Mr Amin Sulaiman and Ms Noelle Yong had planned to move into their Housing Board flat on the day they got married.
Little did they know that their new home in Clementi would double as their wedding venue when they solemnised their marriage last Sunday.
Because of social-distancing measures from the middle of last month which restricted gatherings to fewer than 250 and subsequently 10 people, the couple had to throw their original plans out the window. They were supposed to hold a lunch reception for about 1,000 guests, followed by a dinner for about 250 people, both at Hort Park.
Instead, they said their vows in front of eight family members. The scaled-down affair did not dampen the occasion though.
Ms Yong, 30, a civil servant, says: "Getting married at home made the ceremony extra special, as our families were very involved in the whole renovation journey."
While many couples have postponed their nuptials in this time of uncertainty, a handful of couples are still getting hitched, albeit on a smaller scale.
Ms Yong and Mr Amin, 31, were initially reluctant to postpone their reception and dinner, which they had spent a year planning. They had considered reducing their guest list and staggering lunch timings to meet the limit of fewer than 250 people at that time.
"But we started asking ourselves if we were being socially responsible to carry on with the wedding, just because we had done so much up to that point," says Mr Amin, who works in an operations role at a tech start-up.
Ms Yong adds: "As the organiser, we had the option to remove that risk for our guests. We had family members in vulnerable groups, such as the elderly, who would have still come, but we didn't want to pressure them to do so."
Prior to their wedding day, friends of the couple sent video clips of well wishes, which Mr Amin compiled into a virtual guestbook as a surprise for his wife. He screened the 20-minute video during a photoshoot at Kent Ridge Park on their wedding day.
Another couple, Singaporean Dhuha Isa, 29, and Briton Mark Hunter, 33, livestreamed their wedding last month for family members who could not be present due to border restrictions.
The couple, both visual-effects editors, got married in Vancouver, where they have been living since 2015. About a week before their wedding, Canada closed its borders to most foreign nationals.
Ms Dhuha's mother had arrived in Vancouver in January, and her sister is a university student there, but other members of their families watched the ceremony over video-conferencing apps FaceTime and Zoom. They included Ms Dhuha's father, author and cultural medallion recipient Isa Kamari, as well as Mr Hunter's parents, brother and uncle – who dressed to the nines for the conference call.
The couple, who dislike being the centre of attention, had planned an intimate ceremony with 15 guests at an Airbnb in Deep Cove, a waterside community, but ended up holding it at Ms Dhuha's apartment instead.
While they wish their families could have been present – Ms Dhuha, for instance, wanted her father to give her away – they are grateful that their parents were supportive about the arrangement.
"It put Read More – Source
[contf] [contfnew]
