Photos, videos, the Grand Meeting & much more!

In the past week we have made some further progress, both in terms of the wedding and our future life in China. Let me start with the wedding first.

    In my 3rd entry I wrote that I bought a lot of wedding magazines, and many of them give suggestions on wedding planning in terms of dates. 1 of them provides a checklist, and apparently according to its editors (and the reality) we should start planning 18 months before the wedding (at least that’s when the diet should start and I’m already more than a year behind schedule and still haven’t made any moves). I also downloaded an Apple App called iWedding and am digitally monitoring our plans with technology! ^ ^

The Essential Wedding Checklist, click here for a version readable with the naked eye

iWedding

    After some research, we have decided to ask Peartree Pictures to be our wedding photo/videographer. They were the hands behind some of the stunning pictures I posted of Goodwood House a few entries back.

)Ö(

^ ^

    We were also seriously considering the other two photographers and a videographer that Goodwood provided in their directory: Barrie Downie, Janda and Bloomsbury Films (YouTube). We think Barrie Downie’s pictures look very artistic but too impersonal; Janda’s pictures are the best among all the photographers we’ve looked at but the price is also the highest; Bloomsbury is very professional but we also gave up because of the price.

Barrie Downie’s splendour (with a Chinese couple)

Janda is very sweet and classic.

    On Saturday evening Nicola, Ben and I had a “Grand Meeting” on wedding planning. 3 of us first each brainstormed all the things we still need to do before the wedding (even before 11th August because that’s when we’ll be leaving for China) and combined them in a chronological way. Nicola also made Post-it notes of all the to-dos and dedicated a piece of wall to it.

to-do wall

    Apart from photos and videos, we are going to try out some groom/bestman/groomsmen/usher attires on Saturday with all the boys and after that we’re going to 1 of the most authentic Chinese restaurants in the UK, Old Place, to have dinner. Should be lots of fun!

Ben wants to wear a morning suit.

    Also, on Monday we had a happy reunion with an old friend from uni. He’s a Kent boy and married a Chinese girl (Now they have four children!) and had lived in China for more than 8 years. We got a lot of useful tips from him. Meanwhile Ben just completed his TEFL exam and has already got quite a few job interviews from Shanghai. The future is looking more and more promising and we’re going to give notice of marriage on my birthday!

    Ben and I had a few arguments these days about working attitudes and how we can make our parents happy. I feel we are growing closer and closer together. The more arguments we have, the more we can discover from each other, the easier it can be for us to solve problems. Last week we watched The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel together, and I was really inspired by its tagline: Everything will be all right in the end… If it’s not all right then it’s not the end. That’s it! That’ll be our motto!

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

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♥The Flashback Corner♥

I apologise for not writing this corner in my last entry because the content was quite serious and I got carried away.

    What was our first conversation about? It was a couple of weeks after I first saw him, and it also happened in the dining hall (We call it the Deep End at Westminster, I’ll take some pictures the next time we go back.) at lunchtime. Ben already had his lunch and was doing his homework as I happened to sit next to him. Richard (the Kent guy I mentioned earlier in this entry) was sitting opposite to us and he knew both Ben and me. He said, Miki, Ben is really good at Chinese! Look at his handwriting! I turned and looked at his homework and I could tell Ben was already very embarrassed, but I didn’t make it easier for him.

    “You wrote that character wrong” was the first sentence I ever said to him.