Raising Rockstar

“And I like Stuff,” will one day be carved on my tombstone as an afterthought. Not just because I do (d-uh), but because like all the other things I think a lot about, Stuff is one of ‘em. I can’t help the annoying, incessant thinking when I’m buying.

“Do I Really Need It?” should also be there on my tombstone.

Except I haven’t decided if I need one yet.

Wedding Stuff is king of Do I Need It Territory so here are my excuses:

Elvis Wedding in Little White Chapel:

Ka-Chingg: ~ USD 700, which got us:

Elvis – to pick us up at the hotel, walk me down the aisle, and accompany us for a spin along the strip in a Cadillac with the top down.

(People yelling stuff at you as you cruise along = Free)

A little bouquet

12 professional pictures in the Little White Chapel, presented in their little white photo album

A pastor to formally marry us (who was mildly offended we asked if he had been ordained on the internet like Joey from Friends – apparently he is an actual pastor from a neighborhood church whom they call in to do weddings)

Wedding certificate (Elvis signs as witness) in another little white album

Night drive round the strip in a stretch limo after the ceremony

We asked them what it was like when Britney got married there. They said she came in at 5am and no one had realized who she was – til they read the tabloids the next day.

Oh, and btw a Vegas marriage is legally binding. Who knew?

Excuse: Do something special, just the two of you. It helped us remember marriage is first two people, before it’s Everyone Else And Their Opinions.

Because whether or not your marriage works after you fulfill Everyone Else’s Opinions will depend on you. Not Everyone Else. Everyone Else will also not be living with your choices every day.

I say this bearing in mind I came from a Baba peranakan family where growing up I was taught to not just get my father’s coffee whenever he wanted it (even while running a Chicken Pox fever), but to refill his coffee mug if he had taken a swig.

Rockstar will not be getting anyone coffee (though right now he loves working the Nespresso machine) but I still wear my beautiful kebaya blouses – with cropped cargos and fierce shoes. Peranakan is part of who I am. Ditto cargos.

The Clothes:

USD 78 white embroidered bustier from Victoriassecret.com (no longer available).

SGD 200 tailored knee-length plain white satin circle skirt. Very Carrie Bradshaw, circa pre-unwearable-Sex And The City Movie Sequel fashion.

Fragile, ornate, expensive white dress to be maintained for generations to come (not to mention making any daughters you might have follow your fashion choices) = Too Much Headache For Me. (But rentals, considering you keep nothing but the photos, bring me no satisfaction either.)

~ HKD 1,500 Marc Jacobs Mouse shoes in white, on offer

~ HKD 13,000 (this is where most of my “wedding budget” went): limited edition Chloe Bracelet Bag – the very recognizable shape Chloe was famous for during Phoebe Philo’s reign. Off-white leather, convertible strap, heavily hand-embellished, only one piece for sale in Hong Kong (though that actually matters little to me since my girlfriends and I have been known to buy the exact same thing – it’s how you wear it that counts).

The bag has been everywhere, from pubbing with jeans and cargos to the most formal banking events with classic black cocktail dresses or pant suits. (Strangely, it’s the work events where it draws compliments).

Excuse, excuse, EXCUSE: Yes, I paid for it myself. Yes, it is still one of the most expensive accessories I own. Philo’s bags are often heavy and inflexible because she goes all out for fashion, while lavishly sacrificing function, whereas this bag is very light and convertible.

Any daughter I have will inherit this bag.

“Second change” outfit:

~ HKD 1,500 each: Matching chiffon sleeveless blouse and gathered knee-length skirt in dusty (not-sweet) pink from Anteprima (because I wanted them to double as work entertainment wear and it’s a popular Hong Kong Tai-tai as well as working woman brand if you don’t want to wear a suit but still want to look trendy-professional).

Both live double lives as part of office / work cocktail outfits and are rarely seen together

~ HKD 1,500 Chloe bib necklace, on offer

Usually seen dressing up non-branded t-shirts

~ HKD 1,000 Rafe gold sandals with crystal briolette dangles – also bought on offer

Kings wore Hugo Boss suit and white shirt from Ap Lei Chau Joyce Warehouse and tailored to fit perfectly.

Excuse: It’s your wedding. You get to shop even if you bought everything except a wedding dress. Especially if. You would be delighted to re-use all your other Stuff, but kinda hope never to need the wedding dress again.

One of wedding’s Great Ironies.

Hair and makeup:

Zero cost. Did my own make up (and most of my makeup is from Watson’s).

My friend Eric (Chan – the Malaysian artist) did my hair – plain French twist, along which he deftly pinned 2 rows of tiny white flowers with crisp green lime leaves for the white outfit, and fist-sized deep reddish-brown imported roses for the dusty pink. Changing the flowers in my hair took him barely 15 minutes.

Flowers:

Zero cost. Gift from Eric (he ordered the flowers from a florist friend, then made up the bouquets himself). I had no idea what I would be getting beforehand. (But then it’s Eric, have you seen his work?)

1 small green and white bouquet with white feathers, 1 reddish-brown bouquet of fist-sized roses with some Strange Dark Brown Things that got a few of Kings’ clients asking for his card.

Negligible cost for flower arrangements: Little gold glass bowls we bought from Metro’s housewares department and filled with green limes and leaves we from the market (guests asked to take most of the little bowls of lime and leaves home after the wedding.)

Venue:

SGD 149 per head for around 60 friends, colleagues, clients at Flutes At Fort Canning, Singapore (Kings’ clients are predominantly Singapore-based). It’s a white wooden bungalow on a hill, with black trimmings, large veranda and windows, filled with paintings you can buy off the walls.

The wedding color scheme was white, with green limes/ leaves and a tiny amount of gold.

Flutes is known for their wines, and while neither of us can do more than tell the very good from the very bad, not so quite a few of our guests.

The wine had our wedding picture on the labels. Guests took some bottles home (unopened) as souvenirs. And yes, with our picture on it, we wanted to make sure it was good wine.

~ Negligible cost, for décor – white dove paper chains we strung along with the restaurant’s own strings of lights and greenery. We scattered little limes and leaves on the plain white linen tablecloths. Nothing satin-y or ribbon-y. The whole semi-open space smelt vaguely of lime.

Excuse: I skimped elsewhere because I wanted to splurge on really, really good food and drink.

I’m excluding the Penang dinner hosted after the Seremban one by my parents, organized by my mum because I consider it her event not mine, for which she has lovingly compiled her own scrap books, guest books (one of the tea ceremony which ran like a duty roster and one for the dinner), and umpteen photo albums.

My father insisted on not serving alcohol. I’m sure I can’t imagine why…

My mum stayed up til the wee hours of the morning with friends she hadn’t seen in years, who flew in for her event, Nyonya kebayas and all. We had to call her down to the bridal suite to say goodnight, after which she disappeared back up to her friends’ rooms.

It was one of my greatest pleasures as an only child to wear whatever she wanted and let her have the wedding of her dreams.

Wedding Invites/ Guest Book:

~ SGD 60 for a large, acid-free paper ring-bound plain white drawing block. Guests were given giant markers to write with. Not a flower or ribbon in sight.

Can’t remember how much for invites but they were postcards, so I don’t think they cost much – reproduction of Keith Haring’s Wedding Invitation

(yes, the name of this art piece is Wedding Invitation).

Surprises:

1)     We played the Elvis wedding video while our parents sighed and pretended not to watch.

My grandmother declared Elvis was “very handsome.”

2)     Many guests exchanged business cards. My (then) colleagues who asked specifically to help out by manning the reception table cold-called some of Kings’ clients after the wedding. They told Kings “must try mah” over the Bloomberg the next day. (Kings’ attitude with his institutional clients is, they should be free to try out everyone’s coverage – and still come back to him. I was a little peeved because it was supposed to be a wedding dinner, not a work event.)

3)     Flaming Lamborghinis and pink champagne flowed quite freely. There is a guy in a black shirt in many of our pictures, cheering guests on as they downed Lamborghinis. We voted him the guy who had the absolute best time. He turned out to be one of our waiters.

This time, I picked the designated in-case-of-emergency person – one of my friends/ mentors, Doc Ang (lovingly so named by subordinates and colleagues for his PhD and 2 Masters’). Brilliant Equity Derivatives Structurer, Don’t Give Me That Bullshit Desk Head and 2-time cancer survivor, he doesn’t drink.

Doc Ang drove me home that night. Years later he succumbed with little pain to a 3rd round ofcancer in his sleep when I was in my last stages of pregnancy. Kings was by his bedside a day or two before, holding the phone to his ear so I could speak to him. His subordinates wept openly.

4)     No cake, no champagne pouring, no grand entrance for the bride, none of the traditional stuff (we already paid all respects to tradition at our parents’ wedding fixes). Not a sharks’fin in sight. Just very good fusion food and drink. And we spent a lot of time mingling with guests.

We reminisced with old friends, swapped stories, shared dreams for a future. No excuse.

Dear Rockstar,

The Wedding Roadshow:

Mummy and Daddy considered ourselves married after our Vegas wedding because it was before God, at The Little White Chapel. We didn’t think He would mind we did it in Vegas with Elvis. Your grandparents however did mind – they wanted their Wedding Fix.

Mummy maintains it was a good idea to let each set of grandparents do their own thing in Seremban and Penang, Malaysia. They were so busy your parents were left completely in peace. We brokered zero compromises, just paid any bills they needed and showed up with smiles on our faces.

Grandmum consulted a temple about auspicious dates. Then she spent 3 weeks picking the right silk flowers for her wedding invites.

Poh–poh auditioned for flower boys and girls among her friends’ grandchildren. (Yes, really.)

Mummy writes how one of the dinners went wrong as an illustration of the first hiccup in our marriage – and what we learnt.

The Scary Wedding Dinner:

Murphy’s Law of Wedding Dinners states something always goes wrong.

Mummy says more so if you make the mistake she did, in giving Kong-kong 3 large cases of cigars for his party. Before dinner had started, a thick cloud of cigar smoke already hung under the ceiling of the restaurant. Guests naturally decided cigars should be accompanied by alcohol. Of course they did.

What Mummy was cool about:

Before the first course was served, many guests were no longer sober. By the third course, one of Kong-kong’s friends, a small, wizened man pushing 70 who downed 3 full glasses of spirits with your father “as a  toast”, had to be carried out.

Two push-fights erupted during dinner. Daddy was involved in one. He marched up to a long-lost uncle and demanded to know why he had thrown Daddy’s school bag in the river behind his house when Daddy was about 7.

After guests separated them, your father and granduncle locked themselves in the restaurant toilet “because men discuss matters in the men’s room”. When Poh-poh tried to get him out, your father patiently explain women were not allowed in the men’s room before gently closing the door in her face.

Halfway thru dinner our cameramen were physically no longer able take pictures. Mummy would be surprised if no one lost any camera stuff that night. Your parents only have pictures of the earlier part of dinner.

Drunken guests picked food off other tables’ plates, cramming it into their mouths with their fingers. One guest who couldn’t quite get the entire handful in bit off the rest and returned it to the serving plate he had taken it from.

Daddy’s drinking party fled back to the hotel early with wives and girlfriends, some of whom were rather displeased.

Your parents never discovered who drove the bridal car back and left the keys with the hotel concierge.

As the night wound down, aunties and uncles staggered into the remaining cars shrieking with laughter, driving very slowly but uncertainly along the village roads. Some had their car doors still hanging open.

Soon most guests had left, aside from a few incoherent ones on the floor (when Mummy told Kong-kong later, he said yes, some of his friends mentioned waking up in the wee hours of the morning and slowly staggering home. Their wallets were probably emptied but they couldn’t remember what they had brought with them anyway.)

Why Mummy was cool:

Daddy has never liked alcohol. He drinks only to be social. Your father can take in about ¾ of a bottle of Jack Daniels (not a small amount of alcohol) before he does a nutty. That night he was very nutty. He must have tried very hard to be social.  Also, his two (then) best men drank very little before leaving to sending their other halves home when trouble broke out. In fact, one declared he would drink nothing, when the dinner started because his wife had flown in at the last minute the night before.

When Daddy used to come home drunk from work events, Mummy would leave a bucket by the bed.

If she was out with him, she would confiscate his car keys and request cab fare and company until she was in a taxi (then Daddy was free to return to the party).

This is because Mummy believes there is a difference between being easy-going and being a doormat.

Mummy also requested a text message from his friends/ colleagues if they left him somewhere, so she knew under which table to look for him. It just saves time.

Mummy likes alcohol. She keeps a bottle of Shiraz out of your reach. But she has a two drink limit because she read somewhere that’s the healthy limit for a woman’s kidney. (She would also smoke too, if she could be convinced it didn’t cause cancer.)

What Mummy was not cool about:

Mummy found herself stranded outside the locked-up restaurant past midnight.

Earlier, she watched several men wrestle your father across the parking lot and into a car that sped off before she could move. It took awhile to realize the car had come back for Daddy and there was no one she knew left at the dinner.

Mummy had no cell phone or money – her bag, she later learned, had already found its way back to the hotel.

A few loiterers trickled in from the night into the restaurant car park. One hooted at Mummy but she pretended not hear.

She started to feel fear, real fear. Some places in Malaysia are not the safest for a lone young woman in a strapless white cocktail dress late at night.

Then a rented car turned in slowly, its driver cautiously surveying the mess. One of your father’s college friends who had flown in from Hong Kong wanting to witness a Real Malaysian Village Wedding (then beat a quick retreat with fiance in tow) had decided to swing back and make sure everything was alright.

Mummy still remembers his expression as she ran across the parking lot in her white dress and flung herself into the car. He said very little. His girlfriend, already in PJs, avoided Mummy’s eye. In fact, at breakfast the next morning, other non-hungover guests were also avoiding Mummy’s eye.

Aftermath:

Mummy flew back to Hong Kong alone to start our new life there with virtually no friends – or furniture – as originally planned. Daddy flew straight to Singapore for grueling back-to-back client meetings.

For the next 6 weeks, your father would return home bone-tired only on weekends – and ask to not be spoken to because he badly needed to decompress with brainless tv to prepare for the next work week.

This would color virtually every argument your parents had in the next 18 months.

Of your parents, Mummy is usually the less emotional one. So she was completely unprepared for the hurt she felt at being forgotten that night. For a long time she couldn’t get over feeling unwelcome in Daddy’s family.

The Lesson:

1.  Never underestimate how different things can look when viewed thru another person’s eyes.

Daddy had very little memory of what happened. And he was whisked away by his family without seeing Mummy stranded – or feeling her fear.

It took Mummy a long time to understand this. And realize your father simply lacked the imagination.

Perception is everything. How you view something can literally save you a lot of hurt.

Daddy learned that in order to accept something was important to Mummy, he didn’t need to understand why it was. Sometimes we do things we don’t understand simply because they’re important to the other person. We should be a team.

2.   Never underestimate how much pride can skew things

Mummy is not a wedding person. She wore a USD 78 brocade bustier from Victoriassecret.com and SGD 200 plain tailored satin circle skirt as her wedding dress because she thought keeping an ornate white dress pristine for years to come was impractical. (She splurged on stuff she would get a lot more use out of – any daughters she has will get her Chloe bracelet bag one day.)

Mummy wanted everyone to think she was much loved by the family she had married into. Instead they uh, didn’t.

When other wives and girlfriends who attended felt sorry for her, she decided to do the same.

Ask yourself if your bruised ego is doing the talking. Maybe even nurse it for a bit.

Then tell it to shut. up.

3.  Do a Dale Carnegie on your other half

“Thank you” and “I’m sorry” have Super Powers of Diffusing Bad Conversations.

Daddy identified that Mummy reacts quite differently based on how he speaks to her – so he chooses his words carefully when he wants something.

Why are we on our best behavior for virtual strangers? We may never see them again after they exit the elevator/ leave the company. People who agree to spend the rest of their lives with you should get the best of you.
Otherwise your own life could be hell.

4.  Get your game on for your relationship

Daddy is good with clients. So he manages Mummy the same way. Find your strengths and use it on your relationship.

Besides. There are benefits to having someone madly in love with you. Your life will not feel like hell.

5.   Don’t allow your bride to feel she is not the bride. No matter how laid back she thinks she is.

6.  Never underestimate the old fogeys’ ability to party. And don’t hand them cigars til the end of the evening. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

Silver lining:

Your Kong-kong’s friends swapped stories delightedly for weeks. It’s still the Mother of All Wedding Dinners in Kampung Baru Rasah.

Mummy is surprised they can remember anything.

We have been blessed with incredible memories – yet spared what could have been a terrible ending – for that we are grateful.