A tale of two weddings

I'm not sure if the moon was in alignment with Venus on Saturday or if the date could be conjugated into some amazingly auspicious number, but everyone I know who decided to get married this month decided that January 7 was the day of choice.

There was:

• My cousin --- wedding ceremony, lunch and tea ceremony for the family (11 am - 2 pm).
• Cowboy Caleb --- wedding ceremony at 10 am, tea ceremony before and after it, dinner at 7:30 pm. Oh yeah, and all the festivities were in Malaysia.
  
• My current boss - wedding ceremony at 11 am, dinner later.
  

So it was that Saturday morning found me hurrying downtown to help with the cousin's wedding, before hurrying up north to Malaysia after lunch to celebrate with Mr and Mrs Cowboy. The boss had invited me last, of the three, so his invitation I declined on account of not being able to create a Doppelganger of myself.

I've been to so many weddings that up to a certain point, they all start to blur into a great white chiffony swirl of lacy well wishes. But this isn't to imply that each wedding doesn't have its own moments of --- well, let's see.

The cousin's wedding had the first flower girl I've ever seen who twirled her way down the aisle. On the other hand, Cowboy's wedding dinner had a flower girl who tried to bolt for safety the moment the dry ice machines were turned on and flooded her path with smoke. As a kid, I used to regret that I never had the opportunity to play flower girl; on hindsight, recalling what a frightfully shy girl I was, I doubt I could've done any better than these girls --- although perhaps I would have outdone at least Ondine's flower girl, who was a precious but terrified two-year-old at the time and eventually had to be toted down the aisle by a parent.

At the cousin's wedding, her best friend threw all the guests for a loop by declaring with absolute certainty in her speech that she thought my cousin would make a great wife and, in the same breath, a wonderful mother --- which immediately had us all wondering if the best friend knew something the rest of us didn't know (you had to be there to catch the context). I was also wondering if my ninetysomething-year-old grandfather had comprehended the remark, although he's pretty nonchalant about things these days.

At the lunch table, I casually inquired of my cousin's kid if he was in primary one (first grade) yet, to which he scowled at me indignantly and spat, "[Primary] TWO!" Whoops. He was always a small (but fierce) kid.

Even though I've had wine around the family before, there was no end to cousins, uncles and aunts coming up to enquire if I had been out in the sun or if I had in fact had too much to drink at lunch to be helping with the tea ceremony. This, from the side of the family that gave me the gene that makes me flush so easily after just one drink.

At Cowboy's wedding dinner, he seated us with some of his non-blogging, non-Singaporean friends, so we got to that inevitable moment in the conversation when they asked us, "So how do you know [Cowboy]? Colleagues? School?" We smiled, we hemmed and hawed. "Ah --- must be bloggers!"

The male (Cowboy) Barflies really know how to drag out a yam seng (the traditional Chinese drinking toast). Or rather, a yaaah-aaah-aaah-aaah-aaah-yumyumyumyum-yaaahm-aaah-aaah-aaah-aaahm (repeat for about five minutes) SENG!

Among the Barflies' many other skills are the ability to concoct foul-tasting drinks by mixing all available types of alcohol together and the vigilance to launch into applause the instant brown attempted to sneak in (fashionably, fashionably late).

It occurs to me that I still owe the boss an ang pow.

-----|||||-----