Looking back on my wedding day, it amazes me how perfect and special and wonderful it all was. The cliches are true, it really was the best day of my life! So far anyway, I suspect events such as the birth of children may surpass it - just. It really did seem like a magical day, so many things turned out so perfectly, beyond any of our expectations, and it seemed like most of the choices we'd made turned out to be so right. Even the day we picked was spectacular. If it had been a day earlier or later, the weather would have been awful!

I bounced out of bed on the big day at 5:30am, after only about 6 hours sleep, but I was so excited I didn't feel tired at all. I'd actually been having nightmares in the lead up to the wedding of things going wrong or not the way we'd planned (for example, I dreamed that the music they played for my walk down the aisle was Every Rose Has It's Thorn by Poison), but not that night. I was super excited and couldn't wait to finally wear my beautiful wedding dress and see how the venue looked all set up with my design ideas, and when I thought of seeing Nick looking all handsome and dapper in his suit at the end of the aisle, I felt all trembly and like I would burst with happiness.

I'd been really anxious about the weather for the wedding. As noted in my previous blog, it rained heavily on our first day in Hawaii when we arrived for our wedding week. It continued to rain intermittently throughout the week and it was extremely gusty. I was very anxious, as rain and wind would both have a good chance of ruining my dream of a beautifully sunny and fully outdoor wedding. At the rehearsal dinner (which was only 10 minutes away from our wedding venue) the night before the wedding, it poured with rain. As soon as I got up I checked the weather report on the internet. Miracle of miracles - 29 degrees celsius and sunny!

I ran out to the balcony to watch the sunrise, and it was just beautiful, the kind of lovely pink freshness that precedes a gorgeously sunny day. Here's a pic I took of the morning, as viewed from my balcony at the Turtle Bay Resort:

I was staying in a suite at the Turtle Bay Resort with my Maid of Honour, Seema. I figured that she probably wasn't as super excited as I was and let her sleep until 8:30. Then we had a light breakfast on the balcony (cereal with soy milk and fruit for me) and marvelled at how stunning the day was.

Now, it was at this stage that I realised something was potentially wrong. I had been in a bit of pain and discomfort and had been peeing blood the whole morning. Horror of horrors, I realised I had a bout of cystisis! Today of all days! I called the front desk to ask if there was a doctor or pharmacy near by, but the closest of either of those things was at a hospital an hour away. There was no way I could go there and still make it to the wedding! You can see a large glass of cranberry juice on the table in the above picture. I was drinking this and lots of water in the hope it would just go away.

We went to the Turtle Bay Spa at about 9:45am for our manicures, and it turned out there was a slight mix up with the booking. We were scheduled for 10:30am manicures, not 10am. So we went and sat by the pool in the sunshine, but I was in terrible pain by then and starting to panic. I couldn't go through my wedding day like this! The constant peeing while wearing a large white dress was going to be extremely difficult, and I couldn't duck out of the ceremony every 10 minutes to go to the bathroom. Not to mention the pain!

I texted my fiance Nick about the situation. His mother usually had medication for cystisis, and thankfully she had some with her that day. I also called our wedding planner Christina, who dropped everything to go to a doctor and get a prescription for antibiotics. Nick's mum was only 10 minutes away form Turtle Bay, so she drove her medication over which I took as soon as our manicures were over. Within an hour I was feeling better!

After the manicures and taking the medication, Seema and I picked up our dresses from the Turtle Bay wedding shop where they had been ironed. The lovely lady in the shop realised we'd just had our nails done and they were wet, so she very kindly offered to carry my wedding dress up to my room for me. Seema then put on some tunes from the late 80s and early 90s and Liz, my stylist from Maleana Cosmetics, arrived to do hair and make up. She was about half an hour late due to traffic, but after the whole cystisis crisis, I was feeling surprisingly relaxed. It just seemed like other things going wrong couldn't possibly be as bad as the cystisis situation, so it was as if the worst thing that could happen already had and everything else was just small stuff not worth sweating over.

Liz started with Seema's hair, then moved on to starting mine (while I ate a caesar salad balanced on my lap). She then did Seema's make up, and I have to say, she did an amazing job. Seema looked so beautiful!

It was then my turn to have my make up done, then my hair finished and my veil put in place. During that time, Christina arrived with the bouquets and my antibiotics for the cystisis. It was a 5 day course to take to ensure the infection was cleared up and that my honeymoon would be trouble free. I did feel a bit emotional when I saw the bouquets but was determined not to cry and ruin my make up! It feltl so surreal to think that was a bouquet for me for my wedding! Two of the photographers from Visionari arrived shortly after and began taking detail shots of my jewellery, dress and shoes, and the tail end of my hair being done.

I really think Liz did such a fantastic job on my hair and make up! Here I am after hair and make up is done, but before the veil was put on.

So now that hair and make up was finished, Liz took her leave. And it was at this point that another crisis reared it's ugly head. We had organised a coach to pick up most of the wedding guests from Waikiki and take them to the wedding venue on the North Shore which was about an hour away. Seema's fiance Rob called in a panic - 2 of the guests hadn't made it onto the bus! The bus was already on the freeway and well on the way to the venue.

I didn't panic, and was still feeling really relaxed after crisis one had been averted. I initially said to just keep going and get Nick to ring the missing guests and get them into a taxi which we would pay for. So Seema rang Nick (I wasn't allowed to talk to him until the ceremony!) to tell him, but unfortunately these guests didn't have a mobile phone and we weren't able to reach them at their hotel.

Seema pointed out that they had come all this way to attend our wedding and it would be such a shame if they missed it. So we got the bus to turn around and go back to their hotel to see if they could find them. Thankfully they were waiting outside the hotel!

This did mean we were now really behind schedule. Seema and I were supposed to leave the hotel at 4pm (after the getting ready photos were taken) to be at Loulu Palm by 4:15pm for a 4:30pm start. However it looked like the coach wasn't going to get there until around 4:30pm or later. I didn't want to risk leaving at the scheduled time and arriving at the same time as our guests - seeing me in my wedding dress before the big walk down the aisle was a big no-no! So we asked Seema's fiance to text us when the bus got to the venue and at that point we would leave. This would also give the guests some time to look at the venue, have some of the cool drinks we'd laid out for them, and chill a bit. We would have to start the wedding about half an hour late, but that didn't worry me at all.

So with another crisis out of the way, it was time to turn our attention to the dress! I had shot a video of the dressmaker who altered my dress doing it up so Seema could see how to do it. We watched that, and the video of the dress being bustled up. Seema had a look at the hidden buttons and loops on the dress so she could understand the bustling, then it was time to put it on. I was so excited!

It took about 20 minutes or so for poor Seema to get my dress done up. It was a laced up corset back, and I kept insisting it needed to be done tighter. I'd lost weight since my last wedding dress fitting so the corset needed to be tightened a lot! The photographers took some photos of the dress being done up, here is one of them:

Seema then put the earrings, necklace and bracelet I had borrowed from my mother on me, and then it was time for some posed photographs. This took quite a bit of time, and I felt a bit self conscious! It was a lot of: okay Charmayne, stand here, a bit more to the left, okay, a tiny step forward now, good, now look over your shoulder towards your left heel, turn your body slightly to the right, lower your eyes a tiny bit more - great now smile! I have to say, it got to a point where my jaw started trembling from smiling so much! Here are some of my favourite photos that they took:


I had 2 really great photographers with me from Visionari, and Nick also had 2 with him at his parents holiday rental photographing him getting ready. I should mention here that this was one of the choices we'd made that had turned out to be especially fortuitous. We had tossed up between Visionari and another photographer, and it was possibly the hardest decision we had to make as far as wedding vendors went. There wasn't much in it - we really liked both Jon from Visionari and the other photographer we'd met and all their work was amazing. In the end something in my gut told me to go for Visionari. There was something about their photos and Jon's quiet and easy going manor I just liked a little tiny bit more. So we signed a contract with them to have 2 photographers for the big day.

And this is when fate stepped in. A month or so before the wedding, Visionari were contacted by a Japanese publisher. This company had previously published a book in Japan about destination weddings which had been a bestseller, and they were putting together a second book. They had worked with Visionari on the previous book so they wanted to know if Visionari had any upcoming weddings that would be good to include in the second book. Based on the A-list vendors we had for our wedding, ours was chosen for the book! All that it meant for us was that we would have to answer some questions about our wedding and how we met etc, and that Visionari's photos of our wedding would be used in the book. But more importantly, what it also meant was, that instead of 2 photographers, Visionari were using 4 for our wedding at no extra cost!

Once the posed photos were done, there wasn't much else to do until we received the text saying the guests had arrived at the venue and we could head over there. One of the photographers went to the venue and the other stayed with us and took more photos. We sat around for a while, twiddling our thumbs a bit, until we got the text. Show time!

The walk from our room to the limo was pretty embarrassing for me, particularly walking through the hotel lobby. Loads of people gawked at me, which made me really uncomfortable! Getting into the limo in my dress was also a challenge, and actually sitting in the seats was really difficult. One of the photographers came with Seema and I in the limo and took pics. I was by this stage really really nervous! And then suddenly, we were at the venue...

As I write this blog post, it is 5am in the beautiful Maldives and I am on the second day of my honeymoon. Having drastically changed time zones twice since leaving Hawaii, I'm a bit jet lagged! And yes, this does mean I did get married :). Being up so early gives you time to think, and to write blog posts! Reflecting back on my wedding celebration, it amazes me how fortunate Nick and I are to have such wonderful friends and family, how good the choices we made turned out to be, and how lucky we got with the weather!

As people were coming such a very long way for our wedding, most were taking at least a week off work to make a holiday of it. Nick and I therefore planned a week of activities and get togethers for all our guests. It was really a week long celebration, and all of it was fun and memorable, and everyone came away from the week with new friends.

We ourselves were arriving on the Sunday before our actual wedding, which was on Saturday 13 March 2010. We started our big wedding trip off by flying to Tokyo from London. We had originally planned to fly from London to LA then Honolulu, but having flown that journey several times during the planning stages of our wedding, we knew how long and uncomfortable it was. Add to that the fact that several months before the wedding, British Airways, who we had booked with, announced strikes to begin most likely in the beginning of March! We were able to cancel the flights without penalty, and when my Dad invited us to spend a couple of days with him in Tokyo before the wedding, we jumped at the chance. Nick had never been to Japan before and was eager to go. We spent one full day and one night in Tokyo with my parents and my cousin Tanya and her fiance, which everyone enjoyed thoroughly. Then we flew to Honolulu.

My first day in Honolulu was, quite frankly, terrible! Firstly, after arriving at Trump Waikiki, I found that the comb on my veil had broken in transit. I contacted our wedding planner Christina straight away and sent her a pic of the damage (see below) to find out if I would need the veil placed on a new comb, and if so, who could do it.

Then, it rained. Not your typical 5 minutes of Hawaiian rain followed by a cool breeze and sunshine, but proper, cats & dogs, constant downpour, London type rain. This went on for the whole day. I was beside myself, thinking our outdoor wedding would be ruined and that all our guests had come here for a Hawaiian holiday and were going to have such terrible weather!

Next disaster was that we were scheduled for a special Woo family dinner that evening in a nice restaurant and I didn't have anything to wear! I hadn't thought to pack any nice going out clothes, just shorts and summer tops - none of which fit me anymore anyway after losing 13kg since last summer for the wedding. Nick and I ran off to Ala Moana shopping centre (in the pouring rain) to get dress pants for him and a dress for me But we barely had any time before we were supposed to meet up with a couple of our wedding guests for drinks before the family dinner, and Nick spent long enough choosing his pants that there was no time left to buy a dress for me. I would have to wear shorts and a t-shirt to dinner that were too big!

I was close to tears. Everything was going so horribly wrong. I began to wonder if these were all signs from the universe cursing our wedding! But Nick, bless his little cotton socks, realised how down I was. When we walked past BCBG Max Azria, he spotted a nice white dress and insisted we go in and try it on. He was so great - he zipped me up in the change rooms, sat patiently while the sales assistant brought me several thousand dresses to consider, and gave constructive and helpful opinions that helped me choose a gorgeous dress. He also told me to send a text message to our friends to let them know we'd be 15 minutes late, and not to stress about it (turns out they were running late too so it was fine). Here is the dress we bought:
I ended up wearing it to the Rehearsal Dinner as well - I love it! The floral detail on the shoulder strap is gorgeous, very bridal.

And just like that, everything started to get better - retail therapy proves it's worth yet again! That, and an amazing and considerate fiance :). We met up with our friends, had a few drinks (one glass of champagne for me and no alcohol for Nick, who only drinks on very rare occasions). We had an amazing dinner with my family, and my Dad gave us an early wedding present and an incredibly touching card that reduced me to tears. Christina informed me the hair stylist said the veil was totally fine to use, and not to worry at all. The next day, we woke up to blue skies and sunshine, still the occasional rain shower and very strong gusty winds, but a huge improvement!

The rest of the week went by so fast - Monday we got up early and got our marriage licence, then hired a driver and mini-van to take us and some of our guests to the best beaches on Oahu (with a stop for lunch at the shrimp trucks naturally). Tuesday we met up with Nick's family (I met his sisters and aunts for the first time), had lunch with guests that had just arrived, and had welcome drinks in our apartment at Trump for all our guests to meet and mingle. Wednesday we went on a catamaran snorkelling trip with some of our guests and swam with turtles, then had the first ever Woo/Wright extended family dinner at Nobu, which was such a joyful occasion. Thursday Nick and I went for beauty treatments in the morning, met up with more guests who had just arrived for lunch, met with Christina for our final planning session, and took all our guests to the Paradise Cove luau as a welcome and thank you present. "Chief Nick" went up on stage to do a hula solo in a hot pink sarong and coconut bra - worth the price of admission alone!
Here's a link to the full (and hilarious) video on You Tube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDk4Ntwb2mM

Then suddenly, it was Friday - the day before our wedding! Nerves started to kick in, I felt quite tense and emotional. I had a facial in the morning, then packed up everything I would need for the wedding and the day after. I was paranoid I'd forget something as I'd be staying over an hour away from Waikiki at the Turtle Bay Resort. Nick, Seema (my maid of honour), Seema's finace Rob, and myself went to the Turtle Bay Resort where Seema and I checked in.

Then we had the rehearsal, where Nick's dad, who is the Bishop of Otaga and would be performing the ceremony, read through every line of the service during the run through. I just managed to hold it together and not cry. Then we had the rehearsal dinner, where I did cry. Then it was bed time, and oh my Lord, the morning of the wedding!!! Which I will relay in great detail in my next blog post :).

So here it is, the night before my wedding... I'M GETTING MARRIED TOMORROW!!!!!!!!

We've been planning this wedding for a year and three months and it honestly felt like it would never get here. Now suddenly I only have one more sleep to go!

We had the rehearsal this afternoon and I felt very emotional. The ceremony is being performed by Nick's dad who is the Bishop of Otaga in New Zealand. He took us through the entire ceremony, saying everything he was going to say and having us do all the motions. I nearly cried but just managed to hold it together.

Not so for the rehearsal dinner afterwards! Nick and I got up after the meal to thank our families and the bridal party, and when it was my turn I managed one sentence then burst into tears. Very embarrassing! I was just so overcome with emotion and couldn't contain it.

It was a lovely night though, and some really heartfelt and lovely things were said by Nick, his father, and my father. I bawled again when my Dad spoke. I am really worried about crying like a baby (and ruining my make-up!) during the ceremony tomorrow.

But I THINK that I am over the emotional, nervous/scared/tense bit now and am just really excited!!!

I am staying at the Turtle Bay Resort tonight with my maid of honour Seema. Nick is staying with his family at their holiday rental about 20 minutes away. I can't believe the next time I see him I'll be walking down the aisle to become his wife!

My dress is made of silk, which can be hard to get creases out of. I wanted to minimise the amount of wrinkling on the dress as much as possible in transit. We were flying for 11 hours to Tokyo, then from there another 6.5 hours to Hawaii, so it was going to be quite tricky to get the dress there without too much wrinkling. I didn't want to check the dress in either just in case it somehow got lost along the way. I could probably replace almost all of the other things I was bringing but not my perfectly tailored wedding dress!

The first thing I did was buy a wedding dress travel box from The Empty Box Company website. A friend of mine had travelled on a plane to get to her wedding destination and had used one of these boxes and said they were great. They are the exact maximum dimensions allowed by most airlines as hand luggage and fit nicely inside the overhead bins on planes.

I was a bit dubious that my dress would fit into the box, but I rolled it, still in it's garment bag, and it fit very nicely without any need for pushing or shoving to get all of the dress in. I highly recommend these boxes, they are awesome and make travelling with your dress so much easier!

Next I rang both the airlines I was flying with to see if I could hang my dress up in the coat closets on board. They asked loads of questions about the dimensions of the dress, the size and weight, and when they realised it wasn't a massive puffy wedding cake dress both airlines were totally fine with it.

I got the dress there in one piece (the veil however lost most of the middle teeth on the comb) and without too much wrinkling.

Here I am at the airport in Tokyo with my wedding dress box and another bag with the two large tupperware boxes of sugar flowers, plus the cake toppers made for us by a friend, and my big laptop backpack! I certainly wasn't travelling light.

My beautiful, handmade, one-of-a-kind Jimmy Choo Couture wedding shoes have ivory coloured satin covering the heels. This poses something of a problem for me walking down the aisle (or anywhere during our wedding and reception) as our wedding is completely outdoors on the grass! I really don't want green grass stains on my shoes from the heels sinking into the grass.

A friend of mine, Kylie, told me about these little plastic gadgets you put on the heels of your stilettos to stop them sinking into the grass. After a little bit of Google-ing, I came across several different products made especially for this purpose. I ordered a pair of the ones Kylie had used, Cleen Heels:

Our wedding rings were made for us by a jeweller in Hong Kong, who did it for half the price it would have cost us in London. Nick's ring was relatively easy to choose, he wanted a fairly wide court band in platinum. We went to Hatton Garden and H. Samuel's and Tiffany's and he tried on various wedding bands. We ended up choosing the Tiffany Lucida design but with a 5.5mm width.

When we had been shopping for engagement rings, one of the things that had really sold me on the ring I chose was the way it looked when worn with a diamond wedding band, so I knew that was what I wanted. However we found that diamond eternity bands that were the same width as my engagement ring made the large central diamond on the engagement ring all but disappear! So I opted for a wedding band that was reasonably thinner than my engagement ring to make sure the "show piece" diamond still took centre stage.

I had hoped for a wedding band that exactly matched the setting of my engagement ring, but as the jeweller was in Hong Kong and we were in London, we were trying to explain exactly what we wanted through emails and pictures. So it didn't turn out to be set in exactly the same way as my engagement ring. I'd looked around for eternity bands that had the exact same claw settings as my engagement ring and never found any, I think it must be quite an unusual design. It still looks okay with my engagement ring though, the differences aren't all that noticeable.

We also got our names engraved on the insides of our rings and it looks great! Here are our two rings together (the weird dark spot you can see on Nick's ring is my camera reflected in the metal!):

Once we had the wedding party, colour scheme, and my wedding dress all sorted, I turned my attention to the outfits for the rest of the bridal party. Originally, we had intended not to have a bridal party at all and keep it low key and relaxed. My mum nearly had kittens at the idea and insisted I had to have at least one bridesmaid (my Mum and Dad eloped when they got married, so they didn't have a "proper" wedding and I get the feeling she is trying to have one vicariously through me). So I relented and Nick and I decided to have one Maid of Honour and one Best Man. I asked one of my oldest and closest friends, Seema, to be my Maid of Honour and Nick asked one of his oldest friends, Jon. They both accepted - yay!

I have my own cake making business, Delicious Cake Design, but I decided against making my own wedding cake. I probably would have done it if we were having the wedding in London, but as we are going to Hawaii, it will be pretty much next to impossible for me to do. I won't have access to a proper kitchen, I won't have my cake making and decorating equipment, and most importantly, I could do without the stress of having to finish decorating a wedding cake the morning of my own wedding!

Nick, bless him, also flat out banned me from making the cake, purely because he knows what I'm like when I'm stressed - cranky, snappy, miserable. Putting up with that for several days before the wedding might make him change his mind about marrying me!

However I did decide to make the sugar flowers for the cake, as that's something I can do months in advance and just bring with me to Hawaii (packaged very carefully and carried on the plane as hand luggage). That ended up being really stressful anyway, and I was still hand colouring leaves the night before we flew out of London for our wedding!

I give more details on my Delicious Cake Design blog http://www.deliciouscakedesign.com/blog/?p=312 so I won't go into them here.

I wanted a design for my cake with loads of beautiful flowers, frangipanis of course as that was the theme for our wedding. But also ivory roses, I love ivory roses and my bouquet is predominantly made up of them. I think they are so classic for a wedding and are so beautiful. I experimented with adding lilies and orchids to the sugar bouquets for the cake, but never quite got the mix right. So I stuck with sugar roses, rose leaves, and frangipanis. Here are some shots of the finished product on a dummy polystyrene cake (hopefully this is how they will be arranged on the real cake):

My good friend Yolande makes the cutest cake toppers as a hobby, and she made one for our cake so I didn't make any flowers for the cake top. She has our little figures wearing our exact wedding clothes, even the hairstyles and flowers are accurate! She is amazing. Here is her handiwork:

After buying my dress, I decided I would like accessories that also had a touch of Swarovski Crystal on them. The first accessory I bought was the veil. I tried on several veils with my dress and decided I'd like a single tier one that was just below my waist with scattered crystals. Unfortunately I had a really hard time finding this type of veil in London! I was actually quite surprised at how expensive veils were as well, even for a simple waist length single tier veil it was £200!

So, being an IT geek, I naturally went online and found a real gem of a website for veils - The Wedding Veil Shop. They are manufacturers of veils so their prices are really cheap, and they have a step by step process for ordering a custom made veil that is quick and easy. There is also loads of information on there about all the different options for veils - gathering on the comb, veil lengths, different materials, different edging options and lots more. They also will send you swatch samples of the different colours they have available for free, which was really useful.

I ordered a one layer waist length veil in diamond white with a pencil edge and clear Swarovski crystals scattered on it, 72 inches wide with centre gathering on the comb - for £40, what a bargain!!! And I was really happy with the veil when it arrived, it was exactly what I wanted and just gorgeous! I'm going to wear it relatively low on the top of my head, so you can just see the top of the veil and not have a big poufy thing perching on my crown. Here's a pic of me wearing the veil:

Next I decided on hair style - hair down, parted on one side, long loose curls with a crystal hair comb pulling back one side of my hair off my face. I again did more internet searching and found another great website for bridal accessories, Olivier Laudus. I ordered the Blossom hair comb from them, it is unusual in that it has huge Swarovski crystals in the petals of the flower:

Unfortunately they somehow forgot my order and I had to email them 6 weeks later asking where my hair comb was, but they popped it in the post straight away and I got it a few days later.

So here's a picture of me with the hair comb in my hair at my hair and make up trial:

Later on I realised I'd need a handbag on the day to hold the mini make up kit my make up artist was giving me for touch ups, and for tissues in case of tears, so I ordered again from Olivier Laudus (without any problems this time). I got the Angelique bag:

Oh dear, as part of the after effects of the tragic earthquake that hit Chile earlier today, they are now expecting a tsunami to hit Hawaii!

We are getting married by a beach on the North Shore of Oahu in 2 weeks time, and apparently all coastal areas of all islands of Hawaii could be hit quite hard. This could leave us without a wedding venue...

I know this is a small problem in comparison to the tragedy that has struck so many in Chile, but I can't help but be concerned. If our venue is hit hard, we will be up a certain creek without a paddle.

I doubt highly that we could postpone it to a later time, as most of our guests won't be able to afford to make another trip to Hawaii. Some of them have already left to go to our wedding. Even postponing a day would mean some people wouldn't be able to make it as we have several guests flying out the day after our wedding date.

We could try to find another venue at short notice, possibly the Trump Tower in Waikiki where we are staying. But it is a hotel without any outdoor space, so it would have to be an indoor wedding. It would feel a lot like there was no point going to all the trouble and expense to plan our dream wedding if we just ended up having an indoor ceremony with a package hotel deal.

Our wedding insurance also doesn't cover fire, flood or acts of God, so if things do go pear shaped we won't even be able to get most of our money back.

We are keeping a careful eye on the tsunami as it approaches Hawaii, it is due to hit in 2 hours time. Fingers crossed it won't be too bad!

Like most women, I love buying shoes. I think a beautiful pair of shoes is one of the most fantastic things in the world. I definitely wanted a really special pair of shoes for my wedding. I have several pairs of Manolos but had never owned Jimmy Choos, and I was dying for a pair. So when I managed to get my wedding dress at half price, I immediately put the remainder of the wedding dress budget into the shoe budget and started shopping for Jimmys!

Unfortunately, I wasn't too enthralled with the Jimmy Choo bridal collection. I thought they were lovely and well made shoes, but unfortunately not what I was looking for. To me they were just a bit too plain and ordinary for what was supposed to be such a special day. I looked elsewhere, considered Christian Louboutin and Manolo Blahnik, but just couldn't find the right shoes.

I never gave up on the idea of Jimmy Choos though. I spent many hours trawling the internet, hoping to find a pair somewhere out there that were special enough, with a little bit of sparkle and just the right colour. All to no avail mind you, but I kept trying. And finally, on about my 100th internet search, I stumbled across a small article about how Jimmy Choo "lost" his name. Apparently the actual man himself, Jimmy Choo the shoe maker, sold his rights to the ready to wear Jimmy Choo stores and returned to his real love - designing and hand making beautiful shoes.

I nearly passed out from the excitement. The answer to all my prayers! Not only could I get a pair of Jimmy Choos, but I could get them from the REAL Jimmy Choo himself AND get them handmade exactly how I wanted them! I looked up Jimmy Choo Couture in the phone book and rang them straight away to make an appointment.

The experience was just wonderful. In Jimmy's lovely boutique in central London, your design ideas are discussed and you pick out styles you like or don't like from his look book. Then sketches of several designs based on this session are drawn, and you choose the design you like best, with any tweaks you desire of course. Your feet are measured exactly, all over, so the shoes fit perfectly. The level of detail is amazing, from the design of the back of the shoes to the material to cover the heel. They even matched the silk to cover the leather of the shoe to a swatch from my dress. Then a mock up of the shoe is made for you to try on and adjustments are made to it to ensure a perfect fit. Then they start to hand make the real shoes. You come in for two or three fittings, then the shoes are finished and yours to take away. It takes roughly 4 - 6 weeks in total.

My design involved intertwined ellipses partially adorned with clear Swarovski crystals, on both the front and back of the shoe. I opted for a 3.5" heel as I knew I'd be on my feet for such a long time on the day and wanted to be as comfortable as possible. The shoes fit like a dream, and they are so incredibly comfortable to wear! I've been wearing them around the house (with socks over them to keep them clean) for a half hour every day to break them in, and it almost feels like I'm wearing flats.

Thanks to the increased shoe budget, I was able to afford them. If my wedding dress hadn't been miraculously reduced by 50% there's no way I could've bought them. They were NOT cheap! But if there was ever an occasion to get custom designed, hand made Jimmy Choo shoes, this is it! Most brides are adamant about getting just the right dress that fits perfectly, so why not do it for your shoes too. Your day won't be marred by painful stilettos and you'll have a pair of stunningly gorgeous shoes that will last a lifetime, and unlike a wedding dress, that you can wear again. Believe me, they are totally worth it!

I love these shoes so much, they are unique, one of a kind, and so beautiful :)

I was quite surprised at how hard choosing the wedding favours for our guests turned out to be. It was probably my own fault, I was extremely fussy! I wanted to give everyone something that they would actually want to keep and/or find useful, as they were coming such a long way to attend our wedding in Hawaii. I definitely didn't want to hand out those candied almonds that were so popular at weddings when I was a child -  I hated them! I also didn't want to give chocolates, as I wanted something that would provide a lasting memory to our guests.

I have now visited just about every website that sells wedding favours about 20 times. It was quite frustrating and tiring! I finally chose some little manicure kits for the ladies and sterling silver key rings that had bar tool implements (like a bottle shaped swiss army knife, see pic below) for the men. But then we decided NOT to have a seating plan, we would just put guests on tables but not tell them where on the tables to sit. This posed a problem as there was no way to guarantee that a guest would sit at a seat with the correct favour for their gender.

So it was back to the websites to find unisex favours that everyone would want to keep! Unfortunately nothing was grabbing my attention. We considered beach themed picture frames, double happiness Chinese candles, sterling silver fortune cookie knick knacks, personalised shot glasses, but none of them seemed like things that every guest would actually want to keep. At one stage I thought about combining my Chinese heritage with the destination of our wedding, Hawaii, by getting mini bamboo steamers (they are so cute, see the picture below!) and putting pukka shell necklaces in them, as they are unisex accessories. But I thought about the guests going and realised not many of them were the pukka shell necklace wearing types.

But then we decided to have one long rectangular table, which is what I'd actually initially wanted but we didn't think we'd be able to fit it under the marquee. But once the RSVPs were in, we were 10 guests less than our highest estimate, so the one long table was back in play! This also meant assigned seating, which also meant gender specific wedding favours were back on the table (so to speak).

However, I also had very specific favour boxes in mind. I wanted them to be square, aqua blue, with white ribbon around them, and a foam frangipani flower attached to the top. Which sounded beautiful to me! HOWEVER, the manicure kits and the box the bar tools came in didn't fit into the largest aqua blue box we could find! So back to the drawing board again!

I really couldn't find anything else for the men that I liked, so we ordered one of the bar tools, took it out of its packaging and tried it in the favour box. It fit easily! One problem solved.

I spent WEEKS agonising over the womens favours (mother of pearl trinket boxes, silver cased mirrors, glass coasters) then hit on the perfect idea - sterling silver frangipani pendants. I spent ages trying to find some that were pretty, not cheap and tacky looking, not too small, but around the same price as the bar tools. I eventually found a wholesaler that could do them at a reasonable price, only a few cents more than the bar tools. This is what they looked like on the website:

But the wholesaler didn't take non-US credit cards! So we contacted our wedding planner (who does have a US credit card) and got her to order them for us and add the cost to our bill. Unfortunately we couldn't order just one, so we ended up ordering all 25 sight unseen, which was really risky as we didn't have the budget to order something else if they turned out to be awful!

I still haven't seen the pendants, our wedding planner received them a couple of weeks ago. But she assures me that they look great and not cheap and tacky - let's hope so!

One other thing we are providing our guests as an added little gift are some beautiful rice paper and bamboo parasols to shield them from the sun. Asian Import Store sells some really lovely ones, and the more you buy, the cheaper it is per parasol. They had some amazing colours and patterns, but in the end we decided to keep them clean and white. Here's the ones we chose:

After coming down from the high of getting engaged, the first thing I started to do was look at wedding dresses! I bought loads of wedding magazines and looked on the internet and started to get an idea of what kind of dress I wanted.

One thing I knew right off the bat was that I didn't want a huge, puffy, wedding cake dress. I prefer a slim silhouette, something more fitted, and strapless, cut straight across the top rather than a sweetheart neckline. I also wanted to have some kind of beading or crystals to make it look like a real wedding dress and not just a white evening gown, but not too much, just a little big of bling.

One thing became apparent to me straight away. If I wanted to wear a dress with a slim silhouette, I was going to have to lose some weight! So I started an exercise regime and changed my diet to eat healthier food (see my blog post on Wedding Weight Loss). After several months of this, I felt slim enough to try on some dresses!

The first place I went to was Pronovias. They have a fantastic flag ship store in London where you are given your own consultant and glasses of champagne - lovely! They had some amazing dresses, but nothing that quite fit the bill. The dress I liked the most was the one below shown on a model, it had some great embroidery work on it and I liked the interesting neckline, but it had a large poofy skirt and was REALLY heavy, I could barely move in it, so I decided against it.

I then went to the Vera Wang sample sale at Selfridges. I found a dress that was almost perfect, and at half the regular price! That's me trying it on in the picture below. However, being a sample, it wasn't in the best condition. Some of the beading was coming off and it would need a lot of altering. The bust was too big and the length too long. There was some intricate beading from about half way down the skirt to the hem which would make taking the dress up really difficult. And even though it was half the price, it was still quite a lot to pay. I could get a brand new dress from a decent designer, made to fit me perfectly, for less. It was a really hard decision to make, a Vera Wang dress for a reasonable-ish price doesn't come along every day, but in the end I decided to be sensible and didn't buy it.
Having got a taste for Vera Wang, I made an appointment to look at their new season collection. It was a fantastic experience, the dresses were AMAZING. But again, not quite what I was looking for, and at £5,000 for the cheapest one, way out of my budget.

I came across a picture of a Stephanie Allin dress which I quite liked, and found a stockist about 10mins away from me, Fleur Bridal. I went over and found Fleur to be an absolute gem. The dress I'd originally liked didn't turn out to be so nice in real life, but Fleur was an expert in choosing dresses that would suit me. She is a truly lovely lady and I enjoyed shopping with her a lot. I ended up really liking another dress, and went back several times to try it on. It was Stephanie Allin's Gina dress, pictured below (that's not me in it obviously haha!).
It was a beautiful dress and was quite flattering on me, but I wasn't 100% sold on it (about 89%). I wasn't so keen on the sweetheart neckline, and there was no beading or crystal work on it, plus I'm not a big bow person.

I tried on this dress by Essense at another store which my friends quite liked, but I wasn't so sure. The colour wasn't right, and again it had the sweetheart neckline.

I think wedding websites are a really great idea. Especially for us, as we had guests living in England, Scotland, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Africa. It is such a quick, easy, and cheap way to keep guests informed, not only about the details of your wedding, but also about any pre-wedding events, changes in plans, and what's going on with the planning. It's also a great place to put up photos and provide simple ways for people to get in contact with you.

Nick and I made our website together. There are lots of free wedding websites out there, but they didn't offer the flexibility and designs we were looking for. There are also lots of paid for wedding websites, which are pretty good too, but can be costly and again don't allow you complete control over design and content. So, being IT geeks and in my case a design freak, I designed the site and Nick coded it in php.

I incorporated our colour scheme and frangipani theme, and tried to give it a really fun, fresh, beach feel. We bought the domain name charmayneandnick.com to make it easy for guests to remember, or find, our URL. I did all the content and added loads of information, here's a screenshot of the homepage:

We sent out traditional RSVP cards in our invitation suite but also added the URL to the online RSVP page of our site to the cards - almost everyone used the online RSVP. On the online RSVP form I also added fields to RSVP to our pre-wedding Welcome Luau and asked guests to request songs to be played on the dancefloor at the wedding. People really loved that they had a say in the song list and everyone requested at least one song. My maid of honour's fiance loved the idea so much they are going to do it too for their wedding. I think it's a great idea as that way everyone will hear at least one song they like and will want to dance to.

I found a great free photo album plugin called phpGraphy and we put up pics from our engagement, engagement party and pics of our wedding venue. Another great free tool I used was MJGuest which is a really nice guestbook. I also added a Google calendar from our Google account to show different events and important dates for the convenience of our guests. I researched what airlines fly to Honolulu from each country that our guests would be coming from, and approximately how much flights would cost and put that in the Travel to Hawaii section. I asked our wedding planner to recommend some hotels in Waikiki and added those plus others to suit different budgets on the Accommodation page. The Coach to Venue page shows pick up points for the coach we will be providing to take our guests from Waikiki to the wedding venue (as the venue is about an hour or so away from Waikiki). I created a map in My Maps in our Google account to show the exact pick up points, which I embedded in the page. The Fun Things To Do section has some ideas of activities to partake in on Oahu such as surfing lessons, snorkelling, the best beaches to visit (with another of My Maps from Google!), places to shop and eat, and sites to visit like the Pearl Harbor Memorial. There is also a weather widget showing the current weather in Honolulu.

Our guests were impressed at the wealth of information on our site and have found it really useful - it's been a great way to communicate with our guests. We'll keep it up and running after the wedding as well and we'll add some photos from the big day. I think the website will serve as a great momento of our wedding!

As I write this blog entry, it is 13 February 2010 - exactly one month to go till the big day!!!

Anyway, back to the story of our wedding.

After hiring our wedding planner, Christina, we went over to Oahu for a week to meet with her. We had already had several phone calls and emails with her where she suggested several venues, vendors and suppliers. We narrowed down her suggestions to one or two and she arranged for us to see the venues and meet the vendors during our trip to Hawaii.

We went in March time so we could see what the weather would be like for our actual wedding a year later. We were a bit concerned when we got there as it was REALLY windy, but almost all the locals we met assured us it was unnaturally windy for that time of year and we should be okay (fingers crossed).

We met with photographers, cake makers, florists, stationers, caterers and looked at venues. By the end of the week, we had made all our choices. It was a very very busy week! Most of our choices were actually really hard to make, as the vendors we met with and venues we saw were all so fantastic.

The photographer we have chosen is Visionari. We met with Jon and he was so great, and we felt really comfortable with him. Nick is a keen amateur photographer and they had a chat about lenses, which Nick loved. Jon also showed us some of their previous wedding albums which were all really amazing.

We are going to have three photographers on site, with one photographer solely dedicated to backing up the pictures so nothing is lost. Having two photographers is great because they get several different angles of the same moment, and if one photographer misses a moment, the other one usually gets it.

Many people who know I have my own cake business ask if I'm making the cake for our wedding. I'm not - making a wedding cake is always really stressful and involves a large amount of work in the 3 days before the wedding and even on the day of. I want to be as relaxed as possible for my wedding day. Also, I don't have access to a kitchen with a large oven over there, and bringing over all my equipment just isn't feasible. Nick also banned me from doing it, as he said he would hate to have to put up with a mega stressed Charms just before the wedding!

Our cake is being made by Tiers of Joy. The owner/operator, Leigh, is a fellow Aussie and makes really yummy cakes. We are having 3 tiers round, a coconut cake tier with milk chocolate mousse filling, lemon cake tier with lemon filling, and chocolate cake tier with raspberry coulis filling. Leigh uses a rolled buttercream rather than fondant (aka sugarpaste in the UK), which I like the taste of so much better (the only fondant I like the taste of is the one I make myself!). I will be making the sugar flowers to decorate the cake as I can do that months in advance.

Leigh has also very kindly agreed to make my favourite cake, Pavlova, which will be served as dessert. I really wanted pavlova at my wedding as I love it so much, shame it isn't suitable to be used as a wedding cake!

The florist we are using is Yvonne Design, who I've mentioned before in my blog post Our Aqua Blue and Frangipani Wedding which also has some pics of the sample centrepieces she made for us. She is a truly talented florist.

I've also mentioned our stationer before, Bradley & Lily Fine Stationary. Stacey is lovely and a real pleasure to work with (and also very talented). You can see the pics of the wonderful invitations she made for us in the Our Aqua Blue and Frangipani Wedding blog post.

The caterer we chose is Memoirs. Chef Peter invited us to his house high up on Diamond Head crater. It has an amazing view! He cooked for us there and his food is so delicious! He and his business manager are both really great, and we are very happy with our choice. We will be having several food stations at the wedding where food is freshly cooked to order, rather than a set meal. So guests can eat courses at their own pace and have as much or as little as they want. We are having some really fantastic food, here's a link to a PDF version of the menu:
http://www.charmayneandnick.com/docs/Memoirs_menu_v3.pdf

The venue choice was really hard. We had 2 venues we really loved, but in the end we chose Loulu Palm Estate because it is more private and has a later finishing time than the other venue. Loulu Palm is just gorgeous, it has it's own private beach and a vast green lawn, coconut trees, and a cute colonial style house. Here's a picture of it from our last visit there in January 2010:

I can't wait to see all of it put together in one months time!

I wanted a wedding that was outdoors, fairly laid back, beautiful, and fun. I'm really not into traditional weddings with lengthy church services and receptions that follow the same formula - boring and not funny speeches, a set schedule of events that MUST be adhered to, and an air of stiff formality. To be fair, there are probably lots of weddings that have church services and traditional receptions that aren't overly formal or boring, and I have been to some like that, but the overwhelming majority unfortunately weren't.

I looked through tons of bridal magazines for ideas on reception decor, table settings, ceremony venues, etc. I cut out all the pictures I really liked and kept them in a folder to show our wedding planner, Christina.

I saw several things I really liked the look of. Some of the outdoor weddings just looked lovely on beautiful green lawns with white marquee tents and lots of gorgeous flowers. One table setting in particular caught my eye, it wasn't set outdoors, but I loved the blue colour and the lovely ivory and white flowers with hints of yellow. So it was from this table setting that I decided on the colour scheme of aqua blue, white and yellow.

One of my favourite flowers is frangipanis aka plumerias. I grew up in Papua New Guinea where these flowers are abundant, and many associate them with the tropical paradise that is Hawaii. They are white with a large splash of yellow in the centre, which matched the inspiration picture above perfectly. So I decided I wanted to have a theme of frangipanis, but a more subtle theme, where frangipanis would be used quite sparingly, but would still appear throughout our wedding.

For the wedding ceremony, I loved one particular outdoor setup I saw, which I am hoping to emulate (with different flowers though, and using our colour scheme):

For the reception, we are having a white marquee tent with draping, and one really long table for our 40 guests. The table linens are a crisp clean white, with an aqua blue table runner. There will also be tall vases of flowers alternating with shorter vases of flowers running down the length of the table. It turns out that fresh frangipanis are not the best flowers to use at a wedding as they brown very quickly once cut. So frangipanis in my bouquet and table centrepieces were out. I opted for ivory roses and other flowers with yellow throats such as white orchids and lilies. We are using a really amazing florist, Yvonne Design, here are the sample tall and short centrepieces she made up for us (the aqua blue table runner in the picture is the same as the ones we'll be using for our reception):

The frangipanis are to put in an appearance on the table as part of the favour box decorations. The favour boxes are going to be in the aqua blue of our theme with white ribbon tied around it (very Tiffanys!), and a fake frangipani on the top made out of foam latex. These fake frangipanis are really realistic looking, unlike silk ones.

The foam latex frangipanis also put in an appearance on the exterior of the pocketfold for our wedding invitations, which I designed by borrowing bits and pieces from other invitations and making something I liked. It was put together by Bradley & Lily Fine Stationary in Hawaii. Here is the outside of the invitations:

The invitation itself and the insert cards were designed by a really lovely and talented stationary designer, Stacey from Bradley & Lily. She used our aqua blue, yellow and white colour scheme and a double frangipani motif for all our stationary. Here is the inside of the pocketfold of our frangipani invitations:

The invitations turned out amazing, and I was so thrilled with them. Almost all of our guests complimented us on them, saying they were the most beautiful wedding invitations they'd ever seen :)

Let's hope the actual wedding is just as breathtaking!

When I got engaged I actually weighed the most I've ever weighed in my life (to date anyway). Living in London for 6 years, I had stacked on the kilos thanks to lots of drinking and lots of take aways, and the lack of nice weather meant very little outdoor activity or the need to squeeze into a bikini. So I hadn't really noticed how much weight I was putting on. My BMI was just over 25, which technically put me in the overweight category. I didn't look obese or anything, and I was quite good at dressing to hide most of my flaws, so people didn't really notice it, including me.

However, there is nothing like the daunting task of wedding dress shopping to make you realise you need to lose weight. I wasn't foolish enough to think I didn't need to lose a few kilos if I wanted to look great on my wedding day (and in those all important photos), but I hadn't realised how much I would need to lose. After I got engaged, I stepped on the scales for the first time in a long time, and I was horrified to see them tip at 63kg. I am only 5' 2" with a small frame, so for someone my size, this was BAD.

So I made a plan to get in shape and most importantly, be healthy. It wasn't about starving myself so I could fit into a dress, it was about changing my lifestyle to be fitter and healthier, and in the process, look better - a long term change rather than a short term quick fix. The wedding was a year and 3 months away, and I hoped that by starting so early, the changes I was making would become a way of life and continue past the wedding.

I enrolled in a pilates gym as soon as I got back to London, taking two 1 hour classes a week, for toning and muscle definition. I started using a cross trainer machine for cardio sessions of 30 minutes three times a week. I stopped getting take aways for lunch at work, and started to cook dinners at home. I still ate as much as I wanted, but because the food was healthier and less fattening, and I was exercising, I didn't pile on the pounds. Besides, home made chicken tikka masala with light coconut milk is delicious, and so much better for you than one from your local Indian! Just ask Jamie Oliver :)

I did still treat myself to a take away once a week so I could have a relaxing evening without cooking, but to balance that I cut out daytime snacking. No more crisps, chocolates, donuts. If I had a craving for chocolate, I'd have something small and lower in calories like a fun sized Milky Way, or a small packet of crisps once every few weeks. But to be honest, I found after a month or so of not eating junk, I didn't really miss it or crave it anymore.

I also more or less stopped drinking alcohol, just for the rare special occasion. Not only was this a great detox for my skin, but it was also a big help in losing weight. Alcohol is really calorific!

The one thing I didn't give up as quickly was my greatest vice, Coca-Cola. I was still drinking around a can a day, but as I got closer to the wedding, I started cutting it to one every other day, then only on weekends, then finally none at all 3 months before the wedding. It's now just lots and lots of water to help hydrate my skin.

I did hit a slump after about 6 months where I stopped going to the gym for a 3 month period. My cake making business was picking up and I was so busy and exhausted from doing that that I didn't have time to exercise. But because it was such a physically demanding job and I was on my feet for so many hours, I didn't put on any weight! I was still going to pilates twice a week, but no cardio sessions. Once I got my life back under control, I started the cardio again. I didn't give up and think, "I've ruined my weight loss plan, no sense in continuing".

After about 8 months (including the 3 months I stopped exercising), I'd lost 10kg. I was ecstatic when I could fit into a pair of jeans I'd bought 6 years ago that were too tight at the time. I'd bought  them as an incentive to lose weight but never did (gaining weight instead), so I'd never actually worn them. Until now!

I took a break from diet and exercise for 3 weeks over Christmas and New Year, then got straight back on it. After the New Year there was only 3 months to go, so I stepped up the cardio workouts to 40min sessions 3 times a week and switched to a more intensive pilates class twice a week. It really helped shift the couple of kilos I'd put on over the Christmas period, plus more! With a month to go till the wedding, I'm continuing to lose weight!

I cannot say enough good things about pilates. It really helps to lengthen, define, and tone your muscles, and is so good for your core area (especially your stomach!) and your posture and general well being. I've lost weight before, but thanks to the pilates, I'm more toned than I've ever been. I've dropped 2 dress sizes, and for the first time in a long time, I'm not afraid to wear a bikini!

So I'm losing weight and feeling great. Here are some before-and-after pics:

BEFORE
Here I am at my heaviest, just before getting engaged.