i must learn to be deaf to people’s comments

When it comes to an event as big and as important as a wedding, people close to you (and those not so close) are bound to be offering their advice and comments on practically everything. From the duit hantaran to the hantaran gifts to the wedding deco and the food and the bedroom furniture and the bedroom décor and the mak andam and the clothes you wear – nothing is safe.

Relatives have sky-high expectations of the coming wedding. So they can’t understand when my duit hantaran is a supposedly lowly figure, not of ‘market-rate’ for grads. They can’t understand when an unknown, non-branded mak andam is chosen for the wedding. They can’t understand when we choose to be laissez-faire with the wedding, and not go over the top with expenses. They don’t understand all that. What they understand is that this is a grad marrying a grad…so our wedding MUST be grand! And so when I disappoint them in this aspect, they make comments (jokingly they might add), but comments which when heard are hurtful still.

There are many things to your wedded life than the wedding. The wedding is just the start – there’s still the marriage and your years together as a couple to look forward to. There’ll be many many many occasions to spend on, and spending a bomb on a wedding just does not make sense.

One should be praised for being practical instead of ridiculed for being thrifty. Forget the praise – just be happy for us. Share in the joy. Pray that our marriage will last, our years together happy ones.

I must learn to be deaf to people’s comments.