il lido

part iv: il lido in the sunset

 il lido holds a special place in our hearts as we've gone for more than one date night there. it's also hands down one of the best italian we've had in singers, and the team was an absolute dream to work with. they were prompt, professional, hyper-efficient and they made planning the dinner party so easy i wanted to have another right after we were done. while most places charge (!!!) for place cards (our wedding lunch venue would've charged S$5/piece if we'd wanted them...) il lido did it at no extra cost. it's small things like that, that i felt made all the difference to the experience and i'd highly highly recommend them for events. the restaurant itself is gorgeously located on the edge of the south china sea and we started with cocktails by sunset.

L, our dear friend and PR whizz, let us in on an insider secret. she suggested we re-purpose the flowers from lunch for dinner, so as to save costs. our energetic elves kindly whisked the flowers over and tadaaa! dinner venue beautifully decorated without spending anything extra. score!

didn't the il lido team do a fantastic job? 

fantastic panoramic view of the south china sea

sentosa golf course

and because we're patriotic like that, we even arranged for the flag to be flown by ^^

(just kidding, it was coincientally a national day rehearsal)

wedding lunch at capella

part iii: lunch

i was tickled pink that despite not briefing our lovely helpers, they all turned up in red! my cousin, C, in the middle, had just gotten married the month before and she was my excuse for going home in may, the week before my year one final exams hee~ closest of the camera is S, J (of wedding coordinator fame)'s lovely wife. she's been a great friend since we were abandoned girlfriends in 2007, the year both our men were traipsing around europe on the pretext of being on exchange. S and i spent many happy (?) hours in the library, eventually plotting our escape to join our merry men on the continent the moment our exams ended. good times :)

no fair! rice is so much harder to pick out of hair than petals...

i think i married the hamburglar.

listening intently to his papa

J leading the toasts

the mister trying in vain to stop the toast for fertility. yep, if we ever resort to assisted reproduction (choy!) you know who to blame.

fertility rice ftw!

counting the spoils

done with lunch (8 course sit-down chinese banquet for extended family and parents' friends) and kicking back for the dinner party for our friends!

tea ceremony at capella

part ii: the tea ceremony

we'd a tea ceremony in iceland, which meant the world to us, and the tea ceremony in singapore was a larger-scale version of the first.

singapore wedding photos!

hello hello, much as i tried my darndest to stop this from descending into a wedding blog (no shame in that, just that i'm far from gifted with a good eye and left every little detail to the mister so i can't very well claim credit now!) our singapore photos just came in and i'm very excited to share, if you'd like to see. we'd such a good time with ivan tan, our photographer extraordinaire. far as i am from being wedding-savvy, i'm even further from being photogenic. but ivan managed to take photos that i didn't cringe at - which is cause for celebration. to avoid a massive photo dump, i'll be posting different segments of our singapore celebration over the next week. much as iceland was a dream, singapore was and is home and it wouldn't be "complete" without bringing the party back to our nearest and dearest on home turf. hope you like the photos - they trigger such happy memories for me i'm grinning like a loony at my laptop now :)

part i: the preparation

the mister and J, one of his oldest friends, going over the order of events. K and J go waaay back and have so much dirt on each other it's scary.

what J thought of the mister getting his nose powdered

B, the best man who gave a speech in iceland over our wedding pancake lunch that brought the house down. he may or may not have credited me as the monster that controls the monster. hmm. not quite sure how i feel about that :)

J, ever-responsible and the best wedding day coordinator on the island. guess you can't go wrong arrowing an armour captain. just sayin'

stuffing our faces before the lunch we had a slim chance of eating

J has many talents, one of which is ironing when he helped iron my belt. his wife has trained him well.

bobbie working her magic, and also helping me with afore-mentioned belt. she was the only thing between me and looking like a troll.

and once we were done, it was time to get the show on the road! check back tomorrow if you'd like to see more :)

lazy sundays

we almost went to the country but woke up too late to even think about getting past the ring road before nightfall. undeterred, we spent the afternoon mosey-ing along king's road, finally bought our coffee maker and celebrated the acquisition with happy hour cocktails around the corner from church. a fiver for a long drink in knightsbridge?! sign me right up!!! after service, we had a late dinner at our local italian and can i just say that it's the best pizza we've ever had outside naples. of course, the fact that it's a five minute walk from home doesn't bode well for our expanding waistlines... but let's worry about that tomorrow ;)

indian summer

westminster abbey is beautiful, and especially so in summer. this was a casual drive-by shot on the iphone. no filter, no fancy equipment nothing. just mother nature on a good day. oh! we took this en route to brixton which i posted about a month ago or so.

the ledbury

a couple of weeks ago, we'd the privilege of using the wedding gift that keeps giving. N & L, our wonderful friends from oz, had the brainwave to gift us a very generous ledbury voucher. they're foodies themselves, and food is inevitably one of our favourite things to talk about, and hm, i suppose culturally they couldn't bring themselves to give us cold hard cash. also, my thick skin failed and i couldn't possibly request cold hard cash when they asked what the singaporean chinese gift giving custom was. as a surprise, they mailed us the gift card and oh boy i swear we started salivating the moment we ripped open the envelop. 

part of me is bemused by the typical singaporean tourist, indulge me, who comes to london for a couple of days and make a point to hit up as many of them michelin stars as they can. it's not uncommon to have stars for lunch and dinner in quick succession, and unrelentingly so. a personal observation is so they can later namedrop and say they've dined at X, Y and Z. "oh you didn't try W? too bad!" to be absolutely honest, in another time or another place, i might've done the exact same thing. the obsession with stars can be tiring, and there's so much more to the city and its eateries than the faddy must-tries. that said, i've four absolute favourites here that i'd tell every body passing through to try, and to book way in advance while they're at it. and the ledbury is one of them.

thanks to N & L's generosity, we had the lunch tasting menu and a bottle of champers. as the restaurant was already filled with asian couples toting their DSLRs and photographing every course, i couldn't bring myself to join the fray. also, i've sort of gone off food photography and just took my iphone out for a quick snap at the end. the maitre d', naturally, observed it was a wedding gift and comp-ed even more dessert. which was a thoughtful and much appreciated touch.

happy belated birthday singers

after yesterday's post about supporting team GB and london as she hosted the olympics, it's only fitting to say something about dear ol' singers. thankful for a network of wonderful taitai friends in london who clue me in to the fascinating ongoings over the the singers highcomm. after spying D's beautifully embossed invitation to the national day 'do, i sold out and registered as an overseas sinaporean. conveniently, i also put my thick skin to good use and politely requested an invite to said event. thank goodness they were nice enough to send us one haha! D was my date because the mister doesn't have the luxury of leaving work in time for 630pm cocktails and the strangest thing happened. as we entered the high comm (late, naturally) we heard rousing strains of the national anthem playing and i got all goose-bumpy, as if reminded that while i'm physically in london (and loving it!) singers is and will always be home.

of course, the singers-shaped cake that i somehow managed to eat three huge slices of (D and K didn't want theirs!) didn't hurt either.

olympics

so i'm a little slow posting these photos. oops! it's been a whirlwind couple of months. we returned from singers just in time for the olympics, with the ever-resourceful mister scoring us tickets to volleyball quarter finals, football finals (!!!) at wembley and paralympic athletics finals. we figured we may as well show some pseudo-patriotism to this temporary home and support their sporting endeavours,  and we weren't disappointed in the least :) the atmosphere was electric and strangely, i feel more for the paralympics than i do for the olympics. yes, everyone struggles to eventually attain success but the paralympians somehow have that edge, that added obstacle to overcome, and when they do, gosh. it's magic.

watching grown men bound around in lycra. sessyyy...

front row seats at wembleyyY???! are you friggin' kidding meeeee!!!

while U and family were around

they were absolute sweeties, appreciating that our singers palates could always do with local food and inviting us to join them at every opportunity. while K and U go waaay back (to when they were teensy tiny little squirts at RI), i'm a relatively recent addition but U's family were so warm and inclusive that i soon forgot we'd only just met. in a way, when i grow up i want to be like his folks - picking up lonely kiddos far away from home and treating them as they do their flesh and blood. it's a graciousness we're very blessed to be recipients of :) so we'd pearl liang dimsum on sunday, hakkasan on thursday after a spot of bespoke tailoring, and lobster noodles at mandarin kitchen. all the while hanging with U and his dynamic siblings. i learn so much just by being with them, it's amazing.