Singapore Weddings: Traditional & Non-Traditional

Well, we've been to two wedding dinners in the last two days. One was about as traditional as they come, the other about as non-traditional as they come. So, what, you might ask, is traditional in Singapore? Well, to answer that I will describe the dinner we went to last night. First of all there were 75 tables each holding 10 people. For those of us who can handle simple math that equals a whole lot! We asked the groom how many of them he knew he replied less than half. Yikes. It is typical at Chinese weddings to invite hordes or people your parents vaguely know. It's a way of showing how wealthy you are and makes you look good. More must haves for the traditional Chinese wedding dinner: dry ice entrance, sharks fin soup, friends and relatives performing musical numbers, loud and long "yum sengs" (basically saying cheers), a styrofoam or plastic cake and a grand entrance of the first dish on flaming platters. Basically the more unusual, bizarre, exotic and cruel the food, the better. The highlight of the night? Snowfrog ovary soup. Yum. Tonight's wedding, however, was almost the opposite. Less than 40 close friends and relatives at a nice hotel villa, homemade cupcakes, buffet dinner of Asian and Western food and heartfelt words from the bride and groom. What, you may ask, is the same about both types? Love, my friends. It may be outright or hidden under layers of propriety, but it's there. Mazel tov to all!