I always had a thing about celebrating one’s milestone birthday in a more significant way than others. Mic was not particularly keen on a getaway to Sentosa for his birthday like he did for mine, and I felt I should do more than just a dinner / movie / spa massage etc, so an idea of a surprise party came to me and took shape in my mind.

It was not easy to plan for it as I had to anticipate all the possible giveaways and all possible obstacles that could occur every step of the way. I had to lure him out of the house on the pretext of a massage session at the spa while giving a friend, Jo, the keys to our place so that she and the gang could do up the place while we are gone.

For his actual birthday, I ordered a B cube cheesecake from nydc, which he blew out the candle at 12am but we left it till morning to eat as it was too late for such a rich cake. That’s NY cheese with brownie bits in it, which is pretty nice. Actually Mic’s all-time favourite is still chocolate, but I’m not too sure where I can find really really delicious chocolate cake. Any suggestions?

The initial plan was to catch a romantic dinner at Sizzling Rock at Boat Quay. However, as luck would have it, my mobile broke down the day before his birthday, which means I needed to get a replacement in order to be contactable for the all-important birthday party which is on the next day ie Sat. So in the end, we decided to forgo Sizzling Rock (for the 2nd time!) and check out the phone shops in Vivo City before we have a nice dinner there. We bought tickets for 9-ish screening of Quantum of Solace and ended up racing against time as we adjourned to Plaza Singapura to get a LG Secret handphone instead, leaving only 50mins for dinner. We decided on Shabuya at Vivo City and ordered a steamboat set meal, some salmon sashimi and sake and we made it in time for the movie.

The next day, we set off for our usual massage appointment at Elements Spa at The Cathay. It would already be half the battle won by getting him to agree and indeed go out of the house for this appointment without hiccup. Alas, I sabotaged myself by closing our bedroom door as we were going out, which aroused his suspicion as we do not usually do that. He questioned me and caught unprepared, I came up with some feeble and unconvincing explanation of having a secret surprise present in the room for him. DUH!!! He seemed to have bought it. I hoped he would quickly forget about it. haha. That’s Fumble no. 1.

After the massage, I used the excuse of having a headache to make him take a cab home. He suggested to grab some dinner before we head home but I came up with excuses to refuse and insist on going home straight away.

Finally we reached the lift. Phew!

Wait! What was that? The delivery bike from KFC, which was one of the food I had ordered for the party in advance!

Oh my! Don’t tell me that’s my delivery!

I prayed that we would not run into the delivery guy at my doorstep, which would have given the game away.

OK, he’s not there. Phew… lucky!

Mic unlocks the padlock of the gate, twisted the handle and yanked. It would not bulge. It then dawned on me what had happened. We do not have the habit of locking the gate but somehow, our friend Jo had thought to lock it…!

Oh my goodness, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry then. Despite all the planning, I had not thought to brief Jo about the gate! I stood frozen, not sure how to react to the situation. Mic was shocked. He fumbled with his keys and kept asking why the gate was locked. I kept quiet, yearning for the moment of discovery.

The main door swinged back. Our friends sang “Surprise”. Camera clicked and JW sprayed ribbons on Mic.

Mic was not one to be easily surprised. So it was also of no surprise that he was pretty expressionless when the action unfolded around him. And it did not help that there were so many incidents to prime him. Apart from the gate, my giveaway of the bedroom door and atypical behaviour about insisting to go home immediately also added to the spoiler.

Nevertheless he was appreciative of the effort made to organise this get-together with his secondary school chums. : ) Well, that’s all it matters.

Source : Beautfort Hotel

Right after our tea ceremony at Yh’s place, we headed down to OCC and checked into the bridal suite to rest. Thank goodness we had a spare room so that the boys and gals could have their own place to freshen up. We tried to get some sleep but after awhile, it was time to do a dry run with our banquet manager so I headed off with Anthony to do a quick briefing on the sequence of events for the evening. OCC provided us with a nice box of chocolates and also our wedding cake (since the evening cake is just a prop). It was a pretty uneventful evening as we sat around and chatted away the time (tip: bad idea to let your bro and sis start plotting about the after dinner events ). Pretty soon, it was 6+ and time to get ready for the guests to arrive.

Wan Peng (our photographer) worked tirelessly with us as we greeted our guests and chit-chatted. Glad the function area was big enough to cater to the crowd of 60 tables (Thank you helpers who coordinated the whole logistics of the night!)

Everyone worked tirelessly to get the guests to their tables and of course looking good at the same time

I’m glad we managed to get in so many photos with friends and relatives that night .. OF course it makes it all the more harder to go through all the photos since everyone looks so good!

Our walk down the red carpet had friends blowing bubbles and then red rose petals as we headed towards the stage.. Was great to see family, friends and relatives beside us smiling away. Wow.. we felt like celebrities!

Our wonderful MC’s Julian and Linda bantering away. Also the first dish performance made us wonder when he’d throw the flaming sword in the air

Our second march in felt like a presidential ceremony as we came in on the wedding buggy. The traditional yum seng with everyone on stage and a whole lot of brothers cheering for us…

Both our dads beaming through our thank you speech.

It was time to same goodbye to our guests… has been a great evening and want to thank everyone who could make it (and those who couldn’t) for your well wishes. It’d soon be time to head off to Taiwan for our honeymoon.

Both of us had to get up bright and early to get ready for the hair-combing ceremony by our parents at 0600.

I took some photos and posted them online for Yh to have a look

Yh all made up and parents putting on veil for her

Vicki also gets dressed up for the morning

Yh’s sisters get ready with some “obstacles” for the groom and bros.

Our bridal car comes along with Eunice’s Celica right at the back.. Its quite an entourage of cars Hanyong helped to open the car door and sure looks handsome ya? Josh, Zhihua, Anthony, Joseph, KC, Eugen, Eunice, Sean and Aunt right next to me.

Wanjoo, Karpeng, Xiao Lin, Tingfang, Mag and Linda and  all ready to “welcome” us through the gate. We had to answer a few questions like make up a poem with Yuhui’s name and also answer what’s Yh’s parents full name (Haha which i couldn’t answer and poor Anthony had to have his face drawn like cat!). Thank goodness there wasn’t any sweet/sour/bitter stuff to “torture” us Josh also had to endure putting on a sexy panties (Thx Bro!) while I had to put on a pair of kid’s swimming trunks! Luckily, after much negotiation from Zhihua (aka cash incentives), we managed to into the house!

Of course, it wouldn’t be so easy because Karpeng immediately blocked our ways with two bamboo poles… Soon everyone’s laughing away while we performed the sexy pole dance by men in formal wear routine.

It seem like many moons ago when I knelt in front of Yh at Esplanade’s Roof Garden to ask her to marry me (actually it was on Feb 16th 2005). Definitely feels different all dressed up and with audience

We headed off to our new house first.. quick quick gotta reach there by auspicious time.

We had a quick stopover at our new home to have some tang yuan which I diligently rolled the night before (uhmm got commented that a lot of big n small ones :p). Next stop is back to my parent’s house for tea ceremony.

After the traditional tea ceremony, we proceeded to take photos with relatives who came to partake in the fun. 

After some lunch, we were ready to hit the road again to Yh’s place for tea ceremony

We had the tea ceremony and more photo taking .. and more food! After a morning of rushing around.. we were finally headed off to OCC to prepare for the evening.

Many thanks to Ah Peng Peng (Wai Peng) for our wedding day photos.. Had a great time looking through them (and an equally tough time deciding which photos to post online!)

We hope you have a fun time browsing through our memories

(More to come as we post photos from our honeymoon to Taiwan!)

Yh and myself will be off to Taiwan for our honeymoon soon and shall update a little more with photos from the day:)

Originally uploaded by m.ong.

We’re heading up to yh’s house for tea ceremony