On the high costs of a wedding...

I always read articles that features high costs of weddings, with amusement. Spending $10,000 is considered on the cheap side; what with average costs of wedding in the range of $29,000.

Don't get me wrong: I always, ALWAYS, enjoy going to weddings. The arrangements, the flowers, the merry, jolly air, although "fairy tale" is probably something furthest from my mind. It's almost like watching cooking shows, or perusing furniture and home decor catalog. I love enjoying the moments of appreciation, to all the work that goes in, to make something beautiful, perfect even.

But perhaps, I'm too lazy a person at heart, to help myself in elaborate, prolonged arrangements of an event. Or that I like denim jeans more than evening wear. Most importantly, I don't think wedding dresses go well with my spectacles. (I'll pick my glasses rather than the wedding dress, for pragmatic reasons.)

So, there goes my own wedding. A civic one. All we needed was two witnesses. My family wasn't around. My father-in-law attended. That's about it. My husband is a no-fuss, no-nonsense kinda guy. He grew up in America, but in a way, he clings onto traditions (or so he thinks are Chinese traditions) in his own quiet, fierce way. He said he doesn't care for a wedding (or so he said back then), but he wants it in Chinatown. So we looked up the phonebook, and found this JP called "Peter Wong." He asked what date/time, told us his fees. That's about it.

On the day, I wore a usual dress I would have worn for work, a jacket. My husband sported a white shirt and slack, and off we went. I must say, we (my husband, in particular) were quite sorely disappointed in "Peter Wong." When we got to his dingy office on the second floor in Chinatown, he dug out a form from a drawer, signed it, and told us to pay. My husband asked, "Don't we need to take the vows?" He said "Oh," then dug some more in his drawers to find a very crumpled piece of papers with vows in English. He had to read it for instructions, at when to tell us to say yes (or no, just in case), and when to exchange rings, etc. It's very disgraceful. Our two friends (the witnesses) shot us this quizzical look. My in-law just stood there and had this smirk on his face. At the time I didn't understand what the smirk was for. I would understand later, that he probably knew all Chinatown establishments are like this, but he didn't tell his son (my husband) about it, lest ruining his fancy for anything Chinese. The whole process (vows+rings) took less than 15 minutes.

The only fiasco was probably our rings. We ordered them in Hong Kong, since my husband wanted Chinese names to be inscribed inside the ring. Turned out, his was one ring size too big, and mine, one too small. During the process, he had had trouble squeezing the ring on my finger, and I had to take it, and did it myself. We were all giggling and cracking up. Ah, but it's just a civic ceremony. No one cares too much about formality anyways. Definitely not Peter Wong, who cared mostly about the fees that he's collecting at the end.

Hmm, how much had our "wedding" costed? We had to do medicals for the marriage license, pay for the medical tests and the license itself. Some small fees for Peter Wong. And we went dim sum lunch after the ceremony, which should be less than $200. I don't think you can beat that.

So, it is under my circumstances, that I pity those young folks who have to go through all these wedding business. I never fancy any of the fairy tale weddings, or any pretty things that go with it. (For goodness sake, it's one big, whole industry surviving on wedding support!) My parents and family live overseas, so none of mine was around. I know my parents (my mom, in particular) were disappointed. Mom told me so. Every so often, she would urge me to go take some wedding pictures in studio. I don't really fancy that - I'm still wearing glasses (and they still don't go too well with wedding dress), and I'm not doing lazik any time soon.

For a long time, my husband insisted he doesn't mind or care for a wedding of his own. But then, we attended some weddings of our friends. One time, he finally admitted, "it would have been nice (to have our own wedding)." Oh well, what can I say. I told him it's too late now. :)

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I felt particularly strongly against holding our own wedding particularly after my (third) sister's wedding in Australia. She was so stressful planning our everything. She's even paying for most everything herself. (I can't say too much kind things about her soon-to-be husband back then, but he's an over-ripe, immature, bump. As of this date, he's still an over-ripe, immature, bump. Everyone in the family was against the marriage. Ah, but, that's another story for some other time.)

To save up on the costs, she bought a second hand wedding dress (which is a sound decision to me since there's no real purpose of buying a brand new wedding dress to wear only once unless you're planning to pass it down the generations). A seamtress tailed it for her, but the side of it ripped on the day and we had to hold it together with sellophane tape. All the siblings flew in, and we the sisters were all busy doing the flower arrangements, flower pins, and folding the church wedding agenda, and the lunch menu, on the wedding morning. She arranged to have a beautician to come do her make-up and hair that morning, so she couldn't help out much. For Christ sake, she's even paying for the dresses of the bridesmaid. I offered to rent my own dress, so long as it's in the color scheme that she wants, it should be fine. But my sister has got herself a "bitch" (the younger sister of her soon-to-be husband), who INSISTED that my sister paid A$500 to buy her a crimson silk dress which she can save for future evening dinner purpose. Talking about skimming off on someone else's back (and hard-earned cash).

It's thankful that everything went well. It's a beautiful wedding. I swear to myself, though, that I would not go through something like that myself.

I'll hold the same principles to my kids, boys or girls.