After several small talks with my mom, it became kind of irritating. Irritating in a weird sense. Sometimes, it just seems that I am the mother and my mother is the daughter. Why did I say so?
Below is a short conversation between my mom and I. (By the way, it is just the gist of it. The actual words might not be as stated).
Me: Mom, what do you want for my wedding?
Mom: Me, I do not want anything.
Me: Really, nothing at all?
Mom: Actually hor, why bother getting the dinner? Why waste all the money? Might as well use all the money and go for a good honeymoon and just get married there.
Me: WHAT!! (in my mind is actually '#$%^&*#$%^&@#%^!')
This 'interesting' conversation did not happen only once. In fact, from what I remembered, this idea popped up from my mother almost trice. This really puts me thinking.
Since even my mother does not request for me to go through the usual customaries, why bother? But in the bottom of my heart, I am still a small little girl that dreamt (since young) of going through this special day in a gorgeous gown with the Mr Right and many friends and relatives are there to accompany us on that day.
BUT!! Other then the being pretty side, there is still a lot of factors to consider and think through before making the final decision.
Hmmm...What should I do now?
Mrs Smith...puzzled....
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
The One with The Money!
This is one of those post that I really need some feedback especially from married couple. It's a very sensitive issue on money.
As the Chinese have this saying of
"先小人后君子" - which simply means we have to trash out the bad news before going on with the good news. And I believe this is something we have to sort out before anything moves on since money and wedding is two big issues that comes in a pair.(Although not exactly perfect.)
I recently heard this little incident from my friend's friend's wedding where they did not talk much about the dollar and cents and started planning and almost till the wedding the mum of the bride mention that they need an amount of 聘金 and the amount is $8,000 and the daughter's reaction was "WHAT? MUM! ARE YOU SELLING ME AWAY?". And because of the the daughter and mum got a little fight. So the daughter went and tell his hubby to be about this incident and the hubby to be's reaction was " WHAT! DAY LIGHT ROBBERY?" And the daughter's reaction was "YOU CALLING MY MUM A ROBBER?" And than they had another fight. -.-
See, the money issue is always one of the trickest. It is almost like in a business where you do not wish to shortchange a person but on the other hand you do not wish to get "chop" as well.
From my mum's experience : The newly wed will settle the table money themselves and take all ang bao money, parents of the groom will give this amount to the bride and the bride's end will "return" a small fraction of it to the groom's parents to symbolise that everybody gets some fortune and not like we take "all" your fortune.
From Mrs Smith's mum's experience : The newly wed will settle the table money themselves, the parents of the bride will take the ang bao money of their relative's table (Example: 5 tables's earning) and the groom will still have to pay a sum of money to the bride's parents and take no return.
For me? I just want to make the world dance and forget about the price tag.
If it's that easy eh?
I am sure there are many more variation out there such as parents pay for all the tables and newly wed do not take ang bao or what not method. So what is the "real" tradition? This is really tough as Singaporean's culture is fairly much all mashed up of different dialects and especially difficult for people like me who have all my grand parents in heaven.
So how did it work out for you guys? Leave us your comments below or email me or tweet me. I will be more than happy to share it with our readers.
Mr.Smith, nah sih gua wu ji pa ban ~
As the Chinese have this saying of
"先小人后君子" - which simply means we have to trash out the bad news before going on with the good news. And I believe this is something we have to sort out before anything moves on since money and wedding is two big issues that comes in a pair.(Although not exactly perfect.)
I recently heard this little incident from my friend's friend's wedding where they did not talk much about the dollar and cents and started planning and almost till the wedding the mum of the bride mention that they need an amount of 聘金 and the amount is $8,000 and the daughter's reaction was "WHAT? MUM! ARE YOU SELLING ME AWAY?". And because of the the daughter and mum got a little fight. So the daughter went and tell his hubby to be about this incident and the hubby to be's reaction was " WHAT! DAY LIGHT ROBBERY?" And the daughter's reaction was "YOU CALLING MY MUM A ROBBER?" And than they had another fight. -.-
See, the money issue is always one of the trickest. It is almost like in a business where you do not wish to shortchange a person but on the other hand you do not wish to get "chop" as well.
From my mum's experience : The newly wed will settle the table money themselves and take all ang bao money, parents of the groom will give this amount to the bride and the bride's end will "return" a small fraction of it to the groom's parents to symbolise that everybody gets some fortune and not like we take "all" your fortune.
From Mrs Smith's mum's experience : The newly wed will settle the table money themselves, the parents of the bride will take the ang bao money of their relative's table (Example: 5 tables's earning) and the groom will still have to pay a sum of money to the bride's parents and take no return.
For me? I just want to make the world dance and forget about the price tag.
If it's that easy eh?
I am sure there are many more variation out there such as parents pay for all the tables and newly wed do not take ang bao or what not method. So what is the "real" tradition? This is really tough as Singaporean's culture is fairly much all mashed up of different dialects and especially difficult for people like me who have all my grand parents in heaven.
So how did it work out for you guys? Leave us your comments below or email me or tweet me. I will be more than happy to share it with our readers.
Mr.Smith, nah sih gua wu ji pa ban ~
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
The One with the Guest List
Other than dealing with problems of deciding the date and venue all that, I think that the next big problem will be with the inviting of guests to share our joy on this important day.
However, the problem that Mr. Smith and me are facing is really poles apart (which make me really wonder why we can be together at times). Interesting, he is facing the problem of having too many people to invite and cannot decide who to invite and who not to. Whereas for me, I am facing the problem of having too LITTLE people to invite (quote from Mr Smith: "You have no friends!!!") and do not know who else to include on my list.
People that know us very well would have notice this difference. Mr Smith being the VERY VOCAL one, will always be the one talking to people and making friends. Me on the other hand, is always the VERY QUIET one hiding in the shadow of Mr Smith. To comfort myself slightly, I will tell myself that there is no problem to that ah. However, when it comes to this very moment, looking at my list, it came to me that I really have TOO FEW friends, I started to feel a bit lost. =(
Trying to make myself feel slightly better, I would say Mr Smith started filling up the list first. As such, he included many of our common friends (although he did know them first), thus, I cannot include them on my list. This is also partly the reason of me having less people in my list (still trying to get more excuses).
Something to be happy about so far is that the total number of guests (so far) is not that scary as we have assumed at the beginning. Hopefully it will stay this way (until Mr Smith stun us with any shocking news) throughout!
Mrs Smith
However, the problem that Mr. Smith and me are facing is really poles apart (which make me really wonder why we can be together at times). Interesting, he is facing the problem of having too many people to invite and cannot decide who to invite and who not to. Whereas for me, I am facing the problem of having too LITTLE people to invite (quote from Mr Smith: "You have no friends!!!") and do not know who else to include on my list.
People that know us very well would have notice this difference. Mr Smith being the VERY VOCAL one, will always be the one talking to people and making friends. Me on the other hand, is always the VERY QUIET one hiding in the shadow of Mr Smith. To comfort myself slightly, I will tell myself that there is no problem to that ah. However, when it comes to this very moment, looking at my list, it came to me that I really have TOO FEW friends, I started to feel a bit lost. =(
Trying to make myself feel slightly better, I would say Mr Smith started filling up the list first. As such, he included many of our common friends (although he did know them first), thus, I cannot include them on my list. This is also partly the reason of me having less people in my list (still trying to get more excuses).
Something to be happy about so far is that the total number of guests (so far) is not that scary as we have assumed at the beginning. Hopefully it will stay this way (until Mr Smith stun us with any shocking news) throughout!
Mrs Smith
Monday, December 12, 2011
Happy Mr Smith and Mrs Smith
Hello everybody! Welcome to our new blog www.HappyMrAndMrsSmith.blogspot.com . As the blog's title suggest, this blog is a combine effort blog to pen(type) down the whole(hopefully) planning process of our wedding planning.
The Beginning
Just a little back ground history about us. We have been together since 17th August 2002. We were classmates during our poly days and we have been together since then. 17th August is also her(Chris Goh aka Mrs Smith) birthday. We met on 2nd July 2002, which is the day before my birthday. We know each other for no more than 2 months before we jump into a relationship. No bulls, it's that fast and now it lasted for this long.
The Proposal
The proposal was made only 9years after being a couple. The "yes" was said on 30th Oct 2011 under the eyes of many friends who help to make the surprise proposal a successful one. We actually video down the process but as of now it is still under editing. *stares at Mr.Ma* Anyway below is a simple picture of the proposal.
Why after 9 years?
The Beginning
Just a little back ground history about us. We have been together since 17th August 2002. We were classmates during our poly days and we have been together since then. 17th August is also her(Chris Goh aka Mrs Smith) birthday. We met on 2nd July 2002, which is the day before my birthday. We know each other for no more than 2 months before we jump into a relationship. No bulls, it's that fast and now it lasted for this long.
The Proposal
The proposal was made only 9years after being a couple. The "yes" was said on 30th Oct 2011 under the eyes of many friends who help to make the surprise proposal a successful one. We actually video down the process but as of now it is still under editing. *stares at Mr.Ma* Anyway below is a simple picture of the proposal.
 |
| I won! |
Why after 9 years?
The journey of 9 years seems like a long time but it's nothing as compared to the coming 30 - 40 years that we are going to commit to each other, so what's the rush? Nothing to hide, Singapore is a place where living standard is getting higher by the day and being a man who has to go through a 2yrs of national service is no joke to the bank account. The amount of allowance we get in the army is more like a deficit than income. My jobs along the way did not earn me enough money to do anything more than just pay for my daily expenses. On top of these, Chris was also doing her degree of four years and thus we have decided to not stress her up with both school and wedding planning. Everything falls in pretty nicely this year when her degree course ended this June while mine ended at October itself.
The HDB
We did applied our HDB at the end of 2008 and finally manage to get the confirmation in end year 2009 after 4 BTO tries. Rumor has it that our place will be ready for collection in mid 2012. Which means they only use 30 months to complete the process as compared to the forecasted 60 months(5 years). It was and still is the biggest buy of my life.
The Denial
Although we have made a decision to get a HDB flat in the year 2008, I have never consider Chris as my wife or fiancee for the simplest reason. I am not a man who made a proposal with "eh, wanna buy HDB or not?" and this is one of those things that I do not wish to "owe" my wife cause in time to come this will come back and bite me. I can imagine one of those "See! when we were young that time u also neber propose to me~". And in fact for the record, HDB Flat purchase idea was hers. :x. In fact I am very glad that she made this move as I have never thought about it and I never knew it is suppose to take 60months. Imagine the long wait we have to go through if we only decides to take it up now. And of course, the price difference. This is how she complete me in my life, I am always quite a kid when it comes to such planning. And it is also partly screwed up because of our gahment rules. In fact a lot of my friends who did and gotten a flat through BTO later just broke up leaving their $10k-$20k with the gahment for giving up their BTO after "confirming" it.
What's Next?
We are currently doing some simple planning which we will try to update as often as possible and it is never easy in fact it is like a biggest test of our relationship as it is really not easy to get both party to have a common understanding on the ideas we have. I want it fun and crazy while she wants it pretty and romantic and worst of all the people earning our money really wants our money and it is really expensive! Budget is one of the greatest pain! Being a full time events planner, wedding planning doesn't seems like a big problem to me since I have planned a few for my friends/client or is it? In fact now the biggest problem we are looking at is whether should we settle our ROM in low key and than move into our new place before we do a wedding dinner with Chinese traditional customaries or should everything falls on the same day before the place comes. The later will means that Chris will have to shift to my current/parents' place after the wedding which also means double the effort of moving. The issue is not of moving with my parents but the issue is that if we could just wait maybe a few months more we can do just it once and for all but yet on the other hand we need the ROM certificate to get our renovation done up first.
Lots of planning to do a head! Will share it on this blog bits by bits and hope you guys enjoy reading!!
<i>Mr.Smith, EGGCITED SIA!!</i>
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