Wedding day photos using my camera.

Its our big day today! Just completed our daytime activites. These are some of the photos taken using my camera. Thanks to Lena aka my pa to helping to take the pics of the actual day.

2 days before our weddng - An Chuan and collection of gown

Its time to do An Chuan, a chinese wedding tradtion at which a bridal bed is set up. We did a simple an chuan by ourselves. Putting new bedsheets, shifting bed to position, putting yuan into the wardrobe, placing an chuan stuff like peanuts, red dates, lotus seeds, 2 oranges 2 money bags consisting $9.90 and $8.80 worth of coins.

This symbolises the good health, fortune and the off-springs for the wedding couple.

Me trying to put the quilt cover in place.

After we completed our An Chuan, we proceeded our bridal studio Yvonne Creative to collect our gowns.

Our 过大礼 Guo Da Li on 1 November 2008

Its our Guo Da Li this morning. William, his sister Tiffany and his Aunt Kelly came over to our home with bethrothal gifts.

Guo da li is an one of the main wedding event whereby both families of groom and bride acknowledge and give blessing to this marriage.

William's family also prepared a bouquet of flowers for me which was pleasant surprise for me. Thank you so much! I love the flowers!

These are the wedding cakes which William's family had given us. They were distributed to my relatives after Guo Da Li in the afternoon.

These are the betrothal gifts that William's family had brought.

Money tokens like bride price etc....

Some gift items: Dragon and phoenix candles, 2 bottles of hard liqour, oranges, four gold (四点金), fa cake(Pic above and below)

The bride's family will accept the gifts and return a pair of dragon and phoenix candles, part of the bride price, oranges, 2 bottles of orange juice and 1 fa cake to the groom's family. In addition, we also presented my dowry to the groom's family.

Betrothal and dowry items for Guo Da Li

Together with my mom-in-law, hubby, sis-in-law and her boyfriend, we went to Chinatown to procure our things need for Guo Da Li. My MIL had went racky around the shops selling bridal stuff in Chinatown a few weeks before.

The dowry is one of the main category of stuff to buy for the bride's side. Dowry are the things which the bride's family give to bride for her new life at her new home. This is usually given together with the return gifts for the groom's family.

Apart from the dowry, the groom family need to buy dragon and phoenix candles and a basket to carry the betrothal things like 2 bottles of liqour, bride price, oranges, 4 types of gold (si dian jin). These things are needed to to be brought over to bride's home during betrothal. I did not manage to take photos of the things bought by the groom's family to show here.

We went to a bridal shop called K.K Marriage Goods located at Chinatown Complex. These are things which I had bought for my dowry.

Bathtub, towels (2 sets), mugs (replacing brushing teeth tumbler), ornament symbolising spitoon and basin.

2 sets of plates, bowls, chopsticks and spoon

Bedroom slippers for the groom

A pair of bedside lamp

Tea Set

All these things above will be passed to the groom's family. Other things like 2 bottles of orange juice will be returned to the groom too.

Below are the item which the bride will use during her wedding day.

Bedroon slippers

2 sets of fan

1 red umbrella

Guo Da Li's cakes ordered

I ordered cakes on the behalf of William's family for our coming Guo Da Li (bethroal). They had empowered us to order cakes we like and will be using ang pow to represent cake.

I surfed through a few websites. Shortlisted KYO cake house, sweetest moments and Chocz confectionery. All three have delivery service. I decided on Sweetest moments in the end because of the price, personalised card and presentation of the food.

Wedding customs and wedding shop information

On and off, I would visit Sg brides forum to read my favourite thread regarding wedding related topics.

One of the thread was discussing about chinese customs stuff like guo da li and dowry. They were sharing where to get the stuff from.

I find this website which they shared useful, so I decided to put the link here.
http://www.worldoffortune.com/WOF/FY/index.php

There also this wedding shop which they recommend.
Chop Kwong Mee Blk 4 Sago Lane #01-127

We have not do much for the guo da li, an chuan and dowry yet. This will definitely come useful if we need them.