2 February 2005, Wednesday

昨天她嫁给我了

Just had my screen wedding yesterday and it was quite surreal. (The series is called 活下去 and I play a character called 立国) The shoot was real early, which means I had to wake up even earlier.

I remember my friends RL weddings which also required them to wake up at unearthly hours to do heavenly things, and here I am doing the same thang.

Well, almost the same thang. I am waking up at unearthly hours but unfortunately not doing the heavenly thang.

When I reached the wardrobe department to collect my costume for the day, there was an amazingly long queue. In a weird way, it sort of reminded me of when the groom had to wait for an eternity and subject himself to the mercy of the merciless "姐妹" of his lovely bride. Coz I was really waiting for an eternity and subjecting myself to the mercy of the sometimes merciless staff at the wardrobe department.

(FYI, for those not in the know, its customary in many Chinese weddings to have the bride's friends torment the groom at the gates of the bride's house, before he can pick her up to finally get on with the wedding and eerrm, it.
Torture methods usually involve making a total fool of oneself, or buying one's way in or both. Sometimes, you get to see some very cool creativity at work here, which really makes you wonder why people think S'poreans aren't creative at all.)

After the long wait at the wardrobe department, there was another long wait at the make-up department. It seems everyone needed to doll up that day, including the extras that will act as my guests. While waiting, it strangley dawned upon me that I was kinda going through what some grooms had to go through once they got past the gates and enter the house. (Is it me or is this screen wedding getting more and more real? )

FYI again, 姐妹s from hell will always make the groom go through round two once he is in the house. Usually, it will involve either more silly antics from the groom, or they will ask him to guess which room the bride is, or both. And yes, sometimes they do allow you to bribe them, which I think at the end of the day is their main objective, those bloodsuckers. You'd think that its no wonder why some men are afraid to get married after witnessing all these.

But then again, not every groom has to subject himself to these tortures. One trick I learnt from some of my buds that got married was to be late and say that you are rushing for time and have no time to play such silly games. Sometimes, it worked. Another way was to act very angry and threaten to call off the whole wedding. Sometimes, that worked too.

Of course,some desperate ones will use all the two methods just to get it to work. And when all else fails, just get your body-builder friend to bash the door open. Desperate times call for desperate measures mah.

I had observed that success rate of the above antics really depends on how vicious those 姐妹 are. And how much the bride really, really wants to get married ;)

Ok, back to the shoot. At the end of the day, I think I have gone through what most grooms would have gone through in a typical wedding. There was the standing around and waiting for (hopefully good) things to happen. (In my case was waiting around waiting for my scenes to be shot).

While waiting, I did some good things on my own :

Me and my lovely "bride" Jeneen

Then there was the conversations with strange wedding guests. (In my case, we had to ad lib to the extras playing as my guests to create atmosphere).

And of couse, there was also the picture taking sessions :

Some of the other wedding guests. The pretty in pink one is Laura, a Taiwanese actress.

And there was the merciless jibbing at the wedding couple. (Well, eh, this was scripted :P)

There was even a missing wedding ring "crisis", goodness gracious. (But like all good wedding story the ring was found at the end)

And finally at the end of the day, my last scene was shot and it was finally a wrap. Whew.

And if you are still wondering, no, my last scene is not the 洞房scene.

So how much angbao you give ah? |