After almost 10 years of dating the same guy, my sister finally decided to take the family path!!! I was soooo happy for her as the first time I met my brother-in-law, I knew he is THE one for her. There is nothing else you could ever ask for! My mom always tells me, find someone who loves you, who will think the world of you and someone who will treat you like a princess. Well, she basically has gotten herself the entire package!! When I used to live in Malaysia, I used to hang out at her place (which is his family's house). I loved it so much because they treat me just like I am a part of their family. For 2 and a half years, they took care of me whenever I faced any issue in KL. My brother-in-law's brothers are very nice and warm people too. I remembered when I missed my flight, his second older brother came to the airport at midnight to pick me up and I stayed at his place and at the very next day, he dropped us off again. I felt so embarrassed and felt really guilty because I don't like to give people hassles.
It was a very emotional event, the laughter, the tears, the tension, the smiles, everyone was just so happy. My entire family and other extended family actually flew over from Indonesia and Hong Kong to attend the wedding. Whereas me, I came with my best friend/housemate from Melbourne. My family was so excited to meet my friend from Ireland because I spoke of her so much and also because she would be the only westerner attending the wedding. Hence, everyone was so excited.
After what seemed like a forever alone flight. Mind you, we were at Tullamarine airport from 9 am and the flight was at 12 noon and we transited at Singapore for 2 hours and flew 35 minutes to KL. By the time we reached KL, it was 9 pm!
I was so nervous to meet my family again and to introduce my friend to them. After the arrival, we went for dinner because it was my Birthday!!! How sad to fly on your birthday???? Anyways, my sister treated me dinner and we went home straight after that because I was too exhausted and they have to pick up my other family members from the airport the next day.
It was a very familiar feeling coming back to KL after 4 years. Suddenly I missed KL, places I had been and stayed and of course, my friends in KL. I just didn't have much time to meet up with my Malaysian friends.
It was hard for me to wake up at 7 when I only got to sleep at 1 am!!! We had to because my sister had to drop us off at the nearest shopping mall before going to pick up the others. I didn't want to cause any hassles for her because I know she would be the busiest person on earth and I didn't want to be a burden for her. Here is a picture of me after only 6 hours of sleep + 12 hours of flight the night before.
My brother-in-law's second brother loves cats and this particular cat is still here after 4 years. Well, mind you the last time I was in this house was 4 years ago.
We were "left stranded" at Sunway Pyramid shopping centre where the shape of the mall is like a pyramid and in front of the entrance, there is a sphinx on it. Too bad I don't have the picture with me, oh well, you can just google it ;P
This is me trying to be a cleopatra, sure thing I failed to imitate the egyptian goddess.
I always encounter weird/strange people in my life, especially stalkers. What happened was, we asked this boy to help us take a picture and he did. After that he just made some small talks like "So where you from, etc" to my friend especially. After that we went our separate way hoping we would never see him again but NO!!!! He was there at every corner we turned to! He kept smiling to my friend and asked whether we were shopping. Duhhhh??? Why else are you in the shopping mall if not for shopping/window shopping (all the same)????
We took the escalator down, walking about, Ta dahhhh... He was there again! At one stage we were quite scared because we didn't know whether he would keep stalking us. Afterwards we just decided to go to Sungei Wong (Bukit Bintang) with a cab.
After what seemed like forever alone moment, even slept on our way there due to the traffic congestion in KL area. Lucky enough the taxi driver wasn't using metro or we would have been so broke just after paying the cab fare. I was starving and straight away I dragged my friend to my most favorite HK restaurant when I was still a student there... KIM GARY!!!!! I ordered a bowl spicy noodle with pork chop with a glass of ice milk tea. Yum~~~~ Asian food in Asian countries are the best compared to westernized Asian food in Western countries.
We pretty much just walked through the entire shopping mall because we had the day to kill until my friend's friend turns up. In the end my friend met up with her friend and we just had dinner at Times Square and chatted at Starbucks Coffee shop until my brother-in-law came and picked us up.
Okok, I know I have been mentioning my friend a lot. Here is a picture of the three of us after our shopping day and after my sister came back from picking up our family from the airport. I think altogether there were 21 or 22 people came over from our family side. Hence, she actually hired a tour bus to pick up everyone!!!
From the left, My sister, Angel, myself and my bestie Zoe.
The next day, we had to move to a different accommodation where I will be with my immediate family members while the rest were placed at a nearby Holiday Villa.
I tried to read it for 3 times and I couldn't get the entire prose. Thumbs up for you if you can understand this form of old English prose.
The view from our condominium.
Went for a pamper session at a saloon where I decided to wash my hair with curl finish and did a manicure. Got bored and hungry, ran to a nearby Asia Cafe at Subang to find some food. I miss this cafe as when I was a student, I used to visit my friend who studied at a nearby college (Inti & Sunway college) and we would hang out here until midnight. Oh, memories....
All these preparations are for dinner before the big day. So, before the wedding day, all the bride's family and friends will gather and have dinner together and the bride will not be able to see the groom before the day.
My dress for the dinner
It was quite a chaotic experience to be honest, clothes lying everywhere people squeezing to use the mirror, people borrowing multi-purpose power point which happened to be only a few people brought it to the condominium, me included. I didn't even manage to charge my own phone during the entire journey as mine was borrowed everywhere. This is absurd, the world should use only one type of powerpoint. It wasn't any help when all of us came down from different countries because that means all of us need multi-purpose powerpoint.
The bride-to-be preparing for the dinner. Zoe was trying to fix her hair at the back.
My mom and dad had too much time left before the dinner, so.... Camwhore timeeeee
What did we have for dinner???? STEAMBOAT at bone and pot!!! Yum~~~~ They serve cheese balls there and there are super yum!!!!
Bridesmaids and the bride
They are all my sister close friends and some of us don't know each other and only met at the dinner for the first time. Some of them have been friends since college years which was like..... 9 years ago. Hence, we could call it a reunion!!
My nephews......Fido.
The other one...Max.
At the dinner we had to discuss what kind of challenges we needed to set up for the "brothers" = best men. Apparently, it is a Malaysian culture for the bridesmaids to torture the best men before the groom gets to see the bride. They will have to go through challenges or else they will have to give us a huge amount of "red pocket" = angpao to bribe the bridesmaids. After a short discussion and finished a compilation of ingredients to buy, we went back to the condominium with the bride. There were a few rituals to go through before the bride went to sleep to prepare for the wedding day.
The night scenery from our condominium. The spot where all the lights are is where Sunway Pyramid shopping mall is located.
A few things had to be prepared such as red candles (As shown in the photo), a few incenses, a mirror, a white candle at the corner, a comb. These are some of the ingredients out of many more that I don't even know what they were for. Apparently there was a list of prayer my mom had to read out whenever she combed her hair and her hair had to be combed three times (according to the rituals). Something like, first comb "hopefully you and your husband will have a long lasting relationship" or something like that, my Chinese prose is really bad, hence I couldn't understand much of it unfortunately. My mom continued to comb for the second time and read out the second prose and so on. Oh, and she had to wear white silk pajamas to sleep on the night before the wedding.
I was helping her with dress fitting as my mom herself made the dress!!! The fitting went on until almost 1.30 am! There were also a lot of tensions going on as my mom, Angel's godmother and my aunt are all dressmakers and there were a few disagreements on how the dress should be finished by certain amount of time. Everyone stayed up all night to finish the dress and my sister was already so exhausted. I was helping her out with the fitting etc, hence I stayed up as well. My mom and my aunts actually stayed up until 4 in the morning to finish the gown.
The making..
At 5.30 am my sister woke me up and I was zombified!!! My sister had to do make-up and everything else by 6 am as the make up artists and photographer came to the house. Chaotic experience everywhere as my mom just slept for less than 2 hours, me 4 hours and my sister 3 hours.
My zombified face...
By the way, that is the dress code for the bridesmaids as we had to wear a red top with the vest, black shorts and black heels.
We had to prepare the first challenge which we named is "the taste of life", where the groom and best men had to eat our mixture of sweet (consisted of condensed milk, liquid honey, lots of sugar and a marshmallow), sour (lemon), bitter (consisted of bitter gourd, apple cider & vinegar all blended together), spicy (apple, wasabi, chili powder, chili sauce and chili padi (Malaysian/Indonesian) chili).
All of the best men had to go through that in order to get into the door of the apartment. If they pass the "taste of life" challenge, the have to find a key hidden in a bowl of flour by blowing it with their mouth. Moreover, we mixed a few keys in order for us to increase the chance of not finding the right key.
Apple Wasabi... Anyone??
Bitter gourd
The ingredients...
Mixture of real food and not so real food... LOL We had to be filmed on this and we were asked to scream out "Heng Tai (Brothers), these are for you with an angelic smile...and .....NOOOOO!!!!!" We rushed back to the kitchen where the torturous food located and with devilish smile, "THESE are for youuuu~~~~"
It means happiness is in this house. A Chinese character hung outside the house where a marriage ceremony is held.
THE bride!!!! My sister!!!
The bridesmaids, happily waiting for the brothers to arrive.. We were so excited to torture them soon (:
There were 9 of us, one of us was taking this picture.
Taste of life challenge! Accepted!
Oh, the dress-code for the brothers is yakuza style, which they portrayed very well!
JUST SHOVE IT DOWN BROTHER! YOU CAN DO IT! IN ORDER FOR YOU TO MEET YOUR WIFE-TO-BE!!
John (THE groom) : Don't worry brothers, I will take care of the last two for all of you... *Thinking, shit! What have I gotten myself into???
Next, find the key to the apartment...
Brother, this is too difficult.. I need help!!!
They found the right key at first attempt and all of them just barged into the house, us girls tried to pull them back to no luck. One of us managed to jump into the entrance and tried to push the door close before they barged in to no luck either!
Next, we had a banana challenge where we would tie a banana with a plastic rope on the guys and we paired them so that the partner would squat down and tried to peel the banana skin off and ate them without using their hands.
Next, the brothers had to pass on a slice of crispy seaweed to one another and the groom had to eat the seaweed that had been passed around. They had to pass on a marshmallow to one another using their mouth as well. It was disgusting... Eww..
Challenge accepted. By the way, the reason why they have a number on each of them is because we don't know each other and it would be easier for us to pair the girls and the boys, hence we would keep an eye on the boys.
After all the challenges were passed by the brothers and groom, finally, we took out a piece of paper outlining all the things my sister want from their marriage. Well, as a matter of fact, one of the girls wrote the so called "love contract". The groom had to agree to all the statements and signed it with a lipstick applied to his lips. One of the statements is "My money is your money and your money is your money". Another one is "I promise you to never bully you" and such. He had to read it out loud with a speaker and my sister had to agree and be satisfied before letting him in.
We then discussed how much "angpao"/"red pocket" we wanted from the groom and if we are satisfied we will let him see the bride. We rejected many of the offer because the groom put one stack of RM1 inside the red pocket to make it seems like he put a lot of money in it.
RM1 angpao from the groom..
Everyone has gotten their own share, we share it with the rest of the "ji mui"/bridesmaids/sisters.
Love contract agreed and signed..
We let him in finally (: The groom now may kiss the bride (:
The tea ceremony involves the family of the bride being served tea by the couple and in exchange, the elderly will present gifts (mostly jewelry or angpao) for the groom and bride. It is a Chinese tradition to do a tea ceremony starting from parents to aunts, uncles, and cousins who have gotten married. I am not included in the tea ceremony because I am not married :p Moreover, I even received an angpao from my sister, queuing along with my nieces, nephews and cousins. I felt like I was a kid again...
We then moved on to the groom's side of house to do the same tea ceremony and took some photos. At this stage, I was exhausted beyond words! From 5.30 AM until 1.30 pm, didn't eat much because I had to follow the bride around, keeping angpao and presents for her, making sure to keep track of everything, lifting her gown when she was walking around. I was exhausted to the max, but hey! This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Of course I sucked it up because I only have one sister so I would do anything for her to see her happy (:
We went back to our accommodation and got ready for the evening dinner. I thought I could escape for a few hours and took a nap BUT!!! The make up artist came together with the hair stylist! They had to start styling everyone up since 2 pm because it will take a while to complete the look for everyone and there were a lot of us! Since no one went first, I had to volunteer my hair to be a guinea pig and I didn't like the first look so I had it re-done, almost fell asleep on the chair!
I thought I would escape and slept for a bit after redoing my hair but there was no way I could sleep with my hair like that! Hence, I took a shower and waited for my turn for a make-up session, which I almost fell asleep again! Especially when you had to close your eyes for the eye make-up, didn't help me to keep awake!
My finish overall look!
Hair done by
Kalvin Chan address: 35,Jalan SS15/8A, 47500 Subang jaya,Selangor
Tel: 03-56329720, 012-3368609. He is awesome! Apparently he has been my sister's hair stylist for 9 years now!
The girls' hair is done by the same hair stylist, Kalvin.
My hair from the back
The first style had half of my hair up and the other half down curled, but I looked too mature for the look and I asked the stylist to pull all of them up consider I was wearing a turtle neck dress, it suited me better this way. I am of course my own stylist (:
A group of us then headed downstairs where the tour bus waited for us and we headed to the restaurant Golden Dragonboat restaurant located in downtown KL.
Each bridesmaid had to wear one of these flower tied on our wrist (: Loveeeee...
It is such a shame that I didn't manage to snap some pictures with my sister in her wedding gowns made by my mama T.T That's because she kept went missing and I didn't want to embarrass myself in the middle of a dinner running around looking for her because everyone was sitting in their own seat and there were performances by her J-mobber friends etc.
The groom had to cheer at every table by drinking a glass of wine/scotch or whichever. I actually gulp down a sip of wine without getting red-faced which was good enough for me. I think at the end the groom got pretty drunk..
We eventually went home and by 12.30 am I had to go to bed because I flew back to Melbourne the very next day at 8.50 am which means I had to be in the airport by 6.50 am which means I was being picked up by my in-laws uncle at 6 am WHICH MEANS I need to wake up by 5 AM!!!!! I did!!!
We had to spend 10 hours in Singapore (in transit) because the original plan was that my friend would meet her friend at Singapore while transiting back to Melbourne, however her friend told her that he has moved to KL, hence why we met him at KL and now we had some time to kill in Singapore. So I decided to meet up with my friends in Singapore, chilled out before our flight back to Melbourne.
Us at Marina Bay Sands, Singapore.
Apparently I fell asleep like a corpse on my way back because our plane (Jetstar) actually went through a storm surrounded by jet black cloud and APPARENTLY my friend told me the wing of the plane was flapping vigorously and I was sitting right next to the wing, didn't realize a single thing. I must have been seriously exhausted because I just went straight to RAM stage as soon as I closed my eyes. I tossed a few times, however went back to sleep.
Now, I am back in Melbourne and I have already started missing my family and sister ): it sucks when you have to deal with everything all on your own.. Oh well, this is the path I have chosen, hence I need to be strong and suck it up! The grass on the other side is not always proven to be greener! Remember that! (:
P/S: Pictures all taken with Panasonic Lumix GF2
