I’ll be the first to admit I’m a sucker for weddings. Yes, I even organized my own with these two hands right here, with just the occasional help from DH and no one else!

Now this was before the days of the wedding planner companies like that whole stretch over at SS2. Don’t ask me how I did it but I was just brimming with Wedding Ideas at the time.

And I really had a blast organizing everything from my gown and his suit to my hair and makeup and the photography sessions and music.

I don’t know about engaging some company to do it. Why would you wanna do that?

I figure this being a once-in-a-lifetime, I wanted to do it all myself. Or maybe I’m just a control freak, I don’t know .

If you liked this post, please subscribe to my RSS feed for more hip parenting posts. Oh and do leave me a comment, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

I can’t believe they’ve already started selling mooncakes and lanterns, and the Mid-Autumn (or Mooncake or Lantern) Festival isn’t until, what, mid-September ?

I asked my teens which lantern they want me to buy them and my girls turned their noses up at me and laughed it off. I’ve only bought lanterns once or twice in all the years that I’ve had kids.

They were never very keen on lanterns. Steev completely snubbed them. He didn’t care for lanterns or mooncakes. Like me !

The girls at least walked around the neighborhood with their lanterns for maybe one or two years. I remember the candles kept going off and I was having a heck of a time trying to light the candles on a windy night. Then the mosquitoes started making a feast of us and that was it!

But of course, I would try and make a thing about buying mooncakes, just to keep the tradition alive a little bit lah!

The lucky date for weddings is this week! I laughed when I read that couples are rushing to tie the knot on 8 August 2008, that’s 08.08.08. Hmm, how cool and superstitious is that !

I guess it should also be a good day to start their honeymoon vacation to some exotic destination like the Mexican Riviera. Wouldn’t that be something?

In fact, Karisma Hotels has many resorts you can choose from, each perfect in its own way for whatever style of reception and honeymoon you have in mind.

The scenic sand, sea and surf would provide the ideal backdrop for an unforgettable event, don’t you think? I think it would complement the lucky 8 date quite nicely .

Well, sorta! First off, we didn’t get invited to the wedding of the niece of DH’s longtime friend. DH’s friend didn’t know and innocently told DH he would be seeing us at the church wedding.

This was like 2 days before the wedding, and it set off a series of confused questions, raised eyebrows and debate on whether we should tell his friend we weren’t invited or just play along. To cut a long story short, DH’s friend inadvertently ended up “inviting” us to the church wedding.

His sister was shocked to see us (since she didn’t invite us) and she didn’t hide her surprise either. She pretty much snubbed us. I can’t imagine why since we weren’t exactly excited to be there ourselves. No disrespect but we find church weddings to be extremely boring.

We wasted an entire morning at church, the kids plugged into their MP3s and me playing Solitaire on my PDA phone while DH snored nearby. We left without eating lunch and instead headed for McDonald’s for some much-needed comfort food.

What a laugh we had when DH’s friend messaged later to say he didn’t know the venue of the wedding dinner. And dinner was just hours away! At that point, I decided that we shouldn’t even go. It was quite obvious DH’s friend had accidentally slipped out about the wedding and felt he “had” to invite us.

It’d been awkward enough at the church wedding. I just couldn’t imagine dressing up and spending hours at the dinner afterwards knowing we hadn’t been sincerely invited, know what I mean?

But we did go, finally. But only because by then, DH felt he couldn’t say no since his friend had gone through all that trouble to get us invited. I felt wierd walking in, all dressed up almost expecting to be pounced on and thrown out the front door. It’s my first time gate-crashing, you see, so I guess it’s natural to feel a little paranoid.

Needless to say, I didn’t enjoy the dinner. Not one bit. Heck, by the time we got settled in, I didn’t even feel the least bit sociable and had to resort to perfunctory nods and courtesies to get me through the rest of the evening.

During the 2-hour wait for dinner to be served, I had time to remind the kids about our family’s eating-with-strangers policy. When the food comes, take what you want and do NOT go back for seconds, no matter how good the food tastes.

The common practice of everyone diving in with their chopsticks is pretty horrifying. At weddings, the table is mostly made up of complete strangers, people we don’t know from Adam (or Eve) which makes this whole business of saliva-mixing all the more disgusting.

There’s a common spoon which everyone is supposed to use but no one does. It’s faster to just dive in with your chopsticks. God forbid the people who like to lick or suck their chopsticks before plunging them back into the common plate again and again! YUCK!

When the kids were younger, it was even more stressful for me as I had to fill their plates and my own before everyone else dives in for seconds .

Well, we don’t end up eating a lot. Which is okay we’re there to celebrate someone’s wedding, not to stuff our faces like we’ve never eaten good food before and certainly not to embarrass ourselves.

I went to a wedding dinner last night. Normally we don’t take the kids because it’s considered rude to bring your whole family and take up precious seats at a Chinese 9-course wedding dinner.

But last night, the kids got a rare treat. Of course, the girls were all excited at the last minute trying to decide what to wear and which shoes to go with the dress, etc.

We got there unfashionably early, of course, like we always do. It’s rude to keep others waiting but we’re the rare folks in this country who seem to think so.

Everyone else only start drifting in way after 7pm with nary an apology. It’s the done thing here. Everyone does it. No one complains because they’ll all in this together.

On the invite, it says dinner starts at 7pm but if we ever get to eat before 9pm, that’s considered lucky. Well, we got lucky. Dinner started 10 minutes before 9. Woo-hoo!

We were practically jumping with joy. Not that we were hungry. We always eat before we go. The kids have their MP3 players each, I have games and songs on my PDA phone so we’re all nicely settled in for the long wait…

I have a wedding to attend this weekend. The wedding dinner will be at a Chinese restaurant which means I can afford to dress a little more casually than if it were held at some posh hotel.

The way I see it, restaurants are probably going to be the trend since having a dinner for hundreds of guests can easily cost a fortune at hotels these days.

It might be more economical to just opt for destination weddings instead of organizing a big-scale reception, dinner and honeymoon afterwards. It’d be simpler and so much more romantic to run away to the beautiful beaches of Riviera Maya in Mexico, don’t you think?

Hmm, I can just picture the sunsets, soft sands, exotic food, okay… don’t get me started.

I’m late, says the March Hare. Yes, something I need to be saying right now as I’m late to Marie’s Mommyfest which is going on even as we speak.

I’d meant to put up a post last weekend but I guess I got swept up by Mother’s Day. Anyways, here I am, better late than never .

Hats off to Marie Ynami for this fabulous idea of a blog party. This is my first ever blog party and I’m excited.

Hi and nice to see you. I’m excited about making new friends and saying hi to those who know me from Marie’s Tuesday Toot meme. I’d love to visit your blogs, so please leave me a comment and I’ll stop by later.

I’m not really sure if I’m dressed right for the party . I’m casual as usual, tank top and shorts ready for what’s going to be a steaming 90+ degrees today.

I have three teens, all school-going, so I’m kept constantly busy with taxi runs, lunches, projects, sports. Any free time I have is spent sipping tea and blogging about my kids and sharing tidbits of my experience raising three kids.

I’m off to blog hop now before the kids get home .

I got my presents early this morning from Raine and Skye who have been strangely quiet about the whole thing this year right up till now.

Aren’t these the sweetest? Like I always say, it’s the daughters who know what makes Mom happiest. Big hugs for Raine and Skye !

I don’t have time to write a long, soppy post about the greatness of mothers right now. But let me make this short and sweet. Mothers make the world go round. Moms rock!

Happy Mother’s Day to all you mommies out there, no matter where in the world you are.

I went to a baby’s fullmoon party last weekend. What I really cannot understand is why some couples even bother inviting guests when they’re just not bothered to entertain them.

In this case, the baby’s mother was ‘hiding’ in the living room with her baby and the father was only entertaining selected people and leaving the rest of us standing there like fools.

There was only two main dishes and frankly the food wasn’t enough for everyone there. The drinks were diluted beyond recognition. I barely ate and we left in less than half an hour and we’d driven all the way out to the boonies.

I honestly wish people would be less pretentious and use the slightest excuse to make money by throwing parties or dinners just to collect cash and gifts. It’s disgraceful !