Saga de Malaysia – Part 3

Other Events:
The Wedding Dinner
Bridget and Pei Chin’s Wedding
A day before the wedding

Pre-Wedding tea ceremony at Royal Domains:

Next morning was VERY early for me. Sissie had to reach the bridal shop at 6:30am for her wedding makeup. Henry drove us there.

Don’t know if Sissie was sleeping or giving a deep thought for the upcoming events of the day… But whatever, the makeup artist was waiting to start her work…

Her spraying a cold water on Sissie’s face surely made her fully awake! This artist definitely was much better to deal with then the car decoration artist we faced a day before.

Seems the artist did her best to make Sissie’s eyes POP OUT!

It was then the lips enhancement… Sissie chose to go RED!

  Both these enhancements are quite visible even in an image on a mirror!

A layer of foundation changed the skin tone as well…

It was hair style time then…

And once the hair was done, it was a veil time!

And then the flower time! Don’t know what she was thinking while looking into the mirror in front of her… She was now all set to go for her wedding gown!

  Back at home , her gown and other accessories were waiting for her… It did not take few hours for her to get ready!

She looks gorgeous and definitely, eyes and lips have contributed a lot for that. The light was falling on her from a window on her left. With no other source of light and with a less light on her right, I think EF-S 17-55mm F2.8 did a great job on Canon 7D!

This is Whitsney, Sissie’s Maid of Honor. She did a great job through out the day. From getting Sissie ready, taking care of the tea ceremony in the morning, afternoon after wedding and even extending all her help in the dinner at night, she was a big support for entire event.

Daddy’s girl! As the entire wedding event was well planned by Sissie and Pei Chin, he had nothing to worry about except shelling out many Ang Pau (red packets with money inside) as seen in his pocket!

As the time of Pei Chin’s arrival was coming near, Sissie was veiled by her mom and dad.

Veiled beauty!

And then comes the groom... As a tradition, he  and his friends need to perform certain tasks to qualify to enter the house.

They were presented with "Bitter Gourd” and Grape fruit. Bitter Gourd known as Karela in India is highly bitter in a taste. All of these fruits and vegetables had to be consumed by Pei Chin and his fellow friends…

Just a tiny bite of Karela put him into the trance!

After eating those vegetables and fruits and bribing few red packets to Sissie’s friends, he finally was allowed to enter the house where few more challenges were waiting for them…

30 push-ups and 30 sit-ups…

Dancing on tune of “Nobody nobody” Korean song as shown on TV…

And feeding the best man who was asked to wear a diaper… Look at the eyes of the best man… He seems lost wondering about when last he was fed like this! 

Poor fella was asked to sing a “begging” song to see his bride and present her the bouquet.

After bribing Whitsney and then force-opening the door, finally, he has first glimpses of his bride!

The Duo looked great.. but did you notice the poor fella… sitting uncomfortably on the floor on his legs… and the bride seating comfortably on the bed!

And his hardship just started… See how the bride was enjoying when he was putting her sandals on!

But she was a “helping wife” (though just for a day)!

Thus began the joy of togetherness!

They went for their first walk in the Aisle!

It was a photo session afterward…

Sissie, Mom, Dad and Pei Chin…

Sissie’s Kwan family – Tim, Henry, Thomas and Emily. Tom the middle brother was busy preparing for his performance in wedding dinner in the evening.

The couple with “Ji Mui”s – bride’s friends…

And they with “Heng Tai” – groom’s friends…

As a part of the ritual, the couple offered tea to the parents. In return, parents gave them “red packets”.

Finally, it was the time to leave for the church.

They had decided to self drive to Kajang’s Holy Family Church where Sissie had spent her childhood. The journey to the church was uneventful except at the end when the best man lost the way… 

Pictures marked with * were shot by Mr. Hor Soon – Sissie’s ex colleague. He has done a fantastic job of capturing those moments.

Other Events:
The Wedding Dinner
Bridget and Pei Chin’s Wedding
A day before the wedding

Saga de Malaysia – Part 2

Other Events:
The Wedding Dinner
Bridget and Pei Chin’s Wedding
Pre-Wedding tea ceremony at Royal Domains

A day before the wedding:

While being caged in the house, all I did was to stare out from the balcony…
The views were interesting… The place where Sissie lives is called “Royal Domains” and is located quite near to KLCC – KL City Center. Just off Jalan Kuching, it doesn’t take too long to reach some of the famous places and malls of KL.

One evening, we went out to nearest Tesco to buy some essential supplies for my survival for coming days. Before Tesco, we loitered in near by shopping complexes and I noticed that one of them had many international brands along with “Circuit City”. Not sure if this Circuit City is in anyway related to Circuit City of US as later has already been closed down.

Of course, this international brand is also available here and in abundance.

In Cold Storage shop, I could find frozen parathas with no onion and no garlic. I also could pick up Patak’s pickle which became the companion to these parathas for my upcoming lunches and dinners.
From Wednesday Sep 8th onward, Sissie and PC (Cheang told me that Cheang is his family name and his name is Pei Chin… so now onward, he is called PC) took off from the working and final preparation for wedding started in full swing.

One afternoon, we went to the bridal shop for Sissie’s gown testing…

Its very surprising for me Indian to find out that most of the weddings here use bridal shops for all wedding dresses, makeup and pre-marriage photo shoot. While photo-shoot was understandable (as it needs a good studio setup), it was surprising for me to know that these bridal shops are a one-stop solution for all wedding needs including the wedding gown for the actual wedding. It surely makes sense to rent the gown which you are not going to wear anytime afterwards.

And these bridal shops offer so many varieties of these gowns. Not sure if such bridal shops in India would work as most brides here would prefer to own the bridal sari they would be wearing for the wedding. Never heard that any bride here rented her cloths or jewelry for her wedding. But the concept of bridal shop seems very appealing. It would surely save lots of money and efforts for the bride and if the bridal shop can also help in catering/wedding reception/wedding dinner, it can be a big business at least in Gujarat.

Anyway, this bridal shop named Deva Couture was very poor in service and customer satisfaction though. Sissie’s gown was too tight and it popped off the zipper when she tried it first time. Once it was fixed, she tried it again and after another one more alteration, it was ok. Then we found that the gown was very crumpled and needed ironing. The shop said that its iron has broken and it cannot iron. We had to fight with the shop to get the gown ironed and pick up next day. Looking at the run-down condition of the front of the shop, the interiors and such pathetic customer service, we felt that it was a mistake to choose this bridal shop and they will not recommend it to anyone else.

From the bridal shop, we went to Ali Yaa – the restaurant where the wedding dinner is arranged.
The place looked very nice and the people there were very cordial. All arrangements were getting in place and they honored every of the requests Sissie and PC had made.

Later, we went to One Utama mall. While Sissie preferred to be roaming on her own, me and PC walked few floors, window-shopped in M&S, GAP and few of my favorite shops. We also picked up some stationery and wooden letters for Just Married sign. Later, being very thirsty, we stopped by at Juice Work…

While our juices were being prepared, I used the time to take some pictures, I caught PC using the best of his temporary freedom…
We met this fella while hunting for Sissie… He is so healthy resembling to Michelin guy…

Later, we found out that Sissie was hybernating in this Starbucks.

Once we reached home, PC got busy in making of the sign…
His hard labor was rewarded by Sissie with the special face decoration…

Next day morning, we went to Kajang for the wedding rehearsal in the church. This is also an interesting learning for me…

Since the wedding was in the church, the counselors preferred Sissie and PC to undergo a rehearsal to understand what actually will happen in and during marriage. This way, both bride and groom are aware of the happenings during wedding and are not caught with either ignorance or any surprises during the ceremony.

Later in the afternoon, me and PC went to the bridal shop for the car decoration…  It was Hari Raya holiday but the shop was aware of that Sissie’s wedding was next day to this holiday.

 
The lady turned up for the decoration and her body language showed that she wasn’t enjoying her work on holiday. We had to push her for decent finishing work.

This is how the car looked just before the back side decoration finished.

Later in the evening, Sissie’s parents and brothers arrived and I had a good time with all of them. Later in the evening, I joined Sissie and Mom for a trip to One Utama for her cosmetic enhancements for the next day’s wedding ceremony. While she was busy with that, I loitered in different shops in One Utama, used Starbucks’ free WiFi to check my mails, updated my tweets and four square locations.

Other Events:
The Wedding Dinner
Bridget and Pei Chin’s Wedding
Pre-Wedding tea ceremony at Royal Domains