I hadn’t read Meg’s book when I first got engaged, but (spoiler) it has recommended steps for the newly engaged person. As a lover of lists and inveterate box-ticker I would’ve been delighted by this, and I would’ve been even more pleased to know that I had Step One down.
The first thing to do is to brainstorm and to dream. Let yourself dream unrestricted by reality at first, because the heart has a way of guiding you in the right direction, even when the heart seems a little crazy. —From Chapter One
Because weddings do weird things to your brain, what I started dreaming about was… stationery.
My save the dates came to me in a flash of light, attended by angels singing. A picture of me and my fiancé astride our Chinese zodiac animals—the tiger and the ox respectively—leaping in mid-air and high-fiving!
I had it all figured out. I’d get my ridiculously talented artist cousin to draw my vision and email it to me, I’d print it off on a bunch of postcards, send it to all my friends, and sit back and bask in the glow of knowing I had the cutest save the dates (wo)man had ever seen.
This, of course, is not the way any wedding-related dream goes. Reality took the form of my mother—and reality, as always, was stranger than you think.
“It’s real cute!” said my mother via text message. But she hinted darkly at “some implications from some traditional old sayings.”
My parents’ concern turned out to be the prominence of our zodiac animals. “The tiger eats the ox so maybe people will joke you will bully Peter,” said my mom.
“But if I bully Peter it’s because I’m just that kind of person, not because I’m a Tiger. I’ll bully him if I’m a Rabbit also.”
Strangely my mother did not seem to find this reassuring.
“And I think it’s nicer if the card is in colour,” she said. “You want black and white ah? Colour is nicer.”
Aha, mom! That’s where I’ve got you! The question of “nice”ness is one of subjective aesthetic judgment, and as one of the two people getting married I wield ultimate veto power in determining niceness in the context of the wedding!
“Colour’s more expensive,” I said diplomatically. “Black and white simpler. It’s only the save the date, don’t need to be so fancy.”
The next thing I knew my mother had, er, strongly encouraged my cousin to finish inking the design, wrested the picture off of her, and printed off 100 copies of the design in various colour combinations, all of which I disliked.
Because I try to be a good daughter, I made sure to do all my tooth-gnashing and hair-tearing before I got on Skype and demanded an explanation. And it was only then, amidst the wreckage of my paper goods-based dreams, that my mother came clean.
“Black and white pantang lah,” she said. “You know, when your brother got married, he did his own invitations and sent them out in white envelopes. Dad’s friend’s feelings were so hurt, instead of giving angpow at the wedding, he brought the envelope and put the money in that.”
This requires some explanation for a non-Chinese Malaysian audience. Pantang is Malay for “taboo.” Angpow describes the red packets in which gifts of money are traditionally given at happy occasions such as Chinese New Year and weddings. But—and this was the detail I was missing—gifts of money are also given to attendees at funerals. They are given in white envelopes.
Why my mother didn’t just tell me she didn’t want black and white save the dates because the colours are associated with death is a mystery that I will take to my grave. But that’s weddings for you. Frickin’ everything means more than you think it will, and the reasons people give for the things they demand of you don’t always have anything to do with their actual reasons.
There’s a happy ending, though it does involve some waste of paper. After an internal struggle I directed the 100 postcards to the recycling bin and got my cousin to recolour the design. She did it in vivid pinks and reds—nothing more auspicious than pink and red—and I had the cards reprinted to my exacting standards.
We worked out the zoological issues with the design as well. “It needs a more partnership feeling,” said my dad. “Not one person stronger than the other.” The amended version of the design shows the tiger and ox high-fiving as well as Peter and I. Apparently this is all that is needed to indicate good will among zodiackal carnivores and their prey.
© Alina Choong
What my save the date saga taught me was that you can’t predict what the points of tension are going to be when you start planning a wedding, because a wedding is a community event. To predict every point of tension you’d have to be able to think as the whole community. And most of us can’t do that because we’re humans and not Borg.
But that’s OK. The Borg probably miss out on a lot in life. I bet their weddings suck.
Illustrations by: Alina Choong
