Getting married... Chapter 1

Correct, Chapter 1, meaning there will be subsequent chapters to come.

Getting married as a foreigner in Malaysia during a pandemic outbreak has not been the easiest thing in life. I decided to journal down the events on this journey. This will give me a chance to add some fun factors to this otherwise tedious and stressful ordeal.

Covid-19 has been a beauty in disguise to many, including myself. Midlife Wonders is the beautiful by-product of it. The challenges, however, Covid-19 has given to us is the challenges on the planning of the wedding.

First, the date. Borrowing my experience from "Business Continuity Planning" at work, I have been working out alternative dates for the wedding party. After three dates, from October 2020 to January 2021 and now finally settled for April 2021 (fingers crossed everyone, please!), let's hope this is done.

With that, we decided to separate the legal registration and the wedding party, as most people have done handling this uncertainty.

Second, where. We have explored multiple places for getting the wedding registration done, including Greece, Japan, Hong Kong and Malaysia. With the pandemic, travelling is out of bounds so we are left with Hong Kong or Malaysia. Though the governments are taking turns to reduce their public services due to the Pandemic development.

Third, the papers. We started collecting the necessary documents in February. It involves having my mother heading to the government offices multiple times, to the High Court, to the Malaysian Embassy in Hong Kong and more. It also involves a lot of desktop research, a few youtube videos and a 7-slide powerpoint, to get the documents ready for the first step: obtaining the approval letter for me, the foreigner, to get married in Malaysia

Given we have canceled all overseas climbing holidays, I have taken days off to run these errands. With the steps we have been through with the preparation, I thought it would be a stressful day. But to my pleasant surprise, with a day off, the time pressure is removed from these "ordeals". It also removed the lack of patience and lack of tolerance I would otherwise have when things do not turn out as planned (yes, we did not get the approval letter). In the end, it was an enjoyable day off.

The more I think about things and further down the path of the Midlife Wonders journey, I realised, just like money, time can also "buy" a lot of things. It allows you to buy yourself better intangible assets such as patience and appreciation. Let me be a Carrie Bradshaw: I wouldn't help but wonder: would I rather be someone who is minty rich but behaves like an angry Wall Street banker, or would I rather have a life where I am financially comfortable but richer with time to nurture traits that would make you a better person?