Oh happy day!

So we get a call from our friend Nathan yesterday and he tells us to cancel whatever plans we have today. Because why? The man's getting married! We just got back from the dinner reception and I have to say, there is absolutely everything to love about a small, intimate wedding with just a handful of friends. So what if it only took two days to plan and prepare? It was a sweet and lovely Spring ceremony at Gallup Park just at the cusp of sunset. Nathan's a professional photographer and his eye for lighting was impeccable (well, you would think so, especially for his own wedding), so he picked the exact spot where the setting sun would cast the most gorgeous rays as he and Anna exchanged their vows. Our photos don't do it justice; we'll have to wait for the ones Sadanori took with Nathan's professional camera.

Everyone at the ceremony were close friends (each armed with their own camera no less, so on more than one occasion, it looked like the two of them was being attacked by a really well-dressed mob of papparazzi...); I think that makes a whole lot of difference. It shouldn't matter how many people are in attendance, what matters is who they are...

Anna cried from the moment the minister starting reading the blessings right till we were taking photos later- it was really really sweet... People who were exercising at the park all stopped to offer their congratulations and some even asked if they could take pictures with Nathan and Anna, so that was very cute.

This got me thinking about wedding ceremonies and the fuss that goes into the planning of it. Jude & I planned our wedding in 7 weeks- extremely modest by Singaporean standards (modest might not even be the most appropriate word...). We didn't have a huge Chinese banquet, we got to invite everyone we wanted to invite, and we could say with some amount of certainty that we knew 99.5% of the 200 people who came to our church ceremony (a miraculous statistic considering how people sometimes end up having to invite long-lost twice-removed cousins and other fleeting acquaintances...). Ultimately, does it matter if you plan your wedding in 2 days, 7 weeks or 2 years? What difference does it make whether it takes place in a church, a country club or by the beach? My uncle wisely told me this just before he got married years ago, that at the end of the day, it's not the wedding that counts, it's the marriage.

Congratulations Nathan and Anna!

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
- Shakespeare, Sonnet 116