#arielpohhuiluan

[artravelin]

Destination Wedding for Under SGD 30,000

We just had our wedding two weeks ago at the beautiful Sri Panwa in Phuket with 30 of our closest family and friends. It was absolutely the dream wedding I’ve always wanted and with some detailed planning - we pulled it off for under SGD 30,000!

The above is my favourite photo of our wedding - it truly marks what we wanted for our wedding - a small cosy group of people we love the most having fun!

Here’s a quick breakdown of costs! 

And now for the details: 

1. Destination + Hotel

It was love at first sight with Sri Panwa when I came across the photo above on Pinterest. On one of our trips to Phuket, I secretly emailed Sri Panwa to ask if we could do a site visit for our wedding planning. We were treated like royalty but most importantly the view at Baba Nest took our breath away. That said, I brushed it off as being too expensive initially.

So I went back to the drawing board and explored different locations - we were certain we wanted a beach destination that is close by and accessible - so we narrowed down to Phuket, Bali, Batam. Other considerations we had were: cost of flight tickets to destination, hotels available and type of food at wedding. In the end we narrowed down to Phuket as flight tickets to Phuket were cheaper than Bali, we preferred Thai food for our wedding and there were a lot more hotel options in Phuket than Batam. Once we narrowed down on Phuket, I started detailed research across different hotels in a complex spreadsheet. There were lots of cheaper hotel options, but ultimately we just couldn’t bear to miss out on the once in a lifetime opportunity to have our wedding at Baba Nest, Sri Panwa so we narrowed down to that and paid the deposit to lock in the date.

This was the wedding ceremony setup for our wedding day - absolutely stunning <3

This was the dinner long-table setup at Baba Poolclub (note: there is a minimum spend to hold dinner at Baba Poolclub).

And this was the outdoor area for after-party and sparkler send off.

Note: We had special rates from Sri Panwa due to unforeseen circumstances hence please note that prices for Sri Panwa now will be higher.

2. Accommodation

We decided early on that we want to ensure everyone can enjoy our wedding as part of a holiday and have great fun! We also didn’t want our guests to spend too much money just because we would like to have an overseas wedding. Hence, we decided to sponsor 2 nights accommodation for our guests from Friday to Sunday as our wedding is on a Saturday.

Guests can also attend our wedding without having to take leave by catching an evening/night flight on Friday and flying back to Singapore on Sunday.

Sponsoring hotel nights made a lot more sense as it was logistically simpler to do so and we could arrange for transport. From my friend’s suggestion and our recee trip, we realised that Kantary Bay Hotel is right beside Sri Panwa which made it an idea location for guests accommodation. Guests could simply walk 2 mins to Sri Panwa entrance and catch the hotel tuktuk up to Sri Panwa - perfect! :)  

We also made a bold move to have an “angbao free” wedding. We did not want  our guests to have to pay anything additional as they would already have to pay their own flight to Phuket. Hence we communicated that their presence is our great blessings - and it truly is indeed! This turned out really well and everyone was receptive to the angbao free concept which is great :)!  

Lastly, to hold a wedding at Sri Panwa, there are minimum nights requirements for villa bookings - this is a significant part of the wedding costs. We thought we’ll take this opportunity to pamper our family and give them an opportunity to enjoy the amazing Sri Panwa so we went ahead and booked 4 villas for 2 nights each. We could tell that everyone absolutely enjoyed themselves in Sri Panwa so it was worth every penny!

Photos of our 1 bedroom luxury pool villa and my 5 pounds donut from Primark. We’ve stayed in our fair share of 5* hotels for work but Sri Panwa villas are absolutely stunning and in an absolute league of its own! The gorgeous photos already make me want to go back again!  

3. Photography, Videographer, Hair & Makeup Artist

Now comes the tricky part of a destination wedding: photographer, videographer and makeup artist. This is another reason why I’m so glad we chose Phuket as our wedding destination! As it is such a popular wedding destination, there are no short of great talents in Phuket to ensure the most beautiful wedding! I much prefer to engage photographer, videographer and HMUA from Phuket for couple of reasons:

Familiar with the hotel - especially important for photos

High quality and value for money - I feel their quality is on par or higher than those in Singapore and at a more affordable price

I researched into many wedding blogs and articles of weddings held in Phuket (most of them are planned by wedding planners). A few key names consistently dominate the blogs/ articles which led me to believe that:

They are trusted by wedding planners

They are very professional and deliver high quality outcomes.

Boy was I right!! :) We were blessed with the most amazing team - strongly recommending all of them:

Photography: Nindka Photography - Wasin is amazing and I fell in love with his portfolio and feel that he can capture asian weddings very well

Videography: Gina Smith Photography - they do amazing photography and wedding planning too

Hair & Makeup Artist: Lisa Allen

4. Wedding Gowns and Shoes

This is my favourite part as the cost savings are off the charts on this one :D! I bought my two dresses and shoes for less than SGD250 and hopefully looked more than that!  

For wedding dress, I absolutely LOVE Galia Lahav (i blame pinterest) - All Galia Lahav dresses are gorgeous but unfortunately comes with a steep price tag. I mean look at THAT (Galia Lahav dresses photo below)

So I scoured through Taobao to find my closest Galia Lahav equivalent - low back with beautiful lace and found this (picture below)! Nubbad - this even has a beaded thing at the back - and for under SGD100 including shipping - absolute steal! :D

It didn’t turn out too bad, definitely looked wayyy more than it cost and fitted quite nicely! It wouldn’t be perfect fitting of course but I didn’t want to spend money on alterations. Still looked great in pictures so who cares anyway!

Next for evening gown, I knew I wanted a shiny sequin evening dress (yes i’m getai like that!), ideally rose gold - and yes there’s a pinterest for almost everything you dream of (see below). It’s just absolutely hard to find like full sequin dress in Singapore for a reasonable price. I looked around in stores a little and quickly gave up and turned my search back to Taobao.

The thing is with Taobao - it’s figuring out what is the chinese search term for what you want. I realised the type of dresses i’m looking for is commonly classified under 主持人 (god knows why everyone is a host?!) and sequin is 亮片. It may be long and tedious but once you nailed the term it’s bingo!

Here’s what I found - it’s gold with beautiful sequins and the design looks flattering and for a great price of SGD60 (inclusive of shipping)!

Now for wedding shoes - as you would follow by now. I constantly fall in love with things on Pinterest (it’s dangerous) and I absolutely adored these Ralph & Russo wedding shoes! Not only do I not know where to get them, I can only suspect these are super expensive :(

Somehow I was looking through Carousell and found these “Big Tree” equivalents with the stunning details on the heels! Got them at a steal for SGD40.

Also bought another cute pair of rose gold heels from Primark while I was in London - for like GBP 16 so decided to wear that with my evening gown!

Here’s both my outfits hung in our villa.

5. Groom’s outfit

We looked for geek’s outfit at Zara and it helps that he is of good decent shape that we can just buy off the shelf and make some alterations for it to be perfect! I love his blue suit and it’s definitely cheaper than custom-making one. His white shirt and beautiful shoes are from Benjamin Barker and he got them for a good bundled deal!

6. Bridesmaid dresses & Groomsmen outfit

I had a simple criteria for bridesmaid dresses - that they have to look consistent and blue and I don’t want to have to worry about size of dresses so I opted for convertible dresses. These were more expensive than I thought and the blogshop I bought them from was a complete disaster - I ordered 4 and they delivered only 1, then they said they are out of the colour i want and asked if I would like a change of colour (what audacity?!), all this while spelling my name wrongly in whatsapp messages. Thankfully, the dresses looked great on my bridesmaids but that blogshop was a complete nightmare. I don’t even have such a bad experience with shopping on taobao and the dresses are cheaper too.

For groomsmen, I checked if they all had grey pants and white shirt (they did thankfully!) and bought them all blue suspenders from Qoo10 (SGD5 each! see photo below) to match the colour theme. The groomsmen all looked so good I was so proud :D

7. Bridesmaids bouquet

Wedding flowers are expensive period. Once it’s a wedding, the cost of everything is marked up and flowers are the perfect example. For bridesmaid bouquets, hotel and florists all around Phuket were charging USD 70 onwards per bouquet (which is ridiculous IMO). We tried looking for places selling fresh flowers in Phuket during our recce trip but that wasn’t very successful. In the end, I went to Far East Flora to get a big bouquet of baby’s breath for SGD32, split them into 4 and tied white ribbon around them (see below). Each bouquet cost under SGD 9, a huge saving from USD 70 each. Of course it’s a big hassle hand carrying these and transporting them to Thailand - thank god Customs had no issues and even congratulated us on our wedding!

I also DIYed the wedding vows booklet - cost $0.90 for the paper.

8. Wedding Favours

I was also extremely proud of our wedding favours. Since it’s an outdoor wedding I was afraid the weather would be too hot hence i found these wooden fans from Taobao and bought them for slightly less than a dollar each. We then meticulously cut ribbons and tied each of them!

Inspired by this from Pinterest, I thought it would be lovely to have bubble wands for our wedding as it makes for a wonderful photo opportunity.

While geek was in US for work, I found these Wilton Love Knot bubble wands on Amazon for USD 9 and shipped these to his hotel. He had no idea what I bought and was like -_- when he saw that they were bubble wands.  

Tied these wands with blue ribbon and omg they looked so cute. Love how the wedding favours came together. Fortunately, we were blessed with such strong winds for our wedding that we absolutely didn’t need any fans.

9. Decorations

Thank God for Daiso! We got most of our table decorations from Daiso - all the photo frames and the vases (we spray painted them with bronze paint from Art Friend for SGD 10) come up to SGD 14. I got the LED alphabet lights from a christmas gift exchange (thanks Sarah!) then we went to buy a “&” sign from Typo for about SGD 7. Got the battery LED fairy lights from Primark when I was in London for GBP 2.50 (!! they cost so much more here). We also bought a polaroid camera and 80 films from Qoo10 (~SGD141) to be our “guestbook” and “photobooth” so that guests can take photo.  

Sri Panwa kindly provided us with some flowers and it looks beautiful!

Summary: Our desire for a destination wedding meant that we had to organise 3 weddings (!!) which is really tiring.

ROM and wedding luncheon for extended family to fulfil my parents’ wish for 8 course chinese sit down wedding banquet. We kept it small to 50 people

Destination wedding for immediate family and closest friends in Sri Panwa, Phuket

Catholic wedding in Church

Ideally it would be great to combine church wedding and ROM to save time and cost so that we only have 2 weddings but unfortunately we didn’t complete our engagement encounter in time to do that. :/ Advice to all catholics - sign up for your Marriage Preparation Course (MPC)/ Engagement Encounter (EE) asap, these get booked out wayy in advance!

We have finished 2 of 3 weddings with only the church wedding left to go. We absolutely enjoyed our destination wedding at Sri Panwa and would not have it any other way. This does mean a few things:

The cost per pax is very high but for the people we love the most, we think this is very worthwhile. Everyone had a great time and a holiday and that was really what we hoped to achieve for our wedding! It also gave us the opportunity to talk and mingle with everyone at our wedding which we could only do in a small intimate setting like this.  

We are prepared to not “breakeven” on our wedding. We feel like weddings have evolved to be too calculative, I’m not even sure why the term “breakeven” is used for weddings because it sounds way too much like a commercial business. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with giving angbaos as a blessing, we just didn’t want our guests to think they have to “fund” our choice of an overseas wedding hence we opted for an angbao free wedding.  We examined what the “angbao” intention really meant and realised that our guests’ presence (travelling all the way to Phuket) is already our biggest blessings and we think that it resonated with our guests too

We have to prioritise what matters and what doesn’t - my wedding dresses matter a lot less than having a great venue that everyone can enjoy - this means spending as little as possible on my dresses (no Galia Lahav clearly) but spending enough to have our dream venue at Sri Panwa Baba Nest. We didn’t want to spend money on pre-wedding photography so we just DIY with a tripod stand and camera when geek was in San Francisco for work and I joined him for holiday. We decided that actual day photography was more important and would look more natural anyway.

We hope you find this useful especially if you’re thinking of moving towards a small intimate destination wedding! We had a great time and i took my colleagues advise to enjoy the moment - it was indeed one of the happiest moments our lives and everyone enjoyed themselves and that’s priceless! 

Venue: Sri Panwa, Phuket Guest accommodation: Kantary Bay Hotel, Phuket Photographer: Nindka (Wasin) Videographer: Gina Smith Photography Hair & makeup artist: Lisa Allen Makeup Artist�� Wedding gown & evening gown: Taobao Bride’s shoes: Carousell, Primark Groom’s suit: Zara Groom’s shirt and shoes: Benjamin Barker Wedding favours: Taobao, Amazon

[artravelin]

Brick Lane Market (91 Brick Lane, London E1 6QR)

Brick Lane market is absolutely worth a visit. In addition to food stalls, there are stores selling everything from fancy hats and masks to signs and vintage knick knacks. There are also buskers performing and the market has this positive eclectic energy about it :) 

I also read from TimeOut London that the Rib Man at Brick Lane market is one of the top 10 street food in London not to be missed! The colourful fruit cup is a stunning sight too :)