Ding-Dong Wedding Bells...

A colleague of mine walks into the teacher's room, face all aglow with a badly played nonchalance air about her. I eye her suspiciously... What is she up to? She casually sits beside me and says,

"I'm slowly breaking the news to everyone, ok."

Uh-oh.. what's up?

"George* proposed to me."

Sorry, what? Run that by me again? My brain had a little trouble comprehending. This from the guy who said he didn't wanna think about marriage for another 10 years? I turned and stared at her (picture: jaw dropped, eyes wide open, hands undecided if they should cover mouth or grab friend and shake her). I finally settle on two clenched fists in front of my mouth and a very high-pitched screech. Followed by a very resounding "Oh my GOD!!!!" Lots of hugging and hand squeezing and "oh my gods" later, we finally calm down enough to get down to the nitty gritty... How did he propose!!! (Why is this so important again??) It was then we were joined by another colleague, 6 months into her marriage, and very excited to share advice on the ABCs of choosing THE dress and THE ring. What entails is about 30 mins of gushing and sighing and excited hand clapping, after which Karen* and I actually try to persuade the now overwhelmed bride to be to go across the road and try on several dresses, "just so you'll have a rough idea". Our euphoria is dampened a little though, by Sheryl* pronouncing both of us mad and delirious, and then saying how terrified she feels about the whole thing. Awwwwww... The poor dear. Of course we start up again 2 seconds later, this time with WHERE the wedding should be held. We're all gunning for an Italian fare, since he hails from the country that gave the world pasta and gelato. And that's when I find out that a typical Western wedding would probably only involve between 55-70 guests, whereas a typical Asian wedding would see anything between 200 - 500 guests, or more depending on your culture. I guess Asians tend to ensure that everyone even remotely related to you are invited. Out of respect...

Anyway, there's excitement in the air (mostly due to the women folk) and I bet you every other single female, will be surfing the net at one point or other to "check out a dress" or "wonder which ring would look nice on me".

Nevertheless, congratulations Cheryl! We're all thrilled for you. Don't worry about the hen party, it'll all be taken care of!



*names have been changed. Part of the deal if I wanted to post this :p