If there's one thing I hate doing, it's unpacking (and packing). I love getting things organized, but the process of getting things in and out of boxes and thinking of how to house them always seems way too daunting for my faint heart.
I knew we brought over many of the major things like the pictures, photo books and mason jars, but I hadn't remembered that we had also kept and packed so many little snippets that were all a part of the day we said our I-Do's. From the garden wedding program booklets to our bride-and-groom wedding paddles, from wedding cards to Aston's handwritten vows.
It really brought us so much joy in rediscovering and reliving the moments of the day we started this journey together. This journey that has now led us all the way to London.
There's a funny story behind this one. Aston was so nervous about being on time to get me at my place (it's a Chinese/Asian custom to have the groom pick the bride up at her place to go back to his in the morning) that he totally forgot to bring me my bridal bouquet of fresh calla lilies! So there I was, stuck with no bouquet for pictures. Cue brief panic. Until the ingenious best man, Aston's brother Aaron, yanked this tiny fake cloth bouquet from the bridal car that you see up there in the picture! I ended up carrying this tiny bouquet all morning until we got to his place and swap it for the real thing.
It was hilarious! We both couldn't stop laughing! Everyone actually thought that bouquet of cloth flowers was my actual bouquet because I was holding onto it the whole time! But it was just a last-minute prop that came from the back of a car. It was in ALL our morning pictures!
And these! The program sheets for the day.
My bridal party was so so so sweet to have packed away these little trinkets from the wedding for me. The whole day was one crazy whirlwind and it went by so fast that I wouldn't have remembered to keep the lovely mason jars and bits of decor from our garden wedding that just added the us-element to the whole do.
We go together like eggs and bacon!
By the way, it still bothers me that it says "23-th Oct" on that jar. I only got to proofread text on wedding invites and programs, but not on jars. Can't ever tame the grammar nazi in me.
We somehow also managed to keep a copy of the menu for our traditional Chinese dinner from the next day! Oh man I remember being so famished the whole night because we were running everywhere - on stage giving speeches, the long toasts, getting changed into our other outfits for the night, taking pictures with everyone from every. single. table... So by the end of the night I'd only had tiny rushed bites from one dish out of nine on the menu. You can imagine how the husband and I reacted when the waitstaff brought out small servings of all nine courses on a trolley for us to have after the dinner was finished. Like never mind the gravy running down my chin and staining my dress. Just gimme all dat foooood already! I remember how amazing the scallops were once I'd picked out the foie gras (that I don't eat), and the husband said over dinner tonight while we were having a particularly underwhelming dish of ee-fu noodles at a lousy Chinese restaurant, that he couldn't forget how delicious the ee-fu noodles were at our wedding dinner!
We also brought over a copy of Tatler Weddings which featured our wedding in a small section thanks to the most amazing videographer we could have ever hoped for. Thank you Why Keen and Ichiro Films, for giving us such beautiful memories on film that we can keep reliving over and over.
How I got my hands on a copy of Wedding Tatler was also pretty hilarious. For anyone who knows me, I am so predictably blase and forgetful about things like these. Why Keen had told us we were going to get featured but I totally didn't remember to buy a copy of the magazine (probably still in disbelief we had made the pages of that chi chi society mag because our very intimate and humble wedding was absolutely not in the league of the usual OTT 6-or-7-figure nuptials that get featured there). By the time we realized we had made the feature, it was a couple of months after the article had ran and the newsstands no longer carried that issue. #sadface
Suddenly I get a text from my friend, S, who excitedly tells me she is in a cafe and reading Wedding Tatler to pass time while waiting for someone, and she's seeing the article. When she found out that I couldn't find a copy of the magazine anywhere, she went back and sneakily nicked the magazine for me!! "Nobody will miss it - it came out three months ago anyway. And I paid a lot for my drink there." HAHAHAHAHA wut wut. Fist pump, S! #crazygirlfriendsftw
We also got to read wedding cards from our dear family and friends all over again today. More importantly, we were reminded of how incredibly blessed we both are to have been surrounded by so much love and support on our wedding day, that carries on even in our marriage now.
And how could we forget the husband's handwritten vows? Mine was sooooo much longer so I had it on my iPhone (I invoked the age-old stereotype of brides being long-winded and deemed it my right that day) but he actually had his written down. I still find that so incredibly sweet and got a little teary-eyed when we unearthed that precious piece of paper again today.
At the back is a book that I made for him during the one year that we had between our engagement and actual wedding. I wrote about the surprise engagement, choosing my wedding dress, about losing my engagement ring and finding it again (twice! I am such a drama queen sometimes zzz), about the wedding planning, my feelings through the year, milestones we crossed together, and sometimes, well, I just wrote because I wanted to.
Aston never knew I was writing the book for him because I wanted it to be a surprise gift for him during the wedding. Little did I know, my then-fiance had the same idea and was writing to me in a little moleskin notebook, which he also presented to me on our wedding day. It meant so much to me because Aston is totally not the kind of guy who would write, much less keep it up for a full year. I guess you can say, in a most Oh Fromage! way, that we were, and still are, meant for each other.
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