Sigh…

Weddings never fail to make me smile. It’s a culmulation of effort and love that has come to fruitition…and we all know how much hard work it is. Bacon always tears in weddings…I think it’s really sweet:). Of course,seeing that he cries in all his friends’ weddings, he bawled in ours. Nahhh…not bawled. But I do think it sweet, seeing that I am the jaded stotic type in weddings. On June 1st 2007, one of my favourite of Bacon’s friends got hitched, and of course, we were there.

Bride and groom coming out of the ante-room (??) after signing the registry. Note all the balding men .

Taaa daa da daaa…(no idea what am I singing)…the walk of the newly happily married

The crowd. We got a couple of random people just walking in visiting the church as it was in the middle of Leeds

Mr & Mrs Munley

Another thing that I like to do in weddings here is to criticize the wedding dress. Somehow, the dresses never seem to fit the brides here – I don’t know why! They all seemed to have purchased dresses in the wrong cut/color/shape – most of the time they are just spilling out of the dresses! You would think that they would pay more attention to the most important dress of their life. But Jodie’s dress fitted her like a dream, which is great. Very nice dress with a super long train that gets tucked in at night for dancing.

Typically, English weddings are held in old school hotels refurbished from castles/old manor houses ect right smack in the middle of nowhere.This one is held in Bagden Hall, apparently it specializes in weddings – bacon have been there befroe on a wedding do.

It was raining for the whole week before the wedding, even a little on the day itself, but it cleared up just as the wedding started and the good weather continued all day long – the groom in his sunnies.

Wedding breakfast setting. The english calls the first meal served after the wedding the wedding breakfast – even at 6pm. Strange.

Dinner! The thing about weddings here that I dislike is the fact that dinner/lunch is served at 5.30pm – not yet dinner,but definitely not lunch. Its such an odd time to eat. And they ALWAYS serve melon for a starter. And chicken. OMG the chicken. They ALWAYS serve chicken – and it’s usually with the whiteish sauce. Its so strange!

But I love this melon with the champagne sorbet.Nice and refreshing..yumms

Contraray to most wedding chickens (dishes, not dance) this was actually pleasantly lovely.I loved it – smothered with leek and bacon cream sauce, it was the loveliest chicken dish I had in an English wedding.

Lemon tart with clotted cream and raspberry coulis. The tart was lovely, not sure about the clotted cream. For those uninitiated, clotted cream is a little like a dollop of butter. VERY Strange. Would be nice with just ice cream or a dollop of cream /custard. The clotted cream makes me yearn for hot scones. Nice nonetheless, I love the tartness of the tart.

The whole dinner thing with speeches ect ended around 7pm – we lingered around to watch the bride & groom’s first dance. By 9.45 I was really tired ( only took 1/2 day off work) and we headed on home. Most of the wedding guests continued partying as they were all staying at the hotel (again, another english norm) but with prices of rooms at £95 per night, I thought that was exortion and we did not book a room to stay the night.

Very nice day all in all. Congratulations Mr & Mrs Munley – who are on their way to Kenya now for a well deserved honeymoon. Did not snap much pictures as most of the time people were outside, and I was too busy being sick with hayfever.Bleahh…Snapped pictures inside the church during the ceremony…will need to upload that later on.

Shorttalk: I wish I can photoshop the pictures..most of it is just frankly horrible pictures.Yes, I mistakenly saved on a cheapo photographer – my bad. The good pictures are all taken by my friends. But I had just put in a request through to Dreymer….it will be up to her whether she sends me a photoshop CD or not!!

After a drunken night’s sleep, I was happily woken up by ‘The One from Redang’s’ txt message at 7.35 that he has arrived and smelt like last night’s vomit…and can he have the hotel’s name please. After txting the name of the hotel back to him, I tried going back to sleep, but without much hope. So i prodded dreymer up at 8.15am…and we had an eyemask session since it was too early for breakfast either.

View in the morning

After nearly falling asleep again, The One from Redang rang from reception with pleas of a shower.So we headed on to reception, passed him the keys, and continued on to pig out on nasi lemak, eggs and pancakes.Too tired to take pictures and still reeking of yesterday’s smoke and alcohol binge, we were a sullen group…especially if you compared us to Bacon’s bunch who were in bed early and were up bright and shiny at breakfast, ready to attack the sun and the sea again with a happy shiny smile. Bleah…

Serves us right for having so much fun.

With the makeup/hair lady arriving at 11pm, we tried to head back to the room for a short snooze,but with three of us in the bed, it dont make sense, so I started packing whilst dreymer puts on her lovely face courtesy of SK2 and snoozes up with The One from Redang

she is so gonna kill me..

With barely enough time for me to have a quick shower and scrub, the makeup lady was knocking on the door already.Seeing that we had to move to the suite and check out of the current room, I left her at the suite unpacking her goodies whilst I continue to rush upwards and downwards moving things here and there.Then realizing that I did not have a shirt I could put on so to not smudge my makeup whilst putting on the dress, I snatched Bacon’s ugly shirt to slip on.So viewers beware…ugly top ahead.

Work in progress

Letting someone fuss over you is hard work ok, coffee breaks are essential

So are pseudo photoshoots to see whether the makeup is too heavy or just right

Checking up on his wife

Bacon was so so quiet that I did not realize he was in the suite, at the next room preparing his speech for the night…we ordered in KFC and I did not even share it with him, thinking that he was out playing in the sun. Oh what a wonderful wife I am..:))

We all had fake shu uemura eyelashes installed.I mean glued on.Yes, I’m a geek,so what.

It was such a long process..I did not actually realize I was sat there for the better part of 3 hours.Strange fact; apparently your veil is to be placed on your hair by an old lady who have had many children….thus she was reluctant to fix it up for me. Bizzare. But she did it anyway..and after me refusing for her to place it under my bun (which would’ve effectively made my hair bunned up like a samurai’s topknot), she twsited and turned it around into a flower-like shape.

tada!

At 2.35pm, I started to panic.Having to move downstairs to my parents’ room, grab my dress from the mil’s room where it was being ironed, change,prepare for pictures, make sure all my chi-muis are ready…I had at last started to panic. And proper panic. Some of them were missing…one was rushing in from singapore, another one was slowly taking her own sweet time from Taiping and two others were out hunting for my favourite food to suprise me, all oblivious to the fact that I was panicking like crazy…..and they were rewarded with me bossing everyone around like crazy when they eventually arrive…most of them at 3pm.

The crazy ones.

The parents helping out

The spanning dress

Four there, two more to go!

The upside down obi belt…OoOps.We took it off and put it on again at night.

Its hard being a brideslave;sighs dreymer

I flew all the way from Singapore for this??? pouts mandy

Hahah…err,yes?

Next up: The moment of truth…will Bacon get past the chi muis from hell? (Actually they were too damned nice to him)

PS: Not all pictures are properly uploaded yet – bear with me if your pics are not here…I dont love you any less!

Warning: Extremely drunk-looking pictures ahead

No, not a night of KFC. More of a night of crazy boozing with those closest to my hearts.

Hen nights are traditionally held to celebrate the bride’s last night as a single women. Since I had been officially married for 6 months, this was a little strange…but I wanted it anyway. So maidzilla aka dreymer was tasked with the impossible task of comming up with a sneaky hen night plan that will remain in our minds forever.With not much time on our hands, it had to be the eve of the wedding, when all of us will be in Penang. In the UK, more and more brides to be are opting for the easy (and smarter) option of spending time with the girls in a spa or having a really luxurious time shopping or a girly holiday or whatnots. Seeing that half of my closest pals are guys, this option is not available. Besides, I needed a drink..:P

And an ingenious plan was born.

Being in Penang, I decided that the night is going to be spent eating and more eating…therefore stuffing myself silly from 7pm-9pm. Nonstop. Driving around in Eve’s huge Pajero in search of food. So when the call came from dreymer to direct us to the hen night venue, we were so stuffed we really did not want to go…preferring to go back to the hotel for shut-eye.Dreymer’s horrified protests shut me up immediately…and so we rushed back to the hotel to quickly change (not much time for makeup) and rush back to town. In my moment of ingenuity, I neglected to bring any shoes, so was subjected to walk around the clubs in a pretty dress and slippers. How hot.

After much ado and traffic jams, we arrived at SoHo at last…a pub/club combination that seem so popular with Penang.And my first suprise:

An absolutely beautiful veil painstakingly made by lunabliss portion of Sher. Adorned with shells and glitter and pearls, it was more gorgeous than my real veil! Shame it was too short..i would’ve worn it for the wedding day. Sher was given instructions to buy a piece of gauze for the hen night, and we ended up with this!

You think that’s all dreymer has up her sleeves? Nope, I knew it wasn’t it.

They proudly presented me with a box of contraceptive!

I was then threaten that I needed to raise RM60, otherwise I was going to have to pay for drinks. Since I came prepared to pay for drinks anyway….I offered to pay for it there and then.

Ha! Gotcha.

But being the nice person I am, I happily went about like an idiot selling contraceptives.

First customer at RM10 for one.

It’s hard to sell to this chinaman who wants extra value for half the cost…I gave up…he thinks he’s the only customer??cheh! hahaha

That was when he came to my rescue..dangling RM50 if I were to blow three of the contraceptives up. Seeing that he’s paid more than that feeding my alcoholic dreams, this was a bargin.

And of course I obliged.

Balloon animals anyone?

A couple more sales..as it progressed, I started charging higher prices.

I think I should be a condom saleswoman…because by the end of it all…

I raised RM180!

I made dreymer so proud of me…she gave me a treat

We love me…rar rar rar!

Next up: The morning after the night before.

Part 1 and Part 2, if you’ve missed it earlier
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The Family and The Reception

Now that I am unbelievably Mrs Barker,compulsary pictures with the new happy family is a requirement,not a want.No matter..I was standing there in the biting cold and a forced smile looking like I’m constipated.

Not the most flattering pose. The Mom,Grandma and Stepdad

Stepmom and Dad

Lindz and the Bro in Law

Jo,aka our chauffer of the day and general do-it-all

Amazingly,I was standing there for 10 minutes without a jacket or anything.All the pictures came out with a constipated look and was not very flattering at all,no?

The Reception

At 12.33,we were all set in the ante-room of the John-T’s at Leeds Marriott.Used to the typical cheena wedding of hundreds of people,this reception of 11 people seems pathetcally lonely.It came out nice though,as Bridezilla and Groomzilla was able to take it slow and enjoy it properly

To start off,we had pink Moet&Chandon,which was really really nice…a posh touch.

Bride and Groom’s clinks

Mr & Mrs Snowman!

A view of the cake and my flowers..we had heart shaped confetti all over the tables as well as lovehearts,candies with love messages to amuse our guests

A view of my cheena tanglungs,which were promptly snatched up by the gwai lous after the reception!They have not seen anything so pretty before..it was hilarious seeing them scram around taking the lanterns off.

Instead of sugared almonds or the typical Malaysian gift of sucky cake in a box,we passed our jade chopsticks complete with a holder that we purchased whilst in Hong Kong during Easter last year.

My tulip bloomed halfway through the reception

This is turning into a super long post.Next up: Part 4 -Food(my favourite!) and snaps of the reception.