Wedding reception: UK

Here are some pictures from our UK wedding reception. The grey clouds in the sky looked omnimous, but thankfully it didn’t rain!

Leaving the church for the reception. This pic was taken by our friend Hsu, and most of the rest by our photographer Kerry Morgan.

Having our pictures taken round the beautiful gardens

me and my stunning bridesmaids

Weng and his groomsmen, most of them have changed outfits by now, some into kilts

my family

Weng in his kilt, ready for dinner. The following pictures were taken by friends and family:

Cake cutting. Our florist was also our cake maker, and was really happy with her work!

My dad and I. I’ve changed into my red cheongsam.

Our first dance

we had a Scottish ceilidh, which was great fun!

Our wedding favours. My sis had hundreds of packets of these made for me as a surprise

It was a great day, everything went smoothly. The speeches were amazing. My dad and Weng Tak made alot of guests cry with their respective speeches. My dad’s speech ended with the welcome to Weng to our ffamily, and Weng’s speech ended with a poem he wrote for me.

Our wedding ceremony

It’s been just over a month since Weng and I got married. I’ve finally managed to find time to upload some of the wedding pictures, since i’ve been away on honeymoon as well as a science conference in Rome.

Here are some pictures taken of our wedding ceremony taken by our photographer, Kerry Morgan.

The nervous bride and groom

My 4 bridesmaids: my 2 friends that I’ve known for 10 years, my sis and Weng’s sis

My dad and I walking down the aisle, slightly blinded by flash photography. It was so great to see my friends and relatives

The church was so pretty that we hardly nedded any flowers for decoration

The choir sang Benedictus during the signing of the register

walking back down the aisle, after being immobile for a substantial length of time due to Weng stepping on my dress

My hen night

I’m back from my amazing honeymoon, and thought I’d post some pictures before I head of to a conference in Rome. I’m starting with a post on my hen night. The girls surprised me with a tea party at my flat, since I love cakes. A friend bought some fat rascals and a lemon drizzle cake from Betty’s, and another baked the most delicious victoria banana sponge cake. After that we headed out to a bar and then a club in Nottingham.

Luckily the girls didn’t make me wear anything too embarassing! I didn’t stick out too much in the club as luckily there were about 20 other hens there.

My best friends/bridesmaids came from London and China for the hen night and wedding

Post-wedding, my cousins took Weng and me out for a late hen- and bacholar- night out. It ended up turning into an initiation night for Weng into our extended family. I can honestly say, he is one of us now. Some of my cousins he had just met on the day itself, but by the end of the night it looked like he’d known them forever.

I’m not putting any pictures of the night itself up, as they are pretty cringeworthy due to everyone getting completely plastered within the first 30 minutes. I realised my husband is a bit of a mike hogger, singing to all the boy band songs he claims to hate.

Langkawi honeymoon booked!

I haven’t updated for a long time as it’s just over a week until our wedding! People keep asking me if I’m excited. I’m definately excited, but more nervous than anything. Time goes by way too quickly.

Anyway, after booking our safari we nearly forgot to book our beach portion of the honeymoon. We’re going to my favourite island, Langkawi, and staying at the Four Seasons. Everyone says it’s great, so can’t wait! I think the pics look amazing anyway. Weng-Tak is looking the most forward to the watersports. I like watersports too, but only if I don’t have to swim in the ocean for too long as I am ashamed to say, for someone who works with fish… I have this inexplicable fish phobia. So though I love swimming, and the ocean and aquariums, I just can’t stand to be near a fish without glass.

the room

the room again

I don’t know what this is a picture of, but it looks nice!

the pool, to me this is almost as fun as the ocean as there’s no fish in here

the islands. Can’t wait to go island hopping! It’s visiting island to island via speedboat. Lots of fun. Back in my youth, I was lucky enough to go parasailing. I found it one of the more peaceful things on earth to do. Though my landing was abit harsh and nearly broke my legs.

Then after this, we’re off to the safari! I’m looking forward to it,  but am abit apprehensive about one thing..eventhough there’s no fish there, I also have this insect phobia and apparently there’s lots in the safari… And apparently it’s commonplace to find them in your room…eughh.. So Weng Tak’s agreed to remove any creepy crawlies ASAP..he would tell you I am quite difficult to please..

Wedding plans update

I went back home to KL to visit my family and to arrange last minute wedding stuff. My sis also came to visit from Melbourne and her trip coincided with my birthday so it was the first birthday I’ve had in 10 years with all the members of my family! We had dinner in a Janapanese restaurant at my new favourtie shopping mall (Pavillion), and my mum had a massive citrus-poppy cake with buttercream icing made for me. YUM!

My parent’s just had their place renovated so spent quite abit of time helping them sort out their 101 boxes of stuff. So as I was there for just over a week, I found myself completely busy with house sorting and wedding plans. On the trip I:

• ordered my custom made wedding shoes, from the designer Keith Kee who has also made my KL reception dress
• designed and had made my tea ceremony cheongsam
• had a food tasting at Carcosa for the KL reception dinner
• chosen and booked a studio for our pre-wedding photos (was great fun choosing different dresses to wear for it!)
• had a makeup trial  for the KL reception dinner (I was frightened about the amount of foundation used. I didn’t really recognise myself after. So need to get her to modify the makeup slightly for the actual reception)
• tried out the restaurant my mum had in mind for the chinese banquet we are having for our relatives

My over made-up face. I’ve wiped some of it off as  I had to go for dinner after.

I’m not too fond of the colours, so will need to show the makeup artist a pic of what I want next time, and to ask her not to make my eyes look so cat-like. But I’ve got to say she’s pretty talented, even my parents were impressed with her. I look abit sleepy (VERY now that I mention it), I blame exhaustion. And the fact that I can’t pose for pictures.

As our kitchen wasn’t fully finished yet, we ate out for every single meal, everyday. As a consequence I’ve put on about an extra inch on my waist! I think I’m the only bride to be to put on weight before the wedding. This is very sad indeed.

5th year anniversary

Wow, time has really flown by fast. Weng-Tak and I have been together for 5 whole years. It’s been both our longest relationship to date. My longest was less than 2 years (and that seemed painfully long), and his was 2 months.. Happily, we can look forward to many many more years to come (touch wood)!

To celebrate Weng took me to Kew gardens. We stayed in a really nice nearby hotel, made even nicer when they upgraded us to a penthouse suite because the shower wasn’t working.

Kew gardens was pretty big. Apparently I’ve been there before with my family years ago. I was told my sis had the infamous encounter with a poor unfortunate pidgeon.

Pics on the tree-top walkway. Almost felt like the good old days in Taman Negara.

After hanging around him for ages, I finally managed to get a shot of the peacock flashing his tail

In front of the Chokushi-mon type thing

a gorgeous lake that reflects like a painting

Weng-Tak’s 26th

It’s my fiance’s 26th birthday! I baked him a cake of his choice. Sadly his choice was this half cheesecake, half brownie concoction. As I’ve made neither a cheesecake nor a brownie before, I was pretty worried of the outcome. But it wasn’t too bad.

As part of his birthday weekend celebrations, he wanted to have a nice walk in the woods.

path to the woods

and finally… a squirrel that Weng took 10 mins stalking and taking a picture of

Chester zoo

As the weather’s been quite nice, Weng-Tak took me to Chester zoo. I love animals and zoos, though I do feel bad about the animals being in enclosures. It’s my first time to Chester zoo (I think) and I was happy to find the enclosures were fairly large and the animals looked quite happy basking in the sun.

Sadly we didn’t have time to look at everything. Weng was keen to go on the monorail which had a 45 minute queue, so we ended up having to rush through some exhibits at the end of the day. They have a really nice outdoor zoo ‘pub’ which served the best BBQ burgers, yum – I think that was the highlight of Weng’s day.

I thought I’d share a few nice pics:

A pic Weng-Tak took of my favourite animal, the red panda 

A couple of fish pics I took in the aquarium

 

On our way to the orang-utans

A nice snake, that I can’t remember the name of

And I couldn’t resist adding a picture of my hero…

Girl’s nite out

 

It’s scientists galore! Once in a while the girls in our department get fed up of the lab and organise a girl’s nite out. It was fun to swap labcoats for dresses and solvents for half priced cocktails. Sadly, it wasn’t a big group this time as lots had early morning experiments the next day… My poor friends got hounded by would be suiters and had to shield themselves from being grabbed. Regrettably, none of this happened to me.

Our invites have arrived!

Yay, our wedding invitations have arrived. My mum sent them over from Malaysia in one huge box. I’m happy with how they turned out and can’t wait to post them (especially as it’s getting abit late now). The bridesmaids dresses have arrived too so need to send them out to my bridesmaids. Sadly they live in 4 different countries.