Another Milestone!

Tomorrow we fly to Singapore on an exciting chapter of our lives.

Our son is now engaged to be married later this year. So we shall be meeting his future in-laws to discuss the wedding. It's so exciting!


As the parents of the bridegroom, as per our Chinese customs, traditionally we would have to foot all expenses for the wedding, unlike the western customs where the bride's parents will take care of everything financially. Do correct me if I'm wrong but that was what my Kiwi friend told me.

So we shall be asking our counterparts what they expect from us. My brother, when his son got married, had to give a certain number of tables ( at the wedding banquet) to the bride's side (for her relatives & friends)apart from the bethrothal gifts. It all depends on what the bride's family wants. Thus we are naturally excited about this as we have only one son and he is the last of the Dragons (in our family clan) to be married. There are five Dragons altogether in our family clan - clan because I have nine siblibgs so you can imagine the size of our family! Oh, the Dragon is one of the twelve animals that heeded the call of Buddha and they are the signs under which a person is born. The coming Chinese New Year will herald the Year of the Tiger. So this will be a Tiger year.

It is customary for the guests to give ang pows(red packets containing gifts of money)when they come for the wedding dinner. They also write good wishes or just their names on a piece of red cloth at the reception table. In my brother's case, the ang pows given by the guests went towards the cost of the wedding dinner and he topped up the balance. I believe this is the usual practice now so that the parents of the groom are not out of pocket at the end of the day.

There will be a church wedding in Singapore, followed by the wedding banquet, and then the following week, we will host another wedding dinner in Kuala Lumpur because that's where most of my siblings live. One of my sisters will fly in from Melbourne to attend the wedding. Isn't that wonderful?

Once we know what is expected from us there will be lots of things to do.

The young couple have already looked into the printing of the wedding invitation cards and they have also booked the venues of the wedding banquets. They had a difficult time looking for a venue as there are few auspicious dates in the coming Year of the Tiger and normally, people would book in advance, as far as a year and a half before the wedding. The Almanac has to be consulted to choose an auspicious day. In our case, the bride's family chose the date as we do not read Chinese and do not know how to go about it.

My son only proposed recently. That's the reason why it was difficult to find a venue for the day that they will be getting married. The church has also been booked for the solemnisation of the marriage. The young couple have selected the menu for the dinner in Singapore in consultation with the bride's parents and I understand that they have also selected the photography package.

I will get to know more about this in the next two days. That's why I'm so excited!

Do you realise that the mother of the groom will have to have new clothes for the wedding too? And the shoes and bags, etc., etc. My, there will be busy months ahead!

I shall keep you posted of the progress of the wedding preparations from time to time.

Bye for now.