Yesterday, I had a dinner gathering with my best of friends and one of my friends’ sister will be getting married really soon.

It will be about 2 months before their big wedding day.

They have bought an apartment in the extreme west side of Singapore and the place is currently undergoing its renovation.

However, this is not the point.

My friend mentioned to me that his future brother-in-law had in fact told his future wife to quit her job.

And he didn’t even say “Hi” to the family members who answered his call to my friend’s house. He just bluntly asked for his wife and hanged up if she was not available.

Hmm, it is very interesting observation before their wedding. I know of how some people change their attitude towards the in-laws and their families only after their wedding day but not before.

The two issues that we could discuss here are about how some men behaves before their wedding days:
1. Asking his wife to quit the job
2. Being respectful to soon-to-be spouse’s family members
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“Dear Jhong Ren,

I think lots of pple are very busy with their careers at the time they
are
about to get hitched. That’s why to have guidance in their preparation
would
be a real blessing. =)

My wedding is not due till early 2009 but have already booked my BS.
Super
kiasu right? Haha..

My fiance and I believe in early planning especially when his work is
somewhat volatile in schedule. So we are looking at things that we need
to
do and try to get them settled first so as to minimise any other
decision
making in the future lest we have no time for discussion.

What do you think?

Cheers,
Theo”

My reply:
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When we left the bride’s home, we headed straight back to our home.

The weather during my wedding was nice and warm. The sun wasn’t very hot and luckily it didn’t rain. Can you imagine the inconvenience we may have if it poured?

When we reached home, all my relatives were here. We were very excited and delighted.

Time for tea-ceremony. Everyone got into position…my aunties prepared the tea-cups set and arranged two chairs side by side.

As each cup of tea was served, my cousin was saying nice words…he sounded like the Master of Ceremony for tea-ceremony. :p

Though we had to serve tea to at least 30 relatives, the tea-ceremony lasted for just 15 minutes or so.

Happy times passed very quickly!

Click here to download the pdf file for this post

No one says that wedding-planning is a smooth route. Generally, fulfilling tasks like booking the wedding venues or purchasing clothing and other wedding accessories are easy.

The challenging aspect is partnering with your love one to complete this wonderful once-in-a-lifetime task together.

There will be many times to test how much both of you support, communicate and understand each other.

There will be times when practices and customs from both families clash. There will be times when the bride and groom have to come to a compromise what they really want for their wedding, putting aside their ideal wedding in their mind?There will be times when stressors from work, family and wedding planning become too overwhelming for the couple to carry?

There may be feelings like joyfulness and pleasure when things are going well as planned. On the other hand, there may be other feelings such as anger and frustrations when couples feel that they may not be supported or understood why certain decisions have to be made because of traditional beliefs or because their parents say so.

For me, planning the wedding with my wife has its ups and downs too. Though challenging, I find it as an invaluable time to really better understand my wife and to really support her in terms of the decisions she made and the plans she had in mind.

I find it even more fulfilling when we went through the wedding day together?hand-in-hand?and living to the fullest the magical experience we had on our wedding day? >.< I really hope that this wedding-planning guide is really useful for you and I hereby wish you and your love one have a superb time of planning your wedding together.

– Jhong Ren

I’m extremely grateful to all the best buddies in the following picture. We had a meeting with my band of brothers who are very kind to help me in this wedding-planning.

?

They took up 7 various roles such as:
1) Brother Chief (in-charge of all brothers)
2) Banque Coordinator (in-charge of the banquet and liaise with the hotel coordinator)
3) Beverage Coordinator (in-charge of controlling flow of wine, beer and liquors)
4) IT Coordinator (in-charge of powerpoint and video presentation, microphones and liaise with hotel technicians)
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