working on no6

Finally, the honeymoon album. It was the best time ever. And i'm glad to have these in physical form to look at and remember the great times we had in Penang. Even as we're planning honeymoon no2 now (we gotta do it before the kids come!) nothing beats Penang man. I'm turning these photos into a scrapbook, as soon as i unpack in Unit 8 (no2 on the list!) cos my crafting materials are all packed away and i don't really want to repack them.

The Obsessive Bride

I'm glad i was known as an obsessive bride. I wasn't obsessive over all sorts of little details, i really wasn't all that concerned. I was obsessive over the prices, i said no to a lot of expenditure that might have been. If i hadn't had interfered, i think everyone might have just spent whatever they liked on everything. Crazies. But there's only one thing i'm really happy i was obsessive over, which is the content and flow of the ceremony.

If there's anything any bride should be obsessive over, it should be that. I'm glad our ceremony told the story that it did about our lives together, joined by God, for Christ, his Church and the Gospel. I'm glad that cos of our obsession over that, people could see the statement we're making with our lives. I'm very glad to have put it all out there, for you all my friends and family, because we want to share with you this good life we have, this salvation that we have under Christ.

I just wanted to encourage all you young bride-to-bes to be godly when deciding how to have your wedding. Encourage the people around you to make godly decisions too, like not overspending, or over-anything. I wasn't happy how some things were done, but well, some things i had no choice but to close one eye and let it go. If i had a chance for a do-over, i would have done a lot more things myself. Even though that would have meant a lot more tiredness for me, i would have liked to maintain more control over the expenses incurred and other things. Not everyone shares the same mentality that weddings can be budget, gorgeous and meaningful at the same time. So struggle with it.

the more i see photos of my wedding, the more i see how many people went against our specific requests to respect the ceremony, the HOLY MATRIMONY as it is called, by restraining themselves from taking photos during the ceremony. I find that very rude. Now discreet photos i'm perfectly fine with, but some people really get on my nerves. They get right up there, don't they? If i ever get married to Adrian again, i'm holding spot check at the door to confiscate all cameras. I will be encouraging all future young couples to do that too. Don't care what people say, the ceremony is more important than the shot you're gonna blog/facebook/tumblr/twitpic with. We also gave specific instructions to let the official photographer do his job, which was only two guys and while we were up there saying our vows, there were like 10 photographers. Like, what the heck. England not the understanding ka? I found it really distracting. Really, you should be ashamed of yourselves. Where you should be helping us make our promises, paying attention to our vows to keep us accountable, you are all over the place, distracting us to no end. Shame on you.

Our rings

Ahh finally i can show off our rings. Mine says : Submit, as to Christ and Adrian's says : Love as Christ loves. I wanted engraving on the outside cos there really isn't much point in writing those words inside cos i can't see it. Had to find a custom jewelry maker cos no other jeweler would engrave on the outside and the ones who would looked cheap design-wise. It sorta is to me as maybe phylacteries were to the Israelites but so much more. It's making an effort to remember the Lord's words.

Tomorrow, we're legal

It's really near now, because tomorrow i will be swearing. Angkat sumpah la. Swearing yang lain itu hampir tiap tiap hari ada satu kali (it's bad it's bad i know).

Today (as in yesterday) i collected my wedding dress. Yes. I gave up half way. The lace was too difficult for me to wrestle with so i let a tailor finish up my lace bits. It's SO PRETTY! I feel like Princess Mia Thermopolis in it, except that i don't look like it la. Hehe... she's so pretty how to fight? Anyway, no peeks til saturday =P unless you come to my house.

Time to sleep, blog posts will be short from now til i return from my honeymoon =) Don't mind me, i'm just enjoying myself with my future and then husband, yay! Promise to be back with pictures galore!

excited and frazzled

oh that's okay! It just means it's only 

FOUR DAYS AWAY!

Struggling to get to grips

With all these disturbing thoughts lingering in my head ALL the time, i've been having a hard time concentrating on much preparation. I feel like a schizophrenic psycho hormonal PMSing pregnant woman (i'm not) cos i'm mood swinging from one end of happy to soon be married and upset with all the dingbat things going on.

Can you all please... please just do me a favor and help me focus? If you're not part of the solution, you're probably part of the problem. Help me remember that my dream wedding is essentially one with Adrian in it. (That does not give you license to mess with my wedding by the way, just for your info).

I find it unfair when people say we're crazy to do such a big thing, there's so much planning involved, and like next time they don't wanna get married cos of the whole big planning for the big wedding thing.

Number one : I didn't want the big wedding. I would have been happy with 40-150 people in a beautiful quaint little art gallery, with a tea party after and thats it. Really happy! Just in case you all didn't catch that : REALLY HAPPY!

Number two : Because of the big wedding that i now have, of course la have to do more invitations, more stuff all round. Is that my fault? I don't think so. Am i more stressed out? Of course i am. Does anyone really care? NO. Everyone just wants their own piece of happiness with a massive big wedding. I'm breaking out everywhere, my eczema has come back with full force, does anyone care? No.

Sigh. As long as my nearest and dearest and the church turns up to witness to my vows, to make promises to keep us walking in the ways of God and actually try and keep them, it's good enough for me. In a sense i just can't wait to be over this whole frankenwedding. It just goes to show what people's priorities are. all of whom would prefer me in rashes and stress rather than focusing on my vows and preparing for marriage together.

I'm tired of figuring out how to cover up the little cartoon characters in the hall, trying to figure out how to hang the fabric without it falling. Does anyone else wanna take a whack at it?

It's the final countdown!

Nine! Eee exciting nyer! Today the single digit countdown has commenced. Everything's mostly settled now... i say mostly cos there are still plenty of things to complete. I'm aiming for rest and relaxation at this point in time.

I'm happy to receive so many calls from people i don't normally get calls from. It's nice to catch up and share what's going on with the wedding and everything.

I'm randomly plonking down thoughts, cos i'm just stoked that it's only nine days now! I have to write everything down now, cos i keep forgetting everything!

On my to-do list today : Finalize all decorations and write it all down! One thing at a time, one thing at a time. I've bought so much white cloth, it's enough to mummify me. But i need to cover all the kiddie elements in the hall so when it's necessary... Did you like the little white milk jug i posted a couple of days ago? That's gonna be part of the decor in the hall. I'm gonna try my best to make the hall and tent appear garden tea party like. I am determined to make that happen because i am not getting my garden tea party for real so i'll make do, and there's no stopping me =P So i'm imagining garlands and flowers and a slight resemblance to the mad hatter's tea party.

Eleventeen hundred yonkerzones away

Is it just me or is eleven days really long?

And isn't it just so short?

The long and short of it all is that i can't wait to be married to my mr Miller.

The girls made this scrapbook for me on my bridal shower. And i really want to see it! The front cover was really pretty, it has my name and it read : An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. Taken from Proverbs 31. I really did have a fantastic time. I'm so excited to see the recipes and little notes inside, the poems and sayings, everything lah. I'm really glad Adrian and i both had good bachelor/bachelorette parties. Let men be encouraged to be men and women to be women, to embrace their roles as God intended it. That's the best party i could ever ask for.

It's finally sunk in on me, amidst all the festivities, how serious this is. We have received our vows that we are supposed to memorize (no papers allowed) and as if the content isn't hard enough, at the end it reads "And this is my solemn vow." Big promises, big keeping it after the wedding. Quoting Joy, the wedding is where you make these promises but the marriage... that's where you keep them. Thank God that i believe in total depravity, which means i am a sinful human being who desires no more than to rebel against God but God in his great mercy, has provided me a means of salvation, found only in His Son Jesus Christ's death and resurrection as atonement for my rebellion which rightfully deserves death. And it is God who works in me, changes me, gives me the Godly character and continues his work til Jesus comes again. So its now possible for me, sinful and rebellious, to be a Godly woman, a good wife and part of God's saved people, his treasured possession. Every time i read my vows, i see all that and i'm glad that i have that to remind me.

an English rose

Pretty?

Twelve

It's two days away from single digits. I'm gonna go nuts! *cue song : I'm so excited... and i just can't hide it!* Why can i only think of songs now? But when it comes to the time, i mind blank. Oh Mickey.

About my bridal shower, I leave you with these:

...with the lights off.
...without brushing your teeth.
...clean your ears.

*grin*

It was a blast! As you've probably already seen on facebook or other means, it was a mad hatter's tea party. The food was UH-MAY-ZING! There was so much left over and Swen took it all back!

My boy's videos were the cutest! Of course, no one else thinks so except me. They were the highlight of my night, except when he turned up outside to fetch me =P

Now that it's so close, i feel like i want to be with him all the time. But that's silly isn't it? Cos i'll be with him for the rest of my life. So i'm making time to see all these other people i haven't seen in a while, and just waiting. Impatiently, but i'm still waiting.

15 days...

Ribbons have been bought, and yet there's still more to buy.
Cloth has yet to be bought.
Candles have been bought, and yet there's still a matter of fire safety issues.
The dress is close to done, and yet it is not complete.

I am so tired. I can't wait til the honeymoon. I want to sleep. Hahaha. Like for real ZZZ kinda sleep.

It's only 17 days now

I think we're starting to communicate better, thanks to us being made aware of our strange habits in one of our premarital counselling sessions. We're making dates just to talk (well just one so far, but we will do more). We talk more now about important things, and we (or at least, me) try our best not to shy away from hard stuff. And we're happily receiving RSVPs now almost every day. I'm glad so many of my friends are coming!

I am really looking forward to my second bridal shower this saturday! I enjoyed the first one very much, i'd love to catch up with my friends more. It was really great hearing about where everyone's been and where they're going. And so for the second, I'm really excited to have all my good friends there to have a girly night, filled with fun, laughter, encouragement and prayer. It's already so close and i can't ask for more than a hang out with my girls to take my mind of the craziness. I'm hoping for Adrian to have a good time with his boys on Friday night too. I hope that the men will encourage him to be a godly man and husband and have a fun time celebrating. I can only pray that everyone who comes will enjoy themselves and hopefully take something back with them, even if it's totally different from the usual hen nights. I can't imagine having a usual hen night. I can't understand why any God-glorifying girl would want to have one like that.

I'm really so very very tippytoes excited to see what the girls have come up with for me on saturday! Thank you Mel, Nat and Joy for organizing it for me! You guys rock!

Adrian would like to add : I'm glad we have these people organizing our pre-wedding parties. A grateful thank you to Justin and Jeremy too!

twenty two days!

I'm getting married in twenty two days! TWENTY TWO days! I'm going nuts with excitement. Like a dog on a leash in the park. All this wait wait wait wait waiting... is crazy after close to eleven months of it! That's like a whole year! I can't wait no more! This is going to be the longest twenty two days of my life. Or at least it will feel like the longest til perhaps when i'm in labor. Then it will be the longest i dont wanna know how long hours of my life.

Tomorrow! I'm gonna see the house again and go to the IKEA sale FINALLY! Hopefully there's still stuff left for our house! I'm so excited, i'm moving quickly from delegate mode to nesting mode!

Oh ya! I forgot to update you guys on how the photoshoot went. We had it last Saturday in Ipoh with Joel and his team. My cheeks hurt remembering how much we had to smile that day. Hahaha, it was fun. There was a point though where Joel was like, "Okay, i don't want to close up on your face anymore. You look tired." Gahaha yeah, poor Adrian was tired to begin with, much more ending with. I'm not gonna show you more, just the one, on the sidebar. I'll save the rest for the slideshow or something else. It was so funny on the way back, cos i drove at first but then i got sleepy and dozy, then he drove so i fell asleep in the passenger side. Then we stopped and i woke up and i was like huh? Where the heck are we? This doesn't look like home. He was sleepy la so had to stop at one of the rest places. So i woke up and drove a little way further and then it got really rainy, my eyesight is super bad at night especially if it rains. So he had to take over again. Thankfully we eventually got home.

It was a real different experience though, these pre-wedding photoshoot things. Adrian and i ended up talking about a whole lot of nothing when we were trying to look like we were having a deep and meaningful. I guess our brains could only concentrate on posing, smiling and trying not to look fake and our conversations suffered for that. I asked him to play a real song for me when he was posing with a guitar and he couldn't think of any. Previously, when we were just on our own, he would just randomly play all sorts of things. Although some things never change. Pretend fights and cheeky, mischievious grins, that's my specialty that will never ever change. Anyway, i hope you all enjoy in 15 minutes the hours and effort we all put into the photos.

one more month!

I cannot lie : I WILL BE OVERJOYED WHEN ALL THIS IS OVER and life gets back to normal. I can only take that much crazy for so long.

We're closing in and these people are super

Every day draws closer to the first day of a lifetime of marriage. By now, i am pretty happy to have the day come as quickly as possible. Most things are done. I say most. At this point, i am Ms Delegate Everything. Perfection will never be acheived and i will never be able to do everything myself. So i'm very happy to let everyone else handle everything.

Diana is doing this marvellous job with the fruitcake baking. She completed like 6 huge cakes in less than a week. I don't even LIKE fruit cake, but her's tastes quite nice. Maybe cos belum soak a lot in brandy yet. I don't like the brandy taste. She's also buying the legal copies of music to play at the two dinners. She's a gem!

My sister is coming back in 2 days! I'm very excited to have her back (so i can put her to work). Nolah! It's been so quiet without her. I dunno what i'm gonna do when i'm in my new home and alone when Adrian's not around.

The house is almost ours! Adrian's watching over the proceedings like a hawk. I can't wait to move in and redo the whole place. It's gonna look so cool (at least in my head la).

Mel and Nat are planning my bridal shower. Nat (who's also my day of coordinator) is continuously making me feel guilty for not being organized, hahaha! It's good, it's good! She's like the army general keeping me on my toes. Ah so many things i would forget if not for her. And i hear some interesting things are popping up for the shower. I'm not sure to be worried or excited =P

My mum did the trial cake! It was yummy but needed more orange flavor. Everyone in church got a taste and loved it! They all said it was very nice and moist and yummy. Can't wait to taste the real thing! Her dress oso came back from the tailor's oredi, it looks cool, especially with her super cun shoes. I'll put up photos soon.

My photographer has thrown in a free pre-wedding photoshoot too! So this Saturday, we're going on a field trip to Ipoh! Adrian bought me this really pretty dress to take photos in. The boy is so sweet.

A million other people are helping out in so many ways, i can hardly count! All in all, i'm very thankful for all the people who've helped out in any way. It means a lot to have everyone sorta being invested into this. I hope it means that in the same way, they will support our marriage as well, in praying for us and keeping us God-focused.

kolmekymmentä-kuusipäivää!

This dingbat of mine sent me a sweet email today :

Glad to see us preaching the gospel that gave us life and hope. Glad to see us preaching the gospel that gives us hope for a godly marriage. Glad for the union between Christ and his church. Glad for the union that is to be between you and me.

Well, i'm glad too =)

trying me

I'm so sick of people who dismiss frugal as cheap and tacky, think of creative innovation as weird and nobody-will-like-that, and comment on different ideas as eeyer-nobody-does-that and won't-look-nice-lar.

A question i'd like to ask is, are you the designer or am i?
Nuff said.

the world today has no appreciation for gospel values. not surprising. What's surprising is even Christians think this way. No appreciation for holiness. Marriage is merely something else in life, not related to the gospel and therefore you should just follow the world's standards. Why can't people praise the desire to remain holy before marriage by getting married? Why do people praise the pursuit of more money to achieve a certain expected standard of living and security instead of pursuing holiness? don't you all understand that we don't need to live in a big place with a big car and big bank accounts to start off with? What is wrong with renting a small place, with small cars and small pay? As long as we don't starve to death isn't it... Why do people think of marriage like an end to life? As if i won't have a life after the deed is done. For crying out loud. It's just ridiculous. that is why so many Christians fall into sexual sin before they're married. And what do people do? close one eye, they get married eventually don't they? When they can afford it wat... the whopping big wedding.

Sigh. That is the ugly raincloud that shadows my wedding. That is the worst that weddings bring out in people. If there were any good reason to elope, this comes close.

it's the forty niner.

My ring has no diamonds. My invitations were printed on my printer. My dress is hand made. My make up will be self done. What's more important? I'm marrying a good Christian man and we want to honor God with our lives together by being holy and gospel focused in everything we do.

My friends, flee from things that drag you away from Christ. Flee from things that distract you, color your perspective, entice you subtly. When man becomes your Lord rather than Christ, flee. When money becomes your Lord rather than Christ, flee. When your brother or mother or friend becomes your Lord rather than Christ, flee. There's only one God, one Lord. Only One, who's worthy of our wholehearted devotion and love. Only One who has saved us from these idols. Only One who asks us to follow Him, to take up our cross and suffer. And be blessed.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.