Pre-Wedding Gift Ceremony - 過 大 禮

Our families had the 過 大 禮 today and it went really well. I think both side parents spent a lot of time running around and getting really random things for this ceremony. There are a lot of little items to get and symbolizes different good wishes for the marriage.

Brian's family came over to our house this morning at 11:00am to present us with their gift, it included a red pocket, a gift basket filled with different dried seeds and fruits, two large bags of dried seafood, two boxes of chinese pastry, two pairs of coconuts, two can of tea leaves etc.. Everything needs to come in pairs to symbolize good luck.

From the girl side, we bought pants, belt and wallet for the groom, red pocket, two cake, two fried dough ball, a pair of ginger, some leaves, a basket of fruits that has pairs of a lot of different fruits, tea leaves etc...

After the gift, we went for dim sum with the extended family... I am supprise that both moms had so much to chat about.. I think today went really well!! We are off to a good start! =D

Kitchen Toys WANTED!!

our house closing is less than a month away.... I have so much things that i want to get for our new house!! This is so exciting.... I will have a kitchen of my own!!! As I had mentioned in my previous post, Brian and I went back to get measurement of our house, I realized that our kitchen is not very big with very little counter space =( I am trying to minimize the items that we will need to place on the counter. We found this Instant hot item that you can put into your sink. Its from a company called Insinkerator. It creates a separate faucet at your kitchen sink where you can get instant hot drinkable water. It eliminate the need for a water boiler =) but its also damn expensive. I think its approx. $500 :S

Another thing I wanted is this cool grind and brew coffee maker =) but I think we probably won't purchase this one since I already have an espresso machine at home.

honeymoooon....

I found a pretty good deal at Travelzoo a round trip flight to Barcelona, Spain for $850 including taxes and a free stop over to Paris =) It would be special to revisit Paris since there's where we took our first trip together =)

I am just trying to search for accommodation or cruise deal.. so far, I found courses around the 800 - 900 range including tax.. let me know if you guys see any good deals =) I really want to go to europe for honeymoon!!

dresses are here...

I just called to check up on the bridesmaid dresses and they told me they just received it yesterday and the girls can go try them on mid-Sept or when they feel that their size won't change from that point to the wedding =P My dress also came back already YAY!!! I will be trailing it in Sept as well...

Aside from that, Brian and I made some progress with our wedding plan, we have met with our Photographer and Make Up Artist and have a preliminary timeline in place, I will need to work on that some more to include a detail schedule for everyone and their tasks... time to really utilize my project management skills =P

For our photo, we were thinking instead of having a photo and then a guessbook, we will have our photo enlarged and expand the background and have ppl sign our photo instead of a guessbook. I am still playing around with the idea of having a photobooth type thing where guest can take photos and write comments on a card. I will have to check out the cost and price it out.

Productive Evening

It's been a very production evening tonight. Winnie & I went back to her parents house for dinner tonight and we did some wedding stuff - did a preliminary count of our wedding list. We also went to Michael's and bought two stack of thank you card & a basket for this coming Sunday's Chinese Pre-Wedding ceremony? (Gor Dai Lai)

Didn't know time flew by so quickly tonight - made a call into TD, sent a few emails, printed the remaining invitation for family members & also registered for a course for the coming week.

My mom also told me that she finally told her boss at work that she will no longer work night shifts. Which is a good thing, hopefully she'll slowly start to also quit the day time job and go out more with Dad instead of working.

Thanks Winnie for being supportive in everything I do!

Oh I also received my new passport in less than 2 weeks! That was quick!!

Relaxing Saturday...

Brian and I took a break from furniture hunting and wedding planning on Saturday... well.. we tried anyways! That morning, we went to TD to meet up with Amanda to finalize our mortgage, we got our 3.39% mortgage rate YAY!!! Our first mortgage payment will be on Oct 23rd biweekly :S After signing our life away and joined the in debt for life group, we decided to really take a break and do something fun!

We went to CNE and wasted some money on their games, Brian and I had this idea of setting up all the games from CNE in our basement to practice for next year. We really wanted to win that ATV for his nephew lol... We spent the majority of our time in the exhibition its self.. We saw a couple paintings and wall decor that we really like but we didn't buy them because they are not our priority (and in case my colour scheme changes last minute). We did end up buying some rubber broom and some 1000 threadcount Egyptian bed sheets and duvet covers =) they were $ 30 (1 flat, 1 fitted, 1 pillow case) and $22 (duvet covers) not bad price i thought =) Brian and I also tried some massage chairs =D can't wait to have one in my own house =D

After CNE, I treated Brian to Lees(mainly cuz I have been craving for their Singaporean Slaw 4ever!) They have a susurlicious going on right now $35 for 3 course menu, really good deal!! Brian and I ordered one tasting menu and 2 other dishes, as usual, we ordered too many food lol.
Our order includes:

1. Jerk Chicken Crepe
2. Spicy Skirt Steak
3. Braised Beef
4. Singaporean Slaw
5. Strawberry Puree with Riesling topped with Vanilla Ice Cream

My Review:
$45-50 per person (w/out alcohol)
Food: 4 out of 5 Stars
Price: 3 our of 5 Stars

I am glad Brian and I took advantage of the susurlicious, it gave us a chance to try more things for the value =) My favourite is still the Singaporean Slaw, althought i thought it would be better we its shared amongst 3 or 4 ppl rather than two because towards the end, it wasn't as savouring as the first couple bites... I also find that you really need to mix it really well cuz the last bit of the plate has too much sauce. Beef was as good as I remembered from last time, it really does remind me of chinese style braised beef except its way more tender here. it melts in your mouth! I think they uses beef shank here. the Jerk Chicken Crepe was also very good. They made the sauce with Mango chutney topped to a few slices of avacado which neutralized the spiciness of the jerk seasoning and the mango chutney. I didn't quite enjoy the strawberry puree, I thought it was a little too sour for Brian and my taste. Overall, it was a very great meal and service was excellent! I would highly recommend this place.


Jerk Chicken Crepe


Braised Beef


Strawberry Puree with Riesling


Happy Campers!

Getting closer

hmm.. there's less than 2 months left from our wedding and that means its really time to get serious with my weight loss goal!! Patsy, Christine and I started hot yoga, we went on Monday and Tuesday but were too late for Wednesday and Thursday.. Need to try harder next week. I also started my toning and sculpting programing at Leslie Spa. Its twice a week for approx 2 hours per session, they will use various machine to help detox, tone, shape and all the necessary magic.. (I hope). My mom is also going to put me on some strict diet, hopefully we will see some results.

After 9 months, I finally tried on my wedding dress again and guess what.. its way too big for me.. woohoo.. but I will also need to alter it.. hopefully it will turn out okay! I think i need to take an inch off both sides of the dress... and the little wired ring at the bottom now seems really big, I am not sure what to do with that... and I also don't really like the chinese dress.... yikes but I guess i will just stick with it since I should spend extra money to buy more...

We went to our photography & make up place today to discuss time needed for photography and make up. Apparently it will take 1.5 hours for me and approx 45 mins to 1 hour per person for the rest of the ladies in the wedding party.. I guess we will have to wake up early after all.

We are also planning our Jack and Jill.. Hopefully it will work out =)

Home Insurance

I was off Friday - woke up pretty early to get my passport renewed - got there before they open... but the line was already 20+ people! took me about an hour to get it all done

Called up home insurance companies today to get a quote for our new house - all the questions they ask are similar but all worded somewhat differently? and they speak too fast for me to write things down... and they will not mail / email you a detail quote either... the only one that's willing to do so is TD.

So far we've quoted 3 places
- CIBC online - $950+tax / year
- TD - $375 tax included / year * we have Ryerson Alumni discount
- Belair Direct - $787.32 tax included / year

so far looks like TD is the cheapest

Revisiting...

Just realized that we bought our house two and a half months ago. We booked an appt to get measurement of the rooms within our house yesterday to get an idea of how big of a furniture we can get. I missed our house! Can't wait until we can finally live in it!!.

Another thing I learn is never take the floor plan size as gospel. We went and measure and everything is off lol.. it said that my family room is 13" by 14" but when me measure, it was 12.4" by 12.4". I also realized that our kitchen counter space is quite small so we really need to make an effort to buy less appliances so we don't have appliances taking up the entire space.

48 days to go before we are proud homeowners.... woohoooo

Flower Maddness

Brian and I booked our florist and chose our flowers for the wedding the past weekend. Thanks Amy for helping me identify flowers lol.... The prices are i think average but the lady seems to be very responsible and RESPONSIVE unlike others... We went to the store at Pacific Mall cuz I really like her flowers and the way she puts things together. We went way back in March to get estimate and she said it was too soon and asked us to come back after mother's day. So we went two weeks ago, she apologized and said she is really busy that day and didn't have time to chat and want to spend time with me...She promised that she would be available on Friday.. a little annoyed but I waited and went on Friday with Brian to find out that she is busy AGAIN!! she had some emergency business that she needs to handle..she said "Why didn't you call??" WTF.... you told me you are going to be free... so the usual thing, she asked me to come back the next day.... Needless to say... I didn't go back and just went with the florist at Chartwell!

This shows that it doesn't matter how good your prices are and how nice your product is, if you have bad customer service, you will loose customers!!

There's my rage for the week ;)

Wedding Party Paragraph - received! from the Guys

I finally received all the paragraphs for all the guys ... :) Wayne, Henry, & Greg.

Will need to edit a bit before posting :P

Thanks Guys - should be up on the website soon :)

two step process to be legally married

Apparently there's a two step process to be legally married in Canada.

First you'll have to apply for a marriage license application and bring it to the nearest civic center and submit the application and pay about $130 dollars.

Winnie & I filled in the application last week and I went to submit the application last Friday.

They provided a document that we need to both sign during the day of our wedding in front of the minister and he'll submit that to the government.

Four weeks later we can then apply for the official marriage certification to proof that we're legally married.

One more item checked off on our list!

dresses...

buying dresses for the two mothers are getting quite time consuming lol... My mom is now questioning the dress that she choose and wonder if she should get something more formal. So we will be going for another session of dress shopping I think next week.

Brian and I went with his mom to buy her dress the past weekend, we went to several stores at pacific mall looking at Chinese traditional outfit but none seem to fit her nicely, after two hours of searching and some convincing over the phone from Brian's sister, she decided to get her's custom made. Hopefully that would turn out nice and more fitting. Her first fitting is Sept 8th, hopefully it will look okay. We might have to go get the day dress at another day.

YAY... more items to check off the list!

More Items to check off

It was a very productive weekend for Brian and my wedding planning. I got my mom a new outfit for our wedding, we just need a top for the morning and a pair of shoes :D, We spend most of the day looking for Eric's suit, my parents really wanted me to get Eric a suit for the wedding. At first we were going to rent but it cost over 100 to rent a suit so I thought I might as well fork out another 100 to buy him a suit so he can wear it on the cruise and also at his job interviews. (I am such a nice sister I know...) hopefully Brian wouldn't mind since its not within our wedding budget =P

Finding the suit was painful with my brother's awkward body, if the suit top is perfect, the bottom is too small... and the ones where you can choose different top and bottom sizes are like over $500 dollars :S We finally found one after four hours of shopping.. orginal price was 799 now with special discount comes out to be $250.

Now, I just need to get shoes for both my mom and Eric.