No matter in which continent you are planning your wedding, the wedding planning process is going to sap all your energy away…

from www.grweekly.com

Many thought that proposing could be the hardest step…wait till they start to plan their wedding…

Wedding planning is never just business for the couple. It involves the marriage of two families.

Beside the many liaisions with the bridal studio, hotels, solemnisation venue, photographers, videographers and so on, there are many times the couple may be answerable to their own parents.

I remembered my mother-in-law was very displeased with the journalistic style of our wedding photographers. There was never one photo that she said was “ok”.

She criticised and commented negatively at every photo…”why is there such a dark patch here? why is only the face of this person captured? what about the rest?”

About the food-tasting, we initially thought that we could finalised the menu on the spot. Never did we know that we had to change 5 out of the 9 dishes due to Hong Kong wedding custom.

The reason was that the dishes are not colourful enough to represent such an important occasion.

There were many times we had to meet up with the necessary liaision staff after a hard day of work. We were very tired most of the times and many times we found ourselves dragging our tired feet to these places and had to go through few rounds of bargaining, discussion and negotiation.

It was really tough.

Most of the times, we had skipped our dinner to meet these people.

And by the time the discussion ended, it was already ten plus and we reached home at about 11pm.

It doesn’t end here.
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I am always very amazed by how a package that is worth S$3,300 can shoot up to S$8,000 or even more!!!

This is when there is no communication and common understanding between the bride and groom.

It all started when my friend stepped into the bridal studio with her finance…

It was the day that they were going to choose their wedding photos for their wedding album.

Normally, though the album can only contain 26 pictures with only 26 poses, the photographer is smart enough to have taken at least 200 photos or much much more…

Why?

Here comes the reason…when the couple sat down and their coordinator “assisted” them in choosing the photos, the coordinator would identify who the decision maker was.

Let’s say the fiancee was the one and she could choose any photo that she loved and the fiance had absolutely no say…the coordinator would focus on the fiancee and “complimenting and praising” any photo that she picked up…every photo of her in her wedding dress looked fabulous!!!

This was to encourage her to want the photo to be part of the album.

Mind you….every addition photo add up another $80 to $100 more to the bill….of course, the coordinator would want his customers to buy more. From the final amount, he will get a certain percentage off from the total payment as commission.

Normally, couples won’t have discussed what their ceiling budget was and what their expectations were.
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Many brides emailed me telling me how tough it was to bargain with the hotel coordinators…

It was tough for them even to request for something that they truly deserve.

I have heard brides saying that “they will try”…or “they will see the mood of the coordinator”…or “the coordinators are so experienced. They just won’t barged. What can I do?”

Seriously, I am someone who don’t even know how to bargain. I will always take the first offer.

Wedding planning isn’t easy and that is why I bought this to help me…

I didn’t learn bargaining until the hotel that I had my wedding dinner at was too irresponsible. It was then we felt we must do something about it. If not, we would feel like mistreated.

What actually happened at the hotel was that our coordinator resigned. It was already the second time. 2 staff left in 5 months.

However, the new coordinator didn’t inform us. It was when we emailed our coordinator, then the new one replied us saying that she had “taken a long leave”. By that time, it was about a month before our wedding.

When we called the hotel, the Director of Food & Beverage said that she was on study-leave. When we wanted to bring this matter up to the Director of Business Management, she said that she had resigned too and now one of the managers in the same department had taken over as the acting-Director.

Wow, 2 staffs left the department and it must be something awfully worng that had happened.
The worse thing is the hotel herself was not even sure if she had quitted or she was on long leave. Or are they throwing to hide “something”?

We felt that the life of our wedding dinner was endangered!!
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I know this post is very off from my wedding content. But many bloggies friends of mine want to find out how did I increase my traffic to my wedding blog.

I was playing with this software SEOelite…

It actually taught us how the spiders fo the Search engines crawl to our sites and this will determine the ranking of our web sites if a surfer ket a oarticular keyword, say “Wedding Blog”.

My experience of blogging about wedding is that as much as we want to just blog literally, but we can’t escape from the technical know-how such as html code, php and also the many web sites that support blogs such as technorati.

In addition, I also have to learnt about who the other surfers who like to read wedding blogs. This is where I find them….from social community such as MySpace, Friendster and BlogLog…

The last thing that bloggers can’t escape is driving traffic to our blogs…

LOTS of them to the sites…

and that is why many fo them had got hold of this.

I just heard from my friend that she is going to give away her child…Her child is 6 years old this year and the reason is…because her father-in-law is moving soon…

I am talking about my friend’s pet dog…To her, the dog is like a family member…

Many times, in life, we have to trade-off something that was once important for us…

It could be our pet…or many other things that we once love or enjoy having.

photo from tucoo.com

Time had to be used for spending time with my wife, helping her with the work she brought from home and so on…

Being the wife and having physically moved into elsewhere from somewhere that they once called home, the wives spent less time with their own parents and siblings.

Even, time spent with friends is less. When we were younger, I would ask my buddies to accompany me to go watch movies or go dining.

Now…my priority has been shifted to my home…

I’m not saying that friends or families are not imporatant…they still are…

It is just that as we grew up, we will find oursleves moving away from some things and closer to other things…

Life is full of changes…whether we want it or not…whether we like it or not…whether we are ready or not…

nobody likes many changes in their lives…we all wish to stay comfortable and safe…

Brides and grooms had been facing changes ever since they started off their relationships as boy-girl friends…

The boy will have less time for his army friends or buddies. The girl will have to spend less time at home and more time with her boyfriend.

Different gender will responsd differently. If you are a guy, you may want to read this book to understand ladies.
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