On weddings.

You know when your best friend gets married and you've been offered the honor of being the bridesmaid? You'd gladly accept it without hesitance (obviously) and think to yourself, 'Oh how amazing it would be to be alongside your best friend during her wedding day. I mean, how tough can being a bridesmaid be anyway?'

Wrong. It is the toughest, most pressured 3 hour job/role you can possibly have in your entire life. Okay, I may be exaggerating, but seriously, you think it's all hunky dory being up there on stage, fanning the bride, and smiling every now and then, (scratch now and then, it's all the time!) but it's really a responsibility, one that might affect your friend/best friend's most special day in her life, good or bad. So let me tell you this, if you are the type, prone to knocking into things, best that you let someone else do the job. I'm speaking from experience. :p

So, I was my best friend's bridesmaid, or in Malay terms, pengapit. In traditional Malay culture, the pengapit is someone who escorts the bride to the dais, fans her, and dabs tissue on her face if she's sweating. That's just the gist of it. What people don't know is how you have to stand for about half an hour to 45 minutes on stage, in heels, and not know where to look at. As for me, I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I fanned her with one hand, and the other hand, I almost..almost mencekak pinggang. As for where to look, I tried looking down, but I didn't want to look dumb, so I looked at the other pengapit lelaki, but I didn't want people to think I'm checking him out, I tried looking at the bunga telur girls, but it got really boring, so I looked ahead and smiled, and that's when a camera clicked and tadaa I looked like some camera crazy lunatic of pengapit. In the end, I just gazed steadily at the audience. I went from right to left and then right again and then left again. I must've looked nervous because my mum said from where she was sitting (which was right in front), I looked very very uncomfortable. God knows I'm not made to be a movie star (as in being on stage for whatever purpose). Oh and to add on to the embarrassment, prior to all that, I accidentally placed the hand cushion (cushion for the bride to place her hands on) on the floor near her feet, thinking it was the feet stand. Great.

Also, prior to that, while escorting the bride and groom to the dais, I tripped on the tail of her dress three times. That happened while I was cautiously looking at where I was stepping, no kidding. I was more than embarrassed, I was mortified. To add onto that, when I went on stage to sing for her, I forgot to include "Hi, this is for my best friend, Mira'. I just went on singing like I was part of the band. Really, really awful.

Nonetheless, being her bridesmaid gave me the opportunity to be a part of her wedding. Since I've spent 6 years abroad, I hardly get the chance to have really quality time with her, like how we used to have during schooling days. Though I might have made a fool out of myself, looking at her being so happy and glowing, made it all worthwhile. It gave me that warm and fuzzy feeling, I almost got teary eyed. To think after all these years of attending weddings, there she is, my best friend of 9 years, sitting on the dais, all mature and gorgeous, on her own wedding day. We used to dream of how our weddings would turned out to be and I must say, she's gotten her wish, just right, all perfect.

I'm nowhere near getting hitched but at times, I do dream of how my wedding would turn out to be, and I'm not surprised if I turn out to be a bridezilla ;p So watch out future pengapits, I may just be your worst nightmare :p