Following the teaser from the previous entry about our Balinese wedding blessing ceremony, you can view more photographs at my Picasa Web Album.

More than two hours were spent on dressing Roberto and myself up, complete with makeup and hair pieces, in a Garden villa of the Viceroy Bali. The result is what you see in the photograph in the previous entry.

Then we went the hotel’s CasCades restaurant, where the ceremony would be held, to await the arrival of the mangku or priest who would conduct the ceremony. Some Belgian friends, who planned their vacation in Bali to coincide with our celebration, were already present and visibly excited to see us dressed up.

After a short wait, our mangku walks in with three ladies bearing trays of fruit, local cakes and crackers, a tray of nasi campur or mixed rice, and flowers for offering to the Gods. These are placed on two tables for a later part of the ceremony.
Once that has been done, we are told that the ceremony begins outside the restaurant, which symbolises our marital home. We have to be cleansed before we can enter the marital home afresh.

Thus, we stand next to each other just outside the steps leading to the restaurant, facing the mangku and his assistants as they lead us through a whole set of steps that include using our fingers to touch certain offerings, having some of the offerings being dabbed on to our fingers or palms, fanning out flames with our palms, and pushing over containers of offerings with our feet all while the mangku goes through a series of incantations.

Once we have been cleansed, we follow our mangku and enter the restaurant (the marital home) to complete the ceremony. We all sit facing the Petanu valley, by request of our mangku. He continues with his incantations, which is interspersed by sprinkling water, flowers or uncooked rice over the trays of offerings displayed on the table.

At a certain point, he turns toward us and sprinkles water on us. There were some more incantations and rites that we sat through, but I cannot recall perfectly what they were and no one was present to explain it to us.

Toward the end, the mangku takes some cords from a white cotton string and ties a length of it around each of our right wrists. While we never found out the symbolism of this, we were told to keep the cord on our wrist until it falls off on its own.

Following this, Roberto and I had to serve the nasi campur. This was done with Roberto placing small portions of each item on to two plates being held by me. After we had each taken a bite from our plates, the ceremony was over and guests could begin to partake of the nasi campur and offerings present.

The entire ceremony was over in about 30 minutes. Although there was no one present to explain the entire process and its symbolism to us, it was a deeply moving and intimate experience for Roberto and myself.

It is yet another event shared by us, and this is what being married to each other should be about – sharing different and all moments in life together so that each is special in itself.

We want to thank everyone who made the ceremony possible: Anthony of the Viceroy Bali; Ida who helped arrange for the mangku and wedding dresser, and everyone who turned up to share the ceremony with us.

As written before, we marked our church wedding first anniversary on June 24 with a Balinese wedding blessing ceremony at The Viceroy Bali.

A more detailed entry about the proceedings, with pictures, will come at a later date. For now, here is a photograph of us dressed in Balinese finery to resemble a Balinese king and queen.

We warmly welcome link exchanges for websites on anything relating to weddings and in any language: we will place your business logo with website URL on our Sponsors page in return for the same on your website.

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With two wedding ceremonies under our belt, and planning for the third to happen in mid 2008, we realise that each country/culture has different traditions and methods to celebrating the union of two people. Through this website, we hope to experience more wedding ceremonies through sponsorship, and compile our experiences in to a published book.

If you require more information, get in touch with us for a no obligations discussion.

Our church wedding first anniversary is less than a week away and we are celebrating it in style.

As promised before in Our Wedding Mission, we are having a Balinese blessing ceremony on June 24 2008. The festivities will be held in Ubud at The Viceroy Bali, which will kindly sponsor the venue.

At this moment of writing, we are still trying to confirm a mangku or priest for officiating over a simple blessing ceremony.

Other than that, if you will be in Bali on this date and would like to attend the ceremony, please send us a notification of your interest and we will send you details for attendance. As it is, we have three Belgian friends who have specially flown here so that they can be part of the celebration!

Look out for photographs of the event after!

Un anno fa, a Singapore, io e Patricea dicevamo “I do”, e ci scambiavamo gli anelli per il matrimonio in forma civile che si è celebrato tra moltissimi amici e familiari. In ques’anno di cose ne sono successe tantissime: abbiamo viaggiato, messo su casa, avuto il matrimonio religioso (il cui anniversario sarà tra 4 mesi) ed adirittura messo in produzione un bimbo, il cui arrivo sarà esattamente a metà tra i due anniversari, quindi in Aprile. Un paio di post fa ho messo la sua prima foto-ecografia, ed all’epoca non sapevamo il sesso, ma ora sappiamo che si tratta di un maschietto (si chiama quindi Antonio), che avrà anche un nome cinese: Wei Long (vuol dire Dragone Coraggioso). Anche il cagnolino (sempre in foto poco sotto) è cresciuto tantissimo, e avrà una compagna di giochi che si unirà alla famiglia in marzo. Nato Antonio, abbiamo in programma di averne un altro (possibilmente femmina) dopodichè abbiamo raggiunto il numero ideale… ma vi terremo informati!

Roberto

On this day one year ago, we were married in Singapore with a simple civil wedding, surrounded by my immediate family, godparents, and about 80 of my closest friends.

It seems like only a short time has passed since February 24, 2007 so it is hard to imagine that an actual year has flown past.

One year ago, Roberto and I would not know what would be awaiting us one year later.

Now that I am writing this on February 24, 2008, I can tell you that I am in to my 32nd week of my first pregnancy. Life has really changed dramatically for us, from being contented singles to a giddily happy married couple and now to excited expecting parents.

We still have plans to have a traditional Balinese blessing ceremony for our first religious wedding anniversary, which is four months later. However, details have yet to be confirmed. We will inform everyone at the soonest moment possible.

Nuovi arrivi in casa Capodieci… uno, a quattro zampe, è già con noi da un mese e mezzo, un altro, a due gambine, sarà con noi da Aprile 2008! Iniziamo con le presentazioni: questo è Caramel:

E quest’altro/a (per ora non si sa) sarà “Antonio” o “Angelina” a seconda del sesso:

Tutte le informazioni sulla gravidanza della Patricea le potete trovare qui: http://babycapodieci.blogspot.com (in Inglese)

Siamo felicissimi!!!!

Roberto e Patricea

Sono passati quasi due mesi dal nostro matrimonio celebrato in Italia, in chiesa. Ancora una volta i ringraziamenti arrivano in ritardo, ma devono essere fatti.

Desideriamo mandare inostri apprezzamenti a tutti coloro che sono venuti alla cerimonia o al pranzo per condividere la nostra gioia, il 24 giugno 2007. Sotto troverete i nomi di alcuni tra coloro a cui vogliamo in particolar modo mandare i nostri ringraziamenti.

Le suore alla chiesa di San Girolamo: per l’ospitalità e le letture durante la messa.

Marco “Brandolissimo”: Per il “passaggio” nella sua fantastica Citroen 2CV del 1981.

Elio Martella: Per aver accompagnato la sposa all’altare.

La sig.ra Lapari: Per il grandioso make-up offerto alla sposa.

Salvotore, Daniela & Agnese Capodieci: per la cesta di più di 50 rose bianche a gambo lungo.

Milo Bau: per aver messo in video la celebrazione.

Irma & Rino: per essere stati i testimoni della sposa.

Renata & Guiseppe (ops! intendevo Giuseppe): per essere stati i testimoni dello sposo.

Don Stefano Cannizaro: per averci accompagnato al in questo cammino prima via email, poi incontrandoci di persona diverse volte a Mestre, per la sua pazienza e abilità nel parlare Inglese, e per aver averci unito in matrimonio davanti a Dio.

(Nota: Post Scritto da Patricea in agosto 2007, tradotto da Roberto in Febbraio 2008!)

As this blog gains more web presence, we have received a number of queries from Singaporeans and its residents about some of the vendors/services that we have mentioned here.

Despite my busy week day schedule*, I always take five to 15 minutes answering each e-mail within three working days of receiving them. Even when the e-mails are not addressed to Roberto or myself, despite the fact that our names are imprinted in the header of our blog and liberally sprinkled through the pages.

However, not once have I received a follow-up e-mail with a simple thank you for the clarification/information etc. Indeed, while Singaporeans think that having a courtesy campaign smears the ‘good reputation’ of its citizens, some have yet again displayed why we need such a basic campaign.

My parents and the schools – all non-government institutions except junior college, so I cannot speak for the government ones – I attended instilled in me a sense of basic courtesy. Saying ‘please’, ‘thank you’, ‘excuse me’ and ‘you are welcome’ became second nature to me. In fact, Roberto thinks that it should be human or even second nature in every single person.

The point is: you have written to us asking for help, and we have extended help in as best as we could, in whatever ability that we are able to.

There was no guarantee that our reply would be what you expected (did someone not tell you that having too much expectations could be a bad thing?), yet you cannot deny that at least you received a reply, and the least you could do after that is to acknowledge you received a reply.

Thus we have decided the following:
(1) E-mails that are not addressed to either one of us will be ignored. Period.
(2) Any e-mails that we reply will be tagged with a return receipt. If the return receipt is received, it means you have read our reply, so we expect a follow-up e-mail soon after.
(3) If we do not receive the follow-up e-mail after (1) and (2) are met, a follow-up post will appear on this and other blogs. We do not promise that it will be kind or hide your identity/contact details.

Kindness begets kindness and karma goes round. Everyone wants a lovely and memorable wedding, and so do we.

While we are always willing to offer assistance and suggestions, we do not like being taken advantage of. All we ask for is an acknowledgment of our help. When we start charging, in € (Euro), for answering e-mails, you should become worried! Yes, online credit card or Paypal payments are all accepted.

* Contrary to popular belief that I am living life as a ‘tai-tai’, I do work like everyone else does. Except that I set my own targets and meet my own goals. Nothing in life is free, and we all need that thing called money to purchase food, a roof over the head, and pay for our Internet connection!

Unfortunately, our photograph did not win the contest despite the originality of the moment oozing out from the pixels.

The winning photograph was a posed picture, taken during one of those wedding album shoots, of wife preparing to kick a soccer ball as husband crouches in defense at the front of the goal post. In full wedding finery.

In the end, I guess we did not have enough ‘friends’/'contacts’ who were free enough to sign up with AsiaOne to vote! I bet each of the winning couple’s ‘friends’/'contacts’ voted 10 times (*yes, a case of sour grapes here!*)

If we were not entered in the contest, my vote would NOT have gone to any of the posed wedding album shots. It would have gone to pictures like the one where bubbles floated across the couple in the photograph taken during their wedding reception; or the shared secret between the little kids dressed in formal clothes; or the wife ‘wincing’ in ‘pain’ as the husband pins something on her hair.

My vote would have gone for something that was more natural and captured the essence of the moment, than for something posed, no matter how original the pose is. In my eyes, the captured moments tell the story of the wedding much more than poses, and the few examples I listed above are all winners.

Nevertheless, Roberto and I would like to send thanks to all those who sent in their votes (some of whom include Tina Ho, Vipula, John Lee, N. Sivasothi, Kay Lee).

Also many thanks to those who were unable to vote because they are not residing in Singapore; your lovely compliments brightened our day.