My Honestbee experience

Honestbee has been around for quite some time and my perception of them has not been very good because of the bad experience of my cousin had previously when Honestbee just started. In short, she bought groceries from honestbee and the delivery was delivered late with all the groceries she purchased in bad condition (melted frozen food causing all the items in her purchase to be wet).

As such, I never really wanted to try Honestbee.

However, as my friend shared with me the promotion code for Honestbee just this week, Bee and I decided to give them a try as we wanted to utilize their promotion of having $40 off $120 purchase for our Martell purchase for GDL. I mean.. what can go wrong with the purchase of just 2 bottles of Martell right?

We made an order right away on the Honestbee website and everything was fuss-free.
Just key in my details, discount code, choose the delivery date and place the order, as simple as that! We placed an order on the 25th January and had arranged for the delivery on 28 January.
$40 off our $200 purchase! What a good deal!



On the 28th, I had received a call from my personal shopper.

Guess what?
For the Martell that I ordered, there is 2 different packaging and my personal shopper called me to verify with me which one I prefer. He even went to the extent of whatsapping me the photos for both the external packaging and the internal bottle to let me choose.

His service is truly impeccable! 哪里有人这么好的！




That aside, as NTUC has in-store promotion ($9 off per bottle of $100 Martell), Honestbee did an adjustment to my purchase and I only paid a frigging $142 for 2 bottles of Martell! That's a $58 cost savings for me off the original price of $200! $71 per bottle of Martell!




I am truly satisfied with my purchase with Honestbee!

I don't have to squeeze in NTUC with the CNY crowd and can get the items delivered to my doorsteps in good condition at such a good price! I honestly don't mind trying Honestbee again. Maybe next time Bee and I can order our canned pig trotters for GDL via Honestbee, then we won't have to carry the heavy canned pig trotters home! ;p


This post is no way an advertisement for Honestbee and I am in no way affiliated to them.
Just want to share the good experience I have with them this time round.

Price list of MUAs (SG + JB)

I have been crazily looking for a good and affordable MUA for my actual day as Bee and I plan not to take up any bridal package.
Emailing, texting, whatsapping at least 20 MUAs a day!


In fact I'm going all crazy after the MUA that my colleague recommended me is not available.
Her rates are very reasonable and she is REALLY GOOD (look at her portfolio)!
Too bad I have no affinity with her /:
If you are interested to engage the services of Celest Ong, you really have to book her early!
Still mourning over the fact that I couldn't get her for my wedding... but its okay!


Here you go, the price list for MUAs in Singapore + JB:

All the information is for reference only (:


For me, I'm getting the MUAs to quote me for a morning + wedding lunch touchup together with groom's grooming + mother's makeup. I'm so desperate for a good MUA that I even went to get quotation of JB MUAs that would be willing to come to Singapore!

What I don't like about Singapore MUAs is that many of them charge the early morning surcharge. Like 包赚 one right?!? Especially because morning gatecrash is about 8am and we have to start makeup at about 6am.


For budget brides, I would recommend Joanne Ong (SG) or Felicia (JB).
Felicia's package is really affordable! Great for budget brides like me!
Joanne's package is very reasonably priced for a Singapore MUA.
 Do look through the list and review the portfolio of the MUAs on their facebook/websites.
It's important to find a MUA whose makeup style you like and would think suit you best.
Take your time to find the MUA you want for your big day!


I have finally made my choice after 1 week of sourcing!
I will keep it a secret for now and reveal it at a later date :D
So so so excited!

Some may be wondering why I would want a 2nd touch up + makeup when it will cost me so much more.. especially because I am only having a church lunch. I have actually discussed my plans with my mother who insist that my MUA MUST follow me after morning makeup to my church for touch up as she is worried that I might cry during the wedding ceremony ;x So in order to satisfy her expectations, just pay a bit more so as to not let her worry.

So BTBs, please please talk with your mother before you make any decision to cut cost here and there. My mum says she is okay with anything/ everything but she has the most opinions when it comes to planning for my wedding hahas! So to prevent any surprise, do share your plans with your parents before making any decisions which may end up changing later on when they start to input their opinions (:

Where to get discounted hard liquor for Guo Da Li

Hi All,

For the traditional chinese Guo Da Li, the groom would normally have to bring along 2 bottles of hard liquor to please the father-in-law. For my mother, she specifically requested for Martell (smart choice because Martell has a standard price HAHAS)!

If you are going overseas or have friends going overseas, you can ask them to help you get Martell from DFS. But if you are like me, stuck in my job with no leave for overseas trip and feel too paiseh to ask your friends to help... I'm going to share with you some tips on how to find discounted hard liquor to please your future-in-law and at the same time have some cost-savings!

1) Festive Season Discount

This festive season there is discount at NTUC.
$9 off the original price of $100! 9% off!
If you purchase 2 bottles, it would be a total of $18 savings.
But this offer will end on 29th February 2016 so take note (:



Update: I just saw that sheng shiong sells the Martell at $88!
Even more worth it than the promo price of NTUC!

2) Warehouse Club



Warehouse Club beside Joo koon MRT station sells Martell at a whooping price of $85!
That's $15 off the original price of $100!
If you purchase 2 bottles, it would be a total of $30 savings.

However, warehouse club only allow members to make purchase (membership cost $50 a year).
If you have any friends that has the warehouse club membership, then you need to grab this deal!
Just a tip for you, if you do not have the membership you can try asking any of the shoppers there if they can lend you their membership. Most of the time, people are willing to help (:

1 Joo Koon Circle,
Levels 2 & 3,
Singapore 629117





3) Online shopping

Honestbee is having a promotion now!
If you spend $120 at NTUC online, you will be able to get a $40 off!
Just use the discount code HB785038 when you shop at honestbee.
Discount only applicable for per household this January 2016

So for per bottle of Martell, you will only pay $80!
20% off the original price!
You get to save $40 for 2 bottles of Martell and they will deliver the Martell right to your doorstep.
I'm in no way related to honestbee or trying to advertise for them but this is too good a deal that I have to share!

Update: See my review for Honestbee purchase here

I'm sure every single cent saved is important for couples planning for their big day.. so really hope this post helps (:

Shopping for our wedding band!

Hi there!

To continue from my last blogpost on choosing the perfect wedding band, i am going to share with you on our strategy for wedding band shopping~!

To start off, Bee and I prefer to go for ready made wedding band.
Our artistic talent is as good as zero so if we can't find any wedding band that we like, then we will find a design that we want and get it customized (:

We started off with online shopping to see what are the trendy designs nowadays
We made a total of 2 trips for shopping:
1st trip is to see what designs are available on the market and price range with no intention to buy
2nd trip is to look for more choices but this time with the intention to buy

A list of shops we visited:

1) eClarity

Our first and topmost choice would definitely be eClarity!

Bee bought the proposal ring from eClarity (so did many of his friends) and he has very good reviews of Amanda and her team. Because he is now a member of eClarity, we can get up to 40% off the original price (if you ever visit them you can say you are recommended by singapore bride forum and you can get 30% off too!)

As eClarity has got an online website, we did our online shopping with eClarity to see what they have before going down to their shop. You have to make an appointment and can do so via their website.

On the day of our appointment, we are lucky we decided to call eClarity first to confirm our appointment. Turns out they had brought their full collection of wedding bands to BOWS event at bugis for that day (if not we would have made a wasted trip down to Orchard).

BOWS event requires registration in order to make purchase at the fair and it was quite a turn-off because their registration was so frigging troublesome! We had to register like 5 times before making a successful registration as their webpage kept hanging (the staff explained that wifi there was bad). Not a good excuse actually because we spend like 20 minutes trying to register?!?

We made a beeline for the eClarity booth and spent like… 20 minutes at the booth and we left.
Reason?
We didn't manage to find anything that would wow both of us and the shopping experience wasn't exactly that good at the fair.
- Cramp booth without proper seats for us to sit down and slowly choose (the only 2 seats were occupied by another couple)
- Bad lighting at the fair that doesn't accentuate the wedding bands that they have
If we had gone to their shop, it may have been a completely different experience.

The good thing about eClarity is that after we find a design we want, we can choose to customize the material, finishing etc. If you have a design in mind, you can look for eClarity!


2) Poh Heng

Poh Heng has only the cherish series of wedding band.
So if thats not what you are looking for, you may skip the trip.


3) SK, Citigems

Didn't see anything we fancy in these 2 shops
The shopping experience at these 2 shops wasn't really good (salesman feels a bit ah beng ;x)


4) LeeHwa, Soo Kee, Gold Heart

I personally feel that these 3 shops belongs to the same tier.

One thing that I don't like about LeeHwa when we visited is the extreme lighting they use on the wedding bands. Too shiny to the extent I can't even see the wedding bands properly!
I'm quite worried about LeeHwa's quality as i have read bad reviews about their workmanship from other bloggers/ forumers.









However, this Lee Hwa Destinee wedding band (or something similar) caught my eye when we were shopping for our wedding band! I like the sleek look and bling bling Destinee diamond! Very stylish!
However, the matching wedding band for Bee was quite plain so we decided to give this a miss /:

Sookee is not bad, but the price is a little over our budget.
This wedding band design is what caught our eyes.
Comfort fit and quality looks good! Very solid!




In the end, we decided to buy our wedding bands from Goldheart!
Reason is because we felt the service and price is good.
There was a 20% off for normal range and 5% off for celestial range when we were there.

We bought our wedding bands at slightly more than 30% off the original price as they are having special discount price for some designs. Original price of the wedding band was about $2500!!



I went to singapore brides forum and saw that a forumer was quoted something similar (by another shop) for almost $900 more than what we paid :D that feeling is damn shiok!



Goldheart has a special engraving service for $38 per ring that you can engrave anything you want!
From signatures to handwritten messages to chinese wordings! Pretty cool!
But for normal engravings (standard font), its still FOC.
As mentioned in our previous post, we are still putting the engraving on-hold for now as we have not confirmed what to engrave ;p

Additional Tips

For wedding band shopping, i think Bugis is a good place as most of all the brands of jewelry chain other than poh heng is there! Jurong point is a good place for westies to recce as well!

Always keep a lookout for discounts and ask people around you if they have membership cards to help you get more discounts etc (e.g. Goldheart gave me a membership that would allow 20% off regular priced items)

Not to forget for shopping malls like jurong point, if you have spent a certain amount you will be able to redeem freebies. As all these gifts are first come first served so its better to go in the early afternoon to make your purchase so that you are able to redeem the freebies using the receipt. If you go later in the day when everything is fully redeemed, then you won't be able to get anything.

On top of that, as each ring is sold separately, get the sales person to split the receipt into 2 so that you can redeem 2 sets of the freebie since wedding bands are large-ticket items (:




Getting the perfect wedding band for our big day is a big milestone for us!
Looking forward to the big day!
Hope all BTBs feel as blissful as I am feeling now!

Choosing the perfect wedding band

After getting engaged and planning to get our wedding date at the end of the year, bee and i went for a search for our perfect wedding band (:

A few key points to take into consideration before purchasing the perfect wedding band:

1) Budget

Even before bee and i went for our wedding band search, we had an agreement that we want to budget our wedding bands at $2000 for a pair. We wanted something for everyday wear and decided not to purchase something that is really expensive as we may change our wedding bands in years to come (hoping that i will not gain too much weight after pregnancy to the extent that i can't fit my ring)

Initially we were looking to purchase the Poh Heng Cherish platinum wedding bands as we felt that they look really classic and we love the clean cut look. Having a 'cherish' label for the wedding band seems really sweet and blissful as well.

However, per ring cost approx. $1400 and that would mean we would burst our budget by almost $800.
That's a no-go for us unfortunately.
The rose gold cost rings cost slightly less than $1k though if you are interested.



Bee really likes the Buglari ring designs as well. Very classic.
But out of budget.. next!



2) Brand

Some of the couples may be very particular about the brand of their wedding bands.
My colleague bought her from cartier (plain wedding band at a very steep price).

For bee and I, our mentality is 'who will know what brand you are wearing if you don't say?'
Its really up to the individual on how much they are willing to fork out for the branding.
But be prepared to pay more for the same design and quality if you were to go for something more renown.

3) Design

Goldheart Il Regalo series basically breaks down the design of the ring into 6 steps:


Step 1: Material
Bee and I know that platinum is out of our budget
Rose gold and yellow doesn't suit our skin tone (we are more tanned)
So white gold is something that we will go for

Step 2: Form and width
Unlike some girls who fawn over eternity rings, i really dislike the design.
I didn't want something that is just plain bling bling as it doesn't match my character.
I wanted something comfort fitting (thicker band) and matching to bee's ring
Bee has a really BIG hand, so he needs to get a thicker wedding band or the ring will look awkward on him!

Step 3: Finishing
We tried many bands to have a feel of what kind of finishing suits our skin tone.
We realize that fully polished ring is too shiny for our liking so we are looking for something less shiny.
This is a good guide.

Step 4: Diamond setting
Some girls just love diamonds on the ring while guys may cringe at the sight of diamond on their ring.
Bee didn't want any diamond on his ring at all while I'm okay with anything (:

Step 5: Engraving
We just couldn't make up our mind what to engrave so we are putting this on a hold.
Wanted something like..'To love, honor & irritate' LOL but we felt that its not tad meaningful for us

Step 6: Inside setting
I love the fact that gold heart's ring has a blue sapphire on the inner shank of the ring.
The sales person told us that sapphire is a precious gem and when you wear your wedding band on your 4th finger, its like connecting the ring that you wear on your love vein to your heart <3
Cheesy but yeah we love it!

4) Matching Bands

The recent trend is that couples tend to pick the piece that they each like for their wedding band (since the rings are all sold separately) as each couple may have their own likes & dislikes. If this is so, i think the minimum that the couple needs to agree on is the material. If its a total mismatch i feel that its not as meaningful (but each to his own).

I am firm that i want a matching piece with Bee so I'm restricting my choices as a set and not individual pieces.
Its harder to find a ring that is suitable for him than a ring that is suitable for me so I always let him choose what he likes first (:


In my next post, I will be sharing more on the places we have gone to for our wedding band hunt (:
Have a good discussion with your other half before your wedding band search!
Good luck!