The Marriage Preparation Course (Part 4)

Resolving Conflict

Conflict happens to us all the time and it gets more frequent when we enter a marriage. That’s because we’re all different and selfish by nature. In our marriage preparation course, Wei Jien and I learnt how to identify and deal with our differences. When we did the personality test during the first session of TMPC, one of our weaknesses was our inability to resolve conflicts effectively.

First, we identified the type of anger we have – rhino (explode) and hedgehog (bury). We both have rhino and hedgehog tendencies, but in general, I’m more of a rhino and he’s more of a hedgehog. Next, we were encouraged to look for solutions to the problems we faced.

The important thing we both learnt in this session was never to use words like, “You always…” and “You never…”. Many couples are guilty of making this mistake and it is going to take time (and effort) to change this. We're still guilty of making this mistake, but hope to overcome this in time. Prior to this, either one of us would have give in to the other whenever we faced conflict. This “I win, you lose” situation got us through the years, but it was hardly ideal. Now, we sit down, talk and listen to one another, and identify the issue. Once we agree on an action plan, we work on it together.

Marriage involves sharing everything. We’re moving from “I”, to “us”. It’s no longer my money, my car and my home. Instead we have to look at things from an “us” perspective – our money, our car and our home. That’s going to be difficult for many people, especially if you’ve been living independently for a long time. We also addressed our attitude towards money – Wei Jien and I are both ‘savers’, so that made things a bit better. It’s also good to discuss about who will manage the finances and do a yearly forecast of your expenses. Obviously, Wei Jien will be doing that.

With conflict, there’s bound to be hurt. That’s when we need to learn to put away our pride and say sorry. Asking for forgiveness and giving forgiveness is the only way a marriage can move forward. It makes sense, although I find it difficult to just forgive and move on in general. Yes, I’m one of those people who keep unresolved issues buried until shit hits the fan.

This session, together with sagely advices from our support couple (I’ll talk about that soon) gave Wei Jien and I pointers on how to deal with our differences. We’ve reduced interrupting each other and attempt to be more reasonable when it comes to finding a solution – the “US” solution. Not quite there yet, but it's only a matter of time...

Wedding prep: Make-up artist

I’ve been looking for a good make-up artist cum hairstylist for my big day. The make-up artist of my choice would cost me RM2K (discounted price) PER SESSION excluding hair since he’s a celebrity make-up artist. One of my readers recommended a makeup artist, who quoted me a reasonable amount for two make-up and hair sessions (morning and night). For the trial session, she charges an extra RM150.

The second make-up artist I found does the job for slightly cheaper (2 sessions + trial). He is a hairstylist by profession and does a lot of makeup shows. I like how he does my hair, but I’ve yet to see his makeup portfolio. I was at a concert when I saw the works of the third make-up artist. She did the makeup for the performers, and it was exactly the style I wanted. Her price quote was also reasonable for 2 sessions. Trial session requires and additional RM150. That said, I’m not sure about her hairstyling abilities yet. Both the second and third make-up artist do not own a website so it’s hard for me to gauge what they can do.

Earthy tones are my best bet

Any of you know a good makeup artist (who can do hair as well) who charges reasonably? To save money, I’ll be doing my own make-up and possibly hair for my ROM. If I had a choice, I'd do my own make-up for the "jip san leong" and wedding dinner too. But I'm only worried I'd mess up...because I might be nervous.

Oh, and here are a few hair tips for bride-to-bes:

• You know the saying styling dirty hair is easier than freshly washed hair? It’s a myth. Oily hair doesn’t work well with hairspray.
• Based on my personal experience, don’t use synthetic hair extensions if you plan to style it with your real hair. Human hair is a lot easier to style.

Wedding Video - Behind the Scenes

Over the past few months, I’ve been watching quite a bit of wedding videos to get a rough idea of how I want our video to be. As most of you know, we’ve engaged in the services of Nigel Sia, who will be our videographer for the ROM as well as the actual day. Apart from that, Nigel will also be coming with up with a video teaser and a special video highlighting our dating days…leading up to the proposal. So far, things are looking very positive.

Behind the scenes

We filmed our wedding video in July, and the whole process took 10 hours and spanned across 5 locations. Remember our meet-up with Nigel? That was when he talked to us about how we met, the highlights of our relationship and what we wanted for our video. A week before the video shoot, Nigel emailed us his proposed storyboard and things took off from there. I won’t reveal this special video until the wedding dinner (video will be uploaded on my blog after the wedding), but here’s a sneak peak/behind the scene of what we’ve worked on.

The school scene was a bit difficult because I had to get permission to enter our old school (new headmistress) and a decent looking classroom – government school, go figure – to do our filming. When I got that part settled, the next issue was getting a school uniform. Sylvia, my wedding planner’s assistant managed to find me a pinafore that fit just right. For this scene, Nigel told me I needed to look the part, so I skipped the make-up and changed my hairstyle (don't worry, I didn't cut my hair -- it's just a wig). I don’t know you, but I think the wig did the trick! I got mine from My Dream Cottage.

Nigel came with a team of ‘actors’ – Kel Li, Harinder, Jenkin, Daphne, Simon, Jason and Ren. Jason and Ren were there throughout the shoot, helping Nigel with the videography. The others helped make the school scene more believable. Thanks guys, for the effort! The one thing that struck me about Nigel (apart from his ability to conceptualise) was his attention to detail and structure. Things were done efficiently and with structure from the storyboard. He had a checklist of what we needed to do, which he used as a reference.

Nigel came equipped with five DSLRs (plus tripod, mike, slider…etc) for our video which he changed as and when he felt was needed. We had good fun throughout the 10-hour shoot. Nigel was very accommodative and easy to work with. For those who are looking for a videographer to do your wedding video, give Nigel a shout via email (hello@nigelsia.com) or twitter (twitter.com/nigelais)! You can also give him a ring at 016-384 4617.

*If you’re looking for a less conventional wedding video (ie: boring, bridal studio compilation), Nigel’s your man. But before you engage in his services, let me kindly remind you that he’s off limits on October 8 (first half of the day) and November 19 (full day) 2011. :)

Budgeting

Blog post by Wei Jien:

Before Sue Lynn and I started our wedding blog, my friends and colleagues always asked me, "How are the wedding preparations going?" I will always answer them the same thing -- "Okay-lah." This time around, they started making comments such as, "Seems like your wedding preparations are going well. We can't wait to attend it." It was the wedding blog they were keeping tabs on.

Like a business everything you do needs to be budgeted. Coming from an accounting and finance background, it was understood that I would handle the budget planning. From my last post "concept", I worked out our wedding budget. Once we had our wedding concept sorted out, we roughly knew what we wanted/needed to have in our wedding. From there on, we gathered as much information as we could to prepare the budget. In our case, it was a joint effort of the wedding planner and us.

After obtaining all the information needed, our wedding planner laid them on an excel sheet for easy-viewing. For me, preparing a budget was a piece of cake, but it's the "other forces” that were hard to fight. When we saw the budget total amount, both my fiancé and I tried cutting the expenses from top to bottom and most of the time it was by half!

The "other forces” I speak off in our case are our parents and the wedding planner. Whether you like it or not, these people will usually insist on including this and that, which will make the wedding at the end of the day, cost a bomb. We had 2 options to deal with this. First was to ignore all the wedding planner’s suggestions and keep both our parents in the dark with regards to the wedding. Second option was to ELOPE!!!

The first option would be the easiest way out, but what's the point of hiring a wedding planner if you are going to ignore all his/her suggestions? And somehow, you can never keep your parents in the dark especially when you come from a Chinese family. Also, eloping was never an option…however tempting it may be!

In the end, none of the options were ideal. We compromised, but the key here is achieving BALANCE. We accepted 50% of our wedding planner’s suggestions and 50% of our parents’ suggestion. Like it or not, a wedding planner is more experienced in this field, having planned hundreds of weddings. He/she would know the wedding protocols and what should be included in the wedding. And since our parents often have better insight, they will have some valuable feedbacks which we could learn from, based on their own wedding experience.

A budget is often easy to prepare but do expect your final budget to be different (often more expensive) compared to the initial version. Other forces can be a pain to deal with and might even put a strain on your budgeting. It might not be the wedding planner or the parents who cause this strain. The problem might be caused by the couple's friends/acquaintance, or it could even be due to poor economy (high inflation or recession). Whatever the factors may be, just remember that is the key to good budgeting is BALANCE.