December 22nd, 1999:
Martin: Things are slowly continuing.
As its nearly christmas, both mine & Gerry's parcels to each other
arrived last week. So on christmas day we will have a long phone-call where
we will both open each others gifts :o) Can't wait !!
Still flat hunting i'm afraid. I went to see one place though really
it was too small and was not to safe really. But I have several other '
irons in the fire' so to speak, and hopefully one of them will bear fruit
in the new year. As of today, I have one month until i fly out to HK.
November 25th, 1999:
Martin: I finally got around to
looking into booking our flights between HK and UK. Our plan is for
me to travel out to HK a week before the wedding and then for us 'both'
to leave a week later and return to UK together as man & wife :o)
So I was planning to book and pay for both of our flights myself, so
I contacted my regular agent to check details. Unfortunately, it turns
out that booking Gerry's flight from the UK would actually cost a great
amount of money. So instead, I have booked my flight to begin with, flying
with Lufthansa and connecting at Frankfurt.
Now, with that booked, Gerry is gonna try and book a seat on the same
flight, except from her end, which should work out at a better price.
We'll keep you posted on that.
I also continued my search for somewhere we can rent until we get around
to buying our own house.
I actually found a great house to rent recently, very close to all
of my family, my workplace and ideal for us. However, under my nose it
was sold before i could even talk about renting it. Nevermind.
So now i'm back to looking through the small ads for a place which
falls within our budget, but also suits our needs.
Hopefully i can sort something out in next few weeks.
After searching the Net for the proper etiquette for wording and sending
a wedding invitation, and searching for the right design, I then found
out that a full color design would cost us at least HK$2,000.00 (about
£159.36 / US$257.30) just for outputting the films. Which is absolutely
absurd, but then none of the printers I spoke to would print our invites
for us anyway since they said they won’t profit for printing 70 pieces
(normally the minimum is 100 pieces).
Finally, I found someone who could print us 70 invites for HK$850.00
(£67.72 / US$109.35). As a cheaper alternative, the printer suggested
to copy our design by outlining the fonts and the clipart with silvery
ink. After waiting for a week and a half, I was terribly disappointed with
the result.
Martin: Since
getting a small printer was the obvious choice ( Gerry explained that pre-printed
invites were not done in a style that she liked), I was happy for her to
decide on the design. We talked about the wording that we would have and
she kept me upto date each day via email.
So when she explained that the result was not
what she hoped for, I felt sad for her cause i know how much she was hoping
for her perfect design.
Still, our friends will hopefully appreciate
that we are not on a large budget and so will not make any judgement on
the invite.
You see, the Chinese has this special calendar where people refer to
for special dates, if your planned wedding day happens to fall on one of
these “auspicious” dates, then you better be sure that you have your sleeping
bags ready.
Martin: Well,
i have to say that i was on tenterhooks all day long, waiting to get home
and call Gerry to hear the good (or bad) news.
Since this event was a major step forward for
us both, knowing for certain of the day that we will finally be man &
wife, I was nervous all day long.
For months, freinds and family have been asking
me "so,what day will you get married?" and of course i could only say which
day we were hoping for.
So now its great to actually have a date that
we can aim for and plan for with certainty. I know Gerry shares my view
on this cause we are both so excited that only a few months until we can
be together again.
LAST UPDATED:20th
November 1999