I was really honoured to shoot Mark and Ruth’s wedding all the way over in Singapore! It’d been quite a few years since I’d shot a Singaporean wedding so I was keen for that rare experience of shooting the pre-wedding games. For those of you who don’t know, one of the Singaporean wedding traditions is for the groom and his groomsmen to face a series of “challenges” to be allowed to meet the bride. I’m pretty sure it started off mildly but over time it’s evolved into genuine torture. Mark and his bros pulled out the stops and came dressed as Mario and his turtles, they weren’t asked to by the bridesmaids, this was just their choice 😀 When they got to Ruth’s their first challenge was to eat their way through a frozen bowl of wasabi, chilli and who knows what else, to get the key inside for her room. The funny thing was half way through the bridesmaids realised maybe they’d made the frozen sculpture too thick, and it would take too long to get through, but Ruth’s actual room key was inside so someone had to get it for real! The next challenge for Mark was guessing Ruth’s body parts from a board of others. Everytime he got it wrong there was a penalty of eating Oreo’s off that specific body part, off his groomsman or vice versa. After that they gave him a phone with an open amazon page and said he either had to order Ruth’s favourite snowboard on the spot, or face a drinking penalty. Mark chose the drinking penalty, which resulted in some genuinely ill groomsmen!
After their ordeals, they were allowed in and got changed out of their turtle suits to head off to the wedding. Their ceremony was held at Ruth’s local church in Dhoby Gaut, followed by food and drinks at the church. The guests were then given a few hours to head over to the Amara Hotel on Sentosa Island whilst Mark and Ruth got changed before their Chinese tea ceremony which was held during their drink reception. The eight course banquet ensued with lots of auspicious dishes, with speeches and choir performances (from Ruth’s friends) in between courses. Singaporean weddings don’t have a party after dinner as it usually takes until midnight to nom through the whole banquet, so after the dinner Ruth and Mark hugged their guests goodbye and had an after party with friends in their hotel villa!
