Surprise!!! I got the official wedding invitation today from Mayu 🙂 So very excited! The wedding is going to be in Gold Coast. Yay!!!
I feel bad that I am not able to help her with the wedding preparation. It should be fun doing it, I suppose! Planning for a small and intimate wedding is much more fun than "mass wedding", as I call it.
It’s definitely not about my residence permit. But it’s a very very good news coming from Brisbane, Australia!
A close friend of mine sent me a message today that she’s planning to get married next year. And she insists me to attend the wedding ceremony and be her maid of honor! I was so happy and thrilled upon reading her message!!! I was crying of excitement! I felt so touched too, to be one of the first people to know about her plan — and not to mention that she chooses me as her maid of honor! Wew, I feel so honored! This would be my first time to be a bridesmaid!!
Ah, next year is still a long way to go. But I don’t know how I’m going to do this, seriously — knowing that I already have so many traveling plans laid out. Going to Australia is not cheap. The travel costs are too much and I haven’t got any money for that yet. Maybe I should book AirAsia flight from KL to Gold Coast by this year. And maybe I should cancel my other plans and put them for the year after. Or maybe I’ll do all of them. It really depends on my financial situation next year.
Whatever happens, I can’t refuse to attend the wedding, as I have promised her for many times that I’d come back to Australia if she’s going to get married. She also kept her promise that she’d tell me about it a year ahead before her wedding, so that I would have enough time to prepare. She’s even willing to change the wedding date if the time doesn’t suit me! So there’s no reason for me to not attend the wedding! Hehehe.
If I eventually go back to Australia, it’s going to be a sweet reunion! I haven’t seen her ever since I bade farewell 2 years ago, although yes, we do have Skype session once in a while. I miss the 3 years we spent together as a roommate. And I’ll meet other friends back in the college too!!! I can’t wait! I’m sure Brisbane has changed a lot. I want to reminisce the good old days. Ah, those sweet days that are unforgettable. Insya Allah I’ll find a way to be there.
Who wants to join me? 🙂 (maybe this would be the best time for me to go to Cairns too! To see the Great Barrier Reef!!!! If only money can be grown like plants…)
It was a REALLY hectic day for me today. I had to attend my friend’s wedding in a small city called Enschede, about 3 hours from Eindhoven (if you live here, you know that 3 hours is very far!). The ceremony was at 2pm and I had to take a train from Eindhoven at 10.45am. As I was still in Helmond on that day, I had to wake up early in the morning to go back to Eindhoven.
I reached home at 8am and quickly took shower and had breakfast. Good thing I had thought about which dress I would put on days before the wedding. Otherwise it’s going to be even more chaotic! I decided to wear my modern kebaya and a trouser (since the wedding was going to be less formal, I tried not to be too formal and over-dressed). I put on my make up quickly — the quickest time I had ever done!! — and rushed to the train station. I forgot to buy a card for the newlyweds (I bought a wrong card — an engagement card LOL… coz everything was in Dutch), so I bought it in the train station. I ALMOST missed the train. Phew.
The whole journey took for 3 hours and more. I had to change the train in Utrecht and took a bus from Enschede Central Station to the destination. The wedding was held in the house of the bride’s mom and only few people were invited. The bride is one of my good friends here, Maureen, whom I met when I worked at the Boekenfestijn in Rotterdam 2 years ago. The wedding was announced all of the sudden, I ALMOST couldn’t attend it! But I was glad I did. To see the happy couple on their big day was amazing. To witness the whole process was mind-blowing.
I was asked to read a verse in the Qur’an and at that time I just realized that it was the first time for me to witness a wedding ceremony. I really didn’t know what to expect. Haha. Anyway, I met few friends of mine whom I hadn’t seen for ages! It was great seeing them. I took a train back to Utrecht with them and it was good coz I had somebody to talk to! LOL. Great day, as usual.
Congrat’s once again, Maureen 🙂
I went to ICTheek (computer lab) at 8.30am today to do a report assignment with my classmates Shilpa and Li Lun. In the middle of doing the assignment, we caught in a hard-to-stop conversation ranging from traveling, marriage, to culture! (Shilpa is from India and Li Lun is from China; so our talk was very multicultural!)
Talk about marriage… I discover that we — Asians — have similar culture when it comes to wedding. We would invite EVERYONE; from relatives, neighbors, people whom we barely met, to hi-bye friends. What makes me raise my eyebrows is that, most of these guests are our parents’ friends whom you don’t even know about! Seriously, why would you spend so much money for the wedding party of your “parents”? I wonder. Though I complain about it, there’s nothing I can do with it. I can’t really escape from this tradition. If I were given a choice, I would have definitely go for a traditional wedding ceremony attended by only close friends and relatives. I wouldn’t even have any problems if I were not to have any wedding celebrations! I would rather save the money supposedly used for my wedding for my family’s future!
Shilpa told me that she invited 1,000 guests to her wedding few years ago. That’s a massive number! She said that her wedding lasted for almost 1 week. Some small “parties” and celebrations were held and organized in the first few days of the wedding by the bride- and groom-to-be’s family separately. I can’t imagine how tiring it must be for her! Even she thought that the money spent for the wedding was better be spent for something else. But tradition and culture were hard to skip, were they? 🙂
In Betawi culture (my mom is a Betawi by the way), there is a long lasting tradition that if you’re married, you need to give a so called berkat (a basket of staple foods or even cooked meals!) to your family and relatives. The problem is that, Betawi people have MAAAANY relatives. The last time my cousin was married, she had to give baskets of berkat to at least 40 houses! Can you imagine that?!?! I feel like this is such a waste of money! Why would you give staple foods to people who have no financial difficulties at all?!?!? Isn’t it better if you can just give those foods to the people who need the most?!?! Again, I wonder why.
And I wonder whether I can break this tradition if I end up marrying someone. Alright, perhaps I can tolerate the need to throw a wedding party and having to receive unknown guests to my party, but I definitely can’t tolerate having to feed 40 middle to upper class families!!!
Give me a break!