Being a Super Busy Bride-to-Be

Hi! Assalamualaikum.

Wow it's November! Time sure flies. Especially when you need it most. Some of you who personally know me may already know that I am tying the knot soon, yay! Well, it's next month *sweats terribly*. Now, I'm going to share my experience being a super busy bride-to-be.

I am a corporate executive currently working in a fast-pace, constantly evolving company. My work requires engaging with stakeholders, brainstorming on the best next medium of delivering citizen-centric public services, uplifting public online services for the nation. Don't get me started on the core business of my department haha. The thing is, I've got people in the company coming up to me saying that my department is one of the most hardcore, kiasu, midnight oil burners. For the most part, they're true. I come to work at around 9.30am and sometimes go off at 9.30pm (that's 12 hours of work), 11.30 pm at most (well at one point, I did go home at 1am). Yes, I do feel tired of having to go home late everyday, but more than that, there's no better satisfying feeling than putting your effort into something that you know will be huge and most importantly will contribute to the nation.

Especially now, a highly important, major meeting is coming up which requires at least 2 months of preparation; and at this point right now, I have my breakfast and lunch at my desk. Phew. I'm juggling with preparations of two important things which will be taking place around the same time: 1) the highly important meeting which will majorly affect the country's public services, and 2) my wedding which will majorly be the next phases of MY LIFE.

Sometimes I really can't catch my breath. But thank goodness I am a self-consulting person haha. I'm always reminded by this verse "Allah does not obligate anyone beyond his capacity. For him is what he has earned, and on him what he has incurred ..." Al-Baqara:286.

Enough about work, now let's talk about the wedding preparation. When I was younger I always had imagined that my bride-to-be planner would look like a cute lacey scrap book with all the illustrated wedding details and magazine cut-outs and my bridesmaids will be all excited for me with their own page in my book. But reality is, I kind of just used a notebook that my future husband's company gave out for free. No laces, no magazine cut-outs, no bridesmaids page (heck, I don't even have a bridesmaid!), just lists of things to do, to buy, calculations here and there, and even some scribbles of notes from a few meetings that I happened to accidentally bring the book in to. Lol.

How I imagined my bride-to-be wedding planner to be (maybe fancier lol)

My actual wedding planner/notebook 

I definitely multitask a lot to get things done simultaneously. At the office, I constantly switch from working on presentation slides on my Macbook, to scrolling through wedding dress designs on my phone. Not to mention having to deal with the people that I hired for my wedding: the photographer, the makeup artist, the caterer, etc. My mom's constantly nagging at me for still not getting the wedding cards printed out (she's a perfectionist so she panics easily which is pretty normal lol), my sisters keep texting me at work asking about the progress of things, my uni girlfriends have their own life and career to handle plus we're all staying so far away from each other, my girlfriends at the office would so love to help out but I don't even have the time to hang out with them anymore to talk about things. The only person I could share all this craziness with is Faris, my fiance. My favourite part of the whole preparation was shopping for our 'hantaran' gifts. Faris and I went shopping at JPO which was 4 hours drive away from my house. It was good because we took some time out of our busy schedule to actually spend quality time together, just the two of us. We got to have meaningful conversations in the car, much-needed laughters, and when we stopped the car and got to our destination, I got to do my most favourite thing of all -- spend. Come to think of it, there's no better or more important job in this world that can compare to making yourself happy. To sum it all to you, my fellow future brides, the whole wedding preparation experience (so far) is full of pressure, laughter, and a sea of emotions all rolled up in laces and sequins in the shape of a brutally used credit card.

My advice is this: never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life. 

Enjoy the last days of being a bachelor/bachelorette. Have all the fun of arranging your own 'life event'. The highlight is on you! Get enough sleep (while that queen bed is ALL YOURS), pamper your skin, eat healthy, get hydrated, make sure your wedding goes the way YOU want to. 
Thanks for reading, loves.

xoxo


P/s; the theme of my wedding will be 'starry night' -- because it'll be at night. Get it? Haha nvm.