Our Hong Kong wedding reception (I/II)

As you all probably know, on December 29th, 2014, J and I had a wedding reception in Hong Kong to celebrate with all our family and friends there. The reception took place in a Chinese restaurant which specializes in wedding banquets, where we held a dinner for more than 200 guests. During most part of the dinner, I wore a red dress, and these are the pictures I'l be sharing with you today. Next time, I'll show you my other two dresses, the one I wore on my wedding day, and the white wedding dress I first bought. I loved my red dress, I bought it online for a very good price, and was delighted with it as soon as I tried it on. As you will see from the pictures, Hong Kong and European weddings have nothing in common. In Europe all guests are expected to come in their best gowns and suits, while in Hong Kong, people show up really casual. Chinese wedding receptions also tend to be way more massive than western ones, with lots and lots of guests, several of which are the bride and the groom's parents friends. That's why I feel Western weddings are more centered on the bride and the groom, while in Chinese ones parents play a big role. It was lovely being able to share the joy of our wedding with everyone we love in Hong Kong, but with so many people the truth is it was impossible to properly care for every guest. 

As you can see, I was wearing lots of gold jewelry, all presents from our guests. It is customary in China to give gold to the bride and the groom, and the bride wears it with her red dress. 

A nice family picture with my parents, brother and uncles, and my in-laws and sil

We had lots of performances going on during the dinner, we had two amazing MCs who conducted the whole thing from the stage, and a couple friends with stunning voices that sang some lovely songs.

Aaron and Venus singing beautifully

I have to say I loved the decor of the restaurant. The stage wall was full of white and rose roses, which reminded me of our white and pink wedding in Catalonia! This color combo is one of my favorites ever, so no wonder I was delighted with it. 

This is how we decorated the reception area of the restaurant, with our real-size selves like in our Catalonia wedding!

And last, we had a blast dancing in the stage once the dinner was over. I want to thank our awesome Master of Ceremonies and friend, KC Leung, for all the effort he put into our wedding, and for cheering everyone up with his dance moves.

The Morning of My Wedding Day

A while ago, I mentioned my wedding photographer, Noemi Jariod, and I had decided to take some pictures of myself right before my wedding, on that same morning. Somehow I forgot to show you the lovely pictures from that session, but luckily someone reminded me about it today! I took them before putting any makeup on, so I was a bit worried about how my face would look, but I think they came out really good! ^.^ The pics were taken in the garden of a house next to my wedding venue, and I believe the result is truly gorgeous. That house has a very special swing that hangs from a tree, so the location was already magical by itself. Then we added a pair of fairy wings from Mireia Abras, a florist and decorator with a lovely style, and I wore some white clothes to get the fairy look. I think I succeeded, what do you think?

All the pictures were taken with a 35 mm film camera, which is so rare nowadays! The light is all natural and the pics are not photoshoped, I think they are pure art. Hope you like them!

Our honeymoon in Maldives

Our honeymoon was an unforgettable once in a lifetime experience, it was SO good! I don't think J and I are the only ones to have been caught daydreaming about over the water villas on a turquoise sea during our childhood and well up until now! It's something you see in magazines, on TV, on the internet... and catches your eye right away. We're so happy to finally having had the chance to visit such a dream place! We spent months doing research trying to find the hotel that would better meet our expectations, and we were not disappointed (or just a bit, more on that in a while).

The resort we stayed at is the newly opened Maalifushi by COMO, which occupies the whole Maalifushi island, about 45 minutes away from Male. It was the soft opening of the hotel during our stay, meaning that some of the villas where still under construction, for which we got some special promotions, like full board for the price of half board, which was such a bargain! We stayed at the resort for 6 days, which was just about right, taking into account you couldn't get out of the island! Well, we did kayak to the nearest inhabited island, but that's about it.

The private sea of our water villa ^.^

The hubby swimming with the sea turtle!

We loved the resort, the facilities, our water villa, the amazing food... everything was outstanding. The only thing we were disappointed about was the transportation. From the very beginning, only resorts which had a seaplane for transfers from the airport to the hotel made it to our shortlist. J was really excited about the seaplane thing, and I wanted it because taking a domestic flight was not a very good option: domestic flight run on a schedule, so it's hardly possible you'll get a flight that fits your international flight schedule perfectly. We booked Maalifushi by COMO because it was one of the hotels that offered the seaplane option. What was our disappointment when, two weeks before our stay, we received an email from the hotel telling us the seaplane wouldn't be an option because their legal permits where taking longer than expected. I was so infuriated. We ended up having to take a domestic flight, my worst nightmare!!! From the airport to the hotel on our arrival it was alright, since we didn't have to wait long. But on the day we checked out, they made us leave the resort at 2PM because our domestic flight was at 3PM, and our international flight wasn't until 11:30PM!!! You can imagine how outrageous I thought this was. 

Anyway, this bad experience aside, if Maalifushi by COMO gets its license for the seaplane, it will definitely be a resort to love, seeing how the domestic flight was the only thing I didn't like about it.

Best nap ever :p

All in all, it was an amazing honeymoon the hubby and I enjoyed to the maximum. We loved every single experience, our relaxing villa, the white sand, the wondrous snorkeling... We swam with sea turtles and sharks, I mean, OMG!!! It was also specially nice to get there on Valentine's Day, the hotel had a special exquisite dinner menu for the occasion, and it was the best Valentine's Day of my life!

Some updates

My blog has been completely unattended this last month of January. The truth is much has been going on in my life and none of it was worth blogging about. I've been arranging everything for our upcoming big move to Barcelona, from packing, to closing my shop, selling the remaining stock on other platforms, dealing with all our contracts that need to be cancelled, etc. J's last day at his company was last Thursday, the last day before the Chinese New Year of the Horse, which started on January the 31st. I was so ecstatic on that last day of his at work! No more missing him on weekdays! Now I'll have some help from him for the remaining stuff, mostly his stuff since I'm almost done with mine. We're leaving on the night of the 24th, but we're going on honeymoon from the 11th to the 19th, and to mainland China to greet the new year to some family members from the 7th to the 9th. This means we have exactly 9 days left to sort everything out. NINE days which include several farewell lunches and dinners with friends and family, no wonder I'm a bit worried, don't you think? I think the hubby is not really aware of this situation, I'll have to ask him to read this and count by himself! Anyway, I still have some afternoon tea posts to share, as well as some wedding stuff! Hopefully coming soon. Also, we've been to the beach today, the weather is amazing these days :) Warmest Chinese New Year in years!

Sensational Phuket

These have been the best holidays of my life. I don't know how our honeymoon to the Maldives next month will be, but I do know beating this Thailand holidays ain't gonna be easy. Our party of seven, my parents, my brother, my uncles and the newlyweds, spent a week in Phuket and a couple days in Bangkok. There's not much worth mentioning from the Thai capital, but OH-MY-GOD-PHUKET... It was a dream come true! Definitely best hotels I've ever stayed at. We decided to split our week into two hotels (3 nights + 4 nights) so that we could try different things and see different parts of Phuket. It was definitely a great idea. Both hotels had its amazing and not so amazing parts, so it was nice to experience the whole thing. 

Our first hotel was The Naka Phuket, a relatively new hotel (about a year old), which is still under construction. The whole place is very minimalistic, designed by a famous Thai architect with this characteristic style of his. 

In this hotel we got 3 pool villas (one for the hubby and I, one for my uncles, and one for my parents and brother). The pool villas were really nice, but the best thing from this hotel was the location and its main pool and beach area. The picture I uploaded on my last post in that breathtaking infinity pool is from there, I took it with my iPhone but it's still my favorite. Here are some more pics:

The beach was very big, with plenty of deck chairs, I never saw them fully occupied. You could have your lunch at the beach, the waiters were more than happy to serve you there, and we loved it! The whole beach area was perfect for snorkeling, and it had lots of crustaceans on the rocky side. 

The other great thing was it was at 20 minutes car distance from Patong, the busiest area in Phuket. While at the hotel, you'd never guess such a busy neighborhood was so close, for the hotel was a true oasis of calm. There were not too many guests and it was always terribly serene. And then every single night we would take the free car provided by the hotel to go to Patong, where we would have dinner, stroll around shopping and be offered Ping Pong shows (which of course we didn't go to, now don't go thinking!).

Our second hotel was the famous Sri Panwa, one of the best hotels in Phuket, and awarded top 100 luxury hotels in the world. This one was close to Phuket downtown, but we never ended up going, since there were several restaurants near the hotel as well. Now, without any doubt, the most stunning thing from this hotel were its pool villas. OMG. They were the best pool villas I've seen in my life!!! 

In this hotel we got 2 pool villas, one 1-bedroom pool villa for us, and a two-bedroom pool villa for my parents, uncles and brother. Since the hotel is located on a cape, it actually has panoramic ocean views. The two-bedroom pool villa faced the east, and it had the best views, but somehow it was always windy. Our one-bedroom pool villa faced the west, perfect for sunset drinks, and it was never windy. Plus, the sun stayed on our side much longer than on the other pool villa, so overall we all preferred ours :p 

As for the common pool and beach area of Sri Panwa, they were not good. I guess people don't need to go out of their pool villas since they are so amazing anyway! The beach was tiny and had about 8 deck chairs (and it's a HUGE hotel, so no chance of landing one), and the common pool was small, too. There was this other area in the main restaurant where you could swim as well, but I never saw anyone swimming there:

Something that gave me tremendous joy was the fact of soaking up the sun while back home it was freezing winter. It was my first time to travel to a warm country during our winter, and it was amazing. Tell me, have you ever been to Thailand? Which islands do you recommend? We're already looking forward to our next visit. Maybe Koh Samui next time!