Wedding Tips & Tricks from the Chill Couple🎎

It’s finally here; The post that took the most time (& procrastination) to compile and organise. So let’s get into the nitty gritty. This will be a little long-winded but bear with me🙌🏻

Following up to my previous post, we went ahead with our solemnisation at GBB. That meant $0 venue fee and $20 angpao for the solemniser. Disclaimer: We weren’t sure how much to give, but just gave it as a token of appreciation. ROM did state that we weren’t allowed to give any angpaos but… our solemniser accepted paynow😂

👰🏻‍♀️Outfits

• Dress (shopee), heels (shein), suit (uniqlo), sneakers (h&m)

We wanted a white top, blue jeans kinda wedding. But ROM straight up said no jeans. So that idea went out the window and ngl, it took me a long time to settle on this dress. Maybe it was more of a f$&k it moment, cause I really couldn’t be bothered anymore😂

👫🏻Wedding Bands

Customised from a boutique jeweler, both rings are 18k Gold (14k was out of our budget) and it took about 3 weeks to make. To be fair a few mainstream jewelry shops started running promos for wedding bands. If you don’t mind generic wedding bands, they could cost $899 per pair.

💐 Bouquet

Wedding gift from my cousin who used to be a florist. Shoutout to Mel🫶🏻

😵‍💫 Guest List

This was the most painful process, let’s call it the domino effect. Why? What went from a 10 pax solemnisation turned into a 40 pax event. The amount of times we changed our minds on who to invite… not our favourite part really. Our families tried to give their suggestions which made things worse. ‘Why don’t you invite xx?’ ‘I have invited xx (someone we don’t even know of).’ Managed to settle it two weeks before the event. Thank god. Cost: $0, but a lot of mental stress (can’t really put a price on that can we😂)

🚌 Logistics

• Our solemnisation venue was at Gardens By the Bay (GBB), Ficus Room @ Active Garden.

• Ficus room is walking distance from Flower dome and Bayfront plaza (nearest to MRT). Having said that, walking distance is subjective. It took us about 10-15mins to walk, but with SG’s unpredictable weather, we don’t recommend risking it. So that leaves us with the GBB shuttle bus. It costs $3 per pax and includes a two-way trip, meaning e.g flower dome - active garden, active garden - flower dome. You could pre-purchase tickets, but we bought them on the day itself as we weren’t sure who wouldn’t be able to make it. If any of your guests are GBB members, they get free shuttle bus rides. Cost: $81 for 27 guests (7 guests were GBB members)

🍽️ Luncheon

• 3 hour buffet including free flow soft drinks, juices, coffee & tea. Plus: Some complimentary MBS parking (depends on spending)

• I give Jon all the credits for this. He thought of the idea and I thought it was so damn brilliant. As y’all know, the solemnisation was gonna take place at GBB. The nearest place with food options would be MBS. So Jon suggested that we book a buffet, RISE buffet to be exact since it was walking distance from GBB. I loved the idea because that meant everyone could eat what they like and as much of it as they liked. How genius was that? Honestly, it wasn’t the cheapest per pax but I’d go for a buffet over a sit down banquet anyday. It amounted to about $116 per pax for a private cordoned off area.

To summarise, we spent $6700 for our wedding. All guests enjoyed themselves and some even said how much they loved our idea. The food was amazing and we actually got to sit down and eat. Sounds funny that that was a perk, but most of you who held banquets know that its almost impossible to eat anything😂

Jon and I were exhausted by the end of the day cause we were our own wedding planners and organisers. Meaning we spent most of our time herding our families and ensuring the event went smoothly.

All in all, it was worth every cent and given a chance, we’d do it again (given how happy and impressed everyone was). It was a tough fight on both sides, trying to convince our parents that we wanted an unconventional wedding.

If you’ve read all the way to the end, thank you for being patient with me and I really hope the deets and budgets help you guys in planning!

Are you a bridezilla or groomzilla? Or maybe chill AF as Jon and I? Lemme know how your wedding planning went😮‍💨

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