Wednesday 13 July 2016

Super belated wedding post

As proof that I am a horrible horrible blogger, I just found an incomplete blogpost from months ago; but (if I may toot my own horn) it was quite a nice story so I'm just going to shamelessly finish it off and publish it on the blog.

Just pretend that you're reading this in January okay. Hehe.

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A few weeks ago, one of my relatives made my day (actually, my entire weekend) with a very simple text. It said:

"I've got my man now, insyaAllah, but I need my girls too. Will you be my bridesmaid?"

Up until now, I've had cousins who'd gotten married and I was of course involved in the whole preparation running up to the weddings themselves, but I've never really been a proper bridesmaid before. And none of my close friends are getting married yet, so technically my application to be their dulang girl is still pending (indefinitely). So you can probably tell how thrilled I am about my first official bridesmaid duty. Matching dresses and everything! Suuuuuper stoked!!

I love love love family weddings, albeit all the chaos and stress that come with them. The prep usually drives me mad but after everything's over, I'm always left feeling so satisfied and content and sooo full of love and gratitude for my family. Family time is always a good time, so I'm very very excited for this coming wedding.

Anyway, speaking of weddings!

This brings me to my other winter break activity that I was gonna write about. I went back to KL for a short while in December for my cousin's wedding. The wedding took up one whole weekend – there were 5 events altogether. Friday afternoon was the nikah, Friday night was the Henna Night, Saturday afternoon was the reception on the bride's side, Saturday night we had a maulid at my uncle's house, and, finally, the groom's reception (our side) on Sunday afternoon.

I didn't attend the nikah nor the bride's reception, but there were still wedding stuff that I had to help with during those times. Just listing them down is bringing back the exhaustion of that weekend!


Ladies' Night

On Friday night, we had the Henna Night (aka Ladies' Night) at a hotel in KL. It's pretty weird to call it that because in the Malay culture, Henna Night (i.e. malam berinai) literally means drawing henna on the bride's hands, but in Arab culture, it has nothing to do with henna at all. So I'm really not sure how it got the name, haha. Basically the ladies dress up in fancy outfits and get together to celebrate the bride, so it's more like a bachelorette party. My girl cousins, Najwa, and I got ready at the hotel in the evening. Helped each other with hair and makeup and it was so so much fuuunnn, because we rarely get to do this together! It was chaotic of course, since we easily outnumbered the jamban and the mirrors in the room. I ended up doing my makeup in the friggin' bathtub k guys hahaha because the wall by the tub was covered by a huge mirror (thank God for that!). A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. #dedication

Since it was an all-ladies event, we weren't allowed to use our phones and cameras in the hall to protect everyone's privacy. This way nobody would feel unsafe or uncomfortable to 'uncover' themselves and have a good time. So sadly, we don't have any nice pictures of our outfits from that night! No squad pictures with the cousins either :(((

I'll just put a couple of pictures of what I wore that night:


The hooded robe that I wore over my 'party outfit'




We had a fantastic night though! There were some performances and of course there was food, and my goodness, was there dancing! It was such great fun to see little girls as young as 3 years old jumping along to the music, but even more so to dance with our aunts! To be honest that was really why we don't have any pictures – everyone was so busy dancing, nobody even remembered about taking pictures.

That night I also added a new milestone in my life: I danced the night away in 5-inch heels!! (They were the very same heels that I once tripped in, and then fell smack on my butt in front of a bunch of strangers. So yes, big achievement! I gotta update my CV.)


The Day After

After our long night of glamour and fun, our Saturday was anything but. I got up super early in the morning, got ready and packed my stuff. Once Najwa and my cousins were all set too, we checked out of our rooms and went home to send our overnight bags and have breakfast. Soon after, I had to drive straight to Putrajaya with Najwa and Maryam to help out with wedding errands. By that time we were all still pretty dead from the night before hahaha.

The heat was unbearable that day, which did little to help, but the sky was a brilliant blue and my heart swelled for the city that I call my first home.



It was a super duper long day but it was alright because we got kambing panggang and roti jala that night after the maulid. Big win.


The Reception

The last event of the weekend and the most tiring event ever. Ever!!! The reception was held at my uncle's house and we were expecting more than 1000 guests. I'm not kidding. When I found out about the size of the guest list, I thought my cousin had been joking. So gila!

People started coming at 11am. Masa tu makeup semua masih on point tapi masa tu jugak la matahari nak naik and cairkan segala usaha keras kita. And while the makeup was melting off our faces, us cousins were all busy being handed our tasks for the day.

This part is very, very important. Pro tip: when working at a wedding, get one solid task that you'll have to stick with for the rest of the day. It might be boring, but at least it's something. This is where I'd gone wrong. I didn't have a solid duty for the day and I ended up doing errands and getting tasks from left right and center! The best task I got that day was when I was almost melting off the face of the earth and my cousin suddenly pulled me aside and asked me to guard the wedding cake in a car that had the aircond on full blast.

My cousins and I were moving around so much at the wedding that, again, we didn't have that many pictures of us together which was quite a bummer. My cousin (sister of the groom) has a company for event planning now and she was the one who set up the tent and pelamin and everything. It's not the best idea to plan your own brother's wedding though... She didn't sleep for a whole week and when we arrived at her house that Sunday morning, she was still in her pyjamas setting things up. So gila (part 2). But she did a great job 'cause everything looked so cantik.













Actually, when the reception was going on, I barely saw my cousins because we were all attending to our own crises. Najwa had to deal with kids at the candy station (imagine the horror). Syira had to deal with the caterers while also greeting the guests. Paah and I were just running around doing miscellaneous tasks and getting pulled in every direction for favours. My other girl cousins were nowhere to be found so I'm pretty sure they were facing the same thing. At one point I got so fed up that I went up to my parents in exasperation and said, "UGHHH I DON'T WANT TO GET MARRIED."

But later in the evening when the guests have all gone back, the family gathered together under the tent and watched the guys dance the samrah (not even sure if this is the correct phrase).





I wanted to convert the videos to gifs but it wouldn't work. Sucks because it was pretty cool actually. It was so meriah but chill at the same time and I could tell that everyone was enjoying themselves. They danced for about 2 hours 'kay!! That's like a few days' worth of cardio!

And then it was back to cleaning up the scene of the crime.... That's the downside of getting married at home kan? You have to clean the house and settle the preparations, you are the host, and then after smiling and talking to 1000 guests, you clean up (you = family of the pengantin). By the end of it all we basically wanted to pengsan for 2 days.



Man, weddings sure are
e x h a u s t i n g.

There's no denying that we all had a great time, but if you ask any of us singles about where we'll want to get married, we'll all tell you the same thing:

"I don't know, anywhere but home."

11 comments:

  1. These are just brilliant wedding photos. The wedding decoration was truly amazing. I like such sober wedding decorations. We will also be having a simple ceremony at destination wedding venues NYC. It would be great if you can share any wedding planning tips here!

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Oh my goodness, I'm so sorry, I've just realised your comment on this post! Unfortunately, I wasn't the wedding planner for my cousin's wedding haha so I really don't know what to propose to you. I'm so sorry. I hope your planning is going well at the moment and that your ceremony will turn out great! :)

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