Budget Wedding done in 2011

I have been reading past few months or since 2014 about weddings being expensive and how it is not worth being in debt for that one day event.

& Believe me, it is NOT worth it to be in debt cause of that 1 day event. If you really have saved and that you have the money for a lavish wedding, please feel free. This post is for those who wish to loan left and right, up and down for a lavish wedding.

Let me tell you first how much my wedding was:
$10,500.
Yeah you saw that right. I did not include any costs of rings incurred because I don't find that part of the celebration. We have rings though, 1 is the proposal ring to me and second is our wedding ring.

My husband as you may know by now, is a Chinese (yes converted) and I'm a Malay so we decided that we could make a joint kinda wedding. Our wedding and solemnisation was done on the same day.

Here's the breakdown:

Venue: Kintamani Restaurant @Furama Riverfront Hotel
Time; 11AM till 3PM
Date: 12/12/2011 (Monday) We went ahead with this date because it's our rship anniversary.
Pax: 130-140

Cost $4900.

Hotel Stay 2 nights: $705

Simple Dais: $300

3-Tiered Cake: $600

Tiered Cupcakes: $480

Solemnisation Gown: $253 (Rented from a boutique in JB)

Photography: $650

Pre-wedding Shoot (indoor & Outdoor) + Evening Gown for wedding that's included in the package + Bridal makeup by Feline Bridal: $2400

Those are mainly the costs. Me & hubs believed that we only invite those people that has a lot of impact and involvement in our lives so to make our wedding day more meaningful. Yeah, our parents are comfortable with that idea. As you can see, we do not have a single decoration because, the restaurant is decorated enough. The restaurant is very Balinese/Indonesian style kind of ambiance and really, you do not need to add any decor aside from center pieces that's included in their wedding lunch package. You may want to view my full Solemnisation cum Wedding Pictures here.
Additionally here's some :)

It's sparkling juice.

Oh yes, my hantaran is $10,000. BUT, my mom wants it to be given to me, so the hantaran of $10,000 is to me, and not to her, so basically, no hantaran la in that sense. Me & my family don't believe in exchanging of gifts. I don't know what's the gift exchange tradition is for cause in my opinion, whatever gifts he may give me, I can buy it on my own. Just for that special day to get LV/Chanel/I don't know what other brands so? I can afford my own after getting married to him too. & vice versa for him. Bottom line, gifts are redundant that's all I want to say.

We did not go to Europe or anywhere extravagant for our honeymoon because I just started work, and I wanted to save my leaves for another honeymoon (but I got pregnant with Rayna 4 months after marriage) so we went to Koh Samui instead for 4 nights. I have yet to upload those Koh Samui pictures in my FB because I look so, horrendous in the pictures and hubs was the only nice looking one in the pictures.

Anyways, back to the wedding costs, the food there is great. I really have no regrets having a small and affordable wedding. Our marriage is still strong and getting our house soon.

I do admit though, the cost is very minimal due to the number of guests we invited. Around 13-14 tables. That includes his immediate family,relatives and good friends and my immediate family, relatives and good friends and some of my mom's colleagues. Normally for a malay wedding invitations are between 400 pax and above? So I am really glad I celebrated our joyous moments who gave a damn to me and not those random people.

Really, I do not care if you think it's selfish because your principles and mine maybe different.

Lastly, I'll show you some shots of my Pre-wed shoots by Feline Bridal. For more you may see my Pre-Wed shoot here.

All right, that's all for now. Hope you guys enjoy this post and till more updates!

Love,

iNa

Updated 3D proposals from my ID for 3 room BTO

I received my 3D proposals! I just found out that for BTO flats, the kitchen and bathroom tiles are provided by HDB even though if my house isn't a premium and the worse part, unable to hack them for 3- 5 years. So, me & hubs gotta make do with ugly tiles.

Anyways, here's the 3D proposals by Janice.

Living & dining room. The furniture will be colourful but I still yet to decide what family colour tone I would want. These proposals are to showcase mainly the flooring and wall colours and lighting etc. So my carpentry of the shoe cabinet (on the right) will be very useful.

Our kitchen. The kitchen is Aaron's domain (just cause he's working as a chef and just particular with the kitchen) thus most of the colours were chosen by him. Moreover, the kitchen items will also be chosen by him. Believe it or not, we have bought dinner plates/bowls/mugs etc by Bugatti (Italy) just because Cold Storage having those promos whereby you have to collect their stamps and redeem all the items at a much lower price. We are now eye-ing NTUC's WMF cutlery promo.

Our master bedroom, will not have any for the children's bedroom because I didn't request for anything so master bedroom what Aaron wanted was a desk for his computer. You really can't say not on these stuff to a gamer. Additionally, I wanted more storage for my clothes and bags. So there you are, more storage and also both of us wear specs. So we need a bedside table for the specs thus our cupboard/wardrobe are designed that way for the bedside table. We do not want a TV in the bedroom because, we don't really watch TV. We can just watch porn or other nice shows on his computer.

Our master bedroom toilet. Yeap it looks really plain because we can't freaking choose the tiles anyway due to the HDB thing. So this will do for now. There is suppose to be a light at the top of the mirror and I'm planning to buy additional items for the toilet.

All in all, this is just the surface of the house. I am pretty excited when we get the keys because all the details of the house, fixtures/functions that I have planned will come true! I'm going to save all the excitement and surprise for now :)

Till I receive anymore great updates about the house, thanks for dropping by!

Love,

iNa

Congratulations to the Royal Family of England!

I am a mother, so I am dedicating a post for the Royal Family of England!
Congratulations Duchess on your adorable beautiful baby Princess! I wonder what will be her name!

Duchess looks so beautiful hours after birth!
I definitely want to look like that once I give birth to the second.

Dear hubby, add on make up kit and hair dryer to my maternity bag please.

(Source: telegraph.co.uk)

Till then!

Love,

iNa

3-Room HDB BTO House Renovation Part 1. Meeting Up with the Interior Designer

So I am going to blog about which Interior Designer (ID) that me & hubs chose and the costs incurred and roughly what to expect. Give and take.

First & foremost, there's an update of policy by HDB regarding the cement screed for new homes. You may read it here: Pre-Packed Cement Screed will incur higher costs.

So what you can expect is an additional cost of up to $3000 if you're planning to renovate your apartment which, suck. $3000 is still money to most of us including me. I can buy additional furniture/appliances for the house with $3000!

So I eyed Rezt & Relax ID ever since I saw their TV Ad way back in 2014 so naturally, when I know it's time to get an ID, we then went to their showroom at Expo held in August/October 2014 to get a free consultation. There, we met Janice, our ID.

**EDITED**

Basically she went through with us what we have in mind and advised us what is possible and what is not and well, after hours of discussion (lucky Rayna napped for awhile) we decided to settle the kitchen. They had this package just for the Expo event whereby the kitchen reno is at $6888 inclusive of hob & hood and 3 types of surface. Their carpentry are all Lifetime Warranty and it's from Blum. We added a tall larder unit and wish to extend  the kitchen all the way to the service yard so yes we will hack the service yard door. So with addition carpentry works, it totals up to $9000+. So that's how much our kitchen costs.****

So we had another meet up with Janice in April. We decided we will engage Rezt & Relax and her to design our home. By this time, I changed my mind so much and got all fickle-minded on the theme and in the end, decided on Scandinavian theme. It's going to be mostly plain/neutral coloured walls but I (yes, furniture & outlook decisions are mine to play with as hubs wants me to be happy) choose the furniture to be colourful. 

I'll describe in details.

OK there's the legend. So with those carpentry works and hacking and all costs around $8330.  The next heavy cost is our HERF flooring which includes the living room and the bedrooms total up to $3195. 

Their Misc Works includes Nippon paint and painting the whole house unlimited colours of $1500, supply & lay haulage, general cleaning, protecting totals up to $2090. 

Professional Services includes everything you need advice and help from a profession ID just like how a professions Wedding planner would be, plan from A ro Z and doing site management costs $1500. The rest of the costs are all those nitty gritty stuffs and small builts like cupboard for the toilet, shower screen, tiling, doors for kitchen etc. & of course, at last the stupid Cement screed as mentioned above costing me $3000.

Total costs quoted is $26,800 + my prepaid kitchen of $9000+ = ~$36,000. Not inclusive of plumbing, electrical works, lightings, Air-con, window grilles & furniture yet. So, with that price and possible add-on (if any) and if I were to count in everything furniture etc, we would expect to spend on the house around $60,000. *whistles* So what I hope is to find good deals of the furniture to lower the cost. 

Initially, we plan for a storage platform for the bed in the master bedroom but the price is like $2000+ for that so we removed it and also a full length dark and clear mirror which cost around $2000+ as well and its removed temporarily till I can find a nice replacement (wallpaper/painting) if not, will add that in again. Another thing we removed was the false ceiling. I FREAKING LOVE FALSE CEILING!

(By: Rezt & Relax)

AWESOME LOOKING RIGHT?

But, it cost around $2000+ for our house just the living area alone and we asked for an alternative and was advised to try thread/tread lights  (I am not even sure if this is the correct term):

(By: Rezt & Relax)

See those spotlight looking thing on a bar above the sofa? Yeap those kind.

As you can see the effect is so different from false ceilings. We will see our 3D proposal and decide what to change and what to cancel out (if any).

So Scandinavian theme is like this roughly whereby it's simple and I think mostly practical for a small apartment:

There's lots more if u Google them. All pictures are found on Google.

I still yet to receive my 3D images so I am trying to be as patient because good things don't come very fast so I am putting faith in my ID.

Review of my ID Janice for Phase 1.

- She is really patient and professional. We wanted lots of things or more like, unable to decide on many things so she will give us her advice and recommendations and plan step by step.

- Honest. She is honest when something cannot be done, she will say so. 

- Very personal in a way whereby, in the months that me & hubs were deciding on the house reno issues, from Aug/Oct 2014 till April 2015 of our meet up, she kept in touch with me with sufficient space. She did not keep msging/calling me incessantly and was not pushy for sales/business in a way.

So far so good, & I shall hope it goes on that way with her.

Rezt & Relax, is definitely not the cheapest in the market neither I can say, the most expensive. But I like them cause their designs are simple & practical (they do impractical designs to cater to your needs of course) and still look good.

This is the end of my House Reno Part 1. Part 2 will be around September (hopefully) when we get our keys.

Till then!

Love,

iNa

Pissed Off with the Banners

**EDIT**

At last I managed to rectify it. Anyways, the next update will be about my upcoming apartment. A visit and discussion with the Interior Designer, Rezt & Relax company. I will be inputting how much are the costs etc.

For now, I am having headache and needing to pee all the time and my baby just keeps kicking.

Till then!

Love,
iNa

As indicated, I have edited my banner images and it's to be transaparent backgrouond but once uploaded on Blogspot, it isn't transparent AT ALL and making my blog looks extremely ugly I am ultimately pissed off! Been having this issue since 6PM!

In the meantime, just read my contents while I google and try to figure this out.

Baby #2!

Yes you read that right!

I am expecting baby number #2! I am currently 28 weeks and 3 days. Before I go on about the baby, I wish to update just a little timeline of my life since my first born.

12.12.2012
- Asheera Rayna Ang was born.
- Breastfeeding stopped on 3rd month as she couldn't latch thus I had to pump and THAT caused the BM to decrease.

March 2013
- Resumed working as a Call Centre Agent in a government sector (sorta) and it was an office hours job. It was stress free for me.

August 2014
- Quit the job and joined a banking company as a Call Centre Agent due to high pay. (In between these timeline, went for short holidays which I will post those events at a later time.)

November 2014
- Found out I was pregnant with baby #2 at 6 weeks gestation.
- Had Hyperemesis Gravidarum for 6 weeks straight and was on hospitalisation leave. It was the worse feeling ever as I didn't experience these when I was pregnant with #1.

April 2015
- Quit my job as due to my pregnancy hormones and I had bouts of health issues contributed by the pregnancy and even depression. I cry frequently, dreamt about work few days straight and pretty much having mental issues due to stress so for the sake of my unborn child, I quit. Budget maybe a bit tight, but it's for a few months till I'm back on my feet again.

----------------------

& back to the baby, it's a GIRL again! I really have no issues be it girl or boy seriously but having another girl makes it simpler cause I can save Rayna's stuffs for the second one (but I still bought newborn stuffs for the #2. I just can't help it. Buying baby stuff is always therapeutic for me :P)

With my 1st pregnancy, I did not bother buying maternity clothes as I wasn't out much but somehow, this 2nd pregnancy I love to hang out with my close friends and I have energy (up till 24 weeks that is) to shop and walk (provided by blood pressure does not suddenly plunge down or my nausea or heart palpitations does not act up) so I end up buying several maternity & nursing clothes. Annee Matthews nursing & maternity clothes are really stylish and honestly, they are not THAT expensive.
Spring Maternity's maternity clothes this season is super pretty that I bought so much of it. I even bought clothes from Maternity Exchange as they have a variety of brands selling nice maternity clothes too!

I mostly buy baby items from Mothercare because I am a VIP member there since 2012 and perks will be you can get 10% discount on all regular priced items be it the in house brand or other brands they are carrying. Save a hell lot of moolah for me when I buy in bulk (Which I always do). Furthermore if you purchase $300 & above and wish to spread the cost, you can do so with UOB/DBS card with 0% IPP. Anyhow, Mothercare is having sales of up to 75% discount for their 30th Anniversary! Go crazy mamas!

Alternatively, I frequent shopping online too! Mainly bulky items like baby rocker etc. I'll list down the websites.

Agape Babies
- Mostly bought their California Baby Toiletries as they sell it in bulk and its cheaper! Rayna has very sensitive skin and mild eczema thus she can't bathe in fragrance soaps. California Baby Super Sensitive soaps for the biggest bottle cost like $50-ish each so in bulk of 3s, I get to buy it at $32 each. They do sell other baby items so do check them out.

Pupsik Studio
- Bought countless times from them for their Mini Melissa Shoes for Rayna and many other stuffs too. Very fast & prompt service.
------------------

Ok I am going to end here for the moment and it is a slightly long post than usual with no pictures. I am now revamping the blog and doing all the photoshop-ing to make it look more pleasant to the eyes.

Thank you for your patience!

Love,
iNa