Joel and Pam ("Jam"), one of the loveliest couples we're lucky enough to call friends, celebrated their nuptials with a handcrafted reception at Food for Thought at the National Museum of Singapore. Shot by Jonathan Ong, the heartfelt affair featured a host of DIY's, including the bride's gown (which she designed herself, along with her veil and headband), a DIY jewellery table with pendant charms from the bride's own social enterprise, Saught, and an impeccable backdrop of pages and pages of wisdom and verses made by In Merry Motion, who also decorated and styled the couple's wedding and reception with delectable nature-inspired details. The quirky invitation suite was designed by the couple's friends, Alex and Puiyee.

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A word from the bride...
"We wanted our wedding focus to be a thanksgiving celebration for our family and friends, and for it to be less about us, and more about the love and grace that we have received through our years of courtship! We have been very blessed with divine Providence in our lives, and hoped to share that with our guests. We envisioned a wedding that was intimate and authentic to us! We went for a natural, clean, and light style.

Our graphic designer friends Alex and Puiyee designed our invitations, along with the ampersand that included our initials, and all the illustrations used during wedding – including the adorable jam jars and the portraits of us. The portraits were also used for our engagement (Joel planned a scavenger hunt to propose to me, and Alex and Puiyee designed a series of cards for each station).

Our friends from In Merry Motion designed the look of our wedding: nature-inspired with a handcrafted touch! Our colour scheme involved watercolour tones of powder blue, light wood, blush, and light green. All the decorations for the wedding were handmade by our friends Joyce & Weiyan – the designers from In Merry Motion. This included the feature backdrop inspired by the verse from Ecclesiastes: 'He makes all things beautiful in His time', with aged pages from wise books and hymnals, and the hand-cut autumn leaves in muted watercolour hues draped over our wedding reception dinner at the Food for Thought at the National Museum of Singapore.

We designed our wedding bands, and had it made by the Saught artisans in Cambodia (his was pink gold, mine was yellow gold – both with a touch of artillery shells in it!). I designed my wedding dress, and had it handmade in Cambodia as well, using natural handwoven silk. With the surplus lace from the wedding dress, I DIY-ed my headband for the wedding ceremony. We also had a DIY jewellery table for our wedding guests at the wedding receptions: it featured words from the ‘fruits of the Spirit’ taken from the Bible – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, handstamped onto round pendants; we provided an assortment of chains, cords and loops for our guests to get creative! The pendant charms were also all handmade by Saught artisans in Cambodia.

Our processional was “Morning has broken/Sing Hallelujah”; and our recessional was “Sing Hallelujah”. Our super talented friend who is a musical/theatre actress Ethel Yap sang this for us! We didn’t have a first dance… because we both have two left feet! I did plan a little surprise for Joel at our friends’ dinner with a few friends – and sang “Close to You” on a watermelon ukulele."

Do you have any wedding planning tips or advice to share with brides and grooms-to-be?
"We found that the best way to avoid getting too stressed out by the wedding preparation was to keep our focus on our goal: for us, it was to honour our family, to honour Christ, and bless our friends. It was much easier to make decisions regarding the venue, programme, etc. based on that; and to have a wedding that we knew was very much authentic and true to ourselves, so we were able to create good, fun memories for our family and friends. We also made it a point to make sure that we didn’t get too caught up in the wedding preparations, and to carve out time to date (without doing wedding stuff), and prepare ourselves for a lifetime together!" ~ Pam

Vendor Information
Ceremony Venue: Prinsep Street Presbyterian Church
Reception Venue: Food for Thought at the National Museum of Singapore
Photographer: Jonathan Ong
Wedding Dress and Veil: Designed by the bride and handmade in Cambodia
Bride’s Headband: DIY
Hair and Makeup: Cleo Chang
Groom’s Suit: Made in Shanghai
Wedding Bands, Bridesmaids’ Dove Rings and Groomsmen Wheat Lapel Pins: Saught
Decor and Styling: In Merry Motion
Invitations and Stationery: Alex Kwan and Puiyee Cheung
Music: Compass Entertainment
Videographer: Rainer Chia