Almost 2!

Our wedding cake.
Photography by Jave Lee | Cake by Ab Fab Cakes

I cannot believe that it has been months since my last update! The months have flown by as I was knocked out by an awful cold bug that triggered my asthma and caused a chest infection. And of course there is that PhD thesis I need to be writing up. I wanted to take time though to update the blog as my 2nd wedding anniversary is coming up soon. I wanted to share a little quote that I got from this book entitled Don'ts for Husbands. This book was written in 1913, but it is still full of practical tips on married life. There is the wives' version as well.

Love,

from me to u. 

Onsen-ing

One of the most fun thing to do when in Japan is going for onsen. What is onsen?

Onsen is basically taking a bath at hot springs and Japan is blessed with many natural hot springs. The benefit of onsen in manifold such as healing, and most of all relaxing. From what I gathered, bathing together is also something that a family or friends do in Japan. 

Yes, onsen requires one to disrobe completely in front of whoever you are bathing together with and also random strangers. But one of the things to keep in mind, at public baths women and men sections are strictly kept separated. 

My first onsen experience was around 2005 when I visited one of my Japanese sensei in Japan. She took me to an onsen. Although, I was initially shy, I realised nobody else was. So why should I? That began my love affair with onsen.... :) Read more about onsen here.

Anyway, on my honeymoon I did go back to Japan again as you probably have known. I made sure some of the places we visited are famous for their onsen. Other than Yudanaka Onsen, we also went to Gero Onsen on the 14th April 2011. Gero Onsen is accessible via Nagoya where we had opted to stay for 3 nights. We took the Limited Express Wide View Hida train and enjoyed the gorgeous scenery. 

We decided to save time by buying bento in the train for brekkie.
It was so yummy!

View from the Wide View Hida train.

Gero Onsen

It's obvious what Gero is famous for... 

While in Gero, we also visited Gassho Mura. Read more about Gassho Mura and Gero Onsen here.

After Gero, where were we off to? Takayama!

This entry is part of my honeymoon journey.


Love,
from me to u.

What I'm loving....

... my wedding anniversary. I'm told the first year is special. I'm also loving that we were able to create little traditions during the celebration. We took inspiration from this cake from Style Me Pretty. Thanks to countless hours of being addicted to Pinterest. ^_-

What else do I love this Monday?
Catching up with lovely friends over the weekend with good food. :) Here's Saturday... :)
Being able to introduce friends and having them get along well. (One of them said I should be a matchmaker, haha)
Meeting my PhD deadlines for publications.
Chocolates from Chokolait.

What are you loving this Monday?

Love,
from me to u.

This post is part of Anna's Much Love Monday.

365 days later....

 

We made it to our first year.

Ok, some of the recent updates have been pretty personal (and most likely don't make sense to a whole lot of people but me), but I finally hit my first wedding anniversary. The first year has been interesting. Ups and downs, time for adjustments but I always had fun anyway.

Looking forward to two! ^_-

Love,

from me to u.

Flowers

Photography by Jave Lee.

Yellow ranunculi with dusty pink roses.

Love,

from me to u.

Taking steps...

Photography by Jave Lee. 

It's almost a year.... :)

Love,

from me to u.

Flower arrangement

A Wedding Journey: 3. It's a Sign!

As you know, signage are very important in any function. In a wedding, it can be the very thing that ties the whole wedding theme together. As I mentioned before, I did not have a specific theme for my wedding but rather I was using colours to tie the whole wedding together. Using signage, I used not only the colours, but fonts and motifs to create a feel for my wedding. 

I opted for a different, albeit a well-used idea in weddings by using words for each of my table instead of numbers. I designed and created the signs with a variety of words linked to "love". Some of my friends who were guests in the wedding helped me to come up with some of the words such as "adore, "devotion", "faith" and so on.

The fonts, motifs and colours were carried across onto other signage in the room. 

I did not want to settle for a normal excel sheets for my guestlist and sitting chart. So I created these. Again, I had hoped that by doing so, the continuity of the theme of my wedding would be preserved. 

Using cupcake wraps with stickers that I had designed to match the other signage around the wedding, I've saved time in making sure that my bomboniere were ready by the wedding reception with minimal hassle. I'm a big fan of doing things simple, easy and effective. Here, I opted for a typewriter font instead of the flowy font I had used in my other signage. Why? The size of these particular signage were tiny. It is important when creating signage that the guests can actually read them. That being said, the same font was also used in the invites. So again, it carried the theme of the wedding through.

Details, details details! It is the little details that can make a wedding unforgettable. I created a signage for my cake table to tell the guests what cake they would be getting. I created this by op-shopping my frame and painting it white.

Perhaps I was being overly obsessive about my wedding signage... but I absolutely think it is crucial to have signage that reflects your personality. The fun thing about these signage is, it could be the creative (and DIY) aspect of your wedding as you can actually do them way before the wedding, hence less stress. It is a fantastic way to get the bridesmaids and even guests involved!

We took a small trip...

... and left our normal daily lives behind for a day.

A few weeks ago we took a small break and left for a mini-honeymoon in lovely Daylesford. 

I will blog more about that trip soon. :)

White by Vera Wang

 

Image via David's Bridal

White by Vera Wang makes every (if not, -most-) brides' dream come true.

Wedding submission published at Polka Dot Bride! ^^

My wedding submission has been published at Polka Dot Bride! Yay~!

Thank you to all the lovely vendors that I've worked with for the most fantastic days of my (and hubby's) life! ^^

Read all about it here.

Photography above is my absolute favourite wedding photo taken by the talented Jave Lee from Jave Photography.

It's 2011!

It's time for new beginnings, new resolutions. Happy New Year to everyone, may 2011 brings you more joy, happiness and success!

Photography above by Ivanho Harlim

It's new year's eve!

And it is definitely time to do a recap of what has been happening this year!

More Hana brooch produced this year, one of me.u's bestsellers. Available as a custom-made piece, a variety of Hana was created in 2010. It still remained one of my favourite collection to make, where extreme creativity can be used to achieve a match between the design of each piece and the new owner.

My favourite piece for the year was Little Frog. The best pieces are created when I do take a longer time to finish. Why? There are some ideas that I needed to sit on or even source materials for. This piece was only completed when I acquired the vintage button seen in this piece. Oh, and did I mention this piece is modular? That's why I have to sit on my ideas for a while to work out how things can be pushed further.

 me.u had a debut at the Fitzroy Market this year. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a disaster with the Melbourne weather. The other session to make it up didn't turn out well either. For these reasons, markets for me.u plans will be shelved until further consideration.

The colour of the year for me was definitely mustard yellow. I fell in love with anything mustard yellow. Two major scarves were knitted. My yellow mustard scarf and my pink scarf.

2010 was the beginning of freebies from me.u. The first ever me.u give-away started for Christmas. Two sets of necklace from Animals of the Forest were given away with a special me.u original Christmas bauble. Also me.u original free gift tags template was made available this Christmas. Look out for more freebies in 2011! 

 This year was certainly an interesting year for me as there were definite highs and lows. 2010 started with a major personal low when I had to go through a trying time. However, due to that personal experience, I became more philosophical about life in general. Life indeed do go on...:)

 Photography by Jave Lee 

This was also a year of weddings! I attended many weddings this year. First and foremost, the wedding of one of my best friends early in the year. Then followed by another two weddings and finally it was my own wedding! We had a weekend wedding on the 2nd and 3rd of October. It was a wedding 1 year in the planning from engagement shots, colours to the invites. Next year, read more about how I put my wedding together. Although, when the whole thing was done it was kind of bittersweet...ah well...there is always honeymoon planning next year. :)

All in all 2010 was an interesting year for me.u and for me personally. I do hope 2011 will bring more exciting things. Happy New Year everyone and all the best for 2011!!! ^^

Engagement Shots

 I just wanted to share some of my engagement photo shots taken by the talented Jave Lee. He also took our lovely wedding photos which I will be sharing at a later point. ^^

A wedding journey: 2. An invite speaks a thousand words...

... or rather it sets the tone to the wedding. It sets up the mood, the feel and the overall presentation for the guests of what they might expect from the wedding even before they attended the wedding.

Remember my dress that inspired the whole colour and themes? I used the lace motifs which was reflected in the doilies and printed lace, colours and ribbons to tie the whole theme back to the dress.

Wedding tip #2: Keep things simple. What I mean here is that when designing a DIY for your wedding, think simple in terms of construction. There is nothing worse than a beautifully designed invite that is made up of many components that you needed 2 hours per invite! Execution is the key. If you design something that is beautiful and easy to construct, you are more likely to end up with something that wows your guests because it is well-made. Imagine trying to construct a 50-100 invites when one invite alone is complicated!

A wedding journey : 1. Colours (and the best laid plan)

Inspired by wonderful items from Etsy. Apologies I'm not able to give individual credits to the sellers as I did not save the name of the sellers...apologies! ;;^^ But if you contact me, happy to credit and add the details. :)

Beautiful dress custom-designed and made by Wilson. Photography by: Jave Lee (http://www.apixel.com.au)

Colour scheme and shoe clips for the bridesmaids, sourced from Etsy.com, Chloe & Maddie.

More details of the gown. Photography by: Jave Lee (http://www.apixel.com.au)

When I was planning my wedding, I realised that the sky is the limit. Perhaps budget would be the limiting factor, but when it comes to colours, styling, details etc... literally, there is no limit. It is the one day where you can have things that you like, to represent you and your fiance, anyway you like. And of course, my wedding would be one creative outlet that I relish...:)

Everyone said your wedding should have a theme, a theme that ties everything together. Being the person that I am, I had no idea what theme I would like simply because I love colours...ideas etc. All I know was that I wanted a wedding that represented both of us. So I thought, let's start with a colour scheme. Being a trained and practising textile designer (albeit briefly), I set out to do a mood board. And the place where I got much of my inspiration was of course, Etsy! ^^

I looked for dresses, flowers, accessories idea and I came up with a colour scheme of pinks and greens. Thinking it would be a spring wedding anyway, it would be quite apt.

Having a year to plan the wedding did not help...with the colour scheme. ;;^^ As much as I loved my initial scheme, I felt it wasn't right. I changed my mind so many times until, I got my custom-designed and made luncheon dress by Wilson Tjuatja Widjaja. The idea of the dress was a bridal dress that is not in white. I already had a white gown when I approached Wilson, but I needed a second gown that I could wear on Wedding Day 2 (when the reception was held). He came up with this fantastic idea of marrying salmon pink with mushroom grey. My Matron of Honor, E. picked a darker watermelon pink for the bridesmaids' dresses.
And we finally have our colour scheme. ^^

Salmon pink, watermelon pink, mushroom grey. The french lace that Wilson used on the bodice introduced the idea of the lace throughout the wedding. The pearls added accents of vintage. More details next time on how the colours and ideas from the dress were used throughout the wedding stationery etc...:)

Wedding tip #1: As much as you plan for colours, schemes etc. sometimes be prepared to shift ideas. It is amazing how things fall into place.