Day #223 - A Long but Fruitful Day

To me and Dearest.

Goals of the Day:

• Initiate the selection process of wedding invitation cards
• Achieved
• Settle invitation to solemnize form for our JOP
• Achieved
• Decide on credit card to use to buy mattress 
• Not Achieved

It's a long day of looking at invitation cards, then her looking at wedding gowns while I waited somewhere else, and then a nice evening together.

Good day =)

Today's Small Wins:

• Quality time with Dearest
• Progress in wedding stuff
• Resisted food bad for throat

Today's Small Losses:

• Didn't practise good habits (wake/sleep/meditate)
• Didn't manage to put in time to decide on credit card matters

Day #145 - Multiple Projects at One Go

It's a plan. My Plan.

And right now, "My Plan" has a lot of projects. haha...
Wedding, Renovation, NZ Trip, Office Work, Personal Work...
And Dearest is feeling a bit stressed on the wedding/reno stuff.
She has been taking on a lot to allow me more time for my personal things.
So right now, I should step up and contribute more.

Goals of the Day:

1. Finish 3 office work tasks that I have planned
• Somewhat
2. Navigate through theknot and furnish it with more details
• Achieved
3. Send 5 more requests for campervan quotations
• Didn't send in 5 more requests as the rest are not highly recommended

Had quite a productive day today =)

Office work was still rather overwhelming.

It always feel like that when I have to write report, which I don't like.

Back home, I setup a prototype on theknot to let Dearest see how the RSVP page would look like.

I told her about the limitations of the RSVP questions too.

She later told me that she might prefer Google form... let's see how. haha..

More or less settled on the campervan to rent. 

Woohoo~!

Today's Small Wins:

• Setup prototype on theknot.com
• Near to finalizing my choice for campervan
• Had an interesting idea for a social fashion app that I shared with Dearest
• Meditate for 10 min (after finishing this)

Today's Small Losses:

• Still sick
• Woke up slightly late
• Slept slightly late 

Day #140 - Start of another month

It's the start of another month, and the start of the 4th Qtr of the year.

Goals of the Day:

1. Quality time with Dearest
• Done
2. Plan for the week ahead
1. Undone
3. Settle the wedding ring design and order 
• Done
4. Mooncakes for Dearest's family
• Done

I think I got too indulged in relaxing already.

Lots of things to do - wedding, renovation, NZ trip planning, blog, app learning

Today's Small Wins:

• Wedding ring design is settled!
• Quality time with Dearest

Today's Small Losses:

• Spent time on gaming instead of work
• Slept late and woke up late
• Didn't do housework

Day #137 - Booked an adventure!

This morning, I have finally booked my adventure to New Zealand!
Woohoo~!

Goals of the Day:

1. Settle flight tix to New Zealand
• Done
2. Settle Wedding prep stuff
• Reserve table for 14 Oct
• Done, but reserved the wrong restaurant after proudly telling Dearest. haha..
• Look through car rentals for Actual day
• Done
3. Quality time with Dearest after work
• Had a good evening =)
4. 30 min of video editing (at least)
• Undone, didn't have that much time between activities

Today's Small Wins:

• Had quality time with Dearest
• Settled the wedding ring design
• Booked a trip to new adventure!

Today's Small Losses:

• Didn't meditate
• Slept late
• Woke up late
• Didn't manage to do the video editing
• Not focused at work because of fatigue from staying up last night to look at tickets

Day #96 - Last day of work

Made it to this day~

Goals of the Day:

1. Proper handover of work
• Done
2. Spent quality time with the guys
• Done

Collected Dearest's gowns for our wedding photoshoot today!

Today's Small Wins:

• Did all I could at work before I left
• Quality time with guys
• A short but pleasant evening with Dearest

Today's Small Losses:

• Woke up late
• Didn't meditate

Day #34 - Just an experience

Did the urban attack 5 today!

Although I failed at the 2nd station for both of my runs, but I managed to attempt most of them during the practice. haha..

Dearest was there to support and help me record some of my moments during the practice and the runs!

Grateful for her presence =)

Today's Small Wins:

- Settled the designs for 4 dian jin

- Participated in a physical challenge (that was anxiety-provoking)

- Spent quality time with Dearest

- Spent quality time with the guys for Mahjong

Today's Small Losses:

- Didn't complete the physical challenge (but it's a motivation to try harder next year)

- Lost $70 at Mahjong (damn it)

- Didn't meditate

- Didn't sleep early

Day #20 and #21

The weekend was spent on visiting a renovation contractor on Sat, and then gown and suit fitting on Sun.
Was quite tiring, and Dearest was lamenting that the fatigue from talking to so many interior designers. haha.. I think we are getting there.

Today's Small Wins:
- Did some arm strength training in the morning
- Meditated
- Worked a bit on financial blog contents
- Spent time with Dearest on renovation and wedding stuff
- Progress in wedding preparation! (gown/suit fitting)

Today's Small Losses
- Didn't manage to finish what i planned for my financial blog contents
- Sleeping later than planned

Wedding Plan - Part 4

Yes~! After around 2 months+ worth of researching and visiting, we have finally settled on which bridal studio to go with!

Our criteria was fairly straightforward:

• Good service
• Good rapport with the sales personnel and the people who we will interact with most
• Affordable pricing (Dearest did a lot of research on this)
• All soft copies of pre wedding shoot returned
• Suitable gowns

And it seems that Kelly's Bridal fit the bill quite nicely. Not only that their service was among the top that we have experienced so far from around 5 or 6 places, but Dearest also had a good interaction with them. The price was really one of more affordable ones that we have found so far, and Dearest like their gowns a lot. And so, on our 2nd visit to Kelly's Bridal last sat, we have officially placed our deposit. WooHoo~!

Along with that, we also confirmed Leftear photography as our Actual Day Photography, and we also confirmed our Pre Wedding Shoot Photography, but I can't remember the actual. It's either happycouplepeople, or happypeoplecouple, or something along this line. Dearest really liked their work, and we're going with them.

What's left is to decide who to be our videographer on the actual day. We have limited our choices down to two, and will be meeting them soon~

In addition, we recently found out from the HDB website that our BTO completion date got pushed forward again. So we will be receiving our keys in this year, Q3! That's like another 3 to 6 months! It's coming so fast, we feel like we need to catch our breath with all these wedding and renovation stuff coming along.

At least we are starting early on all these things. And I'm glad she pushed us to quickly settle all these stuff. haha.. If it was all on me, I think I would just be starting to plan things now only.

Wedding Plan - Part 3

Through the discussion with friends and colleagues, I kinda got the idea that we would need to book our Justice of Peace rather urgently because the popular ones would be taken up. So as we pondered over which bridal studio and package to take up, we also went to ask for the availability of some popular and bilingual JOPs.

Our criteria were fairly straightforward.

1) Bilingual - Important because her dad and my mum don't really know english well

2) Good reviews - Always a good thing to know that other couples liked the way he did the ceremony

3) Humorous - Good to enjoy a few laughs here and there to make the whole ceremony more enjoyable 

4) Fatherly look - Just because it looks more appropriate for the occasion. haha..

It didn't took us long to find Mr Zenon Teh, who fulfilled all the above criteria, and was also free for our wedding date.

And in the process of finding JOPs, we realized we might have been a bit kiasu to book a JOP one year in advance. haha..

But hey, that's still one thing down!

#teamJC

Wedding Plan - Step 1

Dearest and I started planning on our wedding around 2 weeks back. So recently we have been rather active in researching for all the wedding thingy~

And just 2 days ago, we have gotten our potential wedding dates from the Feng Shui master!

This is our 1st step towards planning for the wedding =)

We were given 3 dates, but we definitely preferred the earliest one.

So now, we can start working towards that date. 

Hopefully the venue that we want would still be available by the time we confirm. *pray

This whole planning for our wedding is rather challenging, as it consists a lot of comparisons, and each with their own complexity. 

Hopefully our efforts into all these research would help us to save some money for the wedding =)

Financial considerations for my future with Dearest

Valentine's day has just passed!

Dearest and I didn't really celebrate it, but we spent quality time with each other =)

Part of it was an impromptu discussion on our financial needs for our wedding and BTO, both of which would be coming in early 2018.

Here's a rough calculation of the budget that we think we would need:

Wedding

• Banquet - $30K

• Bridal package - $5K

• Actual day costs (Photographer, Videographer, etc) - $5K

• Wedding band - $1K

Total = $41K

Renovation

Total = $45K

Furniture

Total = $25K

Summary

Total = $101K

Wow~!

A whopping $101K cost that we both have to prepare for our wedding and our house.

Of course, this is still a rough estimate, and there are other things that we haven't take into account such as the hong baos that we are going to get back during the wedding banquet.

Based on our current savings, we could barely cover this cost when it really comes. haha..

Maybe when the date draws closer, the budget will be a bit more clear.

Will come back to this when we are really planning for it! =)