The Thing That Is Marriage

Somehow there's a different feel to things when a close old friend gets married. Being someone we've known and kept in touch since secondary school days, the steady progression as 'Nic headed towards marriage never really had that sense of gravity until the final step...

Going steady - fine. Not like we see any more or less of him, since we don't meet much save boardgaming sessions and the Klangite meetups. In fact, as the enthusiastic boardgames prophet he'd even got LiL to join in the fun!

Engagement announcement - Whoa. This almost a year back now. It was a whopper of an announcement (although it shouldn't be too much of a surprise since they've been together since college!). 'Course, this triggered the RM50 Collection Call by the rest of the Klangites (we're not too sure how this worked, but essentially since he's the first among our group to get married he's lost the bet and have to pay everyone RM50, a semi-serious joke).

Marriage announcement - Okay. With the engagement announced, it's down to waiting for the Big Day. And an interesting date too, the six-seven-eight. This, we remembered, led to the discussion on dates to get married and stuff, and Webchitect suggesting 10th October 2010. As he goes, "TEN ten ten!" (you know, the chinese-accented way of dramatic sound-making). Still, 06-07-08 was easy to remember and wouldn't clash with the Olympics.

And as the date drew closer we soon had the preview of the wedding cards. Pretty things with lotsa love and effort put in.

Hen party cum zhimui event - As far as we knew, the zhimuis were throwing a karaoke party for the couple at Red Box Pavilion last Thursday, and the hengdais were invited. 'Course, it being Thursday night the Penang Klangite hengdais weren't able to make it and it was up to those of us here to provide 'Nic with backup against the zhimuis.

In the end he'd only three hengdais to help him out with the zhimui event. We were late and turned up after the challenges were over. :P And due to the motto, 'What happens at Red Box stays happened at Red Box' no one except the zhimuis will have evidence of what the hengdais had to go through...

Well, we still helped out with the karaoke and would say that our only tough bit was having to duet 'No Air' with one of the zhimui. And till that day we would say that we'd never listened to No Air completely - we didn't find the song all that nice so when it came up on radio we'd just tune into another station.

Big Day on Saturday - With the six-seven-eight stuck firmly in our head it took a bit of effort to remember that it was the lunch function that was on that date and not the church wedding itself. Starting out from his old house to meet all the hengdais at his family's new place at Ambang Botanic, a quick photo session on the bridal bed, then it's off to Bangsar to drop the flower bouquet (and for the assigned drivers NJH and TTY to pick up the bride's relatives).

Then it was down to Assumption Church for the rest of us to mill about usher guests. Coats were considered optional dress code, as it was gonna be rather warm at the church. In the end, it was coats and no tie for everyone (after all since you guys made suits in Bangkok might as well put them to use right?).

What caught our attention during the church wedding was that Bubbles was there, taking part in the marriage vows. Best man Ivan had to hold on to Bubbles while Bubbles held on to the rings. What also confused us was that Bubbles was wearing a veil. While, true, we'd never ascertained Bubble's gender but we always thought of him as male.

After the wedding ceremony and lunch, the hengdais thought to spend some time together till the open house at night ('Nic refuses to call it a wedding dinner heh). So we'd all milled about at Starbucks after balking at the long queue at MidValley GSC, then heading on to Sushi King to kill more time. It's during this period where we heard gems of ghost stories.

The open house saw us all helping 'Nic to finish some of the 5 cartons of wine that he'd bought, led by Ivan the Best Man and the rest of the Penang Klangites. Given that 'Nic isn't much of a drinker and LiL was there to tag team with him, the siblings Little 'Nic and Elder 'Nic was dragged in to drink up.

Wedding lunch at Holiday Villa Subang - With the Chief in tow. We were slightly absent minded that Chief thought we were still drunk from the night's drinking. Holiday Villa was idyllic, except that we were busy sweating so much that we lost the mood to take pictures even when Chief volunteered to help us take pictures. A good lunch, the three cheers followed by the table-to-table yamseng (while watching 'Nic's face slowly turn a darker shade of red as well as seeing how the wine level in his glass never seem to go down), the congratulating as we leave the hall...

And we'll once again congratulate the both of you for taking off to matrimonial bliss, 'Nic and LiL.