A roller-coaster letter & a girls’ night-out

My dad emailed me a long letter the day before yesterday which made my heart sink and bounce back. Don’t worry, he didn’t order me to go back to China for an arranged marriage or anything. Quite the opposite, he expressed his enthusiasm to my wedding and gave me a lot of advice (which added a “little” bit of pressure to my plan).

    The night before Nicola and I were briefly adding the number of people Ben and I would like to invite, and we reached 72 without even trying. That means, if I still want the wedding to take place in the Liphook Church, we either have to lose 2 stones each or sit on each other’s laps for the service… I was only expecting 6-8 people from my family to come, buy my dad asked me to invite 20! I’d love them all to be able to make it of course, but that also means a bigger venue, more hotel rooms and more entertaining programmes to be organised on the England side; for many of them that may be their one and only trip to England, and I don’t want to let them down.

    But let’s look at the wonderful side of it! Like Nicola said, it shows how much my family loves me and they are all willing to fly out in winter to celebrate with me! And my dad is SO open-minded that he doesn’t interfere with my marriage at all (although he was quite worried when I told him I was going out with a long-haired English guy, he was picturing Manchurian zombies at one point). All he wants is just everybody to be happy! I have to say this is a rather rare characteristics of Chinese parents and I’m so proud that I have a dad like him. ^^

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Last night I went to visit Nicola’s parents with her. Maybe it’s because of the “Hong Kong bond” (well Shanghai is not far from Hong Kong and our people look very much alike) or their really bubbly character, I started to like them the first time I met them. I’m very excited that they’re going to be my grandparents-in-law. And and and, I got to enjoy one of the very few chances that we girls out-numbered boys! There were a lot of woos and ows and giggles and planning and dreaming accompanied by delicious Chinese food ordered by Brian and Judy, and Brian with his whisky~

    And I also learnt that the groom is not allowed to know anything about the bride’s wedding dress until he sees her in the church! Oops I already put the picture of my “dream dress” all over the place (my Chinese blog can be accessed from 3 places)… Need to take them down before he comes back.