Copied from The Straits Times, Life.
May 15, 2006
Here comes the... bridezilla?
Despite my best intentions, I found myself a nitpicking, colour-coding bridezilla in the
run-up to my wedding last month
By Teo Pau Lin
girl talk
I'VE unravelled one of the greatest mysteries of womanhood.
I can now explain why pleasant women, normally mature and level-headed, suddenly turn into
bridezillas when they're getting married. It all starts with the dress.
The minute you decide that you want a really nice wedding gown, you're right on track towards
becoming a nitpicking, foul-tempered monster obsessed with colour combinations and the perfect
ribbon.
How do I know? I was one.
Before I got married last month, I had always dreamt of having a small, intimate wedding.
I didn't want any of the fuss that came with big ceremonies.
I always laughed at how normal, demure girls often turned into tiara-crowned, fake eyelashwearing dominatrixes on their wedding day - snapping at their parents and throwing fits over a smudged French manicure.
Not me.
For the longest time, my ideal wedding would be a casual do for just 20 family members in church,
where I'd be barefoot, without a veil and with daisies in my hair.
So how was it that, last month, I ended up having a 180-strong guest list, a church hall decorated with 15 types of white flowers and a four-tiered wedding cake?
It was all because of my dress.
Like most brides, the first thing I did to prepare for my wedding was to get that perfect gown.
I showed my bridal designer a magazine cut-out of a light, full-length chiffon sun-dress.
'Looks like a night gown, leh,' he sniffed.He proceeded to sketch a more elaborate version of my desired silhouette, with a shantung silk bodice and a fully crocheted skirt.
Beautiful, I raved. It was a little more formal than what I'd wanted. But, hey, like what they all say, it's once in a lifetime, right?
I left his studio that day a happy woman. But little did I know, the floodgates to bridezilla-dom had opened.
Since my dress is so nice, I mused in a self-absorbed Paris Hilton moment, I might as well invite more people so they could see it.
So the guest list grew.
From just close relatives, it went on to include not-so-close relatives, bosses, close friends and
friends who had the potential to be close friends.
To do justice to the nice dress, the church sanctuary had to be nice too.
So I hired a florist to decorate the aisle, the podium and - while we're at it - the reception, the staircase and the main entrance. Then, you couldn't possibly have a nice ceremony and a drab reception.
So I got a top-notch caterer to bring in a dimsum buffet spread, complete with flower arrangements and linen-covered tables and chairs.
Since the food was going to be so good, you had also to get wine, petit fours and daintily wrapped wedding favours.
I got them all.
And that was only the beginning.
Once the major decisions were made, I found myself moving deeper into bridezilla territory.
Bridal magazines, at first glossy and iron-pressed, became dog-earred and tagged with a thousand Post-Its as I flipped through them furiously for ideas on colour schemes, card designs and fonts.
Instead of the usual wedding cake, I wanted strawberry shortcake cupcakes, made by my favourite Japanese restaurant, to be placed on tiers.
But no, ordinary acrylic cake stands would not do. I wanted them displayed on a four-tiered dummy wedding cake, like the one in Martha Stewart Weddings magazine.
The baker couldn't make the dummy. So I begged a hotel to do it for me.
The baker also couldn't find the right cupcake case to hold up the soft, cream-filled cake. That set me off on a frantic hunt from Holland Village to Geylang over a few weeks.
'This one can, right?' my then fiance said, holding up a brown, corrugated one when he joined me on one of the searches.
'No!' I wailed, irritated. 'I want white. The sides must be vertical. No patterns!'
Before I lapsed into a cupcake-induced emotional meltdown, we found it in a baking supplies shop
in Bukit Timah, just two weeks before the wedding.
My poor then fiance. He had offered to help with all the preparations, but I relegated him to the administrative, nonaesthetic tasks.
How could I explain to him that when it comes to colours, men just don't get it?
Like the time when we went to collect the wedding invitations. My eyes widened in horror when I saw that the satin ribbon wrapped around the cards was not the exact shade of aqua I'd wanted.
'Nice what,' said then fiance. Knowing that it was too late to make any changes, I pursed my lips and said nothing. Inside, I was crying.
Three days before the wedding, I had grown into a fully matured bridezilla.
I snapped at people. I was unusually demanding. I pouted for a long time when I accidentally
chipped a perfectly lacquered nail.
Thankfully, everything went without a hitch on the big day.
Walking down the aisle, I suddenly understood why bridezillas love big weddings.
Gathered in the pews were significant people from different stages of my life, all beaming and
clapping at the same time in my honour. It was overwhelming.
I've learnt that, in essence, bridezillas just want as many people as possible to share the happiest day of their lives.
Then I must be the biggest bridezilla of all.
I just wrote a whole newspaper article about mine.
[email protected]
Copyright © 2005 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved. Privacy Statement & Condition of Access.
still looking around for bridal packages that are not too expensive. 
