I rented a BMW convertible at Mr. Rent A Car for my wedding. When I return the car, the rental shop accuse us scratch the bottom of the car and charged me for damage. I should be suspicious when I pick up the car. The guy at the rental counter didn’t inspect the car with me. He just ask me to look for any scratches myself. I thought it is just the usual sloppiness of Chinese rental shop, so I didn’t pay any much attention. I looked at the skirt of the car, but who would aware to check the underside of the car. You can’t really see the scratch unless you get down on the ground. Luckily, I rent the car with my Visa card, which comes with free rental insurance, so I don’t have to pay the damage. Since I don’t have to pay anything, I don’t bother fight hard against the wrongful accusation.
I think the car already has scratch before I pick up the car and the rental company is fully aware of it. They don’t want pay to fix the car themselves and they know I have Visa insurance, so they just blame it on me. If I have to pay out of my own pocket, I will definitely fight hard to prove my innocent. Here are two lessons I learn from this bad car rental experience. First, next time when you pick up the car, ask the rental employee go through the car inspection with you. Ask them check exactly the same things they will check when you return the car. If he missed anything, it is his fault. Second, always use a Visa car with free auto rental insurance. I just receive the refund cheque today!
I am officially a married man. Horace and Patricia has become one under the witness of over 200 families and friends. The wedding is very successful, thanks to the helps from our good friends. I don’t want to repeat my wedding speech again in the blog, but I must say thank you to those who have helped us one more time. It is great to see all of my good friends to celebrate my biggest day in life with me. Many of them come from far away, some even just stay for a few days. We had good time and able to catch up with each other before the wedding.
The wedding is very well planned, down to time resolution in 15 minutes. However, Murphy’s Law always rules. Thing is working pretty well in the morning. Except no one knows I had a stomachache due to too nervous. I have to ask my best man drove me to McDonald’s for a washroom break before the the door opening game begins. I don’t think asking to use the washroom in Pat’s house would work. The morning photo session is pretty fun, we have lots of group pictures with the groomsmen and bridesmaids. Everyting seems running so smooth that we were able to arrive early in the church.
Probably none of the guests notice, the church ceremony is really off schedule and liturgically wrong in a few places. Too bad that there is another wedding right after ours, so we were literally kicked out from the church. We did not get enough time to have group photos. Luckily, we were able to make it up in the banquet. Those group photo are most boring photo in a wedding anyways. It is more like a record of who has shown up. So consolidate group photos into bigger groups to speed things up wasn’t really a big lost. We planned another photo session in Stanley Park between church and banquet. In the original plan, the wedding party will tag along too. We are running short of time, so we decide to take more couple pictures instead of group shots. The groomsmen and bridesmaids went straight to the restaurant to setup. They got some rest and with just us and the photographers, we were able to take photos quite efficiently. It is important to have take engagement photo with the same photographers, so that we know how to work with each other on the wedding day.
I am really tired at the banquet. We have good MC and wedding planner, so the banquet runs pretty well. I just have to follow the instruction. I don’t have to think too much. It seems my brain has shut down and I am just react with subconscious reflections. We have some silly games in the wedding. One of the game is hiding the groom. It is the first break I have since the morning. I was hiding quite relaxingly at the table in the far corner. That table is full of Pat’s high school friends, the girls could not finish the dishes, so I can share some food. I was enjoying a chicken leg when Pat finally found me. After the banquet, we have another challenge. We received lots of gifts, some of the gifts are in huge boxes. I love gifts in general, but some gifts I got simply shows the giver has no common sense. For example, I got a huge fancy garbage bin. It is nice, but it is inconvenient to bring to the restaurant in the first place. Did the giver ever think about how could I possible move it home? Luckily my groomsmen are really good friends, although it’s pretty late after the banquet, they still helped me to bring the gifts home. It takes three cars to load all the gifts.
I will write a more detail blog entry about my wedding experience when I have more time to digest it. There are so many things happening in the wedding day. I could use some quiet time in my honey moon trip to think over it when I am sun bathing on the deck of a cruise ship.
T minus one and counting. Only one more day from my big day. Things are piling up. I already passed the point I feel nervous or pressured. I simply could not feel anything. Tonight, my groomsmen and bridesmaids met and have dinner together. It is the first time the whole group is gathering in one place.
We had done the church rehearsal, it’s funny that the guy who conduct our rehearsal seems even more stressful than we are. He lost his temper over some silly questions, yelled at us and have to walk to the side to clam himself down. Maybe I simply have the talent to push people over the edge, or maybe he is just nuts. The only thing important in the church is the entry, the exchange of the ring and the exit. Who cares about the liturgy, no one knows the “correct” way anyways. If we screwed up and missed some steps, as long as we improvise on the spot, no one will notice.
Traditional Vancouver special style wedding requires lots of work and co-oridination. I am glad that we have lots of good friend helping us out. With their help, we are in reasonably good shape. I stronger suggest those who are about to get marry, consider keeping it simply. Travel wedding just with the family and a few close friends would be much easier.
If you are walking down Vancouver downtown at night, seeing a group of guys with one weirdly dressed guy, don’t be afraid. They are not crazy. They are just having a bachelor party. It seems this is the tradition in Vancouver. Last night I had my bachelor party and I met at least 3 other groups of bachelor parties. One guy is dressed as WWE whestler with a mark, one guy is in a cow girl outfit, one guy is a princess with a crown. I dressed as a Hawaii girl. Sorry guys, the photos are off the record. I am not going to post any pictures of my bachelor party and I will not write about what have I done. The secret of bachelor party is for guys only.
I just got the package from Royal Caribean for my Mediterranean cruise. I have to check-in online to register my passport and credit card. There are some information of onshore excursion tours come with the package. On each port the cruise ship stop over, we can get off the ship to visit the place. You don’t want to travel around on your own, if you are lost or get into trouble, the ship won’t wait for you. It is better to join the day tour package run by the cruise. At least they gaurantee the ship will wait for you. On average the tour cost about $50 for half day trip and $100 for full day trip. Two people stopping 5 ports easily add another thousand dollar to your cruise bill. That add almost a quater of the cost of the cruise.
Paying that much for the day trip, I would expect I get some decent information help me to decision which trip to join. All I got in the booklet is a few wordy paragraph for each trip on each port. I would expect the online version is more helpful, but it is even worst! The online version is the same as wordy paragraph from the paper copy, but the list is sorted according to type of activities. Please list all the tours of a port in the same. I can only do one or two things at each port, it is important to see see all my options is one place? I have a hard time deciding which tour to join. All the tour description looks quite similar, there are only a few famous places at each port after all. What I really need is a matrix highlight the difference between each tour.
In Canada, all wedding couple have to get a marriage license before their wedding day. You can get it from many places, I just went to London Drugs to get mine from an insurance broker. The wedding license is just a piece of paper. It is the document you are going to sign on the wedding day. The wedding officiant will take it and send it back to the registration office and the government will mail your the wedding certificate. This piece of computer printed paper costs me $100. What a rip off! I wonder how can poor people afford to get marry. $100 for a piece of paper is ridiculous. Getting marry is basic human rights. The government should at least waive the registration fee for the first marriage. It is fair to charge those who marry more than once. But getting marry once is pretty much universal.
When I fill in the application form for the marriage license, I notice some legal statment at the back of the form. It is illegal for a male applicant to marry his mother, daughter or sister and it is also illegal for a female applicant to marry her dad, son or brother. Incest is illegal, so this rules make sense. However the legal statment didn’t say anything about son marrying to dad or daugther to mother. I think we have incest law for many years but the gay marriage is just legalized, so the incest law isn’t update. It would make a headline news if a gay incest couple trying to register. On a second thought, maybe the incest law is not update on purpose. Gay couple cannot have children and the intention of the incest law is to avoid childbirth between close relatives. Since gay cannot reproduce, we don’t have any reason to stop them getting marry. Gay is gross. Incest is very gross. Gay and incest is exponentially gross, yet it is legal. Yuck! The Canadian family law is really screwed up.
Our wedding is on 08-08-16, so Pat wants us to have 8 bridesmaids and 8 groomsmen, including the maid of honor and the best men. In our wedding website, we created a page to introduce every one in our wedding party [link]. I am responsible of writing a small paragraph for my groomsmen. It took me a while to finish writing the short introduction. I know my groomsmen for many many years, all of them are my old friends. I am know them so well that I am used to their characters, like wearing comfortable old shoes. It is seems so nature for us to be good friends. Ain’t we friends since the beginning of time? I actually have to think hard to recall how I know them and become good friends in the first place. Writing the short introduction brings back lots of good memories.
Me and Pat choose to make our own wedding invitation card. At first we want to print the wedding invitation like everyone else does. However, Pat think the print invitation does not have individual character and ours should be more special. Since we learn how to make cards from previous church event, we could use the same technique to make our invitation. In addition, we also sign up a wedding invitation making class to learn some advance technique and get some ideal.
Pat designed the card, I only help her out in making the cards. It takes a much longer time to make 200 wedding invitation than we had expected. It’s fun to cut the paper, stamp the picture, color the pattern, heat up the ensemble powder together. It’s some precious memory that both of us will share for the rest of our life. I worked on the no brainier tasks while Pat worked the task require fine motor skill. Since we are not machine, every card is slight different and each card is unique. We end up having two designs because the first design is too complicate and we have to switch to a simpler design to save time. I think even the second design is too complicate, so for the final bunch we will probably use another design. Other than these major designs, there are a few prototype cards too. If you happen to have one of the prototype cards, you must be really lucky.
The wedding I went yesterday is pretty normal, except there was a lesbian bridesmaid. How do I know she is lesbian? It’s quite obviously. All the bridesmaids dressed in nice green dresses that match the theme of the wedding and this lesbian bridesmaid dressed in a green shirt and pants. Her tom boy look really stands out in the photo among other pretty girls, basically ruined the harmony looking bridesmaid picture. I had dinner with some friends attended the wedding today and we were all wondering what is she doing there.
Our group of friends then started the discussion on whether lesbian is allowed to be a bridesmaid. On one hand, lesbian are female, so she is technically qualified for a bridesmaid. On the other hand, lesbian does not look like female, so it doesn’t seem right to have a guy looking “thing” among the bridesmaids. If you think having a tom boy dressing in shirts and pants is OK to be a bridesmaid. How about a gay guy dressing in a skirt being a groomsman? In the end, we all concluded that having lesbian bridesmaid is OK, as long as she dress like other bridesmaids. I think even a tom boy could look decent if she put on some make up and a nice dress. If she doesn’t want to wear the girl dress, maybe she should consider being a groomsman instead!
Tonight I went to my best friend, Andy’s wedding. I flew all the way from Vancouver back to Toronto, staying a weekend just to attend this wedding. This wedding is quite special to me, because I was the match maker. I introduced Winnie to Andy many years ago. I have done many match making and it is the only one that has a happy ending. In Andy and Winnie’s wedding website, each of them have wrote an entry on how they met. The two version is not exactly the same, yet I think I am one of the few who know the real version. I guess everyone tends to modify their own memory to only remember a better version of the reality.
It’s funny to see my college grad ball date again tonight. When I was in the forth year, I was single, so does a few of my friends. Winnie was so kind that she ask some of her friends to be our dates, so that we don’t have to go to the grad ball alone. My grad ball date was the maid of honor of Winnie. I didn’t keep in touch with her after graduation, so I am quite surprise to see her.
