silver heel sandals. ;)

Cake deposit and Wedding Wish Factory Outlet Sale.

We confirmed our wedding cake supplier as Three Sweeties and gave the a deposit a few of weeks ago. If you recall from the previous post on visiting cake suppliers, we only visited two of them and just decided to pick one from there. I had contacted a few other suppliers through email, but their prices were just more expensive. So Three Sweeties it was; reasonable prices, pretty tasty cupcakes and over 20 years of experience, I think that should set our minds as ease. :)

Anyway I found the Wedding Wish Factory Outlet through facebook one day. They sell wedding accessories, gifts, jewellery etc. and they are situated in Mentone. I found out about them having a warehouse sale on Fri 20 May and so Dar and I decided to check out what they might have since we're still looking for wedding favours for guests and gifts for the bridesmaids and groomsmen. Here are some pics from their warehouse:


They had quite a lot of things: toasting glasses, cupcake stands, ring pillows, guest books, bonbonaire boxes etc, you name it, they have it. They also had some practical gifts for bridesmaids and groomsmen and stuff for Hen's and Buck's Night. Most items were for display only and they didn't have much stock on hand. So the items I bought that night had to be delivered the next week. I got a silver crystal bling key-rings for my girls and mum, a handbag holder for the future MIL and a wedding certificate holder for us.

The prices were quite reasonable and they also hire out wishing wells should you need them for collecting monetary gifts on your wedding day. You can choose items from different themes on their website and they even have some Asian style stuff. But as we still haven't decided on the wedding favours, I might just need to look more varieties online before we make a decision. But salt and pepper shakers are definitely on the list. ;)

Bridesmaids meet-up, sorting their dresses and our wedding bands

Meeting up with my bridesmaids on the Easter trip back to Malaysia and Singapore was one of my main priorities and I was so glad I managed to catch up with all of them - even though not all of them at once. ;) Luckily there is emails and sms to communicate with one another when I'm back here and then there's the private facebook group which we use to discuss stuff as well. Here are the special ladies for my big day:


The arrangement was that I will provide their dress; just a small token for their effort of flying all the way over to Melbourne for me. We all came to an agreement on the dresses before I went back; that we will settle with 1 colour choice and 4 different dress designs. The colour chosen was sort of orange/red colour, quite similar to the colours of the first two dresses. And here are dress designs that they have chosen:


Aunty Margaret, a friend of mum's had a very good tailor who made really nice dresses and so she recommended her to me. The tailor's prices were also quite reasonable and she will organise everything including getting the material for me. There will be 3 satin dresses and 1 chiffon one. On the last photo with the 2 models, Denise chose the one on the right with the flower at the neck and that's the chiffon one.

Darling and I also managed to tick off a few more items off the list by getting our wedding bands, ring pillow and guest book all in one go.

Darling got a Lee Hwa Jewellery Member card when he bought the engagement ring about a year ago. And the member card entitles the user a 10% off any jewellery purchased from the store. What was better, was that they had a sale going on that time and there was a further 20% on top of that. And so we got 30% our wedding bands!

Darling chose something simple, just a plain band with a border on each side, while I went for a single row of diamonds on the top half of the ring (also with a border on each side) to compliment my engagement ring, which was a solitaire.

We also knew we wanted white gold as we are both not a fan of yellow gold and so agreeing on that was easy. The shop also gave us a complimentary ring pillow and guest book. They were white and looked elegant which we can and will use anyway, and so that was two less items we had to get ourselves.

I think white colour goes with almost every theme and so I think a combination of our orange/red colour should go okay with either white or black. Well we are honestly not too fussed about it anyway, simple and elegant is the key thing we want for our wedding. ;)

The finally complete Melbourne Pre-Wedding photoshoot gown with accessories and shoes to match. :)

I collected my gown for our pre-wedding(engagement) photoshoot a couple of weeks ago. If you had previously read, this gown had gone through two different seamstress before it was finally perfected. It wasn't that the I was asking too much, the first seamstress (a wedding shop at that), just did a bad job.

Anyway I was glad to get it back after so long. I tried it on last Monday and showed it to mum on Skpye. She was happy to see her "work"(the maroon coloured sash with sequins and beads sewn) on it. Initially we thought we couldn't use it, but the seamstress (the 2nd one) had this brilliant idea of using buttons to secure parts of the sash onto the gown because it was covering a portion of the zip on the back.

The gown - finally with all alterations and designs completed. Nine West Nuncio Heels Pumps - in Strawberry colour	Flower fascinator to clip on the right side of gown where the ribbon hangs down.
	Crystal and pearl hair comb possibly for the side of the hair
	Crystal and rhinestone hair pins for other parts of the hair.
	Stretchable rhinestone fashion ring for the other hand. ;)

I got on to buying my shoes and accessories to match thereafter. All of those were bought online at much cheaper prices, yet not off setting the quality. The accessories were all from eBay while the shoes were from this fabulous shoe shop in New York - http://www.shopnewyork.com.au/ that sells and ships to Australia at great prices!

And so we have finally scheduled our Melbourne photo shoot for next Saturday! There will be sort of "an entourage" of 4 others including the photographers coming along. We're looking at places like the Botanic Gardens, Melbourne Park, Docklands, Tennis Courts(of course) and anywhere else if more recommendations come along then. Really looking forward to it! :)

P.S: Friends out there who know about "Tubby's shoe incident", can you imagine his face when he saw my shoes!? LOL.