The First Scan!

Maybe because I didn’t spend any money on seeing a doctor during my stay in England, I was surprised by the welfare change when I came back to China and forgot to apply for a “medical insurance card”. When I took back the blood test report my family and colleagues were all surprised that the hospital would ask me to do a blood test and a scan instead of just a urine test. They thought I was cheated. However, every cloud has a silver lining; I got Kima (or its house)’s first picture.

  The day when I got the blood test report Ben and I told the great news to our parents first. In China, the tradition is you shouldn’t let everybody know until you finish your first trimester, so we just told my parents. In England there is no such taboo, so we called mum and dad and grandmas and grandpas and ask them to spread the news to every corner of the United Kingdom. Ben’s mum’s mum is a very out-bursting young lady who is famous for her silent squeak when she is excited, and she did that. We all had tears in our eyes; I felt all the seven oceans were boiling with joy.

  I was very looking forward to the scan the next day, although the doctor said it was only to check how big the baby was. I took it as if it was going to be a professional photo-shoot. I was lucky that work was not busy after the golden week, so I had time to relax a bit in the morning. The scan was one-thirty in the afternoon. I started to drink lots of water from 11:30 to keep my bladder ballooned.

  When I arrived at the scan room at 13:15, I found that many people were already waiting there. The scan room wasn’t in the gynaecology department; many of the patients were either men or old women. I saw only one girl about my age and I subconsciously looked at her stomach; it seemed flat to me, but I still couldn’t help but kept peeping at her.

  After a long hour’s waiting, it was finally my turn. At that time my bladder was so swollen that it was hurting a lot, and I wasn’t thinking of glamorous photo-shooting any more. All I could think about was not peeing the bed. There were two young female doctors in the scan room, one in charge of scanning and the other in charge of keying in. The scanning one asked if I wanted to go to the loo. I said very badly. She said ok, lie down then.

  When she started pressing my lower abdomen I started to worry about Kima. Because I’m uncultured and my brain was filled with pee, I was worried that Kima would be drowned in me, or be squeezed to death by the scanner. As I was panicking, she asked, “you pregnant?”

  I calmed down at once. Oh, good, even the scan shows it then I’m definitely pregnant. I said, “yes, I think so. I tested it at home and I came here to confirm it.”

  “When was your last period?” She was emotionless, and she looked exhausted – maybe due to seeing too many foetuses on the screen.

  “22nd August.” The key-in doctor started typing. I thought, eh? Shouldn’t you find it out yourself by scanning my baby?

  “So do you want the baby?” She asked, casually.

  My heart sank and froze. Was that a common question to ask? How many mothers-to-be decide to give up their babies in this room every day?! Or is Kima not good? What happened?!

  “Yes,” I said, firmly and cautiously, and waited and waited for her reply.

  She didn’t. All she did was keeping pressing my uterus with the scanner and read out loud the data for the doctor next to her to key-in.

  I thought, ok, there is data. At least that means my baby is still alive.

  “Your baby is too small. I cannot see the embryo or hear the heart-beat yet,” she said coldly, “ok, you can get up.”

  She gave me a printed report. That was the first time I saw my Kima. All of a sudden the discontent and fright disappeared. Our first baby, a baby who was too small to be seen yet, was forever printed on this piece of paper.

  On the way back to the office I kept my hand on where Kima was. I couldn’t feel anything physically yet, but I felt new. The embryo was growing in me strongly, quietly and speedily; this was God’s blessing. I felt powerful and I felt I could overcome anything for it – like all mothers.

  Ben rushed to my office after work to see the scan. I said you can’t see Kima yet you can only see its house. He still looked pleasantly surprised and said wow Kima would be living there for the next 8 months! I said you finally believe we’re gonna have a baby don’t you? He said yeah totally. I said is it because of the scan? He said no, because I saw the brand PHILIPS on the scan…

♥The Flashback Corner♥

When Ben came back from Guangzhou I also gave him a new-year card as a thank-you gift. At that time I was helping him and his coursemates with their Chinese mid-term exams, so we spent more time together. One evening our group was eating dinner at the PizzaExpress opposite to uni. I ordered some spaghetti but couldn’t finish it. Ben was sitting next to me. He asked if I still wanted it. I said no I’m too full. He said I can help you if you want. I said do you not mind my DNA? He said if it was your DNA I wouldn’t. I thought, what a nice boy! Not racist at all!

  Ben’s version: Flirting and scrounging food at the same time, typical English uni student behaviour! Got some nice spaghetti, but the flirting didn’t really hit home at that point.

PizzaExpress from Google Maps

“Typical English uni student behaviour” – photo by Miss Anita McMahon

Names & a Trip to the Hospital!

I thought I forgot to mention something in my last entry. I know that scientifically and medically speaking, my memory is inevitably affected by the pregnancy, but I’m trying not to let it do too much ‘damage’.

  Maybe many of you have already guessed from the title of the last entry that we’ve decided to nickname our baby Kima, but I forgot to explain why. Here’s the etymology. My favourite flower is camellia, and that’s also a girl’s name, so I’ve always wanted to name my daughter (if there will be one, you can never know for sure by the look of the recent Carter genes) Camellia. Ben has no objection to that, so Camellia (in short, Kimi) for a girl it is. As for a boy (if there will be one), Ben and I both like the name Matthew very much, so Matthew for a boy it is. Since we don’t know the sex of the baby yet, and it is illegal for the scan doctors to tell the parents-to-be the result (if you’re interested to know the reason why, look it up), we combined the two names. We are left with the options of Maki and Kima, and Ben said Kima is better, because then I can be Kimama; he can be Kimapa.

  We (or I) are parents-to-be who think way ahead of things. Before I got pregnant (ok, before we got married) we have started to think about and finalise our children’s names. I have always wanted Ben’s eldest younger brother John-Joseph to be the Godfather (from the English side) of our first-born, so we have decided to middle-name our eldest son Joseph. We also want a second middle name – I learnt that English people can have as many as they want –, something exotic for his/her colourful bloodline, and I’m not an expert in non-Chinese names, so Ben was left to do the creative work. He wants to use Ulysses, the Romanised name of the hero, Odysseus, who came up with the Trojan plan. Therefore our first son’s full English name is 99% decided, a syllabic and rhythmic Matthew Joseph Ulysses Carter.

  However, we are still stuck on our girl’s name. Ben is from a Catholic family and it’s best for our children to have Saints’ names. Matthew is but Camellia isn’t, so we need at least one Saint’s name to put in her middle names. Ben’s mother’s name is Nicola, which is a Saint’s name and naming the granddaughter after her grandmother is sweet. Therefore we decided to use Nicole to be Camellia’s first middle name. Ben said I could choose the second middle name. My favourite female fictional character is Eponine from Les Misérables, but the character’s fate is too sad. No mother, when naming her daughter, is thinking of letting her die for somebody who doesn’t love her. If I choose a name to match with Ulysses, I need to choose from all the Greek/Roman Goddesses. My mother-in-law kindly read out loud all their names for me and I liked the sound of Persephone. When finding out she was actually Hades’ bride and had children not with her husband but with her father, Zeus, I got put off. My favourite Goddess, the Goddess of Hope, Elpis, sounds anything but appealing to me, so we are still stuck – well, at least I’ve got something to occupy my mind during labour.

  Oh, by the way, we (ok, it’s me again) want 7 children, 5 biological and 2 adopted. My dream order is this: a boy first, then twin boys, then twin boy and girl, the youngest being a girl. When our children are old enough and we have won a lottery of several million pounds, I would like to adopt a boy and a girl with slight disability from China, because children like them usually end up in an orphanage rather than being adopted by other parents. Of course, this is only a dream, and sometimes it’s healthy to have lovely day-dreams. However, it doesn’t mean that I want a son this time; it really doesn’t matter. Whatever God gives is the best.

I should have posted them before, the future baby (2 boys & 2 girls) pictures I did with MorphThing. Ben finds them very scary.

It’s better with our real baby pictures.

  I have written so much about names that I nearly forgot to write what happened on the morning of 9th October. I woke up at 6am on the dot – something which hadn’t happened for a long time, and rushed into the bathroom. I was very, very anxious. I still remember how I witnessed the two bars appear little by little. I was 90% sure that was it, so I woke Ben up and told him the double-confirmation.

  After a night’s sleep, Ben wasn’t as calm as the night before; he started to become serious about it. We had to decide if we should go to the hospital or let our parents know first. At that time I was preparing to apply for a visa to go back to England, and we didn’t know if pregnancy would affect the application. We had already bought the tickets (14th to 28th December) and going back for Christmas every year has always been our plan. If I was really pregnant, would the long flight and jet-lag affect the foetus which might only be 3 months old? We first checked the visa application regulations and found that I didn’t have to tell the immigration officer that I was pregnant (it didn’t seem practical anyway), so we decided to go to the hospital at the weekend first and then tell our parents.

  We have a lot of nice young mums in our office and I find myself very lucky. I asked two colleagues at lunch for their advice; they were very happy for me. They said I didn’t have to wait till the weekend. There was a nearby hospital and I could go have a check-up during the lunch break. I didn’t think it was that easy, so I asked Ben’s advice and walked to the hospital, panicking.

  There were a lot of people at the gynaecology department of the hospital that day and I queued for nearly an hour. I don’t play games on my phone and I didn’t have a book with me, so I spent most of the hour panicking. I told the doctor that I thought I was pregnant. She asked me for some basic information (if I was married and if I’d already had children) and my last period date. I record all my cycles so I remembered it very clearly; I didn’t realise it was 50 days ago… She said if the stick showed the pregnancy twice and I already felt sick and missed my period for so long, it looked very likely that I was actually pregnant. She suggested I do a blood test.

Blood test report with hCG at 41647.00 mIU/ml

  Holding solid medical proof in my hand, I rang Ben up, “it’s medically confirmed. We’re gonna have a baby. You’ll see its first scan tomorrow!”

  Although I was a lot calmer than I thought, my eyes were still welling up. Finally, after 13 years of waiting (I have wanted to have a child since I was 14), I’m going to be a mother.

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♥The Flashback Corner♥

I was embarrassed to find that the two “Flashback Corners” from the last two entries were the same… It looks like I really have to take DHA-related stuff… This time I’m going to write about how we started to like each other. Actually we liked each other the first time we met, but because we were in the same friend group and he was one year my senior, plus we lived very far away from each other, we didn’t spend much time alone. I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend at that time because I’d decided to go back to China after I finished my degree, and having a relationship in England wouldn’t make much sense. Maybe because of that I was very relaxed in making friends and showed my true character, which attracted him (as he told me later). We met in September and soon it was December. I knew he was going to China with his Wushu class (which was also a reason for me to like him) that Christmas holiday and would leave before term ended, so I went to say goodbye to him. We still met up in the dining/study area. He was very happy to see me and gave me a Christmas card, but he told me not to open it in front of him. It was still early December and I didn’t think he would give me a present so I was unprepared. I was very embarrassed. On the train back home I opened the card. He wrote “Happy Christmas” very neatly in pencil in Chinese. It was obvious that he made a lot of effort but he still got some strokes slightly wrong. It was very cute and sweet. That was the first present a foreigner gave me carefully using my mother-tongue; I burst into tears.

Ben’s version: Once upon a time I gave a girl a Christmas card and she cried, nice.

Baby Kima on the way!

Even I cannot stand not updating my blog any more. I’m afraid if I don’t start doing it now I’ll end up spending the rest of my life regretting it (and Ben has already started making fun about the obvious setback in my English, sometimes correcting my Chinese at the same time).

  Following the topic from 3rd August two years ago (if you are interested please click here), Ben and I were buzzing with the preparation of our wedding in England. Then we smoothly got married on 28th December! It feels like ages ago now, but that was definitely the happiest day of our lives. Straight after the wedding we flew back to Shanghai to start preparing for our Chinese wedding which was on 11th February last year. Again there was a lot of stress and sleepless nights, but the outcome was more than satisfactory.

  For a person with an ordering obsession (putting things in order), I have found that the problem with having so many great photographers at weddings is that I want to go through all the hundreds of pictures to choose the best ones, rename and comment on them then share them. Also I’m quite lazy, so this big project is still ongoing…

  As a result the videographers became invaluable to me in terms of sharing the best moments of the weddings. We had Peartree Pictures in England and Shanghai My Young in China, both provided high quality and wonderful service. I highly recommend them. Through their effort we are very lucky to have 2 very different but equally sweet wedding videos: UK wedding highlights / UK wedding full (password Carter2812), China wedding highlights / China wedding full (password Zhang0211). You can also find some pictures in my Facebook albums (UK/China).

  We’ve found that married life really suits us. Our relationship has stayed as fresh as ever and there have hardly been any changes; if there have, they are for the better, thanks to the marriage preparation course we had. We understand each other more and more and quarrel less and less. We decided to wait a year to have children because we wanted to experience the four seasons first, just the two of us. Also we don’t believe in the Chinese Zodiac or the Western Horoscope, so we wanted to try for a baby in summer 2014, hoping for a more comfortable birth the next spring.

  Catholics cannot use physical or chemical contraception, so we did natural family planning. I had recorded my menstrual cycles for 6 months before the wedding. If the records are done correctly, natural planning does work 97% of the time. More than 10 months passed. During the last days of the golden week of the Chinese National holiday, I started to feel sick. At first I thought it was just because of the irregular diet I had during the holidays, and I didn’t even pay attention to the lateness of my period (which wasn’t news to me anyway). On the morning of 8th October I woke up feeling like throwing up, and the night before I didn’t sleep well at all. Still I thought it might just be a body-clock problem. When the symptoms lasted until the evening, I started to feel something was odd, so I peed on a stick.

  That wasn’t the first time I peed on a stick, and I came “clean” all the previous times, so I didn’t really care and wasn’t nervous at all. When I clearly saw the double bars on the tube, I started boiling. With heart beating fast and hands trembling, I shouted out to Ben to come into the bathroom to see the miracle.

  I said Ben, Ben I’m pregnant!!! The shock on his face lasted about 2 seconds, and then he looked at the stick and asked, “how much did you pay for this?” “About £1.50.” “Oh, it might be wrong.” “Shall I do it again tomorrow morning?” “Ok, now go to sleep and stop thinking about it.”

  How could I fall asleep?! Ben was unbelievably calm and started snoring within 2 minutes. I knew he wasn’t pretending not to care. There had been several false alarms which already made me a bit paranoid. We did things according to my cycle and I had signs of another period 2 weeks ago, so it was unlikely for me to get pregnant. However, I’d never experienced such sickness before. Anyway I couldn’t fall asleep until 2am.

Ben’s version: Wow, this is sudden. I haven’t written anything here in quite a while. Everything’s more or less as Miki tells it. Weddings are great fun wherever you hold them; honeymoon periods are romantic and very enjoyable and pregnancy scares are… scary. Well, I got over the scare quickly enough by rationalising that cheap Chinese made pregnancy sticks won’t necessarily be accurate but since then I’ve had to eat my words somewhat.

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♥The Flashback Corner♥

How did we become friends? The second time I saw Ben he was doing Chinese homework in the study area alone. I walked up to him and started chatting. I found him very hard-working and shy, despite his long hair. I like hard-working people. English people didn’t give me an impression of hard-working but this boy was different (I already knew he was 2 years younger than me). I started to think, oh, it would be nice to have a son like him.

Ben’s version: Hard-working?? First impressions can be ever so misleading! And ‘shy’ is not the word I’d use; ‘disinterested’ is better. I was in uni with a sole aim of learning Chinese and getting out of there. I was rather distracted by the lovely girl from Shanghai who came and helped me with my homework, though.

Birthdays & other news!

It has been quite a while since my last entry and so much has happened! Ben and I had a very busy fortnight and in just over a week we are leaving for China. Today I’m going to report the things we did in the past 2 weeks and I’ll write another entry next week just before we go.


    The first piece of great news is that Ben has successfully got his TEFL qualification as already been offered a job in a language centre in Shanghai! This actually happened more than 2 weeks ago, but we decided not to let everybody know until everything is confirmed. In order to get into China Ben would have to apply for a visa, and the Chinese government recently changed its visa regulation which has made things a little bit complicated for us. He has already submitted his application and if everything goes all right he should get his visa next Monday. Fingers crossed!

The Chinese visa application centre in London – we have made a couple of trips there already.

Chinese visa sample

    The second piece of exciting news is that we have given our notices to be married! Again things were complicated by our different nationalities and future plans. Just in case we might have to change our plans and get married in China (but let’s hope not) Ben had to apply for a Certificate of No Impediment to Marry from his government to demonstrate to my government his single status and freedom to marry me. Therefore we made a trip to the Petersfield register office (there is no register office in Liphook) to apply for that and another trip to Winchester register office (that’s the only office which deals with international marriages in our area) to give notice of our marriage in the UK. We were interviewed separately by the officer but the questions were nothing like “what’s the colour of your fiancé’s toothpaste” (she said that was an urban myth) but basic questions like “what’s your name”, “what does your father do”. Oh, and of course, we were asked each other’s names, too.

Petersfield Register Office

Winchester Register Office

    On Friday (also my mum’s birthday and the 1st day of the Olympic Games) we went to Goodwood House to do our menu tasting. Ben and I are very easy to please tongue-wise but we still thought our guests wouldn’t be let down by what they had to offer. We absolutely loved the food and both stormed our plates. I was planning to take pictures of every course but after the starter I was too eager to dig into my main and only remembered to take a shot of the mess I made. We also got served very well by a butler and a maid and all our guests will get the same treatment on our big day!

to refresh your memory of our reception venue: Goodwood House

Starter: Oak smoked salmon on caper & chive blini with Avruga caviar & lemon crème fraiche

Main: Pan fried free range chicken with creamed leeks, fondant potato with cep & tarragon beurre blanc

Dessert: Sticky toffee pudding with honeycomb clotted cream and butterscotch sauce

    The following weekend we went up to Leeds/Hull to attend Andrew (Ben’s dad)’s parents’ golden anniversary party. We just had a party at home in May to celebrate Nicola’s parents’ golden and it is so sweet and encouraging to see such loving and long-lasting couples (especially when they are in the family) all the time. We stayed over at Ben’s grandparents’ place and they were so nice to me. I’m so excited about having another 2 sets of grandparents soon and will keep in touch with them often even when we’re in China. The past 9 years in England alone from my family have made me deeply appreciate family ties. I ring up my grandmother every Sunday and I know just hearing my voice over the phone makes her happy. We will all grow old one day, and I believe that we should do now for our parents and grandparents what we will expect of our children and grandchildren when we are old.


    I found this at Ben’s grandparents’ place. Apparently that’s how Western people perceive Chinese people. I hope I didn’t let them down.

    It was my birthday this Tuesday! The appointment of our marriage notice in Winchester happened to be on that day so it made my 26th birthday more meaningful.

A very special birthday!

    Ben got up at ridiculous o’clock that morning to make me birthday cupcakes for breakfast (with blue icing). How romantic!♥

    After coming back from Winchester we went to Sainsbury’s to get some cup noodles for lunch. It is a Chinese tradition to have noodles on one’s birthday and I really wanted to try British cup noodles. I have to say I was a little bit let down.

    The birthday surprise came at dinner when I was surrounded by presents from Ben’s family. I wasn’t expecting anything as in China the 26th birthday is not usually heavily celebrated. I was thrilled to find that all the presents were London Olympic souvenirs as I am a big British/Olympic fan. Thank you every one! This was the most special birthday I’ve ever had!

the birthday dinner that I “requested”: chicken, bacon & prawn pie with potatoes and peas

My birthday cake (I asked to make this myself with Nicola’s help)!

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♥The Flashback Corner♥

    How did we start to talk? It was maybe 2 weeks after Ben ran away from me embarrassed by his mistake in Chinese. He was sitting in a place called the “old gym” at our university and doing his Chinese homework and I went there alone and saw him, so we exchanged “hi”s and started to talk. I thought he was a very hard-working boy.


    Ben’s version: I wasn’t really working hard; the homework had to be handed in later that day! I enjoyed talking to Miki, she was humorous and sweet.

the “old gym” at Westminster

the “Deep End” at Westminster where we first met – under construction now

A completed course & some new clothes!

Last Thursday Ben and I had our second and also last marriage preparation course. It was still full of questionnaires but this time apart from questions like “who do you think should do the laundry” we had a personality assessment. It might sound scary (like what doctors do to patients at a mental hospital) but it turned out to be very helpful and surprisingly accurate!

all the questionnaires

    According to the results I am a “perfect melancholy” with a “peaceful phlegmatic” side, and Ben is a “popular sanguine” also with a “peaceful phlegmatic” side. I like everything in order and am usually cautious about things and reluctant to try new stuff; Ben is more adventurous but doesn’t really plan or think things through beforehand. Haha, it sounds like we are perfect for each other. We are attracted to each other’s characteristics which we don’t have, at the same time we still share some in common. Thus our life strategy should be: try everything with caution, and don’t be lazy! ^^

We are perfect for each other.

    Please allow me to quote from First Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians 13: 4-8 here (Nicola read it out loud to us at the lesson, and we were all deeply touched).

Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast,
it is not proud. It is not rude,
it is not self-seeking, it is not easily
angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices
with the truth. It always proceeds. It
always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails…

    Now let’s write about the men’s attire! I’ll hand the stage over to Ben.

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Personally I do not often wear a morning suit. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever needed such a thing before; so Saturday’s adventure was certainly a new one for me. It was difficult, first and foremost, to arrange a date when all the groomsmen, the best man, the groom and the bride were all available. When the date was eventually set for Saturday we selected Godalming’s Anthony Hirewear based on a recommendation from my mum.

Godalming Station

    When we got there (all 5 men and a bride-to-be) the staff at the very small shop were rather surprised! Their website invites groups and drop-ins but I don’t think they’d anticipated the scale of workload we were presenting them with. I would later find out that they usually expect the bride and groom to come alone first, and then have the groomsmen come later. Unfortunately our rather unique timeframe didn’t allow for this.

    Despite their initial reluctance and slight exasperation at our collective lack of knowledge regarding suits, suit hire and what it was that we actually wanted, they soon warmed to the idea of sorting us out and became very friendly and helpful, surpassing the standard set by their highly worded recommendation.

    They suggested morning suits which I happily agreed to as I like the idea of a posh coat and tails for such a special day. As the groom I was the first model and we quickly settled on a black coat with striped trousers and a gold waistcoat, a classic English design apparently. We originally opposed the striped trousers and asked if we could switch for plain black, “no” was the answer. Because of the lack of contrast, a black trouser-coat-combo looks silly in pictures, so stripy it is. As groom I will wear a gold cravat to distinguish me from the others all wearing red which keeps our Christmas theme. A detail that may be hard to notice in the pictures is that the waistcoat is embroidered with Chinese dragons, a fitting touch we all felt.

the first two tries: red cravat & grey suit

The final piece!

with bestman Doug

Hair down!

Groomsman No.1: Ben’s 1st younger brother John-Jo

Groomsman No.2: Ben’s 2nd younger brother Ali

Groomsman No.3 (usher): Ben’s 3rd younger brother Marcus

a close-up shot of the waistcoat: dragons

    All in all it was an interesting day and all our goals were met. We were taught how to tie cravats, (just like normal ties but with a fatter knot) and we got our order booked. I’d like to take a moment to thank the willing best man and groom’s men for their co-operation and unfailing patience and also the staff of Anthony Hirewear, Godalming who were thoughtful, welcoming and skilled in all areas of their trade and are highly recommended for all your formal attire needs. Ok, next stop, car hiring!

Dinner at My Old Place

My family-to-be!

The Carter Boys – 11 years later~

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♥The Flashback Corner♥

Ok, for this flashback corner here’s my version of the time Miki and I met. This is going to be embarrassing so readers prone to squirming at outpourings of emotion look away now! (I will be looking away as I type.)

    As Miki explained I was happily sitting doing my homework at university with a group of friends from class. As a second year Chinese student I was beginning to feel like I was making some headway with the language and getting to grips with the basics quite well. All of a sudden this unbelievably cute Chinese girl walked into the hall dressed in a thick white coat and blue top. I didn’t know who she was but I thought I’d very much like to get to know her. In typical embarrassed fashion I fixed my eyes on my book as she sat next to me and studiously avoided saying anything at all, it was then that Richard, already a mutual friend told her to look at my work, “perfect!” I thought, “My Chinese is sure to impress!” I leaned back so she could see and heard “You wrote that character wrong.” My heart sank and I looked again at my homework. Oh no. I had meant to write “how are you?” and because the last character was wrong it read “you good horse.” Caught out on an elementary mistake so simple by this lovely girl, what a way to start!

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.