#002 $$$$$$$

Working out the finances aspect of a wedding served to be a big challenge for us because we simply did not know what the market had to offer. How do you put a budget for say, photography, when you don't even know how much any of the companies out there charge? So we got down to a lot of researching and enquiring. Attending the 'Wedding and Shopping Asia 2014' at Singapore Expo a few weeks ago really gave us a brief overview of what services and costs the market could offer.

For the past few weeks, we made decisions on
- setting a budget
- setting the wedding date and time
- deciding on the wedding venue
- hiring wedding services providers
- type of wedding (size, formality and setting)
- wedding bands/rings

My best friend shared with me a comprehensive Excel spreadsheet that serves as a great tool to manage and monitor the financial aspect of  a Malay/Muslim wedding. I uploaded ours on Google Drive so we both have access to it and can edit it anytime! Here's how it looks like:

There's even formulas included that calculates the total amount of expenditure. Pretty handy! You could drop me a message if you'd like me to send the document to you (:

#001 Mak nak kahwin, so now what?

Well, hello everyone. Let me welcome you to maknakkahwin.blogspot, where I will be documenting every step of our journey of planning the wedding! I must say, alhamdullilah, for the odds have been in our favour ever since the day we decided to get married (albeit the bumps we had to overcome). From the various vendours we enquired about the bridal packages they were offering to the retail staff who serviced us when enquiring about wedding rings, everyone have been so kind and patient with us. Alhamdullilah. (I will share with you the knowledge and wisdom I've gathered from our diamond hunting trip in the next post!)

We are about a month into planning the big day now and up till today, I can still remember how overwhelmed I felt after agreeing to tie the knot. 

"Let's get married...................Errr..................... Ok, so now what?"

Well, first things first, don't get your panties into a twist (jangan terselitkan seluar dalam kamu)! Because I certainly did, I felt really nauseous after doing a bit of research of what constitutes a wedding. There is just SO much to do and SO many decisions to make. SO, I got myself a handy dandy wedding notebook (from Typo for only $3),

and right smack on the first page, I created myself a wedding checklist:

and VOILA, my nausea disappeared. The list looked less intimidating than the whirlwind of wedding to-dos in my head.