From the time when we tussled in the sand during orientation games more than a decade ago, I had known that we would be constants for the four very eventful years of university. It is mostly to your credit, and also my greatest pleasure, that I could be present for the biggest day of your life two weeks ago. I have saved the more intimate bits in private letters and closed-door conversations but what I will pay tribute to here is a celebration to life and love that we will all remember in decades to come.
Your choice of venue was impeccable, and you said it as much in your opening speech. While ATLAS is home to a cocktail program that ranks it as one of the top 50 bars in the world, what leaves the biggest and most immediate impression is perhaps the Art Deco architecture and how over-the-top and resplendent it all is. I could rave about the 15-minute totem of a glass tower bedecked with tincture after tincture of gin goodness. Or the giant murals plastered over the ceiling, plush velvet carpets beneath our feet and the ornate leather booths and gold detailing. Combined, one is instantly transported from the concrete, humid jungle of Singapore 100 years to the past and 10,000 km away to the scene of Jay Gatsby’s parties.
You had intended this night to be more than just your wedding. At this point, most of us are accustomed to the round banquet tables across hotels in Singapore where guests are served a ten-course meal and resign themselves to their assigned seat for the 3-4 hours of the program. From the get-go, you decided that yours would not be one of those weddings. Instead, the people from different parts of your past would mingle with one another in the present to form new beginnings for the future. All with you and your husband at the center. How else could you explain a Bingo game where guests have to find other guests who have travelled with the couple, can speak 3 languages, have been to a karaoke session with you, or have already retired? Or the adjacent rectangular tables of different groups of guests joined by a contiguous sofa contained within a leather booth?
Your menu (or lackthereof) was the point. The cheese platter at the start of program was divine and each of the tapas served during the course of the night were impeccable. But the highlight was surely the free flow of gin cocktails for the entire night. Presumably, there were only three choices including a gimlet and a martini. Though one only needs to look at a waiter squarely in the eye and order a gin and tonic before the iconic highball arrives. Suffice to say, I made quite a bit of eye contact with the waiters that night, though less squarely as the night went on.
I arrived sweltering in a tailored suit and top hat not quite designed for Singapore’s tropical climate or my hyperactive sweat glands by public transport. After re-grouping with a dear friend who had also flown in for the festivity, we made our way to the lobby and was instantly whisked away to a different world. A world that starts off with an old-world refinement and the civility that comes with it. That was how I greeted familiar faces whom I knew but were not especially close to and therefore had not met up since we graduated seven years ago.
We milled around at our table exchanging a few pleasantries before getting up and proceeding to the photoshoot area. It was a stiff shot to say the least, even more so than the martini on the menu. What broke the ice a little was catching a glimpse of you. You were ravishing, and all of us couldn’t help but gasp at your hard-won svelte silhouette which your sleeveless wedding gown fully complemented. What caused our gaze to rest a little longer was the intricate white lacy/floral/veil headpiece more effective and subtle than a diamond-encrusted tiara in proclaiming who the queen is for the day.
This is what a bride looks like in full bloom.
Back at the table, we continued with some small talk before more friends from your faculty arrived. Making way for them to catch up at long last, I siddled over to the adjacent table where a couple I wasn’t familiar was seated. He was dressed in a navy vest over a white collared shirt with sleeves upturned to reveal thick, tattooed forearms. She was decked in a loose-fitting pale pink sequinned gown and the more gregarious between the both of them. That was how I learnt that they were both from Hong Kong and that her partner is also the groom’s long-time gaming friend.
With my quick replies in Cantonese, I could see her visible excitement at being seated next to a compatriot-of-sorts. Speaking a common tongue (perhaps except for English) is easily one of the fastest ways to bond with strangers. After all, a facility in every other language almost certainly implies a common cultural heritage or a deliberate attempt and appreciation for it. She gently ribbed her partner’s inability to speak Cantonese despite growing up in Hong Kong and he grinned sheepishly in return.
Almost on cue, the emcee announced the start of the night’s festivities and we began with our first round of drinks. My go-to G&T was as refreshing as it was delicious. Then came the gimlet, and then the martini, followed by cycle after cycle of drinks. I couldn’t quite remember the order or even the number of drinks I waved at the waiter to order that night. But what I could recall were some of the snippets of conversations and some of the crazy fun we had as we relived our student days. This time with adult money, wisdom and common understanding that a night like this is perhaps once-in-a-lifetime for all of us in the bar.
I learnt about the recent break-up of an 8-year relationship of another dear friend when she came over to my table for a catch-up. Perhaps it was the quiver in her eyes but I told her to bring her drink over as well just before she broke the news to me. Then there was another conversation about another DINK friend’s solid and stable career and life trajectory and how she felt like there was no need to work if she did not want to. I congratulated her on having won this optionality in her life. Next came an acquaintance whom I embraced upon eye contact almost on instinct. With her, I shared about my desire to return to Singapore for family reasons, something which resonated with her.
There were the staple ‘yam-seng’ toasts, one of the few shared traditions between your wedding and the traditional benchmark. Surely, there wasn’t anyone in attendance who had the air supply to drag out the first note of the toasts in a single breath. What our corner of the bar certainly had enough breath for was the karaoke session which you kickstarted. If only a select few had the privilege to sing with you before that night, now everyone who was in attendance can claim that spot on the Bingo sheet.
You played all the greatest hits that we grew up with, from Taylor Swift’s Love Story to Justin Timberlake’s Sexyback to The Killer’s Mr Brightside. These were all songs so etched in our psyche that our generation did not need lyrics on a screen to sing along to. These were all songs that set all our hearts on fire when we had our bellies fuelled with booze. These were all songs that we were all belting along to with you, hands up in the air with not a care in the world.
It was without this care that I found myself clambering up the spiral gilded staircase to the stage where the resident band was at. There was a middle-aged man whom I did not know standing there but it did not matter then. (I only learnt a few days later that that was the groom’s uncle and I had essentially upstaged him oops). The resident band singer graciously passed a mike to me and next thing I knew, we were singing 邓丽君’s 月亮代表我的心 and another number from 张学友 that I heard for the first time. As we crooned one ballad after another, the crowd swayed along and at the center of it all were you and your husband. This one’s for you.
At the end of that very impromptu performance, I staggered down the steps and back to my seat possibly more delirious and inebriated than before listening to my friends take over and cover the next couple of songs. The night was getting progressively wilder, my memories progressively hazier and my behavior progressively more unhinged. If I had been more sensible, it would have been a good time to ask for water and stop indulging. But this wasn’t a time for sensibility; it was a time for decadance with faces old and new.
Towards the end of the night, a human train spontaneously formed. Just like those high-society parties in New York back in the 1920’s, what started out with civility and elegance had flourished into full-fledged bacchanalia. What joy as we put our hands on the shoulders of a stranger and chugged along aimlessly and without abandon across the bar and as the band presided above. I can’t remember the music, but I can remember the wild-eyed elation of what it is to be alive.
There was a price to pay in the coming days, but that night was worth every pain and inconvenience and then some. In post-party reflections, many of us conceded that it was the party we didn’t know we needed; we had such a great, great time. That it was probably as memorable for us as it was for you and the your husband.
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
In the final line of The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway ended with this lament about how as humans, we struggle to move forward while being invitably pulled back by history, memories and personal illusions. True as that may be, we can now say that this past now includes this wedding party you threw for us all in the final year of your twenties in the true spirit of the Roaring Twenties.
It is a past that even forty years later, with our minds and outlooks buffeted by the sands of time, we would recall with much fondness and a smidge of incredulity. That (at least) once, we all had the time of our lives.
Jin Pang 