In Continuum.

Runaway Bridegroom

When the cars pulled into the car park downstairs, the majority of the residence along Street 92 of Hougang suspected little of what ensued. It was seven in the morning, a Saturday morning at that. After the late night partying, a drink or two over at the nearest pub, or perhaps a late supper at 1am at the neighborhood coffee shop, everybody was tired and just wanted a peaceful sleep until the sun bites at their asses. At least that is what my friend Ahmad wanted while he was halfway through his dreams when the cars downstairs lined up in a neat row along the road, and start blaring their horns as loudly as possible. Ahmad, being the kind of guy who treasures his sleep more than anything in the world (And I mean, anything), jumped out from the comfort of his bedsheets and saw a man dressed in a neat suit, shouting upwards into the HDB blocks.

For those people who are unsure of what just happened, it is a Chinese tradition to do such a thing when you are about to get married - at least for the bridegroom anyway. In the past, people used firecrackers to make the noise instead. It is supposed to be an auspicious thing, to signify that the bridegroom is here to fetch the bride, and the louder the noise, the longer the bride will stay married. Supposedly, anyway. But because firecrackers are banned in Singapore - stop laughing, Kenzie - they use car horns to replace the noise made by firecrackers instead. At least that is what happened on that fateful morning, when everybody was asleep in the morning, only to be woken up by the hysterical yelling of the bridegroom shouting things like "Honey! I'm here for you!" and other words of romanticisms. Ahmad shared little of his happiness that morning, and took down their license plate numbers after being overwhelmed by utter irritation.

I haven't been to a lot of weddings, simply because I've been in Singapore all my life. My relatives are all in Taiwan, which means that to have me attend their wedding would cost them an extra plane ticket. So to save cost, my family are usually not invited to their weddings at all, unless we are already back there in the first place. It's not like I am a fan of attending weddings anyway, but it is rather pathetic that I've attended less than a handful of weddings in my life, and have no idea whatsoever how it is like or what goes on during a wedding. Most of my knowledge derives from the things they show on television, or the stories my friends tell me after a night out at a cousin's wedding, or something like that. My knowledge of weddings is as good as the knowledge I have about common rituals in a random African tribe, so to speak.

Comedian Russell Peters once talked about Indians attending Western-styled weddings, and mentioned something about what his mother said. There was this once when his mother was at a wedding of a Caucasian couple, when she started screaming "What are they doing? Why are they wasting all the food?" when their friends and family started throwing rice at the bride and groom. "Maybe they should come to our weddings, and we will throw mash potatoes at them!" You see, rice is one of the primary food in Indian culture, and to his mother it was a sign of wasting food - simply because she didn't understand the meaning behind it. This is the kind of knowledge I have for weddings, the kind I receive passively from different sources, and never experienced anything myself.

I do remember a wedding I attended when I was younger though, and it was the wedding of my father's friend's daughter - or something like that. I'm not sure why we were invited at all, but I guess there must have been empty seats and extra food. I remember sitting in the corner of the great hall, with the bride walking down the central aisle in her father's hands, and the wedding march playing in the background, drowning out the cheers and the laughter all around. It was a beautiful scene, with the little girls behind throwing flowers about and the priest waiting at the very end with the husband-to-be. But of course, I was too short then to see anything when the adults stood up to applause, and I was left in the corner sulking. I wandered out of the venue soon after, and found myself sitting next to the fountain downstairs, watching the fishes swim by the edge of the pool of water, mouths extending out of the surface to catch imaginary food.

So you see, I've never had a fond memory of weddings and was more interested in the life of fishes. I blame the adults who never thought about my height-deficiency back then, and the fact that nobody offered their shoulders for me to sit on. I heard most of the proceedings of the wedding, with the priest saying a bunch of words I couldn't remember, and then more cheers from the audience. That must have been when the rings were exchanged and the lips made contact. But ever since young, the atmosphere of a wedding has been too suffocating, too happy for me to bear. I never liked crowds, and still don't unless absolutely necessary. Weddings to me are like a part of childhood I chose to forget, because they never made a pretty impression in my head, not even the beauty of the bride or the weight of a ceremony like that. Besides, the drunkards stumbling out of the hotel at the end with vomit all over themselves never managed the image at the very beginning. You start to wonder if weddings are not for the sake of putting a couple together officially, but rather an opportunity for people to see others make a fool out of themselves.

Valerie didn't make it for the little surprise party we had for LiPing, because a cousin of hers was getting married. Despite holding it at the Mariott Hotel, it was still a pretty big disappointment, with their sub-standard food and the lack of creativity in the wedding ceremony itself. I'm sure she was there merely for the sake of it, and would've torn herself away to join us at Clarke Quay if she had the choice. However, there was a video played during the wedding that became the talk of the night - at least for her anyway. It was the video of the bridegroom at the front door of the bride's home, kneeling down on his knees and begging for her to open the doors, with the bride's good female friends on the other side of the door, torturing him and forcing him to wear diapers and shit like that. You might think that it is something funny, but I merely thought it was plain stupid.

Seriously, I wonder who came up with the idea that the bridegroom needs to be utterly humiliated on his wedding day in every single way possible. It's just like the tradition they had in school, when boys would be carried around by a bunch of other boys, to the nearest pole and have their crotch slammed a million times before they run off in multiple directions. Somebody must have thought it funny to pull pranks like that on occasions such as birthdays or weddings, that people are now seeing them as traditions. It might be fun to see your friend, your son, or your brother, begging for the bride to open the door in his diapers. But I simply found the idea to be repulsive, really. 'What if the bride wants you to do it?' Valerie asked. 'I'm probably not going to marry somebody as low as that', I replied.

As if it is not bad enough for the couple, any friends or family related to the couple will be dragged down into the water as well. I read a joke somewhere, about a girl being elbowed by her relatives during her sister's wedding. Her aunt leaned into her and whispered "You're next!", which irritated the hell out of her because she was single at that time. So as a revenge, she elbowed her aunt during the funeral of their relative and whispered into her ear "You're next!" It was in an issue of Reader's Digest, and I remember laughing so loud that I choked on myself. I swear, the next time somebody does that to me during a wedding, I am going to say the exact same thing.

A dream wedding would be a simplified version of everything. It is not going to have a bunch of alcoholics, they are not going to have crazy friends of the bride forcing me to put on diapers, nor is it going to have a whole bunch of irritating relatives or friends, harassing the unattached guests of the ceremony about their martial status. As much as I hate crowds, I despise a crowd with a bunch of people I know as well. It is probably going to be in a remote corner of the country(Assuming that it is going to be in Singapore), with minimal amount of guests and all that shebang. I know, it might be rather odd for a guy to be thinking about it, but I guess I just want to save myself from humiliation during the day itself. At least that is what I am to do, to go against this ridiculous tradition people seem to have.

No wonder it was the case for a friend of mine when he proposed to his girlfriend. Of course, it was a harmless proposal and when he said "Will you marry me?", it meant "Will you marry me in five years' time", since he was merely twenty and still schooling at that time. It was one of those romantic things you tell your girlfriends, even if they know that you are not serious about it. They just want to see you on your knees, and asking THE question. It's a cheap thrill if you think about it, but cheap thrills rule anyway.

My friend told me over a dinner once, that the moment he asked that question to her, he regretted ever asking it in the first place. I guess in a way, a wedding is just like the birth of your baby. The moment that baby comes out from the womb, the amount of responsibility thrown on you is going to weigh you down like a bloody avalanche. Not to mention the amount of humiliation you are going to get on the wedding day itself, and that is not mentioning the preparations involved beforehand. Whatever happened to those simple weddings we see by the side of the beach or cliff in movies? They might be overly romanticized, but at least they are more realistic and less humiliating. At least on the wedding day itself, you are not going to get a runaway bridegroom - for sure.