Wedding Recap V :: Dinner Reception

My gown was a Vera Wang replica. My designer, Kenji from The Silhouette Atelier made a detachable one-shoulder strap with huge flowers so that i can have 2 different looks for the ceremony (day) and dinner reception.

As we wanted to create a relaxed, casual vibe with lots of mingling, we served an International Buffet - some drool worthy delights included roast chicken duck with orange and sesame seeds, caprese salad with grilled eggplant, fresh oysters, tandoori chicken, pilaf rice, potato gratin, braised lamb with chickpeas and okra, steak, slipper lobsters ... and the mushroom soup was a big hit.

As I have a sweet tooth, deciding on a dessert buffet *yeay* was a no brainer. But, I had a big problem deciding on what to desserts to have. Some of my favorite desserts included - profiteroles with chocolate mousse, chocolate royaltine and pineapple coconut tarts.

We wanted to do away with some of the traditions like cake cutting and instead gave all our guests a slice of homemade fruit cake made by my aunt with love - nicely wrapped and packaged in a little golden box.

During dinner, our siblings gave toasts, we had energetic bhangra performances (complete with stunts) and sultry salsa nicely put together by friends of the hubz. Bhangra was injected into our wedding reception to honor the hubz punjabi roots.

Before we danced the night away, the hubz and I changed to indian-inspired outfits. He wore a sherwani and I wore a yellow, slightly below the knee dress with gorgeous embellishments at the back.

We gave our thank you speech which was prepared just a couple of hours earlier and danced like 7th graders for our first dance - I am still secretly hoping people forget these things.

... and then everyone danced the night away.

Wedding Recap IV :: Dinner Reception Details

We couldn't wait for dusk. It was PARTY TIME!!! We had aussie wine, gin, whiskey and tons of local beer to get the party going even before it started. The flowers were arranged by talented Jane from Simply Flowers.

Still at decor, my brother-in-law lugged 10 moroccan lamps all the way from Doha, Qatar where he's based. We decided against topping up an additional SGD 75 per table for flowers and decided on the lamps as they are definitely re-usable (some will be in our new apartment). The entire room felt incredibly cozy with the glowing lamps.

Wedding Recaps III :: Beaufort Sentosa, Singapore

We wanted our dinner reception to have a relaxed vibe so it just felt right when we set foot in The Beaufort in Sentosa, Singapore. It's a cosy tropical resort by the South China Sea. This was the closest we could get to a destination wedding.

Wedding Recaps II :: Church Ceremony

We had a catholic wedding ceremony in the morning of 19 Sep 09 @ the Church of St. Anne's, Singapore. After which, the guests (we kept it small) adjourned to the church canteen for brunch. We tried to make the morning events as simple as we possibly could (as we planned a bigger party later that evening at a resort) w/o compromising on some of the details; as you'd already know by now i'm a sucker for details.

Nothing fancy-schmancy though. The stickers on favor boxes {top left} and ceremony programmes {top centre} were created by my sister also the Maid-of-Honor (MOH). The boutonierre {top right} and the reception table decor {bottom centre} were d-i-y-ed by yours truly the night before(!). The runner was actually a humungous piece of cloth bought in a craft store. It was cut into pieces to make runners. The cute white vases on the table were from Ikea at SGD1.90/piece and the red flowers were created out of inexpensive red tissues.

My bouquet {STILL can't get over it} was arranged by the fabulous Sarah; it had deep purple calla lilies with black magic roses, a touch of wildflowers and strands of black beads.

My MOH and bridesmaids got their own attires and wore various shades of blue. We wanted to take pics with the bridal party outdoors but it started pouring and we had to make do indoors, in the church canteen.

{details and inspiration on church reception table decor from here, here and here; bouquet inspiration here.}

Wedding Recaps I :: Stationery Suite

Our second wedding anniversary is fast approaching (I know, right? It feels like just yesterday!) and I've decided to move our wedding + honeymoon re-caps over as I decide what to do with the old blog. I have been receiving spam comments and I do not want to risk leaving my most treasured posts there. It's also nice re-reading these posts once in a while so I'll leave 'em here, in my backyard.

When you're super attentive to details, a graphic designer in the family is like a gift from God. My sister, Flora designed all the stationery we had for the wedding. We had two sets of invites - 1 for the Ceremony and 1 for the Dinner Reception.

Flora also helped me turn my ideas into a beautiful card for the bridesmaids incorporating damask (looks faint in the above image) throughout for consistency.

The ceremony cards had turquoise details with brown background and ...

... the dinner cards had red details with orange background. These set the color tone for the wedding. It was gratifying to see our idea evolve with the skills of Flora, and Hubz eagerness to mess with typography.

We had a very coordinated suite of stationery {SWEET!} - Invites, Programme Booklets, Stickers that were used for cake boxes, and pew cards, among others.

This poster is practically a blown-up version of my dinner reception invite and it graced the entrance of the ballroom.

Being no-frills people, we decided not to have any predictable pre-wedding shots/albums or old photographs in the reception area. I mean, yes you are marrying each other and the reception's enough to prove it. No one's gonna bother looking through (nor remember) pages and pages of you both in different places/poses.

There were also matching little cards that guests wrote on. We had this set up as a guest book alternative. Again, it didn't cost us a bomb to have all these mitchy-matchy details. My talented sister was entirely behind this and we couldn't have had such a smashing day if not for her runnin' all over the place getting all of these done.