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Bride of the Month
Ms Harvin DeolRead about how a bride in Perth used Singapore Indian Brides to plan her wedding in Singapore. From an elegant East meets West Wedding Solemnisation in Perth to a true blue happening Punjabi Wedding in Singapore, Harvin's wedding has been a memorable journey and we wish her and her husband all the very best.
The last one and a half years was an extremely busy time for me and my husband. We had 3 major celebrations within a span of a year. Yes, you have read it right. 3 functions in a year, and it was one hell of a busy year! We had our engagement in Singapore on the 3th Jan 2010, our ROM ceremony in Perth on 2nd October 2010 and our traditional Sikh wedding in Singapore on 9th Jan 2011.Both our immediate families had moved to Perth about 7 years ago, with our relatives still back in Singapore. And that was a reason as to why we had functions in both countries.
Once the dates were set, and the temples booked, the first thing that came to mind was a trip to India. My mum, aunt and I went to India (New Delhi) in September 2009 for a week. We were out of the hotel shopping from the time the shops opened all the way till they closed. We amazingly managed to get everything from my outfits for my engagement, temple wedding and dinner reception to all the matching accessories that i needed from head to toe, which includes my handbags and shoes too! You are basically spoilt for choice in India, with the number of shops there are, not to mention the number of different designs and colours that each shop carried. We also did shopping for all the other necessities that were required for a Sikh wedding. A trip to India was definitely worth it and it was really helpful too knowing that everything we needed for the wedding was bought especially since we live in Perth and were having the wedding in Singapore.
Knowing that we live miles away from the destination of our wedding, and also having to plan one wedding in Singapore and one in Perth which were 3 months apart, i knew we needed to get started on planning our wedding as soon as our engagement was over. Having a wedding planner was not even an option, as we wanted to plan our dream wedding ourselves. This definitely allowed us to do our homework and source out prices from a variety of providers. With work commitments that we had here in Perth, flying down to Singapore to plan the wedding was not easy. And my best friend during the planning stage was no other than the internet.The Singapore Indian Brides website was a regularly used website during our planning too.Being well organised and having everything booked earlier did definitely take the stress away from us, especially during the months leading up to the wedding.
Just a little bit about the Perth ceremony. The ROM ceremony that we had in Perth was a small one compared to our wedding in Singapore. Although it was just a small affair with 150 guests, planning it still did take time as the concept we had for this wedding was of a more modern touch, with me being able to wear a wedding gown. My dream was to always have a outdoor wedding ceremony by the river, with the beautiful scenery as the background and i had my dream come true. There were still a lot of things to consider like food, photographer, decoration etc and we started out by creating a budget for the Perth wedding, this was especially so for we had taken the ROM ceremony squarely on our shoulders. The budget was a really good thing that we had as we constantly looked back to it as a benchmark compared to what we were paying for each provider, and we did well with spending within our budget. The weather turned out perfect on that day, and the simple decoration that we had such as seat covers with sashes, a cream carpet in the aisle with rose petals scattered on both sides as well as a marquee, all of which just blended in beautifully with the wonderful river background. As most of you would probably know, we have awesome beaches and parks here in Australia, and we decided to take advantage of this fact and did our wedding photo-shoot here in Perth totally outdoors, instead of the normal studio pictures that many seem to do in Singapore. We thought it would be something different and the best part of it, it would be real backdrop sceneries.
And so, over the year, planning for the wedding continued. It was something that had to be done constantly throughout the year, but my advice to future brides is to start your planning early. There is no better feeling and also a lot of stress is reduced if the wedding is well planned and organised. I was only going back to Singapore 2 weeks before my wedding and that was a big push that made me have everything organised way before that.
In terms of people or providers that i used during our wedding, my hair and make up artist was Bubbly from Looks Beauty Parlour. To me having a good hair and make up artist was a really important factor for my wedding. For me, how you are going to look and present yourself during your wedding is one of the most important aspects to the wedding. You do not want to look your everyday self, rather stand out and aim to make everyone speechless when you first walk in. Bubbly, to me was awesome. I had heard so many good reviews and recommendations from people about her work. I made a trip back to Singapore in June 2010, and that was when i did my trial with her. And the next time i met her was only a week before my wedding, where she went through everything with me again. She sits down with you and makes sure that you are prepared in terms of accessories etc for your wedding and gives you feedback on what she thinks will look good on you. I felt so at ease having her as my beautician, i never worried about anything at all, as i had the confidence in her and knew that she would make me look spectacular on my wedding day. I wore a lengha for my temple wedding, with a heavy fully embroidered scarf and i knew i really needed someone who could tie my scarf for me really well as i am of a small built, and Bubbly once again has exceptional scarf typing skills. I have no idea how she did it, but i did not feel the weight of the scarf on me at all, and she tied it in such a way that my hands could move freely. I would like to emphasize on this aspect again, as Sikh brides we have our head covered with our scarf for close to 8 hrs on our wedding day, and no one to me could have done a better job. As for our photographer, we used Dave from Picture Perfect. We immediately made our decision to book him as we knew that being a Sikh himself, he knew every aspect of a Sikh wedding and would know how certain customs or traditions are important to us and would capture those moments. That too really helped us as we did not have the time to search and meet up with other photographers due to the distance apart. My husband’s god-brother Habib from Hart Photography also took a number of photographs on his own accord for us, and his photographs were also stunning.
However, with our videographer, we found it harder to make a decision on who to use. Not being in Singapore, it was hard for us to see sample videos of their work as not many of them have samples online. And we wanted a good videographer as it will be the only memories left in years to come of your wedding, and as weddings happen once in a lifetime, you do not want to regret making a wrong choice. In our initial decision making for videographers, we basically researched on videographers by asking around on what people thought about each particular videographer. I would not recommend this at all. Every couple has different views on what a good videographer is, and i highly recommend watching sample videos for yourself before making a decision. As there are quite a number of Singaporeans here in Perth, we managed to get copies of previously filmed weddings by videographers and used that to make our decision. We went ahead with a company called Maan Vision from Kuala Lumpur. You would be thinking why would we take a company from Malaysia? Well, to us, the quality and the style that they filmed their weddings were just breathtaking. You can watch some of their sample work on You Tube under Maan Vision. The best part of it is that we get 2 videographers which was a big plus point. I always wanted myself getting ready on the wedding day to be filmed, and the advantage of having 2 videographers just made it possible. I had one videographer to myself and so did my husband. Simply awesome!
Our decorator was Vanan from Pandora tomorrow. It was really easy dealing with him too especially since he was a friend of my husbands. We have seen his work before and knew his standards and quality of work. For our Sangeet, we chose the colours we wanted and left the stage deco design to him, and trust me he did a good job. My husband’s side also used his services too for our wedding dinner at the Singapore Swimming Club.
We wanted to do something different for our first dance and also to do a small little performance as a way of saying thank you to every single family member and friend who has helped us so much during our wedding. And that was what we did at our wedding reception, which caught many of our guests by surprise.
The wedding went on just as it was planned. Everything turned out beautiful and amazing just as we wanted. And then you realise that the wedding has come to an end. You then realise and appreciate the amount of help and effort that your family members and loved ones have put in, to make the wedding possible, especially with a Sikh wedding where you have numerous functions over a few days, which can be quite stressful for the parents too. And now as my husband and me look back at those few busy days we had, we knew that every effort that we have put in has truly paid off. We had everything we dreamt of, and we can proudly say that if we ever had to re-do our wedding again, there will not be one thing that we would like changed at all, as to us we had the most perfect wedding we can ever ask for.
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