Goodwood House it is!

Breaking news: after half a month of searching, visiting and comparing, we have finally decided the reception venue for our wedding! Here it is: Goodwood House.

    Ben: on Saturday we finally found a venue that meets our strict expectations: Goodwood House. Like others we have seen before it is a grand and imposing stately home with a long history, it is also by far the grandest of all the places we have visited. The building’s exterior is not as beautiful as Rhinefield but as soon as you are inside it is glorious and huge and had us drooling everywhere. Just right for a winter wedding. (Miki: personally I still prefer Rhinefield in my heart because its exterior is pretty much unbeatable and Brockenhurst is such a picturesque town. Goodwood is too grand for us 2 humble people. You all know Ben & I so far are not the material for a Lord or Lordess… But we need to bear in mind that the wedding is going to take place in winter, so whatever the exterior of Rhinefield can offer now is likely to be non-applicable in December. In that case, Goodwood is the place we’re going for. The wedding is going to take place in the church, and that should be the most important place for that day. After that we just want to offer a good place for our family and friends to relax and be entertained, and we believe that Goodwood can do a better job than Rhinefield. After letting my parents see the pictures and their tongue-dragging price we will make some further moves.)

the Egyptian Dining Room



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    On top of this, because we won’t be in the country from August (we’re leaving for China on 11th August), we feel that finding a supportive and reliable team will be essential to preparing a joyful day for everyone. Goodwood House is often used as a wedding venue so the team is very experienced and will provide comprehensive, five-star service. When we visited we were greeted at the door by a planner and house staff and were then given a tour and detailed explanation of a basic plan, we were even given champagne (that was the first time I saw a genuinely living walking 3D butler)! This level of service lets us relax and makes us feel like all the guests will be comfortable and satisfied.

    In conclusion we both strongly feel that this is a great venue and look forward to the reception on December 28th!

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Some catch-up: on Wednesday Ali made us taco! It was the first time I had tacos and they were delicious! Thank you Ali!

    Our Thursday chicken noodle fiasco:

    On Friday we went to have a catch-up with Ben’s friends at the pub, among them are our bestman Doug, and Mike Dawes (YouTube), the first musician we booked for our wedding! Thank you Mike!

Boogie Shred - Percussive Acoustic Guitar - Mike Dawes

    News from my bridesmaid: my lovely bridesmaid Miss Isabella Collett has designed her dress and posted it to me! Such a dedicated bridesmaid! I received it a week ago but decided to keep it a secret but then thought why not let everyone appreciate her talent and hard work she’s done for me and the wedding?! It’s a wonderful design Isabella, and I can see you already have an excellent understanding of a Cheongsam. But I think some winter elements will make it even prettier and Auntie Nicola suggested a mandarin collar with a ballerina bottom. How does that sound to you? ;P



“Four Weddings”, family trees and anniversaries

Nicola suggested me watching “Four Weddings” to have a boost of wedding ideas since I hardly have any due to lack of experience ^^. It is about four brides-to-be going to each other’s weddings and rating them; the one who gets the highest score wins a deluxe honeymoon to a wonderland with sunshine+beach 24/7. I admit for the first half an hour I thought it was a hideous programme. I thought some of their “dream wedding” plans to be very bizarre – I don’t want to be dressed like a cucumber or vampire for my wedding! But what touched me were the brides’ feelings towards their big days and their Mr Rights, especially the ones who lost. Every one of them thought THEIR wedding was the best and the most perfect, however wrong it might seem to other people. I really like that attitude, and that spirit has taken some pressure off me. I used to treat the wedding almost like a piece of coursework, but now I see the difference: the coursework can go wrong and receive a low mark; a wedding is always gonna end up well for two people who truly love each other.

    Nicola also asked me to make a family tree in order to have a clearer idea of who is who in my family just in case they all come to the wedding and there happens to be a Chinese delivery man there. I really, really enjoyed this job! I had never made a family tree before because there are not many of them and my memory hasn’t gone bad yet. But when I was making it I felt how people are connected to each other and 2 people’s love can create a miracle. I became addicted and made Ben’s family tree too. I’m going to combine them 2 and make it into a poster and put it on our walls in the future, so our children will constantly be reminded how miraculous they are~

    I went to a couple of wedding anniversaries in the past few weeks (including Andrew and Nicola’s of course) and there is nothing more pleasant, before Ben and I get married, to see strong couples one pair after another celebrating their lives together. My parents reached their silver as well 2 years ago, although it is not my family’s tradition to throw a party about it (I think we really should), the love between them is growing grander and grander every day. It may be true that the divorce rate has rocketed, but let’s not be affected by that. I think a marriage means 2 people love, stay and help each other through thick and thin for the rest of their lives. As long as we have faith in that, we will always be fine whatever waits for us ahead.

my parents on their wedding day

in their silver year

Nicola & Andrew at their silver anniversary party

^^

Need to start proper planning now!

This is my first blog in English and I hope it’s going to be a start of many, many more.

    To be honest I don’t even know where to start now. I finished university on Thursday, got engaged on Friday and turned 180° in 24 hours from being buried in essays and exams to preparing a wedding which is in just over seven months! I am the least romantic person I know. It’s a bizastrous miracle that as a fully-biologically functioning woman, I hardly ever imagined about my wedding day. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that Ben has put me off or anything. My idea was very simple: I love Ben very much and I know he loves me very much too, so our wedding is just going to be a celebration of our love, hosted by his dad and attended by our close families and friends in the church.

    I still think that is a lovely idea, but I do live in the real world, not the Happy and Rose-tinted Wonderland of Ben-Ben & Miki, so I have to get practical. “Life is hard, so be happy!” – a quote from a Japanese film.

 

    Now I have to start making sense. Where shoud I start? The proposal? Although I have a blank planner for the wedding, I did have quite specific requirements for the proposal. I asked Ben to first, talk to Andrew and Nicola about it; secondly, do it when there are just 2 of us; thirdly, surprise me; fourthly, record it. My mind was stuck in my dissertation which was the analysis of the proposal scenes in Downton Abbey when I made these requirements. As I got sick of it, I began to give up on the recording bit.

    When the real thing happened, he really took me off-guard. I decide to keep the details just between the 2 of us but I can tell you that he did fulfil all my 3 wishes! And it was filled with tears, hugs, laughters, kisses and yeses. After that I happily trotted to his room to look at the images of the 3 rings he was interested in but couldn’t decide which one to give to me, so I had a precious chance to choose my own engagement ring:

    It still feels surreal to us that we’re engaged! I’m an engaged woman now! I’m Ben’s fiancée now! Unless I get that idea properly digested I’ll ever be able to talk sense.

Ok the wedding, when is it gonna be? After a few discussions with our families we decided to start our life as one on Friday, 28th December 2012. I apologise to those heat-lovers, because Ben and I are planning to go to China in August but would very much like to come back for Christmas every year (we don’t celebrate Christmas in China properly; all we do is just putting pictures of Santa with his coke all over windows…), we have decided to set the date then. However in May next year in Shanghai we’ll have another reception hosted by my parents. Ben and I want to set the date on Saturday, 4th May 2013, so that the “force” can be with us, haha~

    What else what else? Oh, the venue. We want to get married in the church in Liphook, and we’d like Andrew to do the wedding and Ben’s Godfather Howard to do the mass. And after Nicola and Andrew’s Silver (aka Brian and Judy’s Golden) Anniversary party, I’d love to have our wedding reception in a heated marquee in the garden too! But there are a million other things to think about, from the size of the marquee to the style of the food; from the format of the reception to the transport from the church… Ah! Come back from France, Ben!!!

    About my family, my parents are definitely coming. I have also asked one of my best friends from high school in China to be my maid of honour and she’s also agreed to come. My dad said he’d give me the number on Monday and my mum said it’d be about 6-8 people, including my parents. We have exchanged a couple of emails already, and I’ll start building an archive from now on.

My main concerns are the cultural differences, the language barrier and the difficulty to make everybody happy. Ben and I will be in China during the crucial preparation stage of the wedding which makes it even harder to organise. Nicola kindly warned me that however prepared we are, at least one thing is bound to go wrong at the wedding or reception. If I’m ready for that now, I can take it a lot easier and panic less on the day.

    I don’t know what else to write about at this stage. I’m still in shock of the sudden change of my status. There’s no news from Ben in France yet, and that makes me even more anxious. He’s not coming back until next Sunday, and we need to start looking for jobs asap then. A lot to do a lot to do!

    Oh oh one last thing today, I ironed my first shirt yesterday under Nicola’s help! It was the first time that I discovered the “yoke” of a shirt! I got it confused with the word “yurt” for a while. I hardly wear shirts myself; a qualified double-idiot in both fashion and housework like me is far away from a suitable wife, and the next seven months will see the intensive training of me marching towards that species, I hope.

    Will come back to report soon, and I’m going to re-write all the above in Chinese now…