Introducing Our New Website!

Finally our website is up and running!! After a long period of juggling everyday work and designing this website, finally I can proudly say, “Please go to our website!”

The link is www.rosettedesigns.com.

Inspired by a French memory board that I saw in Europe during our honeymoon, this design doesn’t really follow the typical look of a website. I always love pinning my inspiration on a board and while now we have Pinterest to do it digitally, the analog form of an inspiration still holds dear to my heart. So, this is my way to share my obsession of a gorgeous board. The look of the website is non-traditional, fun and whimsical. It reflects on our taste and value in designing every wedding. It should be fun and pretty, without losing your own identity.

Please feel free to click the polaroid icon inside to lead you to different directory.

Start from About Us, a short introduction on who we are and a link to meet the founder and principal designer, (ehem…) Hellen Lie. As most of you might know (or not) that I co-founded Diary & Design Wedding together with a fellow planner. Cut the story short, starting this year, Diary & Design Wedding is no longer in operation and both of us have move on with our own things. So this is my thingy now! Nothing changed, the passion is still the same (even stronger) and the works still fabulous.. the best part, the team remain intact and ready to do bigger and prettier weddings.

 

The Gallery page is inspired by Photo Gallery that we often do for our client, with clothes pegs clipping the pictures.

 

Sp please check it out and let us know what do you think about it!

Love,

Hellen Lie

She says: It’s Party Time! – Pretty in Pink

Finally we had a proper house warming and baby shower to showcase our house & our little one. It was a good start with a pretty dessert bar designed and styled by me. It has been awhile since I put together a dessert bar, but I certainly haven’t lost it. Instead it gets better, because I have more time to prepare all the items. Taking inspiration from the lovelies in Pinterest, I came out with theme of Stripes-pink & gray to compliment my monochrome house.

Here are some of the pictures :

I transformed my dinner table into a pretty dessert bar. Love how the table cloth matches well with my grey curtain. Just between you and me, I designed my house in monochrome so it will blends well with any color so I can host pretty parties every time!

The items are cupcakes, marshmallow, cookies, strawberry dip, ferrero rocher, marshmallow pop (which I made myself! I will post the steps in the next post) and red velvet cake with mini bunting topper! I make the mini bunting topper to match the whole theme. So cute!

Marshmallow pop is a very good item to compliment your design, since it is easy to make and the colors just pops!

Love the cookies that my friend did for me, it’s simple and delicious.

The cookies on the right is DIY. I just took the butter cream and sprinkled it with pink non-parelis (you can buy it in any baker shop) and voila, you have pretty pearly cookies.

I bought cotton candy maker for such occasion, but turns out it didn’t really perform well. It was fun to try but the result is not so promising.

I learnt how to make pink-colored sugar for the cotton candy. You only need caster sugar and pink food coloring paste. Give a few drop and mash it together.

The cupcakes are from the caterer Xin Yi Ping. These are the selected ones, the rest is unacceptable in my table.

If you need any decoration or dessert bar for your party, please feel free to give us a buzz in winstonhellen@gmail.com. We will gladly work out something for you that doesn’t burns a hole in your pocket!

Another review about Xin Yi Ping catering, they have very good deals for their Baby’s First Month package. Free cupcake and ang ku kueh, on top of their usual dishes. I fell for that. After all, ordering cupcakes will cost at least another $3/pcs.

However, to be fair, their food, service and the free cupcake is pretty average. You can’t expect much from them. The food is so-so, their service is rather ok and the cupcakes are below average. I can’t make any complaint, because they delivered what is written, just without excellence. For me,  I won’t recommend them strongly for my future parties. But if you are not particular with service and display, you can consider them.

This is the setup and their cupcakes:

Lastly, I prepared a small door gift for my guests. A thank you card with 2013 calendar at the back. I can share the print file with you, if you ask me nicely Just email us at winstonhellen@gmail.com

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.

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

He says: Wedding and the Social Media

After seeing how Hellen is helping the various couples who engage her, I do see a general desire for a couple to do something creative for their wedding. I guess it’s not about couples not wanting a special wedding, but couples generally have problems conceptualizing and executing their wedding. With the recent General Election in Singapore, it seems that social media is playing a huge part in the outcome. A recent website that was given to us by a couple gives me further ideas of how we can do wedding the ‘Social Media’ way. Using this website as an example, I will propose some ideas that couples can integrate in their own wedding!

[Some disclaimer here though: As this is a US wedding with overseas guests, some of the ideas here may not be applicable for all.]

Welcome to the Wedding of Adam and Kari Smith!

Welcome one and all!

 Idea #1: Webpage as your invite

Rather than paying for envelopes and printers for the official invite, why not make your webpage the invite itself? Of course the limiting factor will be the less tech-savvy relatives and friends you may have… The more traditional guests will definitely prefer something more solid, but I believed in a few years’ time, this will become more popular with (almost) everyone going online.

Idea #2: Programmes and Itinerary

This is especially useful for overseas guests, who may not be familiar with what to do in town when the wedding is not the focus anymore. In this example, the couple proposed different options for the accomodation, food, shopping, leisure activities and nightlife. Another suggestion will be putting the actual programme in there (if it is not too much of a surprise).

Idea #3: Directions

Thank God for Google Maps and all the other map websites out there! After going through a wedding myself, I know that other than hotels and famous landmarks, some outdoor wedding venues are quite hard to get to (ok, I admit… including mine). Having the online map such as in this example, makes it much easier for the guests to find how to get to the place.

Idea #4: RSVP

Having a form online to do your RSVP is both convenient and easy. Of course we cannot depend on just the online aspect for RSVP, as normally, a vast majority of the guests still need the phone to prompt them. Websites such as evite is popular in garnering online RSVP as well.

Idea #5: Well Wishes

It is also possible to provide a space on the webpage for the guests to send in their well-wishes. Contemporary ideas nowadays include the always-reliable guest scroll and wishing trees. We can make full use of the internet by letting the guests add in their comments of well-wishes and even video wishes. Well, we still have all these, don’t we…

The Whole Social Media Gang

A wedding is still one of the most beautiful day of your life, don’t let social media take away the intimacy!

 

She says: Wedding Fever – Handmade Arch

It has been almost a year since our wedding, yet the wedding fever hasn’t seemed to go away. From a bride’s point of view to a planner’s point of view, I covered more grounds in this wedding field. Our first anniversary will be celebrated in the almost-exact spot and timing of our wedding one year earlier. Except that we are not the one getting married.

This lovely couple shares the same love for handmade items and craft. One of the main feature for their wedding will be a handmade wedding arch filled with various paper flowers. It will be marvelous sight to behold, especially during your first march in.

Another story of a creative DIY bride getting married in the romantic garden. I am so thrilled to be able to make one dream wedding come true.

I will share more details after the wedding. Meanwhile here’s some of the plan for the arch.

For some useful tutorials, click here!

So here’s the actual wedding arch!

She Says: First Chinese New Year as a Missus

Chinese New Year is here again! This year marks another transition to adulthood, which is giving ang bao instead of receiving one. I thought it will be weird and awkward to give out ang baos (red packet with money inside), but turns out to be just a normal feeling. I guess we adjusted well. It is Chinese tradition on the New Year for married couple to give out ang baos to the juniors. Read more about the tradition here.

Coincidentally, Winston turned 30 on Chinese New Year Eve. That’s more surreal than giving out ang baos. Do you remember Jennifer Garner’s movie 13 going on 30, when she wishes to be 30 on her 13th birthday. We always have fancy imagination of what it is to be like when we were… ( fill in the blank), yet the closer to that number, the lesser the excitement. Even when we have achieved all that, we are not as enthusiastic as the initial point of imagining. At least that’s how I feel. I think dreaming and imagining are the most exciting part of the journey, because the possibilities are endless. Dreaming is like a cycle, once you reach it, it’s time to dream another one, bigger.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Images originally from Apartment Therapy.

He says: The Community

While Hellen links a lot of wedding-inspired websites and blogs in her posts, quite a few websites link to ours as well. In the course of looking through those websites, there are several cool sites out there that I believed will interest and inspire the BTB and GTB for the preparation of their wedding. I will like to share some of the interesting and quirky ones, so that YOU can be inspired and believed that the perfect dream wedding that you want is absolutely within your reach.

1. DIY Wedding | Craftgossip

Craftgossip is a wonderful network of sites that touches on different topics. DIY wedding is one of the newer sections and the sharing ranges from event decoration, invitation, cake toppers (my favourite!), table settings, guest books and wedding accessories. Very cool and in a way, quite minimalist as well. Highly recommended to check out!

2. The Urban Bride

This site is manned by a team of cool ‘urban’ ladies (well, seriously, there isn’t a lot of ‘rural’ gals in Singapore right?), showcasing cool, unconventional wedding, for gals that loved the ‘Sex and the City’ lifestyle. The only downside of this site is that, it has not been really updated for a few months… maybe it has been relocated?

3. Pinterest

Rather than a regular blog, this is more of a pin board for the entire internet community. See what you like from anywhere online and pin the picture and link on the wall! As simple as that, you can share your love out there. When you just need some inspiration, you can go there and check out the random stuff pinned. Hellen’s dollies envelopes are pinned!

And finally something that has nothing to do with wedding whatsoever…

4. Do Nothing for 2 Minutes

Are you panicking and your mind going all over the place with wedding preparation? Maybe you just need to calm down in this fast-paced world and the lead-up to the most important day of your life. Take 2 minutes of your life to take a deep breath and enjoy a moment of solitude and calm. One of the greatest joy in life is to enjoy doing nothing, don’t you think so?

She says: small Idea, BIG Impact – Table Number

I am so blessed that I could do what I love as part of my work. Details and creative ideas always thrill me. Especially implementing that idea for your client. I am currently in the midst of preparing table number design for one of our clients. This sweet and candid couple love candles and tall centerpiece. This elements will be the prominent items in their wedding. I am planning to customize a unique table number that match the mood.

By the way, I am a wedding designer under the umbrella of Diary & Design Wedding, for your info..

With the guidance of my guru, Martha Stewart, I embarked on my quest of candle table number. I will post the result when it’s done.

I did my share in creating my own table number.

Table number for one of our client. It has the similar graphic for menu and reception card

In case you are flabbergasted on the idea of buying 25-30 photo frames, you can simply rent it here!

Meanwhile, here are some samples of table number design that can inspire you! Be a creative bride and opt for well-designed table number, instead of your usual hotel-own-table-number.

She says: Introducing Diary & Design: A Wedding Story

After the success of our wedding, we received a lot of compliments and requests regarding wedding planning and design. It has always been my secret desire to cultivate my love for wedding design to a concrete plan. So, when Lily, my wedding coordinator asked to meet up to talk about the possibility to partner, I couldn’t feel more happy! This is the moment I’m waiting for!

It feels so right and so natural for us to plan & design wedding. I am always championing a life of passion and purpose. There is a purpose of why we are wired this way. Why we are born with certain tendency or talents. Some people are naturally drawn to numbers, sports, music, biology, or some cool ones, like design *haha*. I happened to be born with a love for art and design. I was an aesthetically-inclined child with tons of imagination. My mom can testified to that. She had to repaint the wall many times because of my constant sketching.

So now I know why I love and is able to do art and design, so one day I could help many brides to have a beautiful, memorable and stress-free wedding. Man, that was some revelation!

Anyway, enough of childhood flashback, now the future is in front of us. We are officially launching Diary & Design: A Wedding Story today!

Diary & Design Wedding combines the individual strength of a well-designed and well-organized wedding. You get the best of both worlds. Neither design or coordination becomes secondary. Both are given the same priority and full attention. This partnership provides assurance that all of your design and coordination needs are covered, so that you can relax and enjoy your big day.

We already drafted the services and packages to suit your preferences. We even have the Design-It-Yourself packages to help you materialize the ideas you are dying to impose but have no idea how to!  *Gosh, I wish I had that privilege when I planned mine*

UPDATE:

This post was written about 3 years ago, when everything is still in the infancy level. Now the ladies of Diary & Design Wedding are more mature and experienced, not to mention big thinker. So DDW is undergoing restructuring process and will be officially branch out into 2 companies, which each specialized in different area, wedding planning and wedding design. We have yet to officially announced it, but being a design junkie it is a no-brainer for me to head the new baby, Rosette Designs & Co, which specialized in event design & decor. Please check out our portfolio in our facebook page, while we work on our website.

No matter what is the company I am belong to, my love for design & decor is always prevails.