Unlike most of the r/wedding subreddit community, I didn't grow up dreaming of the day I would become a bride, in fact I think I dreamt of being filthy rich a lot more heh. As such, I didn't feel the need to throw an expensive perfect wedding, and let's face it, no wedding is ever going to be perfect, but I did want the food to be excellent, the ambience to be snazzy and to be the very picture of the beautiful, blushing bride instead of the frizzy-haired, chapped-lipped mess of a salary-woman I am most of the time. Since Wei Jin is from the north, I even had the perfect venue in mind for an intimate wedding dinner - Penang's Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion, even though at that point in time it struck me that such a high-profile venue (sucks that it was featured in Crazy Rich Asians) could break the bank. But hey, maybe with about 20-30 pax it could still be affordable? The idea was to ROM somewhere in Sungai Petani or Penang Island and then have a nice lunch/dinner together with close family members. This particular idea didn't survive long, however, as Wei Jin pointed out that having a wedding in Penang would necessitate the invitation of a lot of unwanted (I'm sorry) extended family members from his side. Then we thought that having a destination wedding would be a good way to avoid the wrath of extended family members, since even though most relatives could very well be miffed at not being invited to a wedding if it's in the same city or state, they wouldn't care enough to travel overseas for one. I considered Koh Samui and some other Thai islands at first, but there weren't that many options for fine-dining and villas as I thought there would be, so I decided to go with another option that I knew would be swarming with villas and dining options - Bali. The guest list was to be our immediate families only, so basically only 4 people from my side, but Wei Jin's immediate family is much larger as they're pretty close-knit, and includes quite a number of people who would not be considered "immediate" traditionally. We would still have to do the ROM in Malaysia though and I was all set for a meal at Cheong Fatt Tze's Indigo Restaurant which actually had a reasonably priced lunch menu. If I couldn't have my wedding at the picturesque mansion itself, having lunch at the restuarant sounded like a pretty good deal, perhaps we could even steal some shots at the mansion eh? Sadly, in the end we couldn't do our ROM in Penang Island because Wei Jin's father insisted that his boss was a very important person who absolutely deserved to be invited to Wei Jin's and my wedding if the event was to be held so close to home turf. The cheek of it all. We were both very against the idea since neither of us were planning on inviting even close friends to our ROM, so why the heck should we be inviting some rando whom even Wei Jin barely knows? Wei Jin pushed back, but in the end to avoid conflict we decided that the ROM had to be far, far away from Penang, hence we went with the basic bitch (but still very beautiful) option of Thean Hou Gong, KL. BUT! Since Wei Jin's side is pretty religious, we still had to go through rites and prayers and all these had to be in Sungai Petani, so we decided to add on another simple session just for this purpose. And boys and girls, this was how we ended up with 3 weddings.
Wedding no.1 - Sungai Petani/Penang - September 2024
After I was all dolled up, there was the tea ceremony where we proffered tea to Wei Jin's elders couple by couple (or singularly if they were not married/no living spouse), requesting them to drink tea and accept me into their clan. They in turn offered us both gifts (jewelry, angpau) and blessings, telling us to have many children yada yada. After all the proceedings were completed, it was time for our lunch at Il Bacaro. The wait team were a pleasant bunch, all smiles and attentive to the needs of our group despite the challenge of dealing with so many of us. We didn't book out the entire restaurant, I didn't even bother to ask how much it would cost to book the entire place, since this was supposed to be the "most informal" of our 3 events. The restaurant did set us up in a part of the restaurant separated from the other guests, 28 pax spreaded out over 3 different tables. I had preordered an antipasti platter with cheese, cured meats, figs etc. for each table to nibble on before the actual starters come, and when we were in the midst of it one of Wei Jin's aunts asked what the meat was. I confidently told her it was pork since it usually is pork right? I waved down a waiter to check anyway and assure them. "Oh it's chicken and beef. We don't serve pork here" came the reply, making me hope the ground would open up and swallow me whole. Background: Wei Jin's family are devout buddhists. So yes, I fed beef to a bunch of buddhist at an event where I was to officially join their family. Great job on the first day. Brilliant. To their credit, no one kicked up a fuss, but I still felt horrible about it. Thank goodness after that it all went smoothly, the food was pretty good and no other faux pas was committed. The lunch ended with a nice big group photo and Wei Jin and I chit-chatting to the managers(?) for a while. I even bought an art print of Campbell House, where Il Bacaro is located, as a souvenir for this occassion.
DAMAGE CALCULATOR
Dining : ~RM 4,000
Make up : Sponsored by Wei Jin's parents yippee!
Outfit : 0 for me because I wore one of my nicer Zara dresses, ~$600 for Wei Jin's outfit because his tailored suit was not done by then
TOTAL: ~RM 6,000
Wedding no.2 - ROM in Kuala Lumpur - March 2025
This was the event which I started planning the earliest, since the Penang one was sprung on us a little late. Since ROM in Penang became a no-no, I had two ideas, either I go with the option everyone based in the Klang Valley goes for - Thean Hou Gong, or I arrange for an officiant to come to a venue of my choice. I scouted around online for options for the latter, but honestly, there wasn't anywhere in KL suitable for an intimate event that caught my eye, hence I decided to be a basic bitch and go with the trusty Thean Hou Gong. After ROM, we would have lunch at a nice non-Chinese restaurant. In the past I usually got compliments whenever I wore a cheongsam, hence I decided to make full use of this and wear a cheongsam for ROM. We wanted to go with the old-Shanghai style theme ala Lust, Caution, so Wei Jin got his suit from a tailor that his aunt recommended. I looked at some ready-made options for my cheongsam but they all seemed too casual for a wedding, so I decided to splurge and go for a custom-made one. There weren't and still aren't many options for custom-made cheongsams in Malaysia (and I wasn't going to pay Singapore Dollars), the most obvious choice was local designer Meichi, whom I believe is pretty well-known in the wedding industry. I first approached her back in March 2024, and my first meeting with her was in May 2024. Mine was a pretty standard design of hers - a long halter neck cheongsam in my favourite teal, inspired by the main character in Lust, Caution, whose cheongsam I love so much, with some flowery applique on the front and side.
The entire ROM process was extremely tedious, I don't understand why the government doesn't make it easier for us, maybe to discourage Vegas-style marriages? We took the registration form from the UTC office in Sungai Petani sometime in late 2023 or early 2024, then had to get a commissioner of oath's stamp of approval, which we did late last year in Kuantan. Why Kuantan? Well we happened to be going back to visit our old friends and we took Monday off, so we decided to make full use of that Monday, if not we would have to take leave on another weekday just for this. Only halfway done at this point, we still had to go to JB to submit the form to the Ministry of Registeration and get their stamp of approval as well and only then was the form fit for submission to Thean Hou Gong, which we had to travel to KL for. Finally we could get our ROM date booking during the form submission. Initially we wanted the 3rd of March cause... 3/3 looks nice I guess, those double digits thing. Sadly 3/3/2025 was the first Monday of the month, and Thean Hou Gong reserves these first Mondays for their admin work which doesn't include ROM stuff, so we switched to Sunday, 2nd of March instead. I rented an Airbnb in Bangsar about 10 mins away from the temple so we wouldn't have to worry about traffic. Of course, mum and dad preferred to stay at home, so only Wei Jin's parents, aunt and grand aunt stayed with us.
Of course I had to consult Joanne when searching for a photographer. It's kinda hard to describe but the trend for wedding photography nowadays seem to lean towards this sort of soft Instagram filter look, which both Joanne and I detest. She linked me a couple of people whose style she approved of, and we got a few quotes but I realized I kept going back to Milan Teh's website to view his vibrant photos. It also helped that his e-mail reply when I asked for a quotation gave me a really good feeling, he just came off as a nice, affable person, even though we had only exchanged a few short e-mails. So even though it would cost me a few hundred ringgit more than someone from KL since Milan would be coming from Penang, I decided to trust my instincts on this one. And I am very proud to say my insticts did a good job indeed. Milan was always very responsive and proactive when it came to communication, for example, updating me when he arrived in KL the day before etc., which I cannot say for some of the service providers I've dealt with over the course of the weddings (yes with a "s") planning process. I think Wei Jin and I weren't the easiest models to work with, cause we're both camera shy and extremely awkward. Quoting Milan, "You're not smiling, you're just showing teeth!". Thankfully he was very patient with us. The photos came out vibrant and lovely, and even though we spent almost 2 hours at Thean Hou Gong taking photos, he only wanted to charge us an hour as he felt that we spent a lot of time waiting around since it was swarming with tourists and other just-married/to-be-married couples with their photographers. Of course I insisted to pay him for his 2 hours of time, waiting or no, but it was nice of him that way. Thank you Joanne and my intincts!
I don't have much to say about makeup. I knew I wanted to go with the old-Shanghai style and I didn't want my makeup to be too heavy, so I just pm-ed a couple of people I found on Instagram who fitted the bill and chose one that didn't break my piggy bank (some wanted to charge me more than a thousand bucks, cray cray) - Diana Tang. She was nice to talk to, and yes I was pretty satified with the makeup even though it probably wasn't the old-Shanghai style I told her about, but my hair left me wanting a little more though. She decided my cheongsam outfit required a clean look, so she did my hair up in a neat bun, but it felt a tad too simple for me, even though Priya insisted later that it was perfect. She also gave me a lot of anxiety because unlike Milan, she wasn't exactly the responsive type. As we got closer and closer to the ROM date, my mind kept conjuring up scenarios of my MUA not turning up on the day itself, leaving me to face the world ugly and bare-faced. Phew, I'm so glad it's all over.
Food-wise I did quite some extensive research and enquired a couple of high-end restaurants in KL - Skillet, Dominic, Entier etc. Skillet didn't have a private room big enough for ~20 pax, Dominic did have a suitable area but was turned off by the brusque PIC. Entier straight-up didn't reply, either rude or bad at doing business. I remember Sabayon was part of my consideration too, but their menu was on the pricier side. In the end I found a restaurant in my list of Saved Place on Google Maps - Cassis in TTDI. I had a good feeling about this place, perhaps because the price wasn't as exorbitant as the other fine-dining places, maybe because from the photos online it looked like a small restaurant suitable for an intimate event. Turns out my intuition was right, the menu offered was solid and dealings with the PIC went quite smoothly. We could also have the entire restaurant to ourselves if we had more than 16 pax, which I knew for certain we would definitely exceed. I know I'm patting myself on the back but I think minus the sweeping views of KL City that perhaps Sabayon would have been able to provide, Cassis was the perfect venue for our party of 36 adults and 2 kids. There was a main dining room with 27 of us (Wei Jin's + my fam bam, Priya and family, Wei Jin's friends, Kess + Natalie, Jason) while the BS3 group had a whole private room to themselves just across from the main dining room. It was a blessing in disguise that the date of our ROM was in the month of Ramadhan, if not my guest list would probably go up to more than 40 pax in total and possibly exceed the max capacity of the restaurant.
I barely spent anything on decor because the restaurant's original state was already cosy and aesthetically pleasing with its beige boho-ish theme, complete with small bunch of flowers on each table. Would I have liked to splurge more if I had the spare cash? Absolutely. Whenever I thought of organizing my wedding, one foolish desire I had was to deck the entire place out with fresh flowers. I couldn't fulfill this mainly because it would probably set me back a few unnecessary thousands. The sustainable part of me also whispered that it would be a huge waste of flowers since lunch was only gonna be maximum 3 hours at the most. So yeah, I had to give up that particular idea. Maybe 50 years later at vow renewal or something heh.
Anyway, the food at Cassis was great, every single dish was done very well, from the croissant starter to the corn veloute, salmon with perfectly crispy skin and finally the chocolate tart. The entire team were champs, excellent service. I decided that I MUST go back to Cassis again, this time purely as a guest and not having to worry about being an organizer, so I insisted to Wei Jin that we have to go there for our anniversary dinner next year. :)
DAMAGE CALCULATOR
Dining : ~RM 8,000
Make up : RM 700
Outfit : RM 2,890 (Cheongsam) + ~RM 2,500 (Wei Jin's suits)
Photographer: RM 1,700
ROM fees : RM 300
Wine : RM 1,044
Bouquet : RM 390
Airbnb : RM 1,675
TOTAL : RM 19,199 Wow, I didn't think it would add up to this much!
Wedding no.3 - Destination wedding in Bali - May 2025
The Bali one was the most frustrating for a variety of reasons:
1. Initially there were supposed to be around 20 of us, mostly Wei Jin's side, since I only have mumkins, dadkins, Annekins and Mingkins. Wei Jin's aunt, uncle and cousins from KL pulled out quite early, claiming... actually I don't remember what excuse they used. Fine, it's fine, they had already come to the Penang event and KL ROM session anyway. What annoyed me was Wei Jin's brother and girlfriend who seemed to be joining at first, although now that I come to think about it, they never actually gave a clear indication when the topic came up. Anyway, they ended up only telling us a few months before the event that they would in fact, not be joining, because they didn't have enough leave. Annoyed is putting it a bit lightly, I was quite pissed actually, since by that time I had already booked accomodations for them as well, and had to do some re-planning after they declared they were flaking. It also irked me especially because they didn't come to the ROM claiming the same excuse, even though our ROM was on a Sunday morning. I also know they attended GEM's concert in Singapore the night before our ROM, so I was already nursing a bit of a grudge since I felt that they chose her concert over our ROM and the entire leave thing was an excuse. Since Wei Jin and his brother only have each other for siblings, it felt quite awful of him to miss both the ROM and Bali trip. He probably thinks attending the Penang lunch was enough to fulfill his brotherly duties. Almost wanted to call the whole thing off, but Joanne didn't join the rituals or ROM, so this would be the only event for her and Sengming.
2. Difficulties finding a suitable restaurant and makeup artist. I don't know why the heck I decided to have my wedding dinner in Canggu, I think it's because I assumed the hustle and bustle there meant there would be tonnes of nice restaurant options. Boy was I wrong. Ok actually I'm not wrong in the sense that there are indeed tonnes of restaurants in Canggu, it's just that most of the fancier places serve European or Japanese or fusion, whereas I was looking for Indonesian cuisine since we're in Bali after all. Just when I thought I could go with Sangsaka, they told me I could not have the private dining room unless I meet their crazy minimum spend of 19 million rupiah, which is not that feasible with only 12 of us, unless we spend a lot on alcohol, which I didn't want to do anyway. Their staff were also not were helpful when I asked if there were any other areas suitable for my party of 12. Merah Putih is probably the most well known fancy local restaurant, but alas no private or at least semi-private dining rooom. After what felt like endless searching, I stumbled across Iwa Restaurant at Hotel Tugu on one of those online lists of dining recommendations and found out they actually had a couple of nice private rooms. I usually have some reservations when it comes to hotel food, but honestly the mental exhaustion of trying to find a suitable place was getting to me and decided to just go with it, since the venue they offered, the Bale Sutra, was the most unique I've seen so far - a Chinese temple from the 1700s.
Finding a makeup artist was frustrating too, because our dinner was originally scheduled to be on Saturday but the few artists I asked didn't want to take such early bookings (I was asking more than 6 months before the event) for a non-wedding makeup session, holding out in case they can score a customer who wants bridal makeup I suppose, since that pays a lot more. The idea of not having a booking secured until a date much closer to the event was making me anxious though, so I decided to shift my event to Friday instead, in the hopes that it would be easier to get a makeup artist to commit. Eventually found Putri on Instagram and I felt like she did a solid job on both Joanne and I: Not too heavy, just nice. My favourite would still be the Sungai Petani artist though.
3. Wei Jin's side was to be flying in on Batik Air, while mum and dad were flying on MAS because mum doesn't do budget airlines. Thanksfully she didn't, because Wei Jin's family got royally screwed over by Batik Air. In the original ticket their flights were supposed to be around 8 - 9 am, leaving them lots of time to rest and freshen up before our dinner. And then, more than a month before the trip the flight was rescheduled to fly 1 hour later. That we could still deal. However, on the morning itself, when they were already at KLIA, they were all unceremoniously booted to the 2 pm flight because Batik Air overbooked their morning flight. They made a lot of noise, but the staff were apparently unapologetic and claimed they couldn't do anything about it. To add insult to the injury, even the 2 pm flight was delayed to around 3 pm, so by the time they landed in Bali it was around 7:30 pm in the evening, and with the horrible Bali traffic, they arrived at Hotel Tugu around 9:30 pm.
There are so many things wrong with this. First of all, why do we customers have to suffer the consequences of the airlines overbooking their flight? We bought the ticket for a specific date and time and the airlines should fulfill their responsbility somehow, even if it means they have to book us another flight with a different company. Failing to do so, they should practise the system of offering monetary reward to volunteers who are willing to take a later flight. This way, those who don't have a tight schedule may be happy to earn a quick dime, and their seats can be offered to those who urgently need to reach their destination by a certain time. But nope, all Batik Air did was offer the Lows lounge access, and Business Class seat for 1 pax because apparently that was there was only remaining seat left. Anyway, why couldn't they have informed us in advanced that the flight was delayed to the afternoon, so that the family could come to the airport later instead. Absolutely horrendous planning and a total disregard of their customers' time.
I felt horrible that the Lows all had to troop in for dinner after such a harrowing journey, without even a warm shower to freshen up. By then, I had already dismissed the hired photographer because we weren't sure what time they would actually reach due to the Bali traffic, so we didn't have nice professional photos with them either. At least, the food and performance by the hotel team, as well as the service provided by the wait staff was great, even though we had to delay our dinner from the original start time of 7:00 pm to 9:30 pm. I felt so bad that they had to wait so long for us, even though it wasn't our fault. We also couldn't enjoy our magnificent dinner slowly, since it was already so late when we started, and the restaurant was supposed to close at 10:30 pm. This Bali wedding was supposed to be THE main event, so it was a really a huge bummer Batik Air messed it up for us. Unless Batik Air somehow sponsors another overseas wedding dinner as compensation, I for sure will do my very best to avoid flying with them ever.
Yeah I think I don't want to talk about Bali anymore. I need to do a vow renewal or 10th wedding anniversary bash to make myself feel better.
Some photos from the photoshoot at out rented villa before dinner, credits to local photog Tony:
Some shots at Hotel Tugu's Bale Sutra, which was already beautiful to began with, but I also paid Pivoine Garden some moolah to to arrange some floral centerpieces, and I must say they did an excellent job:
No professionally-taken group photo since the photographer had already left when the Lows finally arrived, but we take what we can get:
DAMAGE CALCULATOR
Dining : ~RM 4,500
Make up : ~RM 650
Outfit : ~RM 500 (Dress rental) Photographer : ~RM 900
Floral arrangement : ~RM 750
Airbnb + Hotels : ~RM 5,600 + ~RM 3,400 + ~RM 1,700 + ~RM 1,600
Transportation : ~RM 550
TOTAL : RM 20,150
If I could do it all over again, I would definitely not do Bali anymore, since even the support from Wei Jin's side of the family was lacklustre. I would probably just do one big event combining the rituals and the ROM, and it would be at Cheong Fatt Sze in Penang, and Joanne would also have to come during that time instead. I feel like such an idiot for going through so much hassle. Well, as much as I would have liked my wedding to be perfect, I am a firm believer that the wedding is just one day, or in my case, three days, and the coming days together are what matters the most. So here's to us, Beekins.
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