Finding my bridal heels

Aldo is having a mega sales! Up to 70% off!
Bee and I have bought our wedding shoes/heels and guess how much it cost?
Less than $100 for both our shoes! Crazy right?

I have decided to go for a pink/nude based heels and its so PRETTY!
I wanted something that is plain, high with platform and closed toe so its exactly what I want.
Cost approximately $43 (originally approximately $48 but I got 10% off because we bought 2 pairs)
Good deal right? Originally priced at $159!

Okay okay! I cannot deny, Aldo wasn't my first choice. It was a surprise find during shopping ;p
My first choice is of course... TAOBAO!



Bought this lovely designer inspired heels in nude for my wedding initially but Bee doesn't seem too keen on it. He say its too exotic and he cannot appreciate -.- guys~~ So now we are going to take this pair of heels to our prewedding shoot instead. But I cannot emphasize enough HOW HOW HOW COMFY this heels is. The padding is SO good and the quality is really *thumbs up*. A very good buy from taobao. It is on discount now (approximately $30), get it here!

What I like about taobao heels is that they sell heels of different heights of same design!
Can choose the design you like and the height too!

Here are some of the other heels that I have shortlisted ;P

1) Ombre Glitter Heels
Height: 8.5cm
Colour: 7 colours~

Too chio to ignore it

2) Cinderella Crystal Heels
Height: 7cm and 9cm

3) Crystal embellishment heels
Height: flats, 5cm, 7cm, 9cm, 10cm, 12cm

 

4) Customisable elegant pearl heels
Height: 7 different heights available!

 

 

5) Shimmery floral heels

Height: 6cm or 9cm

Colour: 6 colours



6) Modern Chic Heels
Height: 10cm
Colour: 8 colours

 

7) Satin Floral Heels

Height: 4cm, 6cm, 8cm and 10cm

 

8) Pazzion-inspired heels

Available in open and closed toe

 

9) Wifey for Lifey (TOO CUTE!)

Height: 7cm and 10cm

Colour: 3 colours

 

10) Artsy Classy heels

Height: 10cm

Colour: 9 colours!

 



Buying gold for my wedding

For the traditional Chinese, gold is one of the important gifts that traditional mums will definitely want! My mum insist on buying me gold to gift me during the tea ceremony and she insist that my htb family must buy me 四点金! No joke, she would not even accept an angbao in place of the gold.
Gold = face for the family, so it is not something that she would compromise on!

Gold price is approx. $61/g for 916 and $65/g for 999 (it is estimated to be likely to increase due to the unstable economic conditions, hence investors will shift from stock market to commodity investments). But I think the price would hover around that range, hence don't think too much and just buy if you need to. You can monitor the trend here.

Lets be practical, what are the factors that one will take into consideration when purchasing the si dian jin?

1) Price
Wedding is costly enough, make sure that the couple is agreeable on the amount to spend on si dian jin. Si dian jin should be paid by the groom's parents, but in the current society today I think most couple would be buying it themselves. For me, we have to be self dependent (esp when my PILs are retired).

2) Type of gold? 999 or 916?
999 gold has designs that are more traditional and is more costly due to higher 手工费 (workmanship cost). It is softer due to higher purity thus more prone to damage. 916 is harder and easier to be shaped so more designs are available.

3) Design
四点金requires 4 items namely a necklace, a bracelet, a pair of earrings and a ring.
Otherwise you can purchase a 龙凤镯 （dragon/phoenix bangle).
Some people will buy according to their dialects but recent trend is people tend to buy things they like (:

Traditional designs are things like flowers, dragon/phoenix and 双喜wordings etc. SK jewellery has a WIDE selection which I find fascinating. Trendy designs can be anything (I love gold heart's 916 series design as I find them very fashionable).



4) Practicality
Is what you are buying something that you can wear on daily basis? Or for events? Or its going to sit in your cabinet forever? With that, your sourcing criteria will change!

Initially I was looking at 999 gold (because im worried my mum wouldn't accept 916 gold). LOL! But after discussion with my mum, she told me that 999 gold series is ugly and we should get 916 gold (:

I would want to tell every couple, always LOOK LOOK and LOOK + compare prices!
Price of gold is standard, but the 手工费 is the expensive one!
I have heard that 2 gold shops in Singapore does not have GST charge, so it is more worth it to buy from there! You can google more about it (many blogs have information on that).

One of the strategy is to ensure that the shop itemize the cost of the 手工费 per item and negotiate from there. I went to SK jewellery @ JEM to look at the si dian jin set and the sales person refused to itemize the 手工费 for me so I walked out without a 2nd thought. Went to SK jewellery @jurong point and was told that the 手工费cost $419 per bangle (crazily expensive). I would think that those big branches of jewellery shops are not going to give me a good deal when it comes to gold accessories, so I started to look at less prominent gold shops.

Another of my strategy is to bring my mum there with me to negotiate for me! LOL! I will feel paiseh to negotiate too much but my mum is very good at it! ;p

For now, my favourite shop is Royal Dragon @ Jurong point! Some of their items do not have 手工费 so its a good deal! On top of that, you can negotiate with them on the 手工费 if there is any (: if you are willing to pay by cash or nets, they are willing to make a further cut for you! You can look for an auntie there wearing spectacles (I think she is very experienced), I forgot her name ;x think its ivy or something...

I overshot my budget of the bangles by almost twice my budget ;x but got something that I really like (: My 手工费 per bangle is less than $100 (for your reference) so that BTBs can use it as a baseline to make a judgement if you are overcharged for 手工费!

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!