Two Weekends in Comparison

Right about this time last Sunday night the slide show that I created for my cousin brother’s wedding was aired at his reception. Yes…amidst the beading, I was also doing slides for the wedding. When the request came from my aunt, again, I just didn’t have the heart to say no. So I was beading, picture cropping and video creating at the same time. (Giler kuasa la pulak kan, nak buat semua benda…)

The video that I created...

Just as I was finishing the video, another request came from my uncle.

“Ida, can you help write my speech for the wedding?”

“Urr…write speech?? If you want to have it in English, boleh lah.”

“Tak pe lah..in English pun boleh.”

So, add one more task to the existing three, tulis speech la pulak. I figured, dah tolong aunty, tak kan uncle tak tolong.

After googleling info on wedding speeches, I was well on my way writing dear uncle’s speech. I had wanted it to have a good mix of both English and BM expressions and also pantuns to give it more spice. Lucky me coz I had this thick pantun compilation book which I used as reference.

The two flower girls...Nissa & Alina

Farah, Nissa, Alina & Ayna

Both the video and speech were well accepted during the reception. I simply had to put my signature (in a subtle way so to speak..) in one of the pantuns.

One of the opening pantun sounded like this.

Dari Juasseh ke Seri Menanti
Singgah sebentar membeli kuini
Gembira sungguh rasa di hati
Bertemu semua di malam ini

Where is the signature one may ask? For those who know our family, they’d easily guess that the writer must be someone of the immediate family. The clue was the two kampongs (in Kuala Pilah) mentioned in the pantun - Juasseh and Seri Menanti. Juasseh is my kampong and Seri Menanti is where ABE hails from. Kenalah kan letak identity sendiri..heh..heh :)

My closing pantun had the guests smiling away, and left them guessing which one of the host’s children is next to tie the knot.

Halwa manis si kueh sugi
Tamat lah sudah majlis resepsi
InshaAllah panjang umur murah rezeki
Terima menantu kita ketemu lagi

One could not imagine how relieved I was when the last line in the speech was read. Mana tak lega nya….all that was entrusted on me, dah selesai….alhamdulillah syukur, everything went well.

Well, that was last weekend, all so packed and hectic.

Mom, Uncle, Aunty, TM and Alina

My aunty - Zizah, Mom, Aliah and flower girls

This weekend was the total opposite. In fact I started my weekend rather early. I took leave on Friday to be with the girls on the last day of their school holidays. We had a jolly good time bumming at One Utama, indulging ourselves to the scrumptious lunch at Delicious. Yours truly, of course did damage at her retail therapy. Nissa was happy coz she got the computer game she wanted. Farah had her equal share of new stuffs and moi….I got stuffs for the house. All smiles when we got home that evening..heh..heh.

Lunch today was treat from my uncle and aunty. They wanted to celebrate with Alina & Nissa, the two flower girls at the Japanese restaurant in KLGC*. So sessi makan la pulak…..rezeki kata orang tu jangan ditolak kan :)

We thought of hitting the mall, but ABE said he wanted to finish packing for his trip tomorrow. So we headed home straight. I managed to nap for a short while. Ohh…nikmat nyer dapat close eyes for a jiffy.

Nissa's acts in the pool

Celik dari napping, Nissa asked if we could go for a swim. Oppss…better ask Alina first if she’s game for we didn’t want to leave her behind. Alina said she didn’t bring her swimsuit. Ohhh…now worries, pakai je Nissa’s. Dalam pada we were busy getting our swim gear ready, ABE decided to come along. Wokey…lagi bagus, he could keep an eye on the girls when I go into the sauna later.

We had fun all right, one of those rare days when we had the day pretty much to ourselves. As for me, well…. I somehow still can’t quite make out which was the better weekend of the two – the c-r-a-z-y, running-around-as-a-wedding-helper or the laid back, food-indulgence-over-eating-easy-going weekend.

The Weekend that Was – Part 1 : Flower Girls’ Dresses

This post could be taken as a postscript to the one that Tireless Mom did last week. Like I mentioned in my earlier post, yes, last weekend was THE WEDDING weekend; the much awaited wedding of my cousin brother Shayariz and his bride Nadia.

Sometime last January, I wrote about my role in the wedding preparations (here for story..) Remember, I’m one of those who just couldn’t say NO and that landed me with the task of handling the flower girls and everything that came with that. No problem, easy peasy as how Kak Teh put it, nothing that I couldn’t handle.

Dress # 1

I had all planned properly, the tailoring of the flower girls’ dresses and the beading of the dresses. Anticipating that I was going to be stormed with work in the office, I had sent the girls’ dresses much earlier. It was before CNY that I took the materials to the tailor. She promised me that she would have them ready in three weeks. Fine with me, I thought coz I’d still have ample time to do bead work on the dresses.

At work, I was pretty occupied with my deliverables, and I somehow forgot to call the tailor to check on the dresses. In fact, I went to the tailor’s shop two weeks after the earlier date given to me. My mental calculations had it that I’d have enough time to get the dresses beaded.

It’s Murphy’s law I guess, for if anything can go wrong, it will. When I went to the tailor’s place to collect the dresses, I almost had a heart attack when the tailor said that she had completely forgotten about the flower girls’ dresses!!! Huh…say what??? I saw in her cupboard where she stacked the tempahan materials, the materials were still untouched. Oh my God….I was already panicking.

My tailor apologized for the slip up, and promised to get started immediately. She said she’ll have them ready in a week. I was pretty upset about the delay, and so much wanted to scream at her. But what’s the point??? And having an out burst was not going to solve the problem.

Three days later I received a call from the tailor. She said that the dresses were ready for collection. Fuhh…what a relief, but there was still a long way to go to get the dresses beaded, and the wedding will be in three weeks.

Late nights, busy weekends held me back from doing beading work on the three dresses. I remember one night I stayed up till almost 1 in the morning to finish as much bead work as I could. The next day, I woke up with a terrible headache – all caused by the strain on the eyes and not to mention the late night.

The bead work

Half way through by beading, I ran out of beads and when I went to the shop, they told me that they too have run out of the beads that I wanted!!! I could have kicked myself for not buying enough beads earlier. In the end, I had to make do with beads of a different colour. Nasib baik still okay, and still matches the dresses of the flower girls.

Beads were sewn on each of the flower of the lace

One completed dress

It was a mother – daughter partnership. Farah helped me a lot with the bead work. In fact she did most of the work and I worked on putting the finishing touches on the dresses. The last dress was finally ready like 3 hours before the wedding, with me sewing the last line of beads on it.

What a relief that was!!!

To be continued

Sneak Peek

It was an extremly hectic and HOT weekend. Yes, it was the WEDDING weekend. Will post the story later (coz nak masuk meeting in a while ni..). But I want to put up pics of the flower girls first.

During the rehersal yesterday morning

The three little beauties...
Sweeties....you all were simply adorable!!!