Good News Only

January has shaped up to be a fantastic start to 2011.   Apart from the flu, which got me two days off work, its been good news after good news!

1. After our honeymoon in Hong Kong, I came home to an order that has been six months in the making - my new car!

Very happy with Giselle (that's the name Anh's given the car).  She goes like the wind and has these very hypnotic eyes.  Best cure to post-holiday blues :)

2.  My good friend Phil gave me the fantastic news this afternoon that I'm going to be a groomsman to his wedding!! Oh yeah!!  I know Phil and Mel are going to have an awesome wedding and I get to be in the midst of it all.  Buuuccksss night! Hehehehe.

3.  My cousin Berts and Thuy just passed on the great news that they are expecting TWINS!!! Two for the price of one!! Crazy stuff!! I don't think I've heard of twins in our family generation so this is going to be quite exciting for everyone.  I'm excited to see the twin prams hehehehe.

End of Spring 2010

No more weddings!!!  HOOOOOoooorrraaaaay!!!!

Well... at least for 2010  :)  More weddings already planned for 2011.


It feels like Anh and I have just been doing wedding things the past few months so were both really glad its over!

Spring Wedding #1

 Spring Wedding #2

 Spring Wedding #3

After our wedding, we attended Tuyen and Than's wedding and then Joe and Yip's wedding last Friday.

But with every wedding comes the honeymoon!!
Yay for honeymoons!

We're planning on heading to Hong Kong and Macau to see the sites and of course - TO GET FAT :P

That is of course, if we find the food places in Hong Kong.

Last time I was there, food was notoriously hard to find.  And going without a translator - this will be challenge!

Maybe I should bring pictures of food hehehe.  Anyone recommend any good places in Hong Kong?

*******

Now I'm not one to be "hatin'" all the time, but I'm already hating the summer heat.  :S

Must be the recent hot spell or maybe I'm just PMSing today, but I just dont' have love for the hot days.
Especially here in Perth when it scorches to around +35C for several weeks straight with a few 40 degree days thrown in just for fun.

I can already see myself cooking in my car or getting sun burnt for hanging laundry.

Yuckers.

I would just rather have spring, autumn and winters. :P Three seasons of joy!

Speaking of Joys - Christmas is just around the corner!!

Despite my confused outlook to Christmas (I was commercialised with white Christmas when I was a kid, but the summer Christmas here in Australia messed me up), Christmas is still a time I enjoy.

Looking forward to having the little nephews run around the house giggling and laughing.

And I wish mom cooks her chicken with white mushroom sauce, that would be so good!

Married

I'm officially married!

Wow, what a ride.

Phew!

Again, what a ride  :)

It was almost a year ago when I proposed and I can't believe how much has happened!

It's been a tremendous experience, one that's too big for words.  So many ups and downs and things that go sideways!?  Its something I wouldn't do again that's for sure!  But if I had a chance to change anything,


I would keep everything the same.

Engagement
A while back, I was driving home after I saw Anh and I was listening to one of my old CD's.

Ronan Keating's Bring you Home album.  Track 2 - "This I promise You" played.

I've heard the song many times before, but this time, it sounded like the song was for Anh.
That's when I realised she was the one for me, the one I'll be dancing the song with.

I know thats corny and all, but its true.  :)












A few months later I bought the engagement ring :)

Preparation
I think preparing for a wedding is the ultimate test for couples.

Its the biggest day of your life as a couple and everyone's got a different idea of how the day should pan out.

Then you're told that you should do this and that and you've got time, finance, and every man and his dog bearing down on you.  Its a mammoth of a task!

You try your best to satisfy everyone but you risk losing what you set out to do in the first place, having  you're own wedding!

But somehow, we managed. :)

Anh and I put a lot of hard work to our wedding and when we hear how much our guests enjoyed our day, little bubbles of happiness burst inside us.

Tea Ceremony

Our big day started with the tea ceremony at the bride's house.

Its Vietnamese tradition for families to offer gifts to each other.

My family brought gifts of fruits, alcohol, sweets and a roast pig for the bride's family.

The bridal couple then offered prayers to ancestors and tea to family for their blessings.

When I think about it, a few trays of food, alcohol and a roast pig got me the hand of a lovely girl :P

Bargain!


Church Ceremony

Our wedding ceremony was in St Michael the Archangel, a beautiful chapel in Leederville.  The church was really beautiful that day with the sun rays passing through the yellow glass windows giving us a golden tinge inside.

And our priest, Father Hong was the best!

He's been coaching us for a few weeks already in preparation for the wedding but his service was most entertaining.  He got his beautiful wedding message of communication and forgiveness with magic tricks and great humor.

I cried laughing when his wallet caught on fire!

Reception
After an afternoon of taking photos - we had our wedding reception in the Perth Exhibition and Convention Centre.

The room looked fantastic and Anh did a great job making up our centrepieces. We all enjoyed a generous banquet with the beautiful views of Perth city.

There's the beautiful cake my sister decorated.

And I really enjoyed the speeches.

There was crying everywhere!  The maid of honour had my bride bawling her eyes out halfway through her speech.  My brothers had me bawling my eyes out of laughter in their speech.  And I think we had a few tables bawling their eyes after our speech too!

We finished off the formalities with our bridal dance.

I'm not really sure how we did. In my head, I imagined we'd be waltzing like the pros, gliding across the foggy dance floor with spotlights following us.  Instead, I felt super clumsy, tripping a few times on Anh's dress.  I guess its karma for all the times I laughed at groom's tripping on their bridal dance.  :)

It was nicer than what I imagined because this time Anh was laughing with me.

All the small things that were not expected made for one memorable day.

After the reception we crashed into our hotel room and literally melted into our bed.  We were just so tired and the beds were super duper soft. Months of work, preparation and stress faded away.

It was the best feeling.

Wedding Month - Survival

Im surviving the last few weeks into our wedding.

I survived week 4 which was my bucks/bachelor's party week.  I had a great time catching up with my friends but nearly lost a liver from the excessive drinking.  Amazon woman was hot. lolz.  I didn't spill my guts, but I think should have as I paid for it dearly the following Sunday.

Week 3 was a weird week.   I was told to go home from work because I was acting 'sick' :P  On the way home my car was hit by a plaster board which broke off from the truck in front of me.  It was scary as hell, like a scene from a movie.  A small propeller hovering from a far, then suddenly spinning its way straight to my car.  There was a moment of silent slow motion and realisation that it was going to hit.  Then BAM! A deafening thud.  Plasterboard stuck my car at speeds at least 100km/hr piercing my windscreen.

The bright side to this is I didn't have to call the repairer to fix a previous chip on my windscreen :P

Having survived the 'plaster of death' I am now fighting my waist line. Lolz.  The birthdays and celebrations this month has meant non-stop eating.  Big dinners and food food food!!  I literally had to roll myself to bed last night for my mom's birthday and father's day dinner.  This morning I went for a jog to work it off, but Pizza for breakfast kinda cancelled it out.  :P  This is my toughest challenge yet.

Season Ender - Flying Solo

August has flown and I have no doubt that September will fly even faster.

I'm getting married in September.  :)

So lots of activities and maybe another slow month blog-wise.

Its a really nice warm fuzzy feeling knowing that I'll be spending the rest of my life with someone I love and cherish.  because I really love being with Anh.

I look forward to having our puppies and walking them and going on trips and eating burgers and sleeping late.  We're really looking forward to the marriage - and not so much the wedding - yeeckz!

The wedding prep has gone relatively okay.  Some minor hiccups, but Anh and I seem to find a way.  Actually Anh's been a tower of power with the wedding stuff.  She's ploughing through most of the work, where I seem to be dragging my feet.  I do help - but I'd like to think I give more creative and inspirational help.  Whether or not its actually helping, thats another story :P

I'm just a boy, in front of a girl.. 

In the end I'm sure it will all work out just fine.

It always does.

Engagement Tea Ceremony

Last month Anh and I celebrated our engagement....... again :)

This time was a traditional engagement tea ceremony.

From what I was told, the Vietnamese engagement tea ceremony involves the groom's family bringing gifts to the bride's house as offering for the bride's hand in marriage.

They said back in the old days, when marriages were still arranged, this would be the first time the bride and groom meet.  And that the gifts were kinda like a down payment or a deposit in case the groom ran away. Hahahaha.


Okay, maybe I made that last bit up.  I'm not really sure of the history but I'm guessing its originated from the Chinese marriage tea ceremony, which is very similar.

It was cloudy that day but thankfully it didn't rain.

The actual tea ceremony didn't run according to plan but it was just all laughs and giggles in the end.

Anh's family worried if the Groom was any good

Pink is the new black

There were plenty of food and great company which made for a great day.

Thank you to everyone who helped out.  A lot of people put a lot of work for this day and it was just really nice to have everyone there enjoy it with us.

I'm looking forward to the big day - its gonna have firecrackers and a whole pig!

Marching on to Autumn

Autumn is here so bye bye to the Summer heat wave!

Amen to that brother!

I don't think I can handle another day walking around with armpit sweat patches!


Yes.  Grossness.

*****

Autumn means the start of the football season, which also means the time for my wedding is fast approaching!

I'm using the football season as my ruler because we're getting married same day as the football grand final.  I'm just hoping none of the west ozzy teams make it to the finals otherwise we're going to have some very unhappy guests!

Thankfully work for the wedding has been progressing along nicely.  I mean, we're doing as much as we can now but we know there'll be things that we'll have to leave until the end.  We're going to the Dusk Bridal Expo this Saturday followed by grand wedding in Hyatt.  I hope you're not too tired of wedding posts.

*****

Last Sunday, my family visited Anh's family to discuss our engagement tea ceremony.

Nothing like pork chop and broken rice to get the folks together.

Our parents talked about the tea ceremony, but also about random things like fishing, food and tradition.

I must say, I'm very glad both my parents and Anh's parents get along so well.  Family feuds are always unpleasant, so a good start in that department is a good sign.  Since both parents respect each other's traditions and customs I'm sure the engagement will run smoothly.

Plus us young ones will make sure its fun.  :)

****

Last Sunday Anh and I also invested on a new SLR camera!

*insert "wooooo" sounds*

It's very exciting!  It came with two lenses and it goes click click click when you press down on the button -  just like in the movies!!

And we got a sling bag with a compartment to put your wallet!

And its got lots of dials and numbers and stuff.

Its very heavy though.

Quite big too!

*ahem*

As you can see we're complete noobs when it comes to photography.

I was clicking away on Monday and the shots looked good in the viewfiender, but all the photos came out black!  :(

But thanks to YouTube photography tutorials, I'm picking up on photography lingo and techniques very, very quickly. Yey!

I'm actually off the training wheels (Auto Mode) and am adjusting my own shutter speeds and ISO settings!

*inser "wooooo" sounds*

Hopefully in the not-so-distant future, we can take colourful shots of random things which we can enlarge, frame and hang all over the house to make it bright and happy.

Gift Registry

Anh and I had our first wedding gift registry experience!

We went around Myers and scanning items we hope to get as wedding presents.

We didn't do so well on our first run though.  I think we were scanner-shy.  We only scanned twenty five items.

And most of these so that we get the freebies!! hehhehehe.

Stuff you get for free if you scan certain brands

But we're warmed up now!
So watch out scanner - we're heading to the electronics department next.

E-Bridal and the Wedding

Wedding overload last Saturday.

Spent the first half of the morning checking out the eBridal wedding expo.

As you'd imagine, the $15 event packs the Burswood function area with pretty much every wedding-related item you can think off.

Photographers, invitations, cake-makers, venues, dresses, limo hire.  They even had this guy who will MC + DJ and sing on your wedding! It's the wedding singer! And he actually sounded pretty good. Very Frank Sinatra.  Too bad his music choice were too old for us.

It was a good experience, but one that I wouldn't want to do again lolz.

Not that it was bad or anything. They did give free popcorn and mini-cake samples.  Plus we probably saved lots from the deals and discount vouchers we picked up.

It just that it had this unpleasant feeling of having too many bride-to-be in one building  :P

With the brides were moms, sisters, friends, bridesmaids, cousins - whoever.  It was like a giant bridal-Tupperware-oestrogen party *shudder*

And its really unfair because is geared towards women with heaps of stands with 'Hen's Night' stuff.  Where's the stand with Buck's night memorabilia huh? Where's the pole dancers?  :P

Man-stuff - Hummer Limo

After the expo we headed to the Perth Cathedral for Joe and Michell's wedding.

The newly upgraded Cathedral looks fantastic!  It's both modern and traditional at the same time.  Inside is really bright and fresh and a huge improvement from the previously dark church.

The altar has a new greeny-bluey glowing background

The reception was then held in the Perth Convention Exhibition Centre. I really liked this place and  I'd have my wedding here if I had the choice :)

Chopsticks with Knife & Fork! Brilliant!

The celebration was really enjoyable.  The food was excellent, the company was great and we had a great night.

Was sooooooo tired at the end of the night though!

All wedded out as well.