She says : Full time Mom & Full time Biz Owner.. me!

It’s been ages since I blog!!

*…and somehow that line becomes a default opening line on my every post recently..*=p

Our life has been moving faster than we thought. My house is finally fully renovated and ready to be decorated. I love how gorgeous it turns out to be and the theme and color just perfect for me.

Another thing that happen to us recently is… We are expecting!

A baby girl name Savannah Grace is coming our way. There’s a meaning behind that unusual name and I will tell you next time when the baby arrive.

Anyway, I’m so excited to share with you about this book, Mom’s Inc by the darling of blog world, Meg Mateo Ilasco & Cat Seto.

Here’s the description about the book and authors (taken by Chronicles’s page)

So many women dream of having it all—being kickass mothers and running their own successful businesses. This book helps them take the leap with confidence. Serial entrepreneurs (and moms) Meg Mateo Ilasco and Cat Seto draw on their own successes and missteps to reveal exactly how to choose the right business, find clients, write a business plan, launch a blog and Web site, stay focused at home, and more. Insightful Q&As with enterprising mothers like fashion designer Cynthia Rowley and Style Me Pretty blogger Abby Larson demystify the many nuances of balancing work life with family time. It’s not easy. But this practical and inspiring guide helps make it possible.

Meg Mateo Ilasco is a mother of two, freelance artist and writer, and a serial entrepreneur who started her first business in 1999. She is the author of several books, including Craft, Inc., Creative, Inc., and the Craft, Inc. Business Planner, and is also the cofounder and creative director of the home and lifestyle magazine Anthology. Meg lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Visit her at www.mateoilsaco.com. 

Cat Seto balances design, illustration, writing, and motherhood in her San Francisco studio and boutique. Her stationery products and custom wedding line are carried by retailers around the country. In addition, Cat received an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan, and her writing has appeared in publications such as the first edition of Best New American Voices. Visit her at www.catseto.com and www.momincdaily.com.

Having read Meg’s previous book, Creative, Inc (co-write by Joy Cho, the writer of Oh, Joy! blog) I am fully convinced that this book is gonna be super inspiring too! The first book is so informative and inspiring as I always been contemplating to give up my day job and focus on my creative business.So the book helps growing that seed.

I’m not sure how many of you, have desire to be a full time mom and full time business owner, but that’s always been my goal. Although I truly love my day job as full time designer, but deep down in my heart I know I can do so much more with the time I spent sitting in front of my 2 giant Mac screens and 2 TVs in my office.

I am one restless creative dynamo.

By the way, I just made reservation in Kinokuniya for this book and I’ll dig it on my Krabi holiday in June! Yay!

 

 

She says: Love Nest for Two

Although this blog is more known as the wedding blog, we decided to keep this blog post-wedding. We have move on to the next chapter in our live, now that we have been married for almost 2 years! Like many young Singaporean couple, we bought a BTO flat in 2008 (before we even engaged, how practical..) and now in 2012 we got the key and almost ready with our renovation. I didn’t post much about the renovation because I’m not familiar with interior or renovation. I know what like but I don’t know how to classify it. One thing I really like is IKEA stuff & style. I always love those Scandinavian clean and graphic look. A lot of my friends would love to have a Classic or Country style house or French-inspired interior, which I thought I will be one of them too. Who doesn’t like those pretty white armchair and crafted white console. Well, I didn’t like it for my home. It’s very pretty, though. My best friend, Katryn has the best Classic house I’ve ever went into, with white wooden panels, classic furniture, wallpapers, etc.

Anyway, here’s my layout and my inspiration. Btw, our love nest is located in the tip of Northern Singapore. Yup, you got it right, Punggol!

Here’s the Layout that we have agreed with my ID. I think we changed it about 10 times before settling with this one. I hacked few walls and even up few walls also. I don’t know why, HDB always have this funny recess wall.

I will talk about each room individually in the next post.

 

She Says: We are Still Around Because Love is All Around

Finally! After non-stop wedding weekends  for 2 months consecutively, we have reached the end of our high peak wedding season.

It was a roller-coaster ride which is full of ups and downs, especially during this rainy season! I will one day write about having to manage your expectation when weather and acts of God is involved in your wedding. We had our painful share of the wettest scenario during a full outdoor wedding and trust me, it wasn’t easy to swallow the reality that you can’t have your dream outdoor wedding. In fact it can haunt you back if you don’t prepare to let go in the first place.

Many lessons and experiences we gained during this peak season, some amazingly fond memories and some was so traumatizing that it shook our passion of wedding planning and design to our core. Our patience and passion was being tested again and again. Despite all these, we are still standing here and marching forward. These are most valuable lessons that will be a strong foundation going forward. I may one day share with you about it.

One of the florists who has years of experience, told me that when the couple is nice, the flower will turn out to be better and looks nicer. Knowing that flower shipment is unstable, sometimes the flower blooms beautifuly and sometimes it looks dull, I took it with a pinch of salt. But after doing so many weddings, I couldn’t denied the facts that it was rather true! I wouldn’t say much about the characters, but rather the attitude towards marriage and to each other. Wedding shouldn’t be bigger than the act of marriage. Sometimes we can be too consumed with the wedding, the decor, the DIY stuff that we forget the reason we are having this wedding!

I can unapologetically say, that in my opinion, the best part of the wedding is the picture perfect, gorgeous decoration setup, before any guest steps in and anything starts. The perfect looking color coordinated dessert bar, tall glittery centerpiece, fun and creative props for photo booth. But that’s because I am very passionate about decoration and design. Wedding should mean much more than that!

At the end of the day, it’s not really that flower decoration that you remember, but the memorable moments in the wedding, the faces you see, the romantic moments with your chosen one.

The wedding will be perfectly wrapped in Love. As the Good Book said, Love Covers All.

To sum it up, LOVE  should be the main focus of a wedding. And don’t forget to let go and let God.. especially if you are doing an outdoor wedding in October- December. You will need a lot of that…

She says: Uber Chic Wedding @ Yacht

Some of you might know that I am closely linked to Ian Photography. This creative and fast growing company grew together with this blog as we were his first client back then. Of course it doesn’t hurt that Ian was one of my disciples in church and Irene is my sister. I took credit for matchmaking them at the earlier stage. Now the link is further deepened with their marriage! Check out the pics here at Diary & Design Wedding’s gallery

I am really proud of this uber creative couple. Seeing them grow and blossomed as a couple and as business partners is a privilege. Nothing short of drama, sometimes thrilling, inspiring yet challenging. Mixing love and business can be a real pain in the marriage. Theirs wasn’t immune to it either. However, thank God that despite all the drama, they decided to put business and differences aside. Love conquers all.

Always a fan of their works, I knew their wedding will be picture perfect! Shoot by their second line, Bunny&Co, their wedding is ultra chic. Salute to the couple who always dares to be themselves and not confined by tradition & pressures. Love every bits of the details, starting from their wedding e-invite.

Irene & Ian came up with the theme Sail Away, with white & Navy blue as the main color. The decor & design is super chic! The wedding favor is sailor hat for female and bow tie for male. All the guests followed the color theme closely. The result was picture perfect wedding!

Winston & I, Dad, Mom, Ian, Irene, Imelda, Trisia & Bro Will

She says: Rekindle my Fire

With all these weddings coming up in October, November and December, sometimes I feel numb and a lack of excitement. Too much of a good stuff can backfire on you. It’s hard to keep the fire and passion going, and it might fall into the dangerous area of dead routine. I detest doing something without passion and inspiration. I almost forget how anxious I was preparing my own wedding, how delightful it was to find an amazing deal online for my wedding favor, or when I finally found the vendor for my tiffany box. Every wedding is immensely special. I will try my best not to fall into the cycle of vendor-client related complacency.

That’s why I’m so thankful when I saw this wedding video of Danni & Chris from one of my favorite blog, Oh, Hello Friends. One year after their wedding and it still takes my breath away.

I always love personalized, laid back weddings and where the couple’s love takes center-stage. That’s what wedding is all about.

One advice I can’t stressed enough is, invest in a good videographer & photographer! The moments can easily pass you by, but the feeling come back rushing everytime I watched my own video.

Thank God we splurged on Alvinadeline.

We say: (Secret) Dream Comes True!

We have been waiting for Style Wedding magazine’s September issue for a month after our interview. In the initial stage of our wedding preparation, we secretly wishing that our wedding will be featured in a magazine one day. It didn’t happen on the year we got married, only a year after that, our vendor called us asking if we are interested to be featured, since the theme of the issue is vintage. Yay!

For those of you who wonder how to get featured in bridal magazine, it is actually more complicated than having a very nice looking wedding. It also has to do with whom you engage. Anyway, we are really happy that 2 of our vendors approached us at the same time, without knowing each other’s intention.

A big shout out to Jasmine, who wrote the article so descriptively and positively. Also Adeline from Alvinadeline Weddings & Wansheng from Feldberyl for their referral.

Although there’s a small hiccup (but with big impact!) of our blog address, instead of welovelaughkiss.wordpress.com, it written as welaughwekiss.wordpress.com, we managed to salvage the situation by creating a page with the wrong blog address and direct it to this one! Problem solved!

For you who didn’t have access to Spore’s Bridal magazine, here you go!

She says: Deja Vu in our Paper Year

Can’t believe that we have passed our 1st year wedding anniversary! Seems like yesterday, we are still preparing our wedding and folding those rosettes. Now, one year later, we are still preparing a wedding and folding those rosettes. Under Diary & Design Wedding, we were designing & coordinating a wedding which uncannily bear resemblance to our wedding. The date is exactly the same: 19 June 2011, and the venue is also the same, except that it was in Fort Gate instead of shady OMSQ. The bride is also a really hands-on one, the night before the wedding, she decided to make flower wrist corsage for the bridesmaids. The color theme was also somehow similar, tiffany blue, pink & peach.

However, as always, no wedding is the same.

The couple really go all out with the decoration & personalized item. When the bride spoke to me about having handmade wedding arch as part of the decor, I knew we are unto something  creative and fun! Under our direction and tutorial, the couple opted to do the paper flower themselves, which saved us a lot of time and saved them money too! We arranged the flowers  and styled it on our white arch.  That’s what I called perfect collaboration.

You might have seen the sneak preview here. More pictures of behind the scene to be posted (hopefully).

Here’s the inspiration board of the creative couple. I really love this color combination.

and this is how the actual wedding was! I’m so thrilled with the actual floral arch. It’s a perfect photo backdrop for outdoor wedding. Enjoy the pictures!

Check out our tips to do a creative wedding here