#Bigbangwedding: Searching for Wedding Bands + Review of Fairy's Inc

We (by "we", I mean mostly me only lol) began our search for the wedding bands the earliest.

Before all the wedding planning started, C and I sat down to discuss what are our wedding priorities. The wedding bands came out tops so that was the first segment I started on. 

Initially I didn't plan to spend so much on the bands since I already got a very pretty engagement ring, and therefore didn't mind if it's not gold or anything. But he was rather particular and wanted something that's very "us". His reason being this is the only piece of jewelry he'll ever wear and for the rest of his life so he thought the investment was worth it. (Aww) 

I went on etsy first and proposed several ideas to him including: 

geeky rings -- but it didn't make sense coz' he doesn't know binary

wood x titanium rings 

rings with customized thumbprints 

I got in contact with the thumbprint ring seller (based in USA) and was told that they are unable to help as they will need to send me a mold for the rings and they will not do it for anywhere outside of USA. 

Retail Shops

Then we decided online may not be a good choice also since we can't try and see the actual rings before purchase. I also went to almost all the ring brands in the shopping mall. I would suggest ION Jewellery Street since most of the retail shops are there. The staff are more attentive/friendly and are able to do some level of customization within the shop that other outlets in heartland malls are unable to. 

Soo Kee's rings: Able to choose colour and shape (sharp or round edge)

A pair of the rings at these shops range should be around $2,000+.

However, the collections are more or less similar or limited, but these 2 did stand out from the rest - 

Love & Co. 

Soo Kee 

At SooKee's Brilliant Brides event. Outlet at Wisma Atria

Tip: Attend workshops and read broadly to find out which jewellery to go with the gown, and what cutting suits your body shape best. 

Specialized Shops

During the period of the ring hunt, I was also reading bridal magazines and bookmarked Ling Jewellery as well as Fairy's Inc. Ling was located at Orchard Hotel Shopping Centre (then) and Fairy's Inc at Delfi Orchard. 

We spent a good 1.5 hours at Ling's, who provided great service and very patient with us. They tend to have a lot of celtic designs and mixture of different materials/colours (my colleague got her weddings bands there and her ring is in black!), but rings are also highly customizable there. 

At that point we were quite sold to Ling's, but then I said no harm checking out Fairy's to see their range, even though they are more expensive. The shopfront of Fairy's is pretty -- clean, sparkly, white with pink accents-- like a princess's tale. 

For some reason we were a quite intimidated but because the staff managed to propose something that C likes, plus her knowledge in my engagement ring (we didn't say anything at all), he was sold. We started with the design of my ring. 

C wanted me to wear both my rings together after marriage so we had something customized to match my Paloma Picasso Crown of Hearts.   

Because my engagement ring was already rather thick, the wedding band has to be kept slim. I couldn't make up my mind but I knew I wanted these 2 elements: 

- Rose gold (always my fav) 

- Scallop edge

She recommended diamonds to go with it too and I fell in love with the heart-shaped diamond. Added only one ($$) to anchor the ring.

The rest of the scallop "dips" is decorated with small round diamonds. I liked that different sides of my rings can be in different gold, so only my top and bottom is in rose gold, the exterior and interior white gold. 

Perhaps you would also notice that when I finally stack my rings and when worn together, it looks like my engagement ring is wearing a Heart Crown too, geddit geddit? Hahaha

Anyway I have friends who thought this set was one ring itself, so I'm quite pleased with the end product. Just a bit disappointed that the heart diamond looks smaller than expected and I never knew the carat of it. :/ Is it important to know? 

For his ring, he browsed the shop looking for ideas. He had an equally tough time choosing because he didn't want a plain band. The designs I chose for him were too girly lol.

He later on discovered the beauty of the matte hammered gold finish. To complement my ring we wanted to add a 'heart' element to it, but if carved outside, it is too girly. Sandra from Fairy's Inc were very helpful in giving ideas and also sketching the designs out.

She suggested having half the heart hidden/folded, and we added rose gold colour to fill up the heart portion. His ring also has a more subtle scallop edge design to match mine, layered on top of the base ring.

Last but not least, instead of carving just dates inside the rings, we carved "#bigbangwedding" (yes with the hashtag!), the date (on mine) and a picture of us stargazing. After all, we wanted a space-theme wedding and we made sure the rings were covered too :)  The picture engraving is done using an actual back view image of us, with his arms over my shoulder. That makes it even more special for us. 

His ring has the picture engraving of our back view, and mine of the stars. So when you stack our rings together...

Tadaaa, us stargazing! 

The rings were presented nicely to us in a white box, with a layered floral petal design. We collected the rings 9 months before our wedding because we wanted to our photog to take pictures of them during our pre-wed shoot.

C and I are pleased with the end results!

Overall, I feel like we're paying more for the 'brand' and the marketing efforts. For the price we paid, I later found out we could have easily gotten rings of more prestigious brands from the boutiques. Fairy's Inc is probably more suitable for their diamond engagement rings because the details to each ring is much more worth the money in my opinion, and the designs beautiful. The collection of engagement rings is gorgeous.

Service wise, Sandra was good. Although initially we were quite intimidated, it got better over the few sessions. They also allowed us to shoot part of our Tuesday Report in the shop, and helped us "act" too. Hehe. :D

Personal ratings - 
Service: 4.5/5
Quality: 4/5
Design: 5/5
Price: 3/5

Fairy's Inc 
Delfi Orchard #03-03
402 Orchard Road Singapore 238876
Tel: 6235 5570

www.fairysinc.com/‎

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I'm Engaged!!!! The Full Proposal Story!

I know this is almost 6 months late, but yes, he proposed and I said "YES!"

To friends and family member who have asking about the proposal, I'm sorry I haven't been quick enough to update. So here's the full story (sort of) of how it happened! :)


THE TIOMAN TRIP 

It started with my usual bugging him to go overseas for a holiday together earlier this year. Of which, he disagreed. :(  I wanted to celebrate his birthday with him.  However, he told me that he had planned for a weekend trip to Sentosa instead.  We should have gone there during April, but it was one of my last few days of school so I couldn't afford to skip it.

We later settled on the first week of May.  He had managed to convince me that we were REALLY going to Sentosa (because he really love Singapore), and that we were gonna be heading to USS on Saturday.

Yet, a week before our trip something funny happened.  His parents, him and I were going for dinner at Nex as usual, and his mom suddenly mentioned,

"While we're away in Europe, please take care of the dog ah"

I looked at him and he looked constipated.  He stuttered,

"Err, we also going away for the weekend leh. Can we find a dog sitter?"

His mom:

" Oh. Cannot bring the dog to Sentosa meh?"

Alien:

"Cannot"

After we arrived at Nex, I noticed he behaved oddly. He pulled his parents aside (rather non-discreetly) and spoke softly. I pretended that I didn't see and checked on my phone.  I disregarded that, but halfway during dinner ...

His mom:

"You all going Tioman for how many days ah"

You should have seen Alien's face.  Lol. He was at a loss for words and looked pissed.  He immediately replied, quite forcefully:

"Sentosa. We're going SENTOSA."

The same night I asked him if we're really still going Sentosa... because there were too many loopholes already. He even said I need to bring passport to check-in at Sentosa hotel. Hahahaha.  I told him I know where we're going already la, no need to bluff me.

We broke into evil laughter coz' his surprise getaway was ruined... by his mom.  Lol.  He was a bit disappointed because he only told a handful of people about the Tioman trip. He wanted to minimize the chances of news being leaked.

So a few days later we packed for Tioman and left home bright and early!  :D

Note the cute caucasian baby in background! 

I would just like to add here that please DO NOT EVER TAKE A PLANE TO TIOMAN.  Because Alien like planes (understandably), he decided that we should fly to Tioman via the only flight provider -- Berjaya Air.

We had time to take pictures because we were already ON BOARD the plane, and Berjaya Air decided to refuel the plane.  This means the AC was off throughout this period, and we were all sweating like pigs inside.  I don't mean those stand-under-the-sun kinda perspiring, I mean we were sweating inside the cabin as if we had just ran 10km.  It was real stuffy and warm.

When they finally switched on the AC, it was NOT cool air!  The ventilators were dirty and out came a whirling fog of dust. I sat by the window and had water droplets drip on me every 3 minutes. :(

What is this shit.  Worse of all, Alien paid a lot more to take the plane than the boat.  We were pretty upset already.  We endured it all but the flight was unbearable (shall elaborate more at the end of this post). 

The happy stuff first.  The flight was a short one and here's the view of the island!!!

.... Welcome to Tioman!

This is Tioman "airport" in its entirety lol.  I didn't know Tioman was SO hot.

We put our stuff down in our resort room and went to the beach.  The beaches and clear waters are the redeeming factors to the bad start of our trip. 

Alien and I spent a few hours frolicking under the sun, finding fishes and watching the sunset.

Sunsets at Tioman is really BEAUTIFUL.

After dinner we stayed in to watch plastic surgery on TV (old liao) and discussed if I would ever go under the knife.  The girl in the documentary broke both her knees in the hope of growing 1-2 inches taller, wtf!

View from our room.  It was the 15th (Chinese Calendar) and so it was full moon.


The following day we went snorkeling (Alien's first) and returned to the resort mid-afternoon really exhausted.  But after a satisfying lunch we took a dip in the resort pool.


THE PROPOSAL 

We had to be dressed properly in order to enter the restaurant so we headed back to our room.  At this point of time I still didn't know he had anything in mind!  Apparently while we were heading out, he was so focused on hiding the ring that he locked us out of the room. 

At dinner, out of nowhere he suggested that we should go for a walk by the beach afterward.  I was doubtful because he HATES walking in the dark by the beach (for fear of sand flies and what not) and he actually WANTS to do that???

So after our buffet we went to the lobby to ask for a spare key but the concierge told us to go back to our room and wait for somebody to unlock it for us.   Since we wanted to go for a stroll by the beach first, he told her that we would come back later instead.  All these while with me asking him "Are you sure?? We don't have to walk by the beach one, it's okay".   But he insisted anyway.

As we walked towards the beach, he started behaving all weird.  We strolled and came to a quiet spot, so we stood and watched the distant ships ... and then he had to come and say,

"Eh look. I own that yacht over there leh." 

 --______--"

I immediately replied,

"Yah yah. (Me pointing at another random boat) And that's mine, the island's mine, the bar is mine." 

IT WAS AWKWARD AND ODD, I DON'T KNOW WHAT HE WAS DOING.

I wanted to walk on to find a spot to sit so I turned away and at this point, he grabbed my hand!  The next thing I knew was that he had led my hand towards his crotch area, and he said,

"Touch here!"

 I wasn't facing him so I didn't know exactly what that was.  It was something very hard that I touched  HAHAHAHAHAH DO YOU GEDDIT.  I panicked and my immediate reaction was to pull back my hand and exclaimed,

"WHAT?! HERE?!  ARE YOU CRAZY?  THERE ARE PEOPLE AROUND!!"

Then I turn to face him. LOL

It was a look a disbelief on his face and he said,

"Walao! What are you thinking?! It's this lah! (took out the hard object from his berm pocket)"

 It  turned out to be a blue box that he put inside his pocket!!!!  


The box was a bit too big for his pocket and that was how it ended up near his crotch.  0__0 


 LOLOLOL.  Thinking back, I will still laugh about this every time. SO EMBARRASSING on my part!!!

My memory of the proposal is henceforth blurry.  I remember being breathless and mumbling "OMG OMG OMG IS THIS REALLY HAPPENING" many times.

He handed me the gorgeous blue box and wanted me to open it.

!!!!!!

It's THE ring. The ring I liked and mentioned a year before when I first saw it on the T&C website.  He remembered and now IT IS BEFORE MY EYES.  WHAT????

If you know Alien, you would have know that he's not the romantic kind of person who remembers anniversaries, send flowers,  etc... and so to have him do all these (and a surprise!) was unexpected.  Some friend even asked me if he actually knelt down (ya he's really not romantic one!) to propose.

The answer is ... he did go down on one knee la.  And popped the question. :.)


It was simple like that.  No video crew, no long speech, no make up or fancy clothing (I haven't showered the whole day) ... and with that I said yes to him on the beach, under the galaxies of stars and moonlight (full moon!).

We laughed, walked back to room, and found out more about his original proposal plans.  He had hidden the box in a blue plastic bag along to avoid my detection!  The kind of blue plastic bag that you dabao lunch kind leh! So unclassy! LOL.  But he did succeed. I just assume that was to put his wet trunks.


Alien had to place an order for the ring at the shop because it was unavailable in Singapore. He had to get it imported and paid a lot more for that! :(

Because he had to untie the classic T&C bow to check that the ring design was correct, he told me he had no idea how to tie the ribbon back.  He learnt it from YouTube and here he's trying to show me how he did it. LOL. Hahaha okay lah give you effort point.

Tioman is a quite the sunny paradise; just make sure you go there by sea okay.

On the flight back to Singapore we thought we might die because the turbulence on Berjaya Air was very  bad  due to a heavy thunderstorm.  We "levitated" in mid-air and even hit the overhead compartment. There were screaming (I'm not exaggerating I swear) which came from the air stewardess coz' she wasn't wearing a seat belt, and she flew out of her seat.  -__-

We will NEVER fly Berjaya Air ever again.

---

THE RING

Here are closer pictures of my ring.

Didn't have to resize! He found out my ring size by playing around with my acrylic rings!

Yep, and I know it's not considered an "Engagement Ring" without the main diamond.   The salesperson at T&C told him that too.  I don't like a having a big diamond on my finger.  I will just lose it (if you know my history with safekeeping). 


Somebody told me this is called an Eternity Ring, what with gemstones lined all around the ring.  I love the tiny hearts in rose gold!  :3

----

For some bizarre reason, Alien has also became a little sweeter after he proposed.  He gave me a bouquet of roses when I came back from UK. :.)

The love(s) of my life.

Posted this picture on my instagram+FB last month, and some people thought it was our actual  pre-wedding studio shoot!  We were filming for a ChannelU reality TV show and this was part of the challenge for the program.  Alien had to choose the gown, decide on the makeup and hairstyle for me, and I had to do the same for him too.  It was fun!!!  :) But we had to kiss onscreen for more than 5 seconds. WEIRD.


---

THE WEDDING PLANS

Now that we're engaged, we have already started planning for the wedding. :) Thank you for all your well wishes on FB, instagram, Whatsapp :D

We have confirmed our banquet and theme for the wedding.  Will update more about our wedding gradually.  We are also in discussion with a photography company for our pre-wedding shoot + AD.

Thank you Adeline for agreeing to help us with the wedding invitation design!  Do check out her works and find out more about her quirky little world with Yellow!

Thank you Marriage Central for our upcoming Marriage Preparation Course!  Can't wait to learn about building a happy marriage. ^^

Currently looking for sponsors and seeking collaborations in preparation for our big day next year end.  Looking for hair, makeup/facial/beauty, fitness services;  gowns, dresses, 
suits, shoes/heels; decorations and flowers; car rental; wedding bands; food catering, cake/pastries/desserts; videography services, couple activities etc, please contact me HERE!

We would really appreciate it. :)   Also if you have anything/anyone to recommend,  please contact us too!  THANK YOU SO MUCH ! :)

XOXO,

Alien and Thiang

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