Wedding at SG!

One fine Sunday, sometime in May09, mom received a call, all the way from Australia. To her surprise, it was her nephew, Eugene (her 2nd sister's youngest son) on the other line. Eugene has called my mom to extend his wedding invitation to our family as well as the rest of the relatives in Kuantan for his wedding in Singapore in July09 (he will be back in Singapore by then).

Mom thought that he called to inform of Joel's (his 2nd brother) wedding. He told mom that he met his wife-to-be only over a year and mom's response was "over a year is good enough". So, mom was "assigned" to inform the rests of her siblings and to get confirmation on their attendance. Eugene told he would call again for the confirmation of attendance in 2 weeks' time.

To cut things short, to everyone's surprise, there were 17 (plus 2 kids) of us who confirmed our attendance. Before confirming, we did some research on the mode of transportation - bus? fly? drive? We have decided to fly there instead (via Air Asia of course). So we bought our tickets and confirmed our attendance right before Eugene's 2nd call to mom.

The wedding started off on Saturday, 19 July 2009 with the "Getting the Bride" thingy. But for us, our program started at 11am (thank God, more time to rest), with the bride and groom (Eugene and Eileen) coming over to our resort apartment for tea ceremony. For this, sis, myself and "Yi Ma" was assigned the "Tea Lady", though sis and I were only helpers/assistants, rinsing the cups and pouring the red date tea into the tea cups. We had to be careful with the tea set - teapot and the cups as we were told that it was a 50 year old set (loaned from Eugene's "Ku Ma"). Thereafter, lunch was catered for at about 12pm.

Next itineray, church wedding was scheduled to start at 3pm and we had to leave the apartment by 2pm. During this short break, Vincent, myself and Loong quickly walked to Downtown East to do some quick shopping. Walked around Downtown East and E-Hub, there was only 1 store that we could shop for some clothes - Giordano. The Great Singapore Sale (GSS) was still on, we browsed through, after converting from SGD to MYR, the price of the clothes were still cheaper in SG than in MY. (Refer to next post for details of our quick shopping).

Ting, ting... it's already 2pm and sis had called Loong's handphone asking when we would be back as we need to leave for the the church wedding soon. We quickly paid up and walked back and got ready.

Then, ting, ting.. again, we were at the Church of St. Theresa and the time was 3.15pm. Eugene and Eileen walked thru the aisle, side by side, holding each other's arms.. (Eileen's dad did not walk her in and hand her over to Eugene as they had earlier went thru the "Get the Bride" thingy, Chinese traditional style). They declared their marriage vows, some singings, scripture readings.. ta-daaa.. and it ended about 4.30pm. By the time we reach the apartment, we had to bathe, get ready for the dinner.

Wedding dinner was scheduled at 7.30pm (7pm cocktail) at Grand Ballroom, Hilton Hotel. Dinner was served at 8.15pm, last dish served at almost 11pm (if we were in KL, we might not have stayed until the last dish is served, we would just leave , especially if the dinner is on a Sunday!). During the dinner, Eugene played his clarinet, then Eugene and Eileen gave their speeches. "I've never won any lotteries or lucky draws" said Eileen (I guess what she meant was that having Eugene as her hubby was a lottery strike for her, indeed :P), " It's unfortunate that I never get to meet Eugene's mom, I knew I would like her very much as Eugene is always telling me how much he is, like his mom" Eileen added. This really put tears in my eyes. Yea, "Singapore Yi Ma" (as we used to call her) would definitely love to be witnessing her youngest son's wedding, I bet she was, only that she was witnessing it from Heaven. I thought to myself, thank goodness I am already married and mom and dad were there to witness it. Hope that Loong won't take so much of a time so that he would not need to give the same speech that Eileen gave.
Finally, dinner ended. We were greeted by Eugene and Eileen as we were walking out. Eugene said, " Thanks for coming, seeing you all reminded me of my mom." Hearing this, tears started rolling from sis' eyes while she tried to hold back on them. I guess all of us missed her too.

So, that's it. Another cousin got hitched, another new addition to the already quite big and extended family (more additions when they have their kids).

------ THE END ------- (Ivan's favourite way of ending a story :P )