Minus one

Well, exactly one year from now, we will be husband and wife.

Knowing him, he probably doesn’t even realise it and he’s going to give me this sheepish look with a big grin when he sees me rolling my eyes at him. Yes, he remembers things like when the Singapore Formula One race will kick off but other dates just slide off his memory like water on a baby’s backside.

He is not the romantic sort. I honestly cannot remember when was the last time he bought me flowers (maybe seven years ago?) and the last surprise I got was the proposal (which was sorta cute). Most of the time, I whine and kick out hard at his shins about the lack of a romantic bone in his boy (he is a VS boy afterall).

But in the end, I realise that it’s not the big gestures that keeps a relationship going. It’s in the small things – how he brings heavy magazines home for me from his office, how he sends me home without complaints even when he is dead tired, how he always pays for my meals because my wallet has swallowed up my cash, how he carries my gym bags for me even though his load is not light, how he good-naturedly accepts the good-hearted jibes of my extended family who adores him…

So after almost eight years, we are finally nearing the end of a chapter and the start of a new life together. Cheers to the remaining one year of engagement.

(Edit: Well, it seems that he knows why a cake was sent to his office after all!)

Dress-hunting woes

I have come to realise, rapidly, that I am a dress snob. Really. I’ve been looking at wedding dresses for a while now and I am nowhere close to finding The One Dress.

I think The One Dress does not exist.

Flipping through local bridal magazines leaves me cold. Out of the entire 3kg magazine, of which 85% of the pages are ads, I probably end up clutching five tear sheets of dresses that vaguely interest me.�Most of the dresses are either too ruffly, too expensive, too �un-me� or just simply too boring.

Of the three bridal studios – termed â��BSâ�� by the Singaporebrides community – that I have visited thus far, only Silhouette has impressed me beyond the usual tepid “oh, it’s nice”.â��To be fair, Ted Wu has interesting ideas, classic lines and excellent workmanship.â��But it was just…nice.

D’sire certainly had the most innovative designs, although the range was rather limited.â��I felt like a Barbie princess in their gowns.â��Most importantly, their prices are easy to swallow down if you are not looking for details like built-in boning and they are really flexible when it comes to ala carte.

But Silhouette hit the right spot when Minda, the designer attending to me, put her hands on her hips, scrutinized me for a moment while I stood there posing in one of their gorgeous poufy gowns and said, �You would look so good with big curls and a flower in your hair.�

Bingo!
It was exactly what I had in mind.
But I just can�t bear to splash out that amount of cash for a dress, as beautiful as it makes me feel.

Sandy got it right when she said she doesn�t remember her married friends� dresses, except that they all looked amazing on that day.�Maybe The One Dress is just an urban marketing tool, just like Tiffany & Co, to make women feel like they need to have it in order to be a happy bride.�For practical reasons, breath-taking dresses are out of the question because frankly, I would rather splurge on my house.

Perhaps, all I need is to find something that makes me feel happy and beautiful.�All the future husband (or FH, in the confusing bridal world of abbreviations) wants is to see me happy and that�s all it matters.

In the meantime�.could I have one of these dresses please?