Do it right and don't be silly... please.

There’s been some sort of phenomenon lately and I’m told, it’s just a phase that everybody once in their lives faces at one point or another. It took me quite a while to agree and once I did, it hit hard. The thing is there are two things that people I know and people in general tend to like to do in their past time. They’d either get married or they’d die. It is rather sad really. Death is never good and I’m not going to say more. But these people getting married, as selfish as I am, would mean less people readily available to my company. I have - or rather used to have - different groups of friends to do different things with. Now my resources are depleting and they’re depleting fast. Considering the pace I’m going at, in two years time I’ll be that bitter and cynical guy who sits at the bar, havering to the barman about my dead end job, illegal immigrants and Selangor’s ongoing political turmoil on Friday evenings. But the future aside…

My issue with weddings is, you have to attend it and I hate attending for weddings. It is always amazing how they invited thousands of guests and still manage to recall who came and who didn’t. Missing it is a big no-no in a traditional almost-orthodox Malay community. It’s a social suicide some might say and it is quite true.

It has become a trend to follow the western ways of doing things. People are inclined to have the wedding reception held in a hotel ballroom or some fancy hall, depending on affordability of course. They’d try to make the event as grand as possible. And you will have to dress up in traditional costume and struggle not to spill a drop of curry onto your clothes. There’ll be an 8-piece cutlery set right in front of you and you’ll spend half the time trying to be friendly and civilized to the other nine strangers on the table while at the same time figure out which spoon should first be used and how.

Then there’s a more traditional way of doing it. Some have it at home. My only issue with this is Malaysia is way too hot to go about having lunch underneath an oven-like plastic canopy in a full Baju Melayu suit – and fake a smile while at it. I always pity the newlyweds but they brought the ‘pain’ onto themselves so they shouldn’t complain.

I’ve temporarily given up trying to understand why people get married knowing that I’ll do it myself somewhere along the road. That's another story for another day. The pressing concern here is the wedding reception. Having observed the ways they’ve been doing it I begun to wonder if they even know what they’re doing and why they are done in such ways. So I took a step back and think. Why do I hate wedding receptions so much? What’s so wrong about it that I think it’s pointless?

Wedding receptions, be it held in a five-star hotel or a simple ‘dewan serbaguna rakyat’, tend to get it all wrong. First of all, more often than not, all the decoration and food were prepared by ‘contractors’. Traditionally close friends, neighbors and family members would gather resources to prepare for the wedding reception. Some will bring onions, some rice, some cooking oil and whatnots. It is not about getting others to contribute really, it’s the spirit of togetherness. Having worked hard for two days, both guests and help feast together for a day, celebrating the newlywed’s special day.

Also, traditionally, guests will be given each a boiled egg, wrapped in a piece of colorful cloth. This symbolizes fertility, hoping soon the couple will receive a gift of a child and more to follow. Yes, throughout the years we’ve been becoming more and more creative in the ways we present the boiled egg. Some come in a woven basket, some porcelain boxes yet some still in the form of the good ol' ‘bunga telur’. This is where many got it wrong. The packaging is getting increasingly outlandish but that’s fine so long they contain boiled eggs. Now instead of symbolizing fertility and function as a token of appreciation, they represent nothing. We now get Pandora boxes. Them boxes may contain sweets and candy, or a hand towel, or specially imported chocolate, or a piece of fruitcake. You’ll never know what’s inside until you open it. Just like the marriage you’d just witnessed and celebrated, you’ll never know what to expect of it and what’s going to happen.

Then again, what do you care, you're only there for the free lunch and bitch on how bad the food was and how the decoration was a bit off and how the bride could’ve found someone better looking. And as for the host, if the real reason of having the reception is to announce that the couple is now off the market, instead of spending a hundred grand on it they could’ve just spend two-thirds of that money and make a half-page announcement on three nationally circulated printed media, the way listed companies publish their annual reports. A one-day job and 26-odds million people get to know about it at the comfort of their own homes, plus you have 33-thousand ringgit left to go on a romantic honeymoon on an exotic island or place deposit for a new house or even both.

But if you do it just because everybody else is doing it, or you just want to show off that you have more, well, screw you and god be with you.