My Brother's Wedding

Parents' Old Wedding Tea Set being used for the Tea Ceremony

The official reason for this trip to Singapore being my only and youngest brother's wedding dinner, I thought I'd better blog about it.

I didn't have a Chinese Wedding myself as I married an Ang Moh who didn't want one and I've missed out on almost everybody else's in the past decade so I've dim memories of what such weddings entail.

Family Photo after Tea Ceremony (wah, so fertile, said the photographer)

It was therefore with much enthusiasm that I returned home for the occasion especially since I'd get to sit at the VIP/Red table and get to be served tea (missed out on my younger sis' a few years ago) by my Bro and SIL. If I had known that serving tea to all those uncles and aunties could be financially profitable (especially at current gold prices) I would have coaxed the Hub into doing it during our time. But without the sabotage that usually comes with fetching the bride, "sisters" nowadays ask for a lot leh.

Our Tua Pek Kong

Eldest Son was given the job of lying on the bridal bed and peeing in the chamberpot in the hope of giving many sons to the bridal couple. He also got to open the wedding car's door.

It was fortunate that the dinner took place 3 days after our arrival as I was already starting to expand horizontally (huge tim sum meal at Victor's Kitchen followed by wonderful brunch at Club Chinois etc) and could barely squeeze into the dresses that I've brought over. Younger sis and I were in charge of taking the relatives' attendance at the reception desk and witnessed a funny episode :

One relative arrived and checked in with us. Then she looked around and saw this girl. "What are you doing here?" she asked the girl. So it happened that the girl's her eldest daughter and was attending the dinner as the bride's colleague. Small world, n'est-ce pas?

Hub was quite impressed with the wedding. Wah, so grand and co-ordinated, so many dishes. I had the satisfaction of informing him that he was being a mountain tortoise as most expensive weddings in Singapore are like that. Haha.

SIL's a teacher so 2 of her kids MCeed during the dinner. So we learnt that the couple met at my sister's wedding (SIL and sis are friends) and that my usually stoic brother could be quite romantic when he sets his mind to it (at least when it came to the way he proposed).

The Cold Dish 1st Dish

The VIP table's no fun at all. You get served tiny individual portions which meant that I had to walk around the other tables (the emptier ones, of course) to help them finish up their leftovers. At the same time I got to keep track on who is who and what they have been up to. Got most of the relatives mixed up, and got the shock of my life to see babies as I remembered them all taller than me now. Ouch.

I saw my Malay Nanny. "My Baby!" she said when she saw me, which brought tears to my eyes immediately. 7 years I've lived with her, she is like my mother. Now she is so old, thin and frail. When you think that she used to stuff my mouth with onion, garlic and chilli when I was very naughty.

Towards the end of the dinner, I turned around and took a look at the table behind mine said to contain the brother's bosses and colleagues. This girl and I stared at each other and then I cried out "Mavis!" and she cried out my name too. Goodness, can you believe that my former University mate is now my brother's boss?

Anyway I'm glad that I didn't have a Chinese Wedding. No chance to eat during your own wedding, where's the fun? And some idiot who gave an empty red packet. Welcome to the 40-table dinner, man. Maybe they should send stickers with names together with the wedding invitations so that guests could stick them on their red packets or presents :-).