Cheers

Last night we had the third and final round of our wedding celebrations, in the Punch Tavern on Fleet Street. When we arrived at 4:30 I was a bit worried as there seemed to be lots of people I didn't know, but they all cleared off around 5 as the first of my friends began to stream in.

Marriage redux

After three months and a week of being married, we figured it was time for another party, so we booked the outside deck on a bar in Wan Chai. It's November now and the weather is starting to cool, so we figured it would be a pleasant, balmy night.

Just as with our wedding, our estimate of the weather was a bit off, as Hong Kong cranked the heat back up to 30 degrees and we were sweltering in our Canada-weight clothing. I missed a trick here: I should have insisted that everyone else dressed formally too, so we could share in the joy of dehydration.

Getting married in Osaka

Yesterday I got an email from the organisers of the 2011 Osaka Marathon, asking if I wanted to get married after I've run the race.

Getting ready for getting married

Today was very busy; we had to meet lots of people in charge of different parts of the wedding today, and ensure everything was in place. In the morning we began this task by going and eating lunch at a Sri Chinoy vegetarian restaurant, and then I spent half an hour trying on hats at a Banana Republic in a nearby mall.

The pall of wedding bills

Today I felt jolly productive (as I typed a lot) then a bit of a jackanapes (as I went to the tailor to pick up my suit for the wedding, only to find I was a day early) and then finally I felt sort of athletic because I could run very fast on a treadmill.

Having achieved all these things before eight o'clock in the evening, I felt that I'd done enough for the day, but I was mistaken. After all, today was the day that we had to pay for the wedding venue. And the wedding food. And the wedding booze. And the wedding DJ.

I'm not complaining. I'm just a bit shellshocked, because never in my life have I maxed out a credit card. Well, maxed out two different credit cards, and now I'm staring at an enormous mound of debt that seems to be flying towards me at great speed, while I worry about whether my hero, Cash Flow Man, will arrive in time to save my bacon.

Perhaps I should just get the credit card company to up my credit limit. There wouldn't be anything wrong with that scheme, now would there?

While I spin around making the noises usually produced by a scalded cat, my fiancee seems to be quite relaxed. Relaxed to the point of laughing at me, while I froth at the mouth and wriggle. And to think, yesterday I thought all that was left to do was to pack.

Oh.

Actually, packing will be quite easy. We're going away for three weeks, so that's three pairs of underpants and two pairs of socks, plus a Motorhead t-shirt and a paperback novel about tigers. I know how to live.

If that doesn't stop her laughing at my financial hysteria, I'm not sure what will.

Singapore for a day

The wedding was beautiful, and not just in comparison to watching Anacondas: Blood Orchid. I haven't been to that many weddings in the last few years, but at each one I'm astounded by the attention to detail everyone seems to show. It's both humbling and inspiring, and vaguely worrying for me that perhaps I haven't put enough thought into our wedding this summer. Or perhaps that's something my dear fiancee has already sorted out.

All you can eat

We got up much too early today: I only had about ten and a half hours' sleep, which was hardly enough. Yesterday I'd had the world's grumpiest man serve me the world's smallest pastry for breakfast, so today we went to an Italian restaurant on the top of a shopping mall for all you can eat pizza and pasta.

Weddings in Hong Kong

Tonight I bumbled up to Mong Kok for a wedding in a seafood restaurant.

Reading that last sentence, I realise how odd getting married in Hong Kong must be to Western eyes.

Proud

I hosted the Friday night show, and had the chance to try out a brand new joke in front of an almost-capacity (at least twenty people) crowd...

Weddings & Funerals

I've long had the feeling that funerals can be less stressful than weddings.

Let's consider:

• No overpowering demand to enjoy yourself more than you've ever enjoyed yourself, ever
• Unlikely that the "special day" has been planned to perfection by one of the participants since her ninth birthday
• No DJ playing Come On Eileen
• No chance of two uncles having a drunken punch-up and falling through a multi-tiered cake
• No pressure to dance with a cloyingly precocious toddler
• Less mother-in-law jokes
• Nobody is fighting to catch the bouquet "so they'll be next"

On the other hand:

• Seen as seriously bad form to cop off with anyone involved in the ceremony
• Music is often quite doleful - but is that better or worse than Dexy's Midnight Runners for the nth time?
• Unlikely to get any sort of party favours for turning up
• People can be so gloomy
• Never get to toast the occasion with free champagne

So on the basis of that list, funerals aren't that much superior to weddings. I suppose you get a similar proportion of men wearing waistcoats and women in hats at each, but I'm waistcoat- and hat-neutral from a cost-benefit point of view.

Nobody ever said I wasn't a romantic at heart.

Wine, weddings, whining

Last night I went to a wedding in Macau, and while I didn't think I drank much, I had enough to destroy some part of my brain, evidenced by not being able to name what I was drinking. It was a combination of lumps of fruit, red wine and ice cubes. At the time I didn't think much of it, but it had a prodigious effect on my vocabulary. Also, a bottle of horrid red wine.

We should have known.