I Swear by the Pool

It was merely a few hours of shut-eyes that seperated the previous day's anticipation and today's real deal. I was rather well-rested despite the slight difficulty in falling asleep and the deficiency in terms of the number of hours. Perhaps like what my dear says, sleep is one of my natural talents, but I guess the main reason was because my set-off timing was around 8+ am. Soon, I got myself dressed for the occasion and made a few checks with the brothers via the phone before setting off.

As according to plan, Suwei and Sunny were early and they were the only brothers coming to my place while the rest rendezvoused at the hotel itself. However, as according to Murphy's law, whatever will go wrong will go wrong and indeed, I forgot the hand flower fifteen minutes into the ride to town, despite having taken the flowers from my mum in the morning. Poor Sunny had to detour back home with my brother while we continued our way to the battleground.

Upon reaching the hotel, we waited a while for Sunny and my brother to return but time was not in our favour and the duo had lost their way, thus we went ahead with the gatecrash, though we did take some videos and shots prior to the route to the hotel room for the gatecrash. Below are some scenes from then:

The intellectual test...

The physical test...

The beauty test...

The food test...

The musical test with the euphoria of completion =)

The gatecrash went on quite smoothly and the sisters were rather merciful towards us, thus we were soon back on schedule, only to have Murphy's law eccentuating its presence via the gift of rain for the land. And it was a generous gift indeed. The original plan of going to Marina Barrage for the outdoor photo shoot was abandoned in favour of East Coast Park as we had information that it was bright and sunny in the latter, credits to Suwei's family. I guess luck was still on our side as well as the sides of the numerous couples having their bride-fetching that day as you can see from the photos below:

We met...

... we loved...

... and we kissed!

The throwing of banquet to the sisters...

Not to be undone by the sisters, the groom was thrown...

The entourage 1...

The entourage 2...

The impressive stride of the entourage!

After some time spent smiling and posing for the photos, tea ceremonies for both male and female parties were on the way and we had to leave out travelling to our new place in order to save time. The buffet lunch was soon served and the morning activities came to a close. However, it was not yet the time for us to rest (lesser time for my dear as she had to have her makeup done) as we had to get ourselves ready for the solemnisation ceremony and the dinner in the evening.

Tea to the groom's parents...

Tea to the bride's parents...

Luckily, Mr Murphy was only working half-day on Saturday and there were virtually no hiccups for the rest of the day. The solemnisation ceremony went on very smoothly with fine weather, good scenary and all the "Chen" people and it was interesting to know that our Justice of Peace, Mr Tan Kian Choon (PBM), had another couple to solemnise immediately after ours just opposite the pool. Talk about about good timing.

The reading of vows during solemnisation

The solemnisation party of all "chen"

The dinner also went on very smoothly with the help of my brothers and the banquet manager, though I felt that the banquet manager was rather inexperienced in handling such banquets. The first instance of such a feeling was during the rehearsal of the songs whereby he could not quickly offer us solutions when our self-burnt song cd (we bought the song on the internet) could not work. The second instance was during the rehearsal of the march-in as we were only informed after our actual first march-in that our pace was too fast. However, this was easily rectified in the second march-in. Nonetheless, those were minor hiccups and it did not really affect the overall flow of the banquet, and I guess every experienced banquet manager had to start off somewhere. There were also some requests for changing the seating arrangements by my mum's friends but that was quickly settled. There were other changes in seating arrangements which was carried out unofficially and unannounced but luckily, as far as it was to my knowledge, there were no negative impacts due to that.

The first march-in which was too fast...

The cutting of the real wdding cake...

Just like every other couple who had the standard programme for wedding banquets, we only managed to sample the first few dishes before we had to rush off to change our attire for the second march-in. It was pre-arranged that we had our meals prior to the solemnisation ceremony and we had one more free room service after the banquet, thus we were not hungry at all during the entire event. We were just tired.

The second march-in, with speed adjusted...

The pouring of bliss...

The yum-sengs

The end of it all...

There were many feedback that we were efficient in our timing as our banquet started quite promptly at 8 pm and ended quite early at 1030 pm. It was so early that you do not actually see hoards of people leaving before the serving of the desserts like in other banquets and the guests were actually lingering in disbelief that the night was still so young. But well, all banquets had to come to an end and soon the event ended with the shaking of the guests' hands. It wasn't over for us until 3 am later as we went back to the rooms to pack up, clear the rubbish, settle the bill, count the ang baos and have our room service.

So many months of preparation for just one day of action, but I guess it was all worthwhile. Though I believed that we both would not want to experience the entire hectic day again. I Swear by the Pool - Mission Accomplished =)