My FM (Finance Minister) planned this wedding more than 12 months ago.
She’s the perfectionist what other perfectionists would be jealous for.
The wedding hall must be Hollywood-level glamorous.
The food must taste as good or better than her cooking. (No pressure on the caterers at all.)
The guest list must not miss anyone, including that one cousin nobody’s seen since 2015.
And more… endless checklists and what-to-dos.
All these with as low budget as possible, because we are not rich.
We are, however, very good at pretending to be rich for one day.
And to save money, we hired our Sabahan in-law-to-be family member to perform a few songs.
Turns out he was great. Free didn’t mean bad. Lesson learned.
It was a very sentimental moment for my FM. She cried heavily while walking her daughter all the way through the aisle.
I’m pretty sure even the caterers paused for a second.
That moment seemed to wipe away all mother-daughter “love-hate” relationship they had before.
You know the kind. Every household has one.
I still remember clearly when she was 10, she always gave the same answer when asked about something — “Tak tau….” (I don’t know.)
Ask her what she wanted for lunch. “Tak tau.”
Ask her about homework. “Tak tau.”
Ask her about literally anything. “Tak tau.”
Little did I expect that she became the one who knows everything (she studied microbiology).
Turns out she did know things. She just didn’t want to tell us.
I must admit that the Malay wedding ceremony has changed drastically. We used to do it at the house yard or the community hall.
There would be a ‘membawang’ session where the neighbourhood aunties gossiping about others while chopping onions.
While the uncles talk about Pas and Umno. Same topics, different decade.
The amount spent for the entire wedding?
Rarely exceeds $3K.
Today it costs nothing less than $50K for a “marhaen” (commoner) wedding.
Somewhere along the way, weddings became business deals with confetti.
And that is something that went wrong in my daughter’s wedding.
Otherwise it went perfectly.
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