The Wedding Mass
I’m now a married man!
When I woke up on Monday, 23 May 2005, I felt a tinge of excitement. Why else would I be awake at 5 am in the morning? Unlike the bride, I had absolutely nothing to do, so I went for a bicycle ride around Bedok Reservoir, had my breakfast, came back and changed.
I drove to Sengkang where I picked my brother and mother up. They had the corsages ready and were fully dressed. My brother was the designated driver and we drove up to St Anne’s.
We arrived at the church at 8.45 am, and were greeted by the SJI boys guiding the cars. Inside, there was lots of activity and I could see everyone setting up the tables and decorations and all. It was lots of things happening, but R had arranged everything to a fine detail.
At 9.30, the bride and her father walked in. She was absolutely stunning, and it was almost surreal to see her walking up to the pew and me taking her hand. R wore a gold lengha with a light veil over her head. LA and CM were the page boy and flower girl.
The Mass went smoothly. Fr David Garcia was the main celebrant and Fr John-Paul Tan was the co-celebrant (we had two because Fr Garcia was not a resident in Singapore and could not therefore officiate at weddings). R’s two nephews served as altar boys. The cordless microphones failed, so we had to step up to the altar to make our vows to each other, which was better because we were then facing the congregation instead of having our backs to them.
After the Mass, we took photos - groups of people took turns to stand with us. It went on for quite a while, and after that we had a lunch reception at the church canteen. This was a whirlwind of activity that had us mostly greeting our guests and smiling continuously for photographs.
When lunch was over (we didn’t really eat anything), we went to my parent’s place for the tea ceremony. It was a small ceremony involving us serving tea to the relatives in order of their seniority. To each, we greeted with their proper names that indicated their relationship to us. That went rather well.