Engaged!
26 November 2005 1:10 pm
It feels great to be engaged to someone you really love. I am looking forward to the wedding and the marriage. I don't think I have ever felt this sure about anyone before. It feels right, and God-willing we will be happy together.
While K was in Singapore (he left three days ago), we managed to get a number of important things related to the wedding done. Firstly, we made our engagement official. K proposed to me and formally asked for my parents' blessings. We had an engagement ceremony of sorts at my aunt's place. It was more of a Hari Raya gathering at which we took the opportunity to announce the good news. We were overwhelmed by the warmth and kindness of my family members and relatives, K especially. By the end of his three weeks here, K feels like he's a part of the family now. Thank you, everyone, for being so welcoming and generous. The weekend after the engagement ceremony we threw a party for our friends. Preparing for the party was a little stressful; K got himself flustered making two types of bruschetta (baguette slices with toppings) and trying to get them done before the first guest arrived, and I dirtied the front of my dress lugging cans of drinks and two bags of ice from the supermarket. It was worth the effort, though. Thirty of our friends showed up and filled my tiny apartment with warmth and laughter for a few hours. We were glad we did it.
Secondly, we met the kadi at the Registry of Muslim Marriages for a question and answer session. That went well and we're clearer now about what we need to do before we register our marriage. We also got K's conversion certificate from New York endorsed by the Singapore Islamic Council so he doesn't have to go through the conversion course here unless he wants to. So now all we have to do is wait a couple of weeks for the wedding date to be available (it has to be no more than 150 days later from the time of registration, so if you're thinking May 26, count back 150 days and figure it out.)
Thirdly, we went to a food-tasting session organised by a caterer that we were considering. It was a good experience because it made us clearer about what we want in our wedding reception menu. The caterer's food was okay, but ultimately not what we would look forward to. We're now thinking about going Indian. We've found an Indian restaurant that does catering, and not only are the prices reasonable, the menu looks more appetising. We looked at it and we went, "Now that's a meal." I will make a visit to the restaurant soon (maybe today!) to see if the food's as good as they claim it is.
Finally, we went wedding band-hunting. Many jewellery shops later, we realised how impossible it was to find a plain wedding band in platinum, as in a plain circle of precious metal, with no lines, no patterns, no gem embedded in it. You would think that the plain wedding band would be ubiquitous, but it's not. Every time we said, "We're looking for a plain wedding band," the sales person would show us a ring that was anything but. "This one is plain, it has a simple design," he or she would go. Grrr. Which part of plain did they not understand? We asked the jewellery store that made my engagement ring if they could custom-make plain wedding bands for us, but they advised us not to because it would cost us a lot, since we wanted platinum. There was one other shop that also said they could custom-make a plain band for us in platinum (they had a plain band, but only in white gold), but the price they quoted was still too much, though a lot less than what the engagement ring people had asked for. Eventually, we found the wedding band at Tiffany's. It costs a couple of hundred dollars more than what that second jewellery store had quoted, but it looks good and is already in platinum, so we don't have to pay extra to get it custom-made and all that nonsense. I never expected that getting the wedding band would be this troublesome. Now we each have to save up for a ring that's a few hundred dollars above our budget, and all because we wanted a plain ring. How ironic.
I am looking forward to the year-end bonus so I can set aside money for the wedding and also start paying deposits to the vendors that we want to hire. Whatever it is, we are not going to bankrupt ourselves trying to get married. If we can't save enough, we will scale the wedding down rather than starve, beg or borrow. If in the end all we can afford is a barbecue by the beach, so be it! The most important thing is being husband and wife.
Older entries
Ramadan - 08 October 2006
Where I Have Been - 03 October 2006
Baby Talk - 10 August 2006
6 Weeks of Separation - 16 July 2006
Unacceptable Rudeness - 21 June 2006