Weddings had always been an interesting issue to me.
A question had always baffled me:
Truly, for whom is the wedding dinner meant for?
I could never tell if it was solely for the couple themselves, or should it be for the two families that would be soon linked in union.
A wedding I attended two weeks ago(11 Sep to be exact) provided me an insight. Two perhaps.
One, there are wedding styles that are either "Cheena" or "Beng contemporary-wannabe".
Two, never try to hybridize freshmen orientation programmes and wedding dinner.
"Cheena" would describe the culture of southeast asian chinese. Typical Cheena convention would include coming late for wedding dinners(being punctual is tantamount to drooling over the dinner yet to start), wedding gift moneies that are proportional to the number of people attending(it is an enterprise, the guests eventually pay for your wedding dinner) and "Yiam Seng" is to be howled in place of "Cheers" when proposing toasts(in fact, it goes "yiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam.............. seng.")
The second style I mentioned seemed to be a up and coming style, popular among the younger generation I suppose.
It involved programmes, emcees and bad jokes: just like a high school graduation, but imagine your grandaunt and cousins all graduating in the same batch. The couple decided to make a pun out of the Sep 11 incident, and opened the event with an Agent 911 inspecting the audiences for contraband items. The Agent came into the hall, with his sleek groom suit, complete with batik shorts and a bow, and demanded to search an 80 year-old lady for filming devices. After a 30min inspection, the Agent was finally satisfied and the wedding dinner finally commenced with the entry of the newly weds. The event then saw a stream of video, which was supposed to entertain the guests. One of them was on how to happily keep (out) a marriage, another was why the bride and groom ended up each other, adamantly ruling out desperation.
Last but not least, after the toast, the newlyweds were initiated by having the bride, pass a banana through the pants of the groom.(ring a bell?). These really brought me back to the 20th century, when I last had my high school graduation night dinner; albeit I had a better time then.
The experience scarred me, and it incepted, in me, a few questions.
Has the "me" culture overgrown our cultural roots?
Is the wedding for the newlyweds, or the families and friends of them?
Is it really ok to make a joke out of anything?
The last question is one I can answer: Cheena says no, but Beng goes ahead.
