19 September 2009, 4pm
The Church Wedding

We initially planned on having the church ceremony outside of the traditional church, but it proved daunting finding a suitable location – air-conditioned, large enough, has a stage, has a suitably-long aisle to walk down etc.

So we settled on having it in our home church – Faith Methodist Church. It was lovely, as there were designated church florists to decorate the aisle and the stage according to our preferred colour themes (cream & pink), but the place was a little big for us (we were expecting 100-200 people, although the church could sit 1000).

Nevertheless, the pews were pretty, and the aisle was long enough to show off my gorgeous train.

My 3 baby cousins (from left, Jaslyn, 6 years old, and Jamie, 4 years old) and Joshua (4 years old) were the flower girls and ringbearer.

The groom being briefed by Pastor Kenneth, who officiated our wedding.

The kids had more than 10 trials of “walking down the aisle” before the actual walk. Their parents had to remind them over and over again not to run down the aisle!

Look at the groom’s eager-anxious face; while the best man is kinda ambivalent. Sneaking a glance at his love perhaps?

And finally, the bride – being led in by my dad to the traditional “Bridal Chorus” piece by Richard Wagner.

The ceremony started with the song that we sung at the very first church service we attended together, in London – Shout to the Lord.

The best man and bridesmaid were made to stand beside us throughout the ceremony – apparently the best man was meant to fight off the groom’s enemies, and the bridesmaid is there to… well, be a maid to the bride :D

“And who gives this lady away?”

“I shall”

And the groom is relieved that he’s finally gotten the bride.

The exchange of vows – that we had a hard time memorising, and for which we actually had a rehearsal!

Finally, “you may kiss the bride”.

The signing of the marriage certificate; this has to be done twice. Once on a very unglam black and white copy, that’s to be handed to ROM, and then the proper one, which you get to keep. (Talking about which, we should get around to laminating ours before it turns yellow.)

Just after the speech, the groom sprung a surprise. The irony of it all was, I printed his speech!! But he carefully deleted the last page of the speech, and hand wrote it himself.

Mr re-enacted the proposal scene – the slideshow he created, and the song he sung: “You raise me up” by Josh Groban.

And now, we present to you Mr & Mrs :)

Hooray! We did it!