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: