Fish Leong to have wedding dinner in KL

Taiwan-based Malaysian songbird Fish Leong will have her wedding dinner in Kuala Lumpur on the sixth day of Chinese New Year.

The daily reported that Leong would also invite Malaysian media, which witnessed her rise in the industry.

Her close friends had already been informed of the big event by Leong through her Facebook, said the daily.

The daily added Leong chose to have her wedding dresses at that time as most of her friends and relatives would be around to celebrate the Lunar New Year.
Their big day turned into a big embarrassment.

All because of a power outage at the Hotel Royal@Queens in Bras Basah, where Mr and Mrs Lin were supposed to hold their wedding dinner on Saturday.

Some of the 200 guests who arrived early waited up to two hours in the dark and stuffy Chinese restaurant, before they were diverted to the affiliated Hotel Royal on Newton Road.

There, a buffet replaced the original multi-course dinner as the kitchen staff were unable to cook up a storm, given the short notice.

Shark’s fin was on the original menu.

But fried e-fu noodles was served in the end.

"It is impressive how many different designs are available," said Tarek Zagha, a German who was shopping with his Chinese fiance for a tuxedo and dress for their upcoming wedding. "We just want to find something that fits us."

Sin Jie marries Oxide Pang in pink wedding

Kedah-born actress Angelica Lee Sin Jie will marry film director and producer Oxide Pang Chun in a pink-themed wedding reception at the luxurious Pangkor Laut Resort Saturday.

It will be a private ceremony to be attended by relatives, family members and close friends.

A close friend of the actress confirmed that Sin Jie is not pregnant as rumoured.

Among the Hong Kong celeb friends who arrived in Malaysia Friday for the wedding dresses are Aaron Kwok, Gigi Leung, Charlie Yeung and director Sylvia Chang.

Angelica Lee, 34, who had been with Pang Chun for the past seven years decided to get married after he proposed to her last year. Both of them went to Alor Setar to seek the permission of Shin Jie’s parents a few weeks ago.

Angelica Lee is the youngest daughter in the family - she has three brothers.

She left Alor Setar in 1995 at the age of 19 to pursue a career in entertainment in Taiwan.

She won the Best Newcomer Award at the Berlin Film Festival in 2001, Best Actress at the Golden Horse Award in 2002 for hit horror movie ‘The Eye” and Best Actress at the Golden Bauhinia Film Award in 2003.

It is understood she got to know Oxide Pang while acting in “The Eye” which was directed by Oxide Pang and his twin-brother Danny in 2002.

Her mother Ooi Yean Lee, 54, said,”Sin Jie informed me and his father about her plan to get married last year and a date was fixed but it was postponed due to their tight schedules.

Wedding dinner woes

Q I am a 25-year-old woman and will be attending a wedding dressesdinner in a few months' time. What kind of clothes will be appropriate for the occasion?

A You don't have to splurge on a dress in order to look like a million dollars. Actress Joanne Peh proved that last October when she attended Fann Wong's wedding in an electric blue knee-length toga dress from Topshop.

If you want to recreate her youthful yet evening-friendly look, electric blue cocktail dresses in a variety of styles, starting at $29, are available from Hula & Co.

If you want to invest in a pricier piece, check out Karen Millen's cobalt blue leopard print dress (above), priced at $589.

A little black or navy dress for the evening would also be appropriate and versatile enough for all kinds of functions in the future. Hula & Co offers a netted bodycon version in both colours for $29 each and a deep V-neck cocktail mini in black for $35.

Add glamour with sequined accessories such as drop earrings, a clutch bag and high peep-toe heels.

High-street label Forever 21 offers jewelled bracelets from $13, while New Look has satin-like clutch bags in jewel tones for $20. Jewelled cocktail rings and sparkly earrings can also be found at Topshop for between $20 and $30.

Just remember to avoid white for wedding parties because that suggests you are competing with the bride.

Overtly sexy styles with plunging necklines and sheer fabrics generally don't belong at a wedding either. If you have to ask if it's appropriate, it probably isn't.

Happily after wedding

“Where is the florist,” he complains, shooing away a swarm of mosquitoes. “She was supposed to be here at noon and what time is it now? 3pm?”

According to the muffled voice on the other line, some miscommunication has occurred and the offending vendor is “stuck somewhere”. He heaves a dramatic sigh: “All these stories and excuses, I’ve heard them before.”

The minutes are ticking by. All the prep work needs to be completed by 5pm, in time for vows to be exchanged between operations manager Hena Yeo, 31, and new media firm boss Ang Chonglai, 34.

After the solemnisation ceremony, a 10-course Chinese dinner will take place under a specially constructed marquee.

Nuptials aside, you are tuned into The Sherwin Lee Show. Calling the shots is the 31-year-old executive director of DoWed, an “experiential weddings” company – as he describes it – that he started four years ago as a creative response to soporific ballroom affairs with cheesy slideshows and unexciting menus.

The boisterous bachelor says: “I hate boring wedding dresses. Cut cake, change gowns, that’s it. I like to do something different each time, no matter what the budget.”

This wedding, which costs about $25,000 for about 200 people, is a simple affair by his standards. His most lavish project to date cost around $100,000. A wealthy Chinese couple had flown him to London to organise a bash at the Ritz-Carlton there.

Wedding planning services, he says, are getting wedding increasingly popular among Singaporeans, many of whom are marrying later and have more money to spend on professionally tailored weddings. Becoming a wedding planner requires no official accreditation.

One bride who behaved unreasonably all the time revealed, in a fit of tears, that she did so because she felt inferior to her husband’s family. Another would ring him at 2am to ask if she was “making the right decision”.

Deal with wedding, marriage with maturity

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I recently got married and, while I am happy that I got married, I find myself crying great big sobbing tears at the very mention of the wedding. I can’t help feeling it was completely ruined by discourteous people.

The maid of honor dropped out five days before, and our photographer’s car blew up (not an act of discourtesy, but it did add to the overall disaster). A wonderful friend found herself a seamstress who would do alterations overnight and a photographer.

My hair dresser didn’t show up, and my niece (God love her for trying) made a mess of my hair. Our videographer moved an elective laser eye surgery up (not his doctor’s decision) so that he would miss our wedding.

My brother cursed at me as we waited to go down the aisle because he didn’t think the bride was supposed to go last, and then pulled me along so fast I nearly tripped. I tried tugging on his sleeve but it only made him walk faster.

The meal I wanted wasn’t in our budget, so I ordered what we could afford for 60 people, and only 30 showed up. Some people who hadn’t even been invited did show up. They wore baseball caps during the ceremony.

The guests not only started eating while we were taking photos (which I found very offensive, as I was always taught that its not proper to serve yourself until the host and/or hostess has at least joined the room), but all took double portions and left the wedding party with very little.

I don’t even feel like this was my wedding. I feel like it was a wedding where I got married. I hate that I feel that way, but don’t know how to change.

My mother had no interest in planning, paying or participating in my wedding. My mother-in-law really worked, helping, asking what I wanted rather than trying to take over the entire affair. She and my father-in-law paid to rent the hall. I appreciate all of that very much. But she wants pictures, and I very honestly do not want pictures to exist of this day.

Can you tell me how to choke that back and lie through my teeth? Because I cannot find a polite way to tell her that even though she worked really hard and I really am grateful, the wedding was lousy and it makes my heart sad to think about it.

GENTLE READER: Madam, please! You are hysterical. Get a grip on yourself.

You have a new husband, a wonderful and resourceful friend, and generous and tactful parents-in-law.

And yet you are carrying on, sobbing about your wedding dresses? What does your poor husband think about your behavior?

Because weddings are complicated events involving many people and variables, things rarely go exactly as planned. Mature people take this in stride and recount it later, laughing rather than sobbing, which is a good thing because marriage requires maturity. Miss Manners can only hope, for the sake of your husband, that you are able to grow up quickly.

The perfect wedding

Last Saturday afternoon, I found myself bouncing around in the seat of a packed MPV on a bumpy, narrow road in the Balinese rainforest.

'You would have thought that if these luxury resorts are charging an arm and a leg for their accommodation, the least they could do is pave the roads,' grumbled the guy in front of me, holding on for dear life.

That little vignette stuck with me all week. In life, you often have to endure all sorts of ups and downs before reaching a happy ending. And all that turbulence along the way makes the outcome even sweeter, I guess.

So it was with this little trip, which had taken me more than a thousand miles over land and sea, just to be there when T. ties the knot.

T. and her husband-to-be, A., are both Singaporean, so almost all of their guests were making similar journeys. A. used to be a peacekeeper in the United Nations, so some of his friends were travelling from hot spots such as Timor Leste and Afghanistan.

Was it all worth it? You bet.

In fact, it was the most beautiful wedding I had ever been to in my entire life.

The MPV finally stopped in a quiet little driveway surrounded by buildings that looked traditional but on closer inspection housed state-of-the-art computers, gym equipment and toilets within their floor-to-ceiling glass walls.

We walked down a little path to one of them, which served as the reception area. Once we registered, we came out the other end of the house and into the resort proper.

What we saw took our breath away.

All that driving had taken us to the edge of a cliff, on the southernmost tip of Bali. Ahead of us was the massive expanse of the Indian Ocean with waves crashing on the rocks and sand hundreds of feet below where we were standing.

Just behind us loomed six huge Javanese antique wooden houses that apparently used to house the region's noblemen, but now served as the resort's villas.

Later that night, I toured one of them and found not just that there were handcarved panels on the ceiling of the king-sized wooden bed dating from God knows when, but that the bathtub actually floated in the middle of a pond, beside the villa's private waterfall and garden.

After taking about a million photographs of the place, the 40 or so guests eventually gathered at one of the highest points in the resort to wait for the couple's entrance.

It was a simple ceremony, presided over by the wedding planner.

The bride wore Jimmy Choos but the groom was barefoot. Me? It was the first time I had worn flip-flops to a wedding.

Her two younger sisters kicked things off by giving two readings. The first was a delightful passage from Winnie The Pooh, about the bear's love for Piglet.

The second reading turned out to be the lyrics of the Adam Sandler song I Wanna Grow Old With You, from the movie The wedding dresses Singer.

'I'll miss you, kiss you, give you my coat when you are cold,' the goofy song goes. 'Need you, feed you, even let you hold the remote control.'

Then, the couple were exchanging wedding vows and kissing under a simple bamboo arch in front of a perfect sunset.

I turned to my travelling companion to say something only to find that he was tearing, even though he had never met the couple before.

That was not the end, of course. We went on to have a lovely buffet dinner in a garden by candlelight and later were entertained by a rare performance that tourists reportedly queue for hours to see at temples.

The kecak dance is performed by a circle of 70 or 80 performers who repeatedly shout 'Cak!' as the story of the Ramayana is told through actors in costumes.

According to Wikipedia, it has its roots in sanghyang, a trance-inducing exorcism dance.

Indeed, the winds blew fiercely as the slightly spooky performance reached its climax. And even the two spookier-looking 'raincatchers' - who had successfully chanted away rainclouds for most of 12 hours - could not keep away a drizzle.

At some point in the evening, I went up to T. and hugged her.

I was so happy to see her so happy. And it was then that I realised that even without the perfect venue, ceremony, clothes and table settings, this wedding would have been perfect anyway.

Her friends know that just a few years ago, T. was going through a very dark time.

She had a number of difficult relationships after getting a divorce from her first husband and things at work were also not going well. We spent hours talking about the curveballs that life was throwing her, in between frenzied shopping trips in Orchard Road to chase away the gloom.

Wedding season: Tips for gift-buying

NEW YORK -- Holidays, birthdays and other family celebrations often generate concerns about giving presents. But when it comes to gift-giving anxiety, nothing tops a wedding.

Where are they registered? Is it OK to give cash? Do I have to cover the cost of my plate at the reception? What if I can't fit that into my budget?

"There are all kinds of myths out there," said Peggy Post, director of the Emily Post Institute. It's easy to stumble over what's acceptable, especially because many brides and grooms themselves don't know the rules, and can misfire with gift requests.

The first rule the happy couple should follow is to avoid bringing up the topic, Post said.

"Most people like to receive a wedding invitation, but don't like to have a card fall out that says, 'Here's where we're registered,'" she said. Some retailers provide those cards and encourage inserting them in invitations, but Post said that's bad advice. "A lot of people feel that it's putting too much emphasis on a gift."

Instead, she said, wait for the guest to ask what type of gift is desired. "Then it's certainly appropriate," Post said.

Cultural traditions can add to the confusion.

When Alejandra Ramos and Eugene Smolenskiy first started dating, they attended the wedding of one of his family members. "I asked him where they were registered," she recalled. He had no idea what she was talking about, because in his family, cash is the typical gift.

"I had always just done gifts off the registry," Ramos said. As they started planning their own wedding, scheduled for January 2011, the issue came up again. She had to explain to her fiance the concept behind picking items for a registry and sharing the list with family and friends.

Ramos said the idea of registering appeals to her, because it can result in items that will last a lifetime and remind her of her special day. "I love the idea of looking back 10 years from now when I'm making dinner and remembering that this is the pot my aunt gave me for my wedding," she said.

Tradition also plays a part. Julia Tyson and Tyler Santerre are planning their wedding for September 2011 in Vermont, and while they prefer cash because they're trying to save for a house, she said they'll also register.

"There's some more traditional guests, especially on my side of the family, that are not going to want to give money," she said. She knows, for instance, that her grandmother plans to give her china. "I can't imagine her writing a check."

While it's certainly appropriate for couples to request cash gifts, some people do feel uncomfortable about giving them, because the amount they're giving is plain to see, Post said.

That could drive some to give more than fits their budget, especially if there is a close relationship with the couple.

"Weddings are so wrapped in emotion," said Pat Seaman of the National Endowment for Financial Education. Many guests may feel an impulse to demonstrate their feelings toward the couple with a lavish gift, whether or not they can afford it.

WHEN it comes to the wedding day, your bride is the star and, technically, you are the leading man. But you don’t need that much time to get ready, since most of the work would be done for you. So here is the six-day plan for you (tongue in cheek of course).

Seaman pointed out that being wedding dresses guest can become an expensive proposition. The celebration of a marriage often includes an engagement party, a bridal shower, a bachelor or bachelorette party and a rehearsal dinner, in addition to the actual ceremony and reception. Parents of young children might also have to pay for child care expenses -- sometimes more than once. The growing popularity of destination weddings can add even more costs.

These expenses, from travel to clothing to gifts, must be planned ahead. "Think about weddings as a budgetable expense, just like groceries and utilities and special occasions and budgeting for Thanksgiving dinner," Seaman said.

That includes dismissing the worry about whether you should give as much to the couple as they are spending to host you at their reception.

"I don't think that's the best way to think about a wedding," Seaman said. "It's not a financial transaction."

Ramos said she's heard people mention that concern, but as a bride, she doesn't expect guests to consider what she's spending.

"If I throw a dinner party and someone brings a bottle of wine, I don't expect them to cover the price of (what) I'm serving," she said. "They're not buying a ticket to the wedding, they're coming to share in the moment."