Yan Ming’s Wedding (Peony Jade @ Keppel Club)

I was invited to my teammate Yan Ming’s wedding reception at Peony Jade at Keppel Club last March, and it was the very first Singaporean wedding I had ever been to, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.

I was too early, it turns out. Oh, I was on time according to the wedding invitation, but apparently most guests don’t actually show up until like an hour after that. The groom happened to be loitering by the reception table when I arrived, so he pointed out where my table was.

Naturally, no one had briefed me that I was supposed to hand over the ang bao (the envelope with cash gift) at the reception table, so I had to go back outside to do that when everyone else arrived and we had a picture with the groom.

Before the program started, the radiant couple walked around to mingle with the guests, the bride still in her white gown. We kind of called attention to ourselves during a moment, and we joked that this is probably the reason why YM had felt the need to isolate us in a table with fake guests.

You see, each table was supposed to have ten guests, but at our table, there  were five of us, and the other five never arrived. Seems suspicious, don’t you think? 🤔

But each table had a set amount of food, no matter how many people were actually there, so we had double the amount of food to consume compared to other tables. And since this is a Singaporean wedding, it was a nine-course meal, so I’m talking about a lot of food here.

My favourite was the suckling pig starter, but everything was so delicious! Someone commented that he had eaten a light dinner before coming, because most wedding buffets are not that good, but this surprisingly was.

Somewhere in between, the bride switched out of her white gown and into a different evening gown, then walked around from table to table for pictures. This is apparently common for Singaporean weddings.

We all thought the bride was really cute. She is so bubbly and she surprisingly knew each one of us by name even though not all of us had met her before. (I first got introduced to her in a bus – it was a random encounter.)

My Filipino friends had warned me that Singaporean weddings are not quite as “exciting” as Philippine ones, in the sense that there’s usually just eating and not much of a program (in the Philippines we have lots of performances, speeches, games, etc), but this wedding had some stuff going on, like when the bride’s friends showed their hen night pics and did a song number, and when the bride surprised the groom with a sweet video in the form of a love letter to him which showed pictures of their history, all tied up together with a Chinese love song which she later revealed to have sung herself.

She kept mementos of their early days! Look at those Nokia screenshots! It’s so sweet! 😍

Overall, my first Singaporean wedding experience was a fun one, and I’m excited to attend my second one next month. I just hope we don’t make a scene this time! 😅