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I never thought I would be blogging in a “Wedding Jitters” topic again, but this one I thought I couldn’t let up, so…

… so I was at this wedding dinner tonight hosted by one of my wife’s closer cousins. I shan’t go into specifics about the goings on, but throughout the course of the dinner I had a number of revelations that I thought I’d share, along with a handful of good advice handed down to me by my own groomsmen and maids-of-honour, one of whom was a wedding planner herself at one stage in her very colourful life.

1. This has to be number one: Always choose your groomsmen and maids-of-honour wisely. You need responsible people who are able to do their jobs, are constantly conscious of the people attending the wedding from the moment bride and groom wake up to the moment AFTER the last guest has left the wedding dinner venue, and most importantly, respect you and your partner for who they are. Your parents might know what you are like, and they might know what your friends are like, but your in-laws, extended relatives and other acquaintances you are inviting to celebrate your special day sure as hell don’t. So when your maids-of-honour run through their morning “bargaining” ritual with the groom by picking on his poor English language skills and subsequently embarrass him in front of a whole ballroom with a video clip of him struggling through an English passage, or when your designated Masters of Ceremony conveniently forget to invite the groom’s VIP table up to the stage for the ritual toasting, or when your groomsmen start putting cigarettes in their mouths and light up in the ballroom of your wedding dinner only just after the last course is served, and they’re sitting only 2 tables away from VIP Table No. 1, not to mention the tables surrounding them that have kids ages 5 and below (including my own son), it says a lot about your social circle, and that (unfortunately) reflects really badly on you, however much of a nice person you may be.

2. Wedding affairs may be the most exhausting to plan and execute, but you need to stick it to the very end with your brightest smile and your best manners. Meet your friends and family and greet them with all sincerity (even the ones you don’t particularly like). Never, ever, miss out on anyone. See them all off at the door when they’re done dining – all of them. Show them a level of respect above and beyond any respect you’ve ever given or received. Because as much as this is your day, it’s not. Wedding days are really a big-ass extravagant announcement to the world you live in that you’re getting married, and the people you invite, whether it be for solemnisation, tea ceremony, lunch, dinner, karaoke or mahjong session, are the people you are doing it for, no matter what people tell you. Face it, the bride will always dream of the perfect white wedding, the groom will always dream of the smallest bills, but based on experience, the wedding day done right is the wedding day done with the people in your lives in mind – not you. You want to do something for yourselves, you got the rest of your lives to go sort it out (starting with your honeymoon; now that is where your married life really begins). Your wedding day goes to your guests (who are, by the way, the same people you are trying to get to pay for the whole thing anyway, so do right by your sponsors).

3. Choose your venues carefully. If you’re cost-conscious, going for a cheaper restaurant is all fine and dandy, but you got to at least make sure service standards and venue facilities are up to par with the standard expectations. People can forgive the leaking ceiling in the lift lobby, or the dingy car park with a post-dinner car queue extending 3 basement storeys because there’s only one single-lane exit point. But banquet staff who don’t bring you your drink after 4 consecutive requests, or usurp your personal space to serve food without so much as a glance or an “excuse me”, or try to clear your dish before you even touched the food on it just leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Look at it this way; the two of you are getting married because you’re committing your heart and soul into your relationship for the rest of your lives. Shouldn’t the people you’re engaging to help you on your wedding day at least put in their heart and soul, just for this one day, to making your wedding go right?

4. You have to play politics. As much as you don’t like it, politics plays a big part in this kind of event. I haven’t met a couple whose extended family doesn’t have a grouchy uncle or a troublemaker cousin or a bitchy grandauntie twice removed or any other kind of colourful character that seeks to make life interesting. That being said, you still got to invite them all for the sake of common courtesy and prevention of wagging tongues. I personally found myself receiving RSVPs from my more complicated relations, including people I thought were long estranged from my mother and had problems with my dad, but careful planning of seating arrangements and an unorthodox programme involving a trishaw and 1930′s Shanghai music ensured the enmities were kept to a minimum and the old folk were suitably distracted to forget about family warmongering for just that one night. In fact, it actually got my family closer to my mother’s estranged side, who invited us to another grand dinner event in order to try to patch things up.

5. Think through the red packets you’re giving out carefully. When you involve your friends and family in the groomsmen/maids-of-honour/flower girls/ring-bearers/drivers/door-openers/runners/odd-job labourers, this is the one time you have to communicate their worth in monetary value directly to them, so you can’t afford to be stingy, and you got to give it to anyone and everyone who’s helped you, however small the job; it’s not only customary, it’s expected of you. I made the mistake of asking my mother to help me divvy up the red packets I was to give out, and she ended up giving a paltry amount to my brother-in-law (who was my driver), who subsequently never looked at me the same way again. And let’s not forget the third-party providers that are actually billing you for their services (your matchmaker lady, photographer/videographer, restaurant manager, etc.). Wedding events for them are pretty much the only time they can earn tips in Singapore, so you gotta indulge them too.

Having said this, I am in no way a wedding expert, nor do I claim this to be an exhaustive list (although after writing this over the span of one late night and a morning, it is exhausting), but I have seen and heard enough from people at my own wedding and others to know some of the things where people get things right or where things can go wrong without you knowing. Feel free to add on your experiences in the comments. I will add points in this post when I see good points being made.

My wife’s been on maternity leave for a week now. It takes some getting used to, even though I still get to see her when I go home.

Our life at work is a little different form other couples working together in the same office. I first introduced her into the company before I even joined a year later, and that may have contributed to the (mostly) smoothsailing working relationship we have. Also, we set down some rules for ourselves as well as the people around us early on so boundaries are not overstepped, yet we are still very comfortable talking about our jobs both at work and outside of it.

Now that she’s on maternity leave though, I find myself a little more isolated from the rest of the office. Her absence has made me realise how dependent I am on her for social fulfillment. This whole time, I’ve been hving lunch with her, or buying lunch in for her. We crack jokes with each other, and even when I’m engaging in small talk or idle conversation with other people, she’s always involved one way or another, which is a great comfort to me, becaus eI wouldn’t really know how to hold my own with the people in the office.

I think the thing I’m missing the most is doing everything with her around. I’d be sitting in my cubicle, comfortable with the fact that she’s just a few cubicles from me. I’d look forward to sitting in the car with her, riding to and from work, and planning the rest of the evening with her, whether it be for dinner, or shopping, or family visits, or just which channel to idle in front of the TV with.

I’m now looking at about 3-4 months of not being able to do all these things with her while she is resting at home waiting for Xander to appear. Thanks to the new enhanced baby bonus scheme, she now has more time to spend with the kid and recuperate from the delivery, while I work off the payments I have to make for my various new purchases in anticipation for the biggest change in our lives (the unapproved $1000 bike included). Maybe it might not have felt so bad if we were working in separate corporations; maybe I wouldn’t have been so dependent on her for my emotional fulfillment at work. But if you ask me, working with my wife in the same office has been what’s keeping me happy (and what’s kept me i this job) since I started work here, and

I remember a time when my first thought after buying a $500 Ibanez electric guitar was how to break the purchase to my parents.

Nowadays my first thought after buying a $1000 folding bike was how to break the purchase to my wife.

The more some things change, the more they remain the same.

Weekends are almost always for sleeping in, shoppping, and late night TV… unless you have a place of your own. Then you have to add cleaning house into the mix, which can be fun. If you’re a sadist.

But clean house we did. Particularly since Xander’s so close to exiting the Mothership, it means we can no longer use the guest room as a store room and have to clear out the 15-20 boxes of Idunnowhatodowiththatstuff.

Honestly, I don’t know how maids do it. I know how my mother does it, but she doesn’t count. To clean 2 bathrooms, vacuum the floor, do the laundry (7 loads total, including our bedding, a kiddie bolster, a child car seat cover which almost disintegrated, some bathmats and my clothes for the week) and change new bedsheets took me a whole day, while my wife tried to sort out her half of the stuff in the guest room (she’s pregnant, so she’s got concession for taking the whole day).

I’m planning a sort-of-minor renovation when my wife’s in confinement; we’re hoping to outfit new cabinets, curtain rails, window grilles and balcony windows as well as buy a new fridge, install a ceiling fan and clean up some mistakes made during our last renovation. Hopefully this second phase is going to make things just a little more like home. Even more hopefully, it won’t cost me my total income for next year.

Ah, the price of parenthood. I am beginning to think our technical depression was caused by August’s announcement of the enhanced baby bonus scheme.

My wife’s been feeling a little under the weather lately. I figure it’s third trimester jitters, which should be normal. The truth is, we’re expecting Xander to pop out anytime between now and December (though frankly, December might be a better time). He’s been getting rougher in my wife’s womb too. It used to be little bumps here and there, but now her reactions and my own personal experiences feeling Xander’s full-bodied elbowing, kicking, somersaulting and frequent Hadouken practice sessions in her womb with my hand are making me wonder if Tae Bo is ingrained into a foetus’ instincts.

***

There’s been a lot of news and opinions about how the economy is doing and how best to approach it, varying from spending all the money you got in order to keep the economy running to start planning and saving as much financial reserves as you can possibkly get your hands on in order to weather the upcoming storm.

I’ve been told by my family I’ll be getting my own rescue package for my birthday to help me alleviate my debts. As much as I welcome the gesture, I also realise financial management is not a lesson to be taken lightly, but if handouts were readily available, it may not serve to teach anyone anything but the easiest way out and why it probably won’t work; when I was 16 years old, my dad signed me up for a supplementary credit card. when I was 16 years old and 6 months, he canceled it.

I’ve since signed up credit cards of my own, but of course, with a family of my own, the lessons that come with earning and spending have hit much closer to the heart (and the backside, where I usually put my wallet). My family has my interests at heart when they find out about my financial situation and offer their help, but I’ve told them all, “Sure, I’ll be more than happy to take your money, what what do you think I will learn out of it?”

Since I got married, I find myself having to work harder to prove to people that I’m not this kid that gets into financial trouble and has to get his family to bail him out, even though my first 20 years of life I’ve been trying to prove the exact opposite. I’m coming to realise though, that I’m trying to prove I’m financially stable to myself more than anyone else.

Damn recession isn’t making things easier though. Even if my paycheck’s still coming in and my expenses have been consistent, the daily headlines are making people really nervous, because nobody at my level, the level of the layman, knows what’s going to happen. My only hope is that Xander and my wife live through their days with me comfortably despite all of this.

Those of you in the know, we’re okay now. The past 2 weeks has been an important lesson in dealing with marital issues and a pregnant wife, and I have gotten advice from every marker of the spectrum from friends and family alike. I got everything from “You guys need to talk.” to “You better stop talking for a while.” to “Did you find out why she’s pissed?” to “Why do you stupidly persist in asking why she’s angry?”. Took me 2 weeks to recover from all that confusion.

But I do want to thank those people who cared enough to ask, and tried their best to help out. At the end of the day, the problems a couple face in the course of their marital bliss may be issues only they can really handle, but a listening ear doesn’t hurt.

I’m hoping to start blogging full-swing again, as soon as I can find the right things to say.

I have a wife who is smart, has a great sense of humour, is always on top of things when it comes to important stuff, and is always behind me when I need her the most.

You may have figured out by now that I got into troube with the missus. And you would be right. We haven’t spoken in 2 days.

But instead of going on a tirade of whys and woes, I’m opting not to talk about the issue that started it all in the first place, only how I’ve been coping with it all.

I feel terrible.

Cold wars are like cold turkey to me. Times like this make me realise how dependent on my wife I am. The sharing, the hugging, the baby talk before the baby’s even come out, the laughter and the jokes,… cold wars mean I don’t get any of the warmth a loving couple shares.

Cold wars also mean hours, days, or even weeks of feeling insecure. Because that’s basically why it’s called a cold war. It leaves you in the cold, with nothing. Nothing that will reassure you that everything will be okay. Nothing that will allow you the luxury of knowing the person you love loves you back.

I don’t deal with this kind of thing well at all. I never have. Instead, I end up making things worse, because nobody ever taught me how to make things right. And so, much like Thailand right now, my life is in a state of emergency, and like incumbent Prime Minister Samak, I don’t quite know how to proceed from here.

The biggest problem we have, I suppose, is an inability to come to a compromise when it comes to handling arguments. She prefers to be left alone; I prefer to talk. She needs time to calm down; I need a solution. She needs space; I need reassurance. And you know what? Nobody’s right, and nobody’s wrong.

I have no doubt we are both happy with each other when we are both happy together. I get unhappy only when she gets angry, and particularly when gets angry with me. I lose all my faculties; I even lose feeling in my limbs, I find myself breathing shallowly, and I get lost in the void of my own mind when she is no longer in the mood to be happy with me, when she no longer wants to share her space with me. I get scared, to put it simply. I get scared that I will lose the one person I love most, because I am afraid that she has stopped loving me.

The worst thing is, it’s her birthday today, and I don’t know what to do. Even if I did, would she reciprocate? I don’t know anything.

I love my wife very much. I just wish I knew what she is thinking right now.

In my 30 years of life experiencing the paradigm shift of society’s progress in dealing with the gender issue, as well as hearing from friends of their experiences in dealing with the gender issue, I have come to one definite conclusion; that for the most part of this day and age we live in, being a man totally sucks.

I say this based on some stories I have heard, as well as my own recent venture in married life. A friend of mine once related to me how he was in a hospital delivery room bearing witness to the beautiful event of his wife giving birth to their son, only to have his deepest impression of that day be the look of utter hatred he received from his wife as she struggled to squeeze the little tike from herself, seemingly to say to her husband, “What the fuck have you gotten me into? …your stupid bright idea to have a kid – AAAAAUUUUUUUGH!”

Another of my friends, while not in the throes of such marital bliss yet, is contemplating singlehood suicide soon. The problems he’s had to deal with are wide-ranging and far-reaching; from deciding which church to marry them with, to dealing with marriage counselling sessions that sound more like assisted breakup sessions, to realising a few weeks ago that he never thought to ask if the woman he was about to marry actually liked him.

And while he’s been sorting his issues out on his camp, I’ve had to sort out some issues of my own. My lovely wife has recently been in dispute with me over turning off the TV and fan when she went to the shower and I went to bed, while leaving her computer and living room light on.

And I hear a slight “huh?” Don’t worry, it gets complicated.

My idea was that she didn’t have the habit of sleeping early (it was about 11pm), so I decided no one was going to be in the room while she showered and I was going to sleep, so save a bit of electricity and she can turn everything back on when she came out. Her interpretation of that idea was that I was a selfish bastard for turning off the TV and fan without helping her turn off the laptop and light, and not even considering that she couldn’t go to sleep that night because she was having tummy pains and I never even thought to help her massage the pain away when she was complaining about it all day, selfish bastard.

Of course, both our arguments have merits. I was looking out for our utilities bill for 10 minutes, and she was wondering if she was going to have to suffer her labour pains on her own as evidenced by an uncaring, unsupportive husband who was going to sleep without her. To bastardise a quote from George Orwell, all are right, but some are more right than others.

It’s all part of a progression, you see. For all the millenia of patriarchy, we are finally seeing the effects of our sins as the modernity of mindset and culture turns the tables on the men of this world. It began with bra burning in the 60′s, followed by women’s lib in the 80′s, Sensitive New Age Guys and the emergence/acceptance of the woman who would be successful in both career and home in the 90′s, and then suddenly at the turn of the century, men all over the world find themselves paying their dues for the long history of suffering they brought upon their women, their father’s women, their forefather’s women, and just about every living thing that could be gender-categorised as female. Oh karma, how heavy your hand.

I can’t speak for all men, but I do live in fear of scorning my wife in any way, hence my avoidance of adultery at all costs (a secondary principle of mine relating to this has always been, you’ve already got your hands full with one, why add another complication?). But things like this I really find mind-boggling. I mean, I’ve been accused just this morning of not thinking most of the time, and I do admit after seeing what she had to say about it that I am guilty of being a selfish bastard to a certain extent, but who would think that turning off the TV and fan and going to bed would get me an earful of grief and a 24-hour cold shoulder? Who would think that even planning to get married could be such a complicated process? Who would think that having a child would earn you a look from your wife during childbirth that could be compared to a look from someone who thought you killed her entire family?

Welcome to Part 2, the sombre side of things. For those of you who just joined us, you might want to take a look at Part 1, though it isn’t entirely necessary.

The experience of a wedding is not for the faint-hearted. Fun as my wedding celebrations process was, the amount of planning in the areas of logistics, organisation, planning and finance is enough to make a grown man cry and his wife-to-be scream. Did it happen to us? Hoo yeah. But that’s where your friends come in. If you’re not the very social type and don’t have people around you that you can properly trust and that isn’t family, your wedding planning is gonna be a damn lonely affair. My wife and I are fortunate enough to have a small group of our own personal heroes that made the things we hoped could happen, happen.

That being said, I would encourage any couple who is legalising their union to please hold a wedding. Hold a big, expensive one, with a lot of stuff in it, all them bells ‘n’ whistles. Do it in a good restaurant with good food and responsible managers. And invite a minimum of 200 people. And get as many friends involved as possible. And think up the wackiest possible things to do to entertain your guests.

It might end up being fun, or it may not. But whichever way it goes, and no matter how many words I put into this blog to explain my experience and how it affects me, you just got to do it to yourself, because it’s going to be a fucking wake-up call.

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It was our wedding planning that redefined (or “undefined”) my thinking of what friendship means. Right up to this point, I thought the people I call friends, the people I don’t call friends, and the people I stopped calling friends, was pretty well-defined in my spectrum. Looking at what our friends had done for me to make this wedding happen made me see my social circle in an entirely different light. The friends we had with us that night were friends that give without a second thought. The friends my wife and I were that night were friends in need. And the ones I blamed for not being there for me the night the wedding planner attacked were more in need of friends than I was in need of them.

It is not easy to come to this point, where one stops laying blame and starts empathising. I can only say, now that I’ve seen a friend in need from my own experience, that laying blame is the stuff that breaks relationships, tears families apart, creates crimes, starts wars. So, don’t.

**********

The wedding dinner itself also proved an eye-opener for me. We had only wanted to provide some form of entertainment to an otherwise frivolous, somewhat inane event that involved two people that most of the event’s attendees didn’t even know. We wanted to do a show, to keep people involved as an audience, and to keep us involved as a couple, to our family, our family’s family, and everyone’s friends. What we didn’t anticipate was their response to us, and more importantly, their response to each other, when something as tiny as a skip during a march-in, or as simple as a rickshaw, could get people talking… to each other.

I personally know of relatives and relatives once, twice, three times a-removed, who have never spoken to us or each other for years and years (be it for loss of contact, grudges, family feuds or court cases), who, by some miracle, came together into one small little restaurant of 26 tables to witness the union of a couple, only to find themselves in a reunion of relationships. People who came to our wedding curious, expectant, trepid, bored even, ended up laughing, dancing, cheering, clapping, completely immersing themselves in the moment… all because our invitation card stated rather subtly, “Dress Code: 1930′s Shanghai Glamour”, and my wife’s sister decided on a whim to include a rickshaw she could rent from a props warehouse in the People’s Association.

Proof that making your wedding different can make a difference to people’s lives, even if it’s just for a little while.

**********

The biggest wake-up call of all, was the dinner bill. Not something I didn’t expect, but it really doesn’t hit you until your restaurant manager actually gives you that check with a smile.

In my entire life, I have never had to pay so much money upfront on a single event, until last Sunday. It hit me that the days of my youth, where my supply of spending money seemed constant and never-ending, where things I couldn’t pay for I could still bank on the next month, came to a head with this one celebration. Faced with a 5-digit bill to pay, no wallet (left it in my hotel room), and a bunch of people impatiently waiting for me to attend to their sabotage session involving that infamous “5-course wine, chillied peanuts and a raw egg in a cup”, my immediate thought was one my parents, all my sisters and my own wife had tried to tell me all my years of knowing them: “Don’t anyhow spend anymore.”

Many would think the angpow money would take care of most, if not all, of it. Some might even think they could profit from it, but it still doesn’t take away the fact that you just contributed a big fat fucking wad of money into the F&B industry. It doesn’t take away the fact that in a society such as Singapore, in an economy as inflated as we are today, in a nation where a car costs about twice as much to own because the government takes half of what you pay for it, as a middle-income earner in an island full of middle-income earners, you probably can’t afford the inital expenses of your own wedding and have to ask your family to help.

Thanks to my wedding, I am now as thrifty as an old lady in a one-room flat who keeps everything she can lay her hands on because “they all cost money”. More importantly, thanks to my wedding, “family” has taken top spot in my spending priorities; “gadgets” and “guitars” has been relegated to an obscure corner of Lim Chu Kang.

I am really gonna miss being a kid.

For those who were there, you know how awesome it was. For those who weren’t. you don’t know what you missed.

(This blog will eventually be updated with pictures of the day, so keep your eye on it.)

The morning was encouraging; we both dressed in our most Chinese nines, much to the awe and amazement of our respective relatives. The tea ceremony in both houses was an unusually happy event, but it was the night that brought the stars in everyone’s eyes.

People started streaming in as early as 6.45pm, an extremely uncharacteristic time for wedding guests to appear in a culturally confused Asia-based island where fashionably late means 2 hours later (Hock Peng, you got a mention! You’re famous on the Internet now!). Dressed in the same ma gua (complete with that big red ribbon rose hung on the chest area) and a $2 Sinatra-esque hat, I greeted the guests in one by one, then two by thre, then five by eight, then one too many. Our reception girls had a hard time keeping up, and our dads were no help either. I have personally never seen my dad such a nervous wreck (if you remembered, he should be quite the opposite, though with his health right now, it’s somewhat understandable).

And then came the grand entrance. I needed four of my best guys to keep everything safe as we turned the house upside down with me pulling my wife into the restaurant well into the entrance and right in front of our table of friends with a never-seen-the-streets-since-1830 rickshaw, beautifully wedding-fied by my wife’s second sister and her very-good-with-his-hands husband. Dancing to the tune of Shanghai Tan, we rounded the restaurant, through the bar, and finally landed up at the VIP table at the front of a restaurant, where we sat down to the first course of our feast to the music of the beautiful shanghai jazz band playing behind us.

Oh, perfection. Whoever said perfection was boring had no idea what the hell they were talking about. Eat those words, detractor; I hope they taste as good as the salted egg shrimp.

Our second march-in saw my wife in a beautiful light bronze evening gown which awed everyone so much they all had to step on it, and me with a tailcoat reminiscent of Sting’s beautiful Calvin Klein nuptial number sans jailbird inners, a white scarf and that same hat, keeping in tradition to the look of the decade. Marching in to the tune of Chachambo was more challenging than I thought, as I had to both guide my wife through the excited little patter of 100 pairs of high heel shoes whilst entertaining my brood of relatives with dance steps not conceived since the grand old days of William Hung. The 3 obligatory yam sengs were surprisingly lively, when my mum’s old neighbour whom we had not seen in years added to the spirit of the occasion by providing the longest toast possibly both sides of the family had ever heard.

The end was no less endearing, when bride and groom stood with our respective parents in the entrance bidding farewell to all our relatives, friends, uh-I-don’t-know-you-but-I’m-going-to-pretend-I-dos and other whozats (Thank you for coming! … whozat? Oh thank you! …whozat?). If I had any doubts that the night was going in an awkward direction, they were all erased with all the pats in the back and the “you win, nobody can beat that rickshaw” my wife and I received.

I ended the night with a wine glass filled with red wine mixed with remains of the last five courses and a raw egg, courtesy of the best friends a couple can ever have. And for the first time since we started wondering what vehicle we should use for our first march-in more than a year ago, a great big weight was lifted from my shoulders, and not a little relief washed over my wife’s very tired self (she braved a cough, running nose and possible fever found to be inconclusive due to a broken thermometer to make the night happen for the both of us).

If you’re wondering about where I lost my childhood in this, look out for Part 2, coming to a 1930′s themed Shanghai restaurant near you.