Checklist 4 - 5 months

The wedding is less than 4 - 5 months away now but because I'm behind with my checklist I'm only posting this entry now!

In about 3 weeks it'll be time to tick off another list.  I'm having so much fun ticking off that I haven't really bothered about working on ones I've left blank.  Yikes!

wishing well

Our wishing well has been printed which means the invitations are now ready to go out!

My initial choice was a lovely poem that was concise and did not leave room for confusion: it basicaly said 'give us money for our gift'.  I sent it to him at the sart of June. 

I made every effort to get the invites ordered and delivered before mid June.  Yet the invites was sitting in his house for close to 2 weeks before he got onto choosing the damn wishing wells. 

He didnt show my wishing well sample to his parents until at least a week after receving the invites. The Y's weren't keen on my preferred wording so Mrs Y gave Ant a selection of what she had found. Ant went with her suggestion.



My choice



The Y's choice and designed by Ant



I love the background that Ant has chosen, I think he did a great job.  But I hate the wishing well poem.

So much so in fact that when I distribute invites to my friends, I will exclude the poem.

dress fitting

Today I went for my first dress fitting.  It's where they take your measurements so that they can alter the dress.

My experience at Fairytales Bridal in Moonee Ponds has been mediocre since Day 1 when I went bridal shopping there.  The staff are women in their 40-50's and seem to love the sound of their own voices because they talk talk talk and talk.  And they're quite bossy/ pushy.

I bought my dress from Fairytales Bridal in Croydon and had it transferred to Moonee Ponds for convenience as it's closer.  The staff at Crydon were nicer.  Not so in-your-face.

Anyway so my fitting was at 4pm.  I arrived at 4:05pm, walked in and said I had a 4pm appointment.  Lady at reception just smiled and nodded so I sat myself down.  I waited a good two minutes and had to entertain myself looking at dresses before another staff member asked if I was there for a fitting.

So finally I'm in my dress and the seamstress is making suggestions on what we can do.  She's going to take the bodice down a size - first she asked if I wanted extra padding sewn into the bust - I declined.  The hem also need to be shortened and we looked at how high my bustle should be.  Total cost?  au$320.  The skirt isn't as fitted as I would like it to be but she recommended that we leave it as is.  I'm not sure how I feel about it.

After the measurements and I had changed out of the dress, I decided to look at some veils.  Another girl had come in for her fitting but she stayed in the change room and wouldn't come out to the open area like I had.  She initially had one saleslady with her, but soon she had three - including mine.  Why?  Because she had a meltdown about her weight after trying the dress on.

The dress was too small but she didn't want to pay for alternations.  She was determined to lose weight.  With her wedding being in December (I couldn't help overhearing), I don't know how she'll manage to go down 3 dress sizes.  Lucky for her the salesladies gave her some weight loss tips.

The check-out process took forever; once again I had to wait because they were talking too much.  To each other and to ms hysterical.  

An hour later I was able to leave.  $2000 poorer than when I went in.

Invites Arrived

My wedding invitations have arrived in Fiji!

The tracking process was awesome with everything documented whenever the cards arrived in a new country with 1 day turnaround times.  Until it arrived in Fiji. I was incredibly annoyed with UPS because the cards arrived in Nadi but sat there and was not delivered until 3 days later.

The 5kg box arrived in Ant's office on Friday arvo.  He was unable to go to work on Wed and Thurs due to a karate injury to his toe, but he went in on Friday arvo to pick up the box and do some work.

He's on crutches or something so had to ask someone to carry the box to his car.

So that will please his parents since they (and he) was harping on about wanting their overseas guests to have at least 2 months notice so that they can organize leave and flights.

As I am typing this blog I'm also watching Wife Swap - thanks to that bitch May.  This white man has a black wife with three kids.  The replacement wife keeps referring to them as coloured.

So the man is like, 'I keep telling her that coloured is the wrong term. People are either black, white or mixed.  My kids are not blue."

LOL!

I wonder if the Yams have finalised their guest list?  If they haven't then they'll have to get on it so that they can start distributing them.
 

Bahn Mi Thit

Tonight I want to talk about one of my favourite things to eat - Bahn Mi Thit.  Also known as Vietnamese pork rolls!

Footscray's Little Saigon market has some food shops that sell these yummy snacks for a bargain $3.50.

To's Bakery & Cafe

What ingredients make up the perfect pork roll? Pork pate, mayo, pork, pickled carrot, coriander, soy sauce, salt and white pepper and sliced hot chilli. Part of the fun in eating a pork roll is not knowing whether your next bite will be with or without a spicy chilli.

Today at Footscray Market I bought all the ingredients that I would need.  Things like chilli, corriander, vietnamese pork and carrot was easy enough to find.  I painstakingly searched each and every shelf for pork pate.  I found lots of shrimp paste, but no pork pate.

Deflated, I went to buy my usual pork roll to cheer me up.  As the lady was handing me my change, I  asked her where I could buy pork pate.

"It's not sold anywhere' she replied.

"Can I buy some from you?' I asked her.

"Sure, it's $5 for a container' she replied.

Before the sentence was out of her mouth, I was already digging through my wallet for moolah.  May was in hysterics at how eager I was and so was the lady.  

It's the long weekend and I plan to spend it eating pork rolls :o) 

Invites printed

My invitations have been posted!

The retailer in Hong Kong has confirmed it was shipped by UPS on Friday night.  The whole process (approving the proof and printing of the card) took a total of 1 month to organize.  And made me au$600 poorer.

April 29th I made contact with the retailer.  She said they didn't have my card in stock but they had Ant's.  His card is au$1 cheaper than mine so I went with it.  It was either that or contacting another retailer and paying a higher price.

April 4th I put down a 20% deposit and provided her with my draft.

May 11th she provided me with the layout.  This is after I rang her to find out why it was taking so long.  She didn't seem to remember who I was and was like, "Oh, did I say I would provide you the layout today?'  and I was like, 'Yes!' 

May 16th I signed off on the layout.

June 1st she emailed to say the card was ready for pick up at their WanChai office, so 'feel free to collect it anytime.'

I had to remind her (again) that I was based in Australia and need the invites posted to Fiji.  How much was courier cost?

She said she would get back to me.

June 2nd I had to follow up and ask if she had the courier quote for me. She responded immediately with the quote.  I authorized the total payment for the invites + postage to be debited from my credit card.

June 3rd she gave me the airway bill number for tracking.

Postage time should take about a week according to her so that's exciting.  The Yams will be able to have the invites 'in their hands' mid-end of this month which keeps in line with their aim to distribute it to their overseas guests with at least two months notice.

Awfully considerate of them to give their overseas guests so much notice.  But not exactly necessary considering they already know.

Favours re-re-visited

 Mrs Yam is again suggesting that we should fill the favour box up!

She sent me an email with the below paragraph.   

I asked Ant how he felt about it and he said he was fine with just the personalized hard candy and the fortune cookie. He had told her this the night before she sent the email.  

So I responded by saying personally I preferred to leave it as is.  Otherwise it's a gorgeous favour box filled with a mish mash of sweets.  I think less is more in this situation.  And anyway, why do you we have to spend so much unnecessarily on wedding favours.  

Also I just tried to put a fortune cookie into the favour box and it was rather a tight fit.  Mostly because the vacuum sealed pack is so boofy and the favour box is so tiny and delicate.

But I have the yellow foil cookies, so perhaps the clear sealed ones will be smaller.

In the second pic we have green personalized lollies from SRS Underwriting.  They were giving them out at a Conference I was forced to attended for work.  I sitll have yet to decide whether I want a pink peppermint lolly or a red flavoured one.  Either way, it looks great. 

I noticed that after a week in room temperature, the lollies had slightly become stuck to the box.  But the plan is to only put about 6 lollies in each box so they should be eaten quickly.  

Also on the corners of each box, there is a sizeable gap which roaches and definitely ants can crawl into; so it's not the best idea to leave the lollies in the box after that night.  Especially not in Fiji.

Sick Day

I'm home sick today.

Rather proud of myself because this is the first sickie I've had since returning to work after Christmas hols his year.  Compared to when I started in 2010; I pulled soooo many sickies then!

Not that I'm relaxing at home.  Ok I am, but I'm still logging in to my work computer via remote access to check and respond to emails.

Sometimes I like to stand at the window and watch the kids playing at the Special School across the road.  But May says it screams 'pedophile' so instead I peep discreetly through my window blinds.  Because that doesn't look as bad.

Anyway I've finally figured out how to use my new phone in terms of downloading the CD driver and being able to upload photo's to my computer!

These photo's were all taken an my new Samsung Galaxy Ace.  It's not the best image quality.  Oh wait, maybe that's because I changed the quality from superfine to fine.  That's something I need to test again later.

Honey is yum.

One night I was watching SBS and it so happened to be about a woman who loved honey so much she used it in the act.  Her poor sheets!!

And all that honey would just make you sick anyway, wouldn't it?

Sept Calendar

Here is the Sept calendar showing the arrival and departure dates of everyone who has confimred they are coming.

I am so lucky that my friends are willing to travel all the way back for my wedding!  Especially when you compare it to Ant's highschool friends - none of them have even committed yet.

If you haven't figured it out already, you can click on the image to make it larger.