Getting Ready for Our First Chinese New Year with UNIQLO

This year is special for us because it’s the first year we have our baby Candice here to celebrate our Chinese New Year as a family in the year of pig!

We are always looking forward to teach and introduce her to traditions. She is four months old and she’s beginning to recognize faces and crowded situations. We are bringing her to meet our extended family on the first and second day of Chinese New Year but we want to make sure that she is comfortable in her outfits in this kind of weather.

Our choice is no other than UNIQLO, which we love so much to wear on daily basis and for traveling too! For this occasion, it’s important to wear something more colorful because our ancestors believe that festive seasons must be celebrated by wearing something bold & bright! We experimented with different kinds of colors these modern days. Besides red, we chose yellow, peach and light purple for baby Candice’s first Chinese New Year’s outfits.

For my husband and I, we also want to stay comfortable during visiting days, so we chose something that is easy to move around, semi-formal and fresh! Here are our picks.



For our first look we wanted to keep the tradition alive during our sumptuous reunion dinner, so I decided to wear the lucky color red. I chose this Rayon Long Sleeve Blouse and paired it with checkered EZY Ankle Length pants in dark gray. My husband is wearing a Waffle Henley Neck T-Shirt in gray and EZY Ankle Pants in maroon. Candice is wearing a floral bodysuit from UNIQLO baby collection to keep her warm and comfortable.





Usually at the first day of Chinese New Year, we spend half of our day visiting relatives’ houses to spend quality time and to enjoy the festive treats!

So as for our second family outfit, I chose to wear AIRism Bratop in light orange color that matches the color of Candice’s pastel dress, because I know I will need all the extra comfort to carry her all around for the whole day. This innerwear is my favorite because it really helps to keep me cool and fresh all day long. For hotter days or in the afternoon, I will wear the innerwear on its own while adding the knit cardigan to add more style and when it’s getting colder.

I instantly feel the extra comfort in this classic white EZY Ankle Length Pants, which is stretchy but still have a tailored look. My husband chose a white soft twill shirt and EZY Skinny Fit Jeans which is basically his favorite casual look.

And for our final look, I chose something that is more feminine and timeless for celebrating the festivity with friends.

I paired up this chic High Neck Rib T-shirt with a Circular Front Button Skirt in yellow and white. My husband is wearing a Soft Twill Shirt in blue this time, pairing it with Chino Slim Fit Front Pants. I dressed my baby girl in a pink Soft Tulle Dress which is so cute for her. Don’t you agree?





Those are some inspiration and how to mix and match bright colors for the upcoming Chinese New Year with UNIQLO Indonesia. What about you?

For more Chinese New Year outfits inspirations: http://bit.ly/UNIQLOChineseNewYear

Candice Alaia birth story

It’s long overdue, but I think it’s time for me to write about this. Part of it is also because I want to remember it again, what happened four months ago. Following my previous post, I got married in November 2017, shortly after, I got pregnant in late January. I was hoping to travel more before I was pregnant, but I ended up staying in town for the next nine months. Oh we had two doctor appointments in Singapore but that’s about it.



My pregnancy was probably the least I expected, especially when I got really bad morning sickness (not just morning but the whole entire day). I saw a lot of my friends who were pregnant at the same time as me, but they seem to be enjoying it and traveling a lot. While all that happened, I was only able to stay at home and eat home cooked meals and feel miserable. They say the vomiting and gastric feeling lasted for three months. It went far above it to me. I wasn’t vomiting but I had gassy feeling whole day everyday and that’s also probably why I didn’t post photos on my Instagram because I didn’t feel like it at all.



Long story short, I entered the last trimester of my pregnancy and I felt excited to meet my little one, who I named Candice Alaia since I knew I was having a girl in late March! So I went to schedule prenatal yoga and all that to help me during delivery. Candice was born in September 21, 2018. I had a normal birth with no epidural. They say things can happen on the delivery day that goes against your plan. It was like that with me too. My water broke at 9AM in the morning so I was rushed into the hospital. I had time to shower and do a little bit of make up just to feel more fresh because I wasn’t in pain at all. Our birth plan was normal with epidural. What happened was I got induced and had no epidural. I was in a lot of pain, but quite less that what I imagined initially. My mom had me eat mee-sua the moment I had massive contractions so that I still have the energy until I pushed the baby out.



Here is the video my husband took with his iPhone on the day our precious baby was born into the world. It was clearly the happiest day of our lives. Seeing her the first time was like a dream come true. Meeting her next day after I woke up was magical. She had this little pointy nose and red lips all those tiny fingers and her smell was unforgettable.



Will share more and more about her in the next post! Plus, I guess this blog is going to have a new topic, which is about my journey becoming a new mom.

My autumn wedding in Tokyo (part 2)

The most important memories are in these photographs. It was the happiest day of my life. Ok maybe second happiest, because the happiest was when my baby daugther Candice was born. Anyway, I treasure these images, they made me smile every single time I see them. We had the most beautiful, sentimental wedding in our favorite city, Tokyo. My previous post was when we had our wedding ceremony at Hotel New Otani Tokyo, in the iconic Japanese garden. At night we held a wedding gala dinner at the China Blue restaurant in Conrad that has the most perfect Tokyo city skyline views. There were around 100 guests who was our closest families and friends.













In Tokyo they offer a wedding package that included almost everything, so we basically arrived and chose the decor, seats, songs, ceremonial type, etc and the D-day we just came as a bride and groom. So much easier than having to plan a grand wedding in Surabaya, Indonesia. What I love about having my wedding there, is that we had the most beautiful nature backdrop as our view, the weather was great, my gown was light and I can move around in it without any trouble.







I have shared so much on my Instagram, Instastory and my interviews with Bridestory and Dewi Magazine, but this blog post is meant to share a more personal story from my point of view.

Let's start with the dress. I wore my absolute dream wedding dress from Elie Saab bridal. One year before my wedding, Mr Elie Saab launched a more affordable (non-couture) ready to wear bridal line that was my preference as a bride. Some brides may want to wear a one-of-a kind couture dress for their wedding, but I don't want to spend so much time and energy to fly to Europe and have multiple fittings because as a bride, I want to plan my wedding as natural and less time consuming as possible. My dress was made of organza. Very light as easy to move around, it came with such a beautiful veil, that I chose to wear from morning to night.






My shoes were supposed to be these Louboutins, but they are not tall enought so I chose to wear the Saint Laurent Candy platforms, that give the perfect instant lift and was super comfortable to wear. After our ceremony in the morning, we had more hours to spend basically the limo driver told us to use up the time slot he was booked for. So he drove us to Barneys New York and stopped by the road and we took impromptu photos right in front of Barneys just casually wearing my wedding dress. It was really memorable and I'm obsessed with the photos of us crossing the roads (that I'll share with you in the next post).

Photos by Carol Kuntjoro and Evans Irawan of Pyara Photo, and Maximilian John of Moire Photography.

My autumn wedding in Tokyo (part 1)

I have been wanting to share this with you on my blog, we held our wedding last year in Tokyo on the 28th of November. Right when the trees turn red and the perfect autumn folliage happen to take place. We had our privilege to be photographed by the amazing Carol Kuntjoro and Evans Irawan of Pyara Photography as well as Maximillian John of Moire Photography.



































Read the full story on Bridestory.

I'm back! First post after one year

Hello again guys. I have been on a massive break for the past year, perhaps the most remarkable year in my whole life. We had our wedding in November, then went on honeymoon right after. I got pregnant in January and my baby Candice was born in late September. Ok so that's about it, I had a lot that I wanted to blog about, actually.

I chose to post this first, because I'm still sorting my wedding photos that I want to share with you guys on my anniversary next week! I'm writing this 1,5 months post partum, finally not pregnant and able to wear pencil dresses like I used to.

My pregnancy style was so boring as I had a gassy stomach the whole nine months. I planned some pregnant outfits when I found out I was pregnant, bought some satin trench and bodycon jersey dresses like the Kardashians, wanted to pair those with laced up booties.. but ended up not wearing them at all. They say being pregnant can either make you feel you're prettier and make you want to dress up, or make you feel completely lazy and unattractive. I happen to feel the latter.















These two dresses I have been wanting to wear since we launched them early this year. You can get them online www.poise24.com or in-store.

Singapore in style

I was in Singapore last month for my final wedding dress fittings, and I prepared four days in case there were further alterations needed, and because of that, I had so much free time. I used to live in Singapore in 2010 to 2012, but the one place I've never been is no other than the National Gallery Singapore. I missed the famous Yayoi Kusama exhibition, I've seen it all in pictures on Instagram, but I wanted to have my first museum experience and see what else was there.













There was the Children's Biennale exhibition going on, which is supposed to aim for kids obviously. But it was light and such a fun experience, first we went to this room called Homogenizing and Transforming world where there was many balls that light up colors, they can change if we tap on them. Next there was this Obliteration Room (polkadots galore!!!).



Then there was this see through room full of ribbons called This Changed My Life. The romantic part in me wanted to write our names and tied it on the ribbons. Kind of sweet because I've never done this before.





Finally, the most photogenic spot of all, was the Sonnet in Blue installation. If you are in Singapore, drop by and even if you might not enjoy the activities, you can take your cameras and explore how the Sonnet in Blue looks in photograph. Breathtaking.

Outfit from H&M and Topshop, photos taken with Leica M.