jannah and azlan's engagement: part 1

I whole heartedly apologize for the super duper late post on my Kak Noi's engagement. Have been dreading this post for far too long now. Anyways, here it is. Hope you'll like it Kak Noi and Azlan :)

*most of the pictures taken is by Alan Arif from Cubic Foto*

*the non-professional looking photos are either from my instagram, taken from other guests and from my camera :p*

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My family has worked tremendously in preparing for my big sister, Kak Noi's engagement. She was my Atok's first grandchild, my mom's first child, and my uncle and aunty's first niece on my aunt's side to get engaged. Not to forget, she is the first sister among the three of us to get engaged too, so we were obviously overwhelmed!

Photo captured by Alan Arif from Cubic Foto

Kak Noi, you know how excited I can get with all these wedding and engagement stuff. I mean who doesn't right? It's all the cute and pretty stuff. The ribbons, colours, feathers, FLOWERS, goodie bags and what not. What's not to love?

Our preparation started early this last year. We scouted for places to buy the door gifts, tailors to make the dress, caterers for the food, and most importantly, who will be making the dais and the hantaran.

But first of all, speaking out of experience, anyone who wants to plan for their engagement/wedding should always, always set your budget, choose your theme, estimated amount of guests and the venue of the event. This is to ensure that you'll know what you want and the amount of guests will fit the size of your venue of choice. Oh and most importantly match your budget :)

Since we were only going to run the event at home, my mom estimated about only 150 guests to invite. Atok was not having the same thought. 

Atok: You're not going to invite the orang kampung (villagers) ke? Orang sebelah, Pak Imam,     Nek Esah blablablablablabla........... (the list goes on and on). Nanti orang nampak khemah pasang orang cakap-cakap.

Mama: *silence* *we're doomed*

So our invitation list eventually went up to about 250. That is one huge event. What happened to the small and private engagement that Kak Noi (more like we) wanted? *facepalm*

The theme was a simple pink and purple theme chosen by Kak Noi. Once these were set, we start to find our direction.

Photo by Alan Arif from Cubic Foto

• Door Gifts

After Googling for quite sometime, we finally decided to give out cupcakes for our guests. The reason being was it was easy to handle, it can last for quite sometime and it's within our budget. 

We chose +Wondermilk's cupcakes (my all-time favourite) as they last long, their cupcakes are really, really, really good and they have fun and quirky designs to choose! Also our experience with them have not been disappointing at all :) (oneloyalcustomerhere)

Cupcakes! Yummers!

We ordered Vanilla, Chocolate Chips, and Mint Chocolate Chips 

So pretty right? You can change the colours of the icing. Up to 3 colours per design! :D Awesome much?

For the cupcakes boxes, my mom found and online store selling boxes. They weren't only really cheap, they were beautiful too. Honestly, this is only an engagement event and people will eventually throw the boxes out. So why spend so much on something extremely disposable, right? I forgot what the website was called though :/

Fatin K helping out with packaging the door gifts. Thank you bestie! I love you mucho mucho! <3 nbsp="" p="">

• Tailor

In all honesty, engagement dresses and gowns will most likely to be worn only once. That is the usually situation that I have observed all these years. But since Kak Noi is really small and petite, we had to make her a form-fitting dress. 

After asking around for boutiques and tailors that have had experience making these dresses, Kak Noi settle to this one shop near Sogo. They were really convincing and their job have been really meticulous. 

Intricate details! I love this! 

For the dress fabrics, we trusted our 'kain man' to do all the searching. Kak Noi told him what sort of design she plans to do and he goes off searching for the fabrics. I love our kain man since he really understands our style and he know where to find all the good fabrics.

• Food

This is the best part of organising any event. The FOOD! Being a fellow hunter for food that I am, we settled with a caterer that my family had chosen. The food was awesome and it really lasted long. You know that a caterer or the cook is good when their dishes can last long. We had some leftovers and we kept it in the freezer. So whenever we want to eat em we will just heat them up and it still tastes nice! :D

We also had a spread of dessert table which was provided by my one and only (and also lovely) aunt, Aunty Inn! She offered to make 6 types of desserts! Thank you Aunty Inn! We love you long, long time! :D 

Mama however wanted additional dessert (as if what we don't already have enough) so she ordered some apam polkadots, cream puffs and fruit tartlets. The cream puff and fruit tartlets were yummmsss.

Sadly, the apam polkadots were dry and the fillings were not what we expected :( So no recommending for that one. Pangkah! Pangkah!

Our dessert table! :D

Jellies!

These are not macaroons. It's whoopie.

For those who never heard of whoopie, it's basically a type of dessert which looks like macaroons but tastes more like a cake. It has fillings too, just like macaroon does, but the outer shell is much softer than  what macaroon has.

Lemon tartlets

Super cute marshmallows

The cream puff is loaded with custard that you just want more!

Fruit tartlets

Most of our guests said the fruit tartlets tasted so good but unfortunately I didn't have the chance to taste it since it went straight to the dessert table from the box! 

This is our main attraction. The chocolate tower! Oh gosh, you should have seen how we arranged it and transfer it from one place to another. We made this at Aunty Inn's house and we somehow picked it up and put it in the car while trying not to knock it off and basically destroy everything. 

That's Ferrero Rocher by the way. We used about 200 pieces if I'm not mistaken but it is definitely a bit hit among our guests. I mean, who doesn't love chocolate right? *yummmssss*

Pineapple Rose Tartlets

The ones in the colourful wrapper is actually pineapple rose tartlets. It has a scent of a rose and a slight rosy taste to it as well. But people mostly mistaken it as some wrapped candy. Gotcha didn't we? xD

I was busy layan-ing all the guests that I didn't get the chance to take pictures of the food T__T

• Dais (Pelamin)

Kak Noi wanted a sweet dais but not the over-the-top with loads of flowers hanging all around so after scouting for various wedding planner, we settled for Jemari Kreatif. Their designs are really sweet but yet it still look elegant. I'm in love! 

The owner of Jemari Kreatif, Kak Siti was also really easy to work with and she would give her best to create something great according to what you want. She would also suggests ideas to make your pelamin pretty. Basically, she's the best lah :D

Before all the lights were switched on

Tadaaa! Nice or not? *angkatkening*

We also made some bunga rampai to fill the house with the scent of people getting married

I love, love, love bunga rampai! I love the smell and how it's all from the nature. The house smell so good as if someone is about to get married. Well, engagement is kind of a step before getting married right? :D

• Hantaran

The hantaran was also prepared by Jemari Kreatif's Kak Siti. We requested fresh flowers to be used especially for the hantaran. It's much nicer to have fresh flowers than the plastic ones, right? :) Well, that's just my personal opinion. 

Yeay! The hantaran are all done!

Since future BIL asked for Kak Siti to make the hantaran, she did it at our house! No surprise at all la but he definitely surprised his family :p The family doesn't have a clue what his side looks like.

Wanna see what we gave for hantaran, who did the make-up and all the other little details? Wait for part 2! :)

Toodles!