Wedding Headaches

Wedding invitations kept on coming these last few days. My weekends were filled with lunch and dinner receptions.. be it at home, community halls and hotels. Weddings can be very expensive affairs if you are on the ladies' sides. The brides normally have to host the engagement ceremonies, the 'nikah' ceremonies and also the wedding receptions. These can range between tens of thousands to maybe a hundred thousands depending on how elaborate the weddings are.

No matter how grand or small the weddings might be, nothing is perfect. Said one celebrity wedding planner, 'if you want a perfect wedding, do not come to me'. How true..I have yet to see a perfect wedding. Like a friend said during her daughter's wedding, 'what you see might be perfect but the actual scene behind it might not'.

I remember during Nadia's wedding, how some of my friends like the band so much. But until today, Nadia was extremely upset since the band did not play her songs at all. The right songs were not played when the couple walked in and during the cake cutting ceremony. The band even started to pack up when the couple cut their cake.My husband and I decided that for our children's future wedding, we are not going to hire any band, instead we are going to use the CDs. But then again we have to make sure the one who is playing the CDs has to know which songs to be played and when.

I sometimes wonder how some caterers can cook good food and some can't. The host paid a substantial amount of money for food. At least the caterers should have some decency to provide nice and tasty food. 'Ayam masak merah' should taste like ayam masak merah not something else. You only have to put nice amount of salt, sugar and vinegar into it. Not..so much salt , a bit of sugar and a lot of vinegar. Then ayam masak merah is not ayam masak merah anymore. Worst still, the guests cannot eat it. And then.. there are not so fresh ingredients.. I pity these hosts, not only their money not well spent and also there are food down the drains.

How I wish that weddings can be a lot simpler. Why not? instead of inviting 500 to 700 hundreds guests, we should only invite those who are really close to us. 100 to 250 guests would be nice and a lot easier to handle. My auntie has a ground rule; those that you have not seen for more than 5 to 10 years should not be invited. We can always forego the engagement ceremony or perhaps combine it with the nikah ceremony. After all, the same people are going to be invited for both occasions, right?

Well, I hope I still have a long time to go before preparing the next wedding in our family. Nabil is just 20 and I hope I will not get any phone calls saying,' Ma, I want to get married', so soon...