A Toast & Many A Thousand of Cheers.

" *clinking sound of the wine glass*

...Attention everyone,

(begins with cantonese dialect now) May I have the attention of all the attendees, just for a moment please?

Good evening, to all the folks in this place together this evening. I'm gonna speak in english for i am not very good with expressful words in chinese.

(breakin into english) I personally myself have something to say to the groom and the bride, albeit more so to the groom in this speech im now about to give as to what we call as a toast.

*clears throat* ahem.

To be honest, me and another friend did at first have some serious doubts as to whether or not delivering a toast for the couple tonight. Approximately a month ago, Chee Keen told me he wasn so sure on doin this because this may be unorthodox for a wedding dinner that would be very much of a traditional chinese one. I told him then that it was okay and that it is okay to be unorthodox at times because I chose to bet on the belief that this is akin to a once in a lifetime thing you get to do for a friend this much dear to you. a close friend, a best friend,

and most of all, we have got nothing to lose : )

The groom is a friend of mine stretching way back to our secondary school St. Michael. We used to be in the same classes during form 4 and 5. How we got to know bout each other was pretty comedic and funny actually. I 1st heard bout Kokseng through Mun Ben when i was in form 2. Ben once storied to me hey dennis, "i have a friend who erm badmouthed you saying your so dark skin toned/siamese kid and skinny and ah biao looking and that um yet youve got a girlfriend." Right, a comment of anything but nice from him.

........

Needless to say, we set off knowing each other on the wrong foot. I didn view him as any decent fellow after that. Well, how irony hits us huh? here we are now and Id like to think and say that on this day, we are close as any close friends can be. the rest in between was history : )

Well lets just take a look at him now, fast forward 8 years on and he scored the upper hand on all of us being the first one among us to graduate, got employed and gettin himself married!!

Now, amidst preparations prior to the wedding, we all know how very much of pressure the groom's ought to shoulder and then there's the huge decision making, not to mention its all been made rather quickly n hurried. Wedding has also been akin to a crash-course one. But most of all, this wedding is a young marriage.

Between two, arguably, very young adults.

And yes it'll be no easy feat to sustain a quick marriage and life as how you see it will be totally different from now on.

But chances are they will find something else that the rest would not be able to find not able to recognise and not able to learn now.

Chances are that this will be a new equation, some thing different and whole anew awaits them, something they have yet to know, something that is so different to what I believe both of them thought they ought to encounter and experience at this point of their lives. But hold tight and firm, as it is by no means a journey to be dreaded upon. And once they have grown into and out of this phase of their lives, they will look back at it and say just these words.

" I wouldnt want my life to have happened any other way than it is "

I hold firm on my ground that this is my belief and I just know that it will happen.

After all, is there any better bet than love?

Remember, just as how our friend Keijoe has put it,

" There's No Early In Pursuing Happiness "

Cheers to Kei Joe for putting it brilliantly.

Tonight, I as a groomsman havent any gifts or souvenirs for my friend the groom, probably among us there are a few of us who did so. Reason for my omission in this, simply because he has already been given the best gift anyone or any power could ever give him, he has won it all by himself. He has got the most beautiful lady here tonight in the shape of his bride, Foo Chia Yin.! : )

I hereby look forward with everyone else to be together again, celebrating the 50th anniversary of your marriage.

To both the groom and the bride, CHEERS!!! "

My friends' (both of them are) wedding dinner was on the 7th of February 2010,
a little less than a month ago.
It was supposed to be a set of three toasts, each given apiece by none other than me myself, Chee Keen and Amchoon on that night itself.

Em....Okay.... hahaha..
So......., thereafter, to the groom and the bride's misfortune ( : P ), i would say, these toasts didn quite happen. Don't get the wrong idea no, the dinner went well.evenin was splendid and would b a night to remember for the young couple.

Toast didn take place was well, it was just a case of mismatch of time and course of events. and ermm...also an aspect of cold feet actually, to b very honest hahaha. (yes i admit i did get freaked out in the end at the idea of speakin infront of everyone there) To put it in retrospect, the evening didn specifically have the Toast part as an agenda in the list. No they didn, because like i sed earlier this is more or less a Chinese-ly culture soaked, one wif all the orthodox normally assembled wedding dinner. We do not have toasts as to the westerners do. This, directly made our task somewhat harder to be achieved.

So me n my other 2 friends were actually waitin for the right time in for the kill. In spite of it, the "RIGHT" timing just seemingly didn come for us and the groom/bride was really sandwiched with the normal routine of goin aroun all the tables serving and greeting n toasting (yam sing) to friends, relatives, family and colleagues alike. In the end, one of the three of us needed to leave much early for he was to catch a bus back to Singapore. Well, nex thing we know was the dinners was well over and it was time to thank the guests at the door and we had to pack n take da few last pictures for the evening. big big pity really. T.T
Hmmm...

Make no mistake, at the end of the evening, it was really hard for me to stomach the fact that i was walkin back to my car knowin that the toast wasn read out to him and her. I prepared for it way back weeks and I was ready for the shot. In the end, it just kept on playin n repeatin in my head " so thats it? its over??? " I think i can understand this feeling because we were all so tenacious in our efforts preparing for the wedding, busy here and thereabout and the whole month prior to it our minds were all on nothing but only the wedding. Then it just ended like that on that evening. And, sad also cos Im very well aware that these things dont come along every day in our lives and then again, every word I wrote on that piece of paper, I meant it as I say it. And you should think that, as a close friend, this is wat you can do for him and her. Dont know how the words spoken out right from the toast would make the couple's wedding feel any more or less memorable for them, but it is just pure and sincere that I really wana make it more memorable for them and I bet it is da same for both CheeKeen and Amchoon too ( not quite sure bout amchoon though hahaha).

Admittedly yes, it is a shame that it didn really happen. We didn mouth out to them that evening that we've got something to say. Subsequently, I have thought of doin so again at the grooms house the nex week, as coincidentally it was Chinese New Year n all of us would be back again meetin at his house for a gathering.
Hahahah n lightning strikes twice they say because we did meet up and just that u know, we were all busy gambling that none of us remembered bout the toast. sigh...
And finally, it all comes down to here. My blog. very own We Dont Need To Whisper. its actualli pretty ironic right? That my blog's name is We dont need to whisper, akin to tellin us to say things out clear,breaking the barrier, breakin the ice instead n theres no need to keep things inside our chest. and then the writer of it, me, didn quite actuali do dat. I kept dat toast on that night all to myself up until this point hahaha. Bad bad, my bad.

Well, here it is and umm, its my part, my toast,
to my dearest(yes dearest, not gay) friends Yap Kok Seng and Foo Chia Yin, the newly wed couple = ) I hope u get to read this here and although not so timely, but yea, its from me and it is from nowhere else other than the most inside of my heart. Love.

a little preview of whats gonna come at the middle of the year??

hahaha, somethin really cute here to remind us as well as the couple of wats to come soon. get ready uncles aunties.