by Kevin Kwan
“That’s not my worry, Peik Lin. Look, no price tags anywhere—that’s always a dangerous sign,” Rachel whispered.
“Don’t worry about price tags, Rachel. Your job is to try on the dresses.”
“What do you mean? Peik Lin, I’m not letting you buy me a dress!”
“Shush! Let’s not argue about this,” Peik Lin said as she held up a translucent lace blouse to the light.
“Peik Lin, I mean it. None of your funny business here,” Rachel warned as she thumbed through another rack. A dress that was hand-painted with watery blue-and-silver flowers caught her eye. “Now this is to die for. Why don’t I try this one on?” she asked.
Patric reentered the room and noticed the dress Rachel was holding. “Wait, wait, wait. How did that Dries Van Noten get in here? Chuaaaan!” he yelled for his long-suffering aide-de-camp. “The Dries is reserved for Mandy Ling, who’s on the way right now. Her mother will kau peh kau bu* if I let someone else have it.” He turned back to Rachel and smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry, that Dries is already spoken for. Now, for starters let’s see you in this oyster-pink number with the pretty bustle skirt.”
Rachel soon found herself twirling around in one stunning dress after another and having more fun than she ever thought possible. Peik Lin would simply ooh and ahh over everything she put on, while reading aloud from the latest issue of Singapore Tattle:
Expect private-jet gridlock at Changi Airport and road closures all over the CBD this weekend as Singapore witnesses its own royal wedding. Araminta Lee weds Colin Khoo at First Methodist Church on Saturday at high noon, with a private reception to follow at an undisclosed location. (Mother-of-the-bride Annabel Lee is said to have planned every last detail, blowing northward of forty million on the occasion.) Although the crème de la crème guest list has been more closely guarded than North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, don’t be surprised to see royalty, heads of state, and celebrities such as Tony Leung, Gong Li, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Yue-Sai Kan, Rain, Fan BingBing, and Zhang Ziyi in attendance. It’s rumored that one of Asia’s biggest pop divas will perform, and bookies are taking bets on who designed Araminta’s bridal gown. Be on the lookout for Asia’s most glittering to come out in full force, like the Shaws, the Tais, the Mittals, the Meggahartos, the Hong Kong AND Singapore Ngs, assorted Ambanis, the David Tangs, the L’Orient Lims, the Taipei Plastics Chus, and many others too fabulous to mention.
Meanwhile, Patric would dash in and out of the dressing room making definitive pronouncements:
“That slit is too high—you’ll give all the choirboys erections wearing that one!”
“Gorgeous! You were genetically engineered to wear Alaïa!”
“NEVER, EVER wear green chiffon unless you want to look like bok choy that got gang-raped.”
“Now that looks stunning. That flared skirt would look even better if you were arriving on horseback.”
Every outfit Patric selected seemed to fit Rachel more beautifully than the last. They found the perfect cocktail dress for the rehearsal dinner and an outfit that could work for the wedding. Just when Rachel finally decided that, what the hell, she would splurge on one great designer ball gown for the first time in her life, Peik Lin summoned for a whole rack of dresses to be wrapped up.
“Are you taking all those for yourself?” Rachel asked in astonishment.
“No, these are the ones that looked best, so I’m getting them for you,” Peik Lin answered as she attempted to hand her American Express black card to one of Patric’s assistants.
“Oh no you’re not! Put that AMEX card down!” Rachel said sternly, grasping Peik Lin’s wrist. “Come on, I only need one formal gown for the wedding ball. I can still wear my black-and-white dress to the wedding ceremony.”
“First of all, Rachel Chu, you cannot wear a black-and-white dress to a wedding—those are mourning colors. Are you sure you’re really Chinese? How could you not know that? Second, when was the last time I saw you? How often do I get to treat one of my best friends in the whole world? You can’t deprive me of this pleasure.”
Rachel laughed at the preposterous charm of her statement. “Peik Lin, I appreciate your generosity, but you just can’t go around spending thousands of dollars on me. Now, I have money saved up for this trip, and I will gladly pay for my own—”
“Fantastic. Go buy some souvenirs when you’re in Phuket.”
In a dressing suite at the other end of Patric’s atelier, two attendants were gingerly tightening the corseted bodice of a scarlet Alexander McQueen gown on Amanda Ling, still jet-lagged from having just stepped off a plane from New York.
“It needs to be tighter,” her mother, Jacqueline, said, looking at the attendants, who each held one side of the gold silk cord hesitantly.
“But I can hardly breathe as it is!” Amanda protested.
“Take smaller breaths, then.”
“This isn’t 1862, Mummy. I don’t think this is actually supposed to be worn like a real corset!”
“Of course it is. Perfection comes at a sacrifice, Mandy. Which naturally is a concept you seem to lack any understanding of.”
Amanda rolled her eyes. “Don’t get started again, Mummy. I knew exactly what I was doing. Things were going just fine in New York until you forced me to fly back for this insanity. I was so looking forward to blowing off Araminta’s silly wedding.”
“I don’t know what planet you’re living on, but things are not ‘just fine.’ Nicky is going to propose to this girl any minute now. What was the whole point of my sending you to New York? You had one simple mission to accomplish, and you failed miserably.”
“You have no appreciation for what I’ve accomplished for myself. I’m part of New York society now,” Amanda proudly declared.
“Who gives a damn about that? You think anyone here is impressed to see pictures of you in Town & Country?”
“He’s not going to marry her, Mummy. You don’t know Nicky like I do,” Amanda insisted.
“Well, for your sake I hope you’re right. I don’t need to remind you—”
“Yes, yes, you’ve said it for years. You have nothing to leave me, I’m the girl, everything has to go to Teddy,” Amanda lamented sarcastically.
“Tighter!” Jacqueline ordered the attendants.
* * *
* Hokkien for “bitch me out” (or slang that translates to “cry to the father and cry to the mother”).
4
First Methodist Church
SINGAPORE
“Another security checkpoint?” Alexandra Cheng complained, peering out the tinted window at the throngs of spectators lining Fort Canning Road.
“Alix, there are so many heads of state here, of course they have to secure the location. That’s the Sultan of Brunei’s convoy ahead of us, and isn’t the vice premier of China supposed to be coming?” Malcolm Cheng said.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if the Lees invited the entire Communist Party of China,” Victoria Young snorted in derision.
Nick had departed at the crack of dawn to help Colin prepare for his big day, so Rachel caught a ride with his aunts and uncle in one of the fleets of cars leaving from Tyersall Park.
The burgundy Daimler finally arrived in front of First Methodist Church and the uniformed chauffeur opened the door, causing the crowd crammed behind barricades to roar in anticipation. As Rachel was helped out of the car, hundreds of press photographers hanging off metal bleachers began snapping away, the sound of their frenzied digital clicks like locusts descending on an open field.
Rachel heard a photographer yell to a newscaster standing on the ground, “Who’s that girl? Is she someone? Is she someone?”
“No, it’s just some rich socialite,” the newscaster snapped back. “But look, here comes Eddie Cheng and Fiona Tung-Cheng!”
Eddie and his sons emerged from the car directly behind Rachel’s. Both boys were dressed in outfits identical to their father’s—dove-gray cutaway jackets and polka-dot lavender ties—and they
flanked Eddie obediently while Fiona and Kalliste followed a few paces behind.
“Eddie Cheng! Look this way, Eddie! Boys, over here!” the photographers shouted. The newscaster thrust a microphone in front of Eddie’s face. “Mr. Cheng, your family is always at the top of the best-dressed lists, and you certainly didn’t disappoint us today! Tell me, who are you wearing?”
Eddie paused, proudly placing his arms around his boys’ shoulders. “Constantine, Augustine, and I are in Gieves & Hawkes bespoke, and my wife and daughter are in Carolina Herrera,” he grinned broadly. The boys squinted into the bright morning sun, trying to remember their father’s instructions: look straight into the camera lens, suck your cheeks in, turn to the left, smile, turn to the right, smile, look at Papa adoringly, smile.
“Your grandsons look so cute all dressed up!” Rachel remarked to Malcolm.
Malcolm shook his head derisively. “Hiyah! Thirty years I have been a pioneering heart surgeon, but my son is the one who gets all the attention—for his bloody clothes!”
Rachel grinned. These big celebrity weddings all seemed to be about the “bloody clothes,” didn’t they? She was wearing an ice-blue dress with a fitted blazer trimmed with mother-of-pearl disks all along the lapel and sleeves. At first she felt rather overdressed when she saw what Nick’s aunts were wearing back at Tyersall Park—Alexandra in a muddy-green floral dress that looked like eighties Laura Ashley, and Victoria in a geometric-patterned black-and-white knit dress (so much for Peik Lin’s theory) that looked like something dug up from the bottom of an old camphor-wood chest. But here, among all the other chic wedding guests, she realized that she had nothing to worry about.
Rachel had never seen a crowd like this in the daytime—with the men sharply dressed in morning suits and the women styled to within an inch of their lives in the latest looks from Paris and Milan, many sporting elaborate hats or flamboyant fascinators. An even more exotic contingent of ladies arrived in iridescent saris, hand-painted kimonos, and intricately sewn kebayas. Rachel had secretly been dreading the wedding all week, but as she followed Nick’s aunties up the slope toward the Gothic redbrick church, she found herself succumbing to the festive air. This was a once-in-a-lifetime event, the likes of which she would probably never witness again.
At the main doors stood a line of ushers dressed in pinstriped morning suits and top hats. “Welcome to First Methodist,” an usher said cheerily. “Your names, please?”
“What for?” Victoria frowned.
“So I can tell you which rows you’ll be sitting in,” the young man said, holding up an iPad with a detailed seating chart glowing on its screen.
“What nonsense! This is my church, and I am going to sit in my regular pew,” Victoria said.
“At least tell me if you’re guests of the bride or groom?” the usher asked.
“Groom, of course!” Victoria huffed, brushing past him.
Entering the church for the first time, Rachel was surprised by how starkly modern the sanctuary looked. Silver-leaf latticework walls soared to the stonework ceilings, and rows of minimalist blond-wood chairs filled the space. There wasn’t a single flower to be seen anywhere, but there was no need, because suspended from the ceiling were thousands of young Aspen trees, meticulously arranged to create a vaulted forest floating just above everyone’s heads. Rachel found the effect stunning, but Nick’s aunties were aghast.
“Why did they cover up the red brick and the stained glass? What happened to all the dark wooden pews?” Alexandra asked, disoriented by the complete transformation of the church she had been baptized in.
“Aiyah, Alix, don’t you see? That Annabel Lee woman has transformed the church into one of her ghastly hotel lobbies!” Victoria shuddered.
The ushers inside the church rushed around in utter panic, since most of the eight hundred and eighty-eight* wedding guests were completely ignoring the seating chart. Annabel had been advised on the seating protocol by no less an authority than Singapore Tattle’s editrix in chief, Betty Bao, but even Betty was unprepared for the ancient rivalries that existed among Asia’s old-guard families. She would not have known, for instance, that the Hus should always be seated in front of the Ohs, or that the Kweks would not tolerate any Ngs within a fifty-foot radius.
Predictably, Dick and Nancy T’sien had commandeered two rows near the pulpit and were turning away anyone other than T’siens, Youngs, or Shangs (in rare exceptions, they were allowing in a few Leongs and Lynn Wyatt). Nancy, in a cinnabar-red dress and enormous matching feather-brimmed hat, gushed excitedly as Alexandra and Victoria approached. “Don’t you love what they’ve done? It reminds me of the Seville Cathedral, where we attended the wedding of the Duchess of Alba’s daughter to that handsome bullfighter.”
“But we’re Methodists, Nancy. This is a sacrilege! I feel like I’m in the middle of the Katyn forest, and someone is about to shoot me in the back of the head,” Victoria seethed.
Rosemary T’sien walked up the central aisle escorted by her grandson Oliver T’sien and her granddaughter Cassandra Shang, nodding to people she knew along the way. Rachel could already tell by Cassandra’s wrinkled nose that she did not approve of the decor. Radio One Asia slipped in between Victoria and Nancy and launched into the latest breaking news: “I just heard that Mrs. Lee Yong Chien is furious. She is going to talk to the bishop right after the service, and you know what that means—no more new library wing!”
Oliver, who was nattily dressed in a cream-colored seersucker suit, blue checked shirt, and yellow knit tie, slipped in next to Rachel. “I want to sit next to you—you’re the best-dressed girl I’ve seen all day!” he declared, admiring the understated elegance of Rachel’s outfit. As the church continued to fill up, Oliver’s running commentary on the arriving VIP guests had Rachel alternately mesmerized and in stitches.
“Here comes the Malay contingent—assorted sultanas, princesses, and hangers-on. Hmm, it looks like someone got lipo. Lord have mercy, have you ever seen this many diamonds and bodyguards in all your life? Don’t look now, I’m pretty sure that woman in the cloche hat is Faye Wong. She’s an amazing singer and actress, famously elusive—the Greta Garbo of Hong Kong. Ah, look at Jacqueline Ling in that Azzedine Alaïa. On anyone else, that shade of pink would look slutty, but on her it looks drop-dead perfect. And see that really thin fellow with the comb-over being greeted so warmly by Peter and Annabel Lee? That’s the man everyone here wants to talk to. He’s the head of China Investment Corporation, which manages the Chinese Sovereign Wealth Fund. They have more than four hundred billion in reserves …”
On the bride’s side of the aisle, Daisy Foo shook her head in awe. “The Lees got everyone, didn’t they? The president and prime minister, all the Beijing top brass, Mrs. Lee Yong Chien, even Cassandra Shang flew back from London—and the Shangs never come to anything! Ten years ago the Lees were fresh off the boat from Mainland China, and look at them now—everyone who’s anyone is here today.”
“Speaking of anyone, look who just walked in … Alistair Cheng and Kitty Pong!” Nadine Shaw hissed.
“Well, she looks quite ladylike in that red-and-white polka-dot dress, doesn’t she?” Carol Tai graciously offered.
“Yes, that ruffled skirt almost appears to cover her buttocks,” Lorena Lim noted.
“Alamak, let’s see what happens when she tries to sit with the Youngs. Wah, so malu† for them! I bet she’ll be thrown out of the row,” Nadine said with glee. The ladies craned their necks to look, but much to their disappointment, Alistair and his new fiancée were greeted cordially by his relatives and ushered into the row.
“No such luck, Nadine. Those people are far too classy to make a public show out of it. But I bet you they are sharpening their knives in private. Meanwhile, that Rachel Chu looks like the Blessed Virgin compared to her. Poor Eleanor—her whole plan is backfiring!” Daisy sighed.
“Nothing is backfiring. Eleanor knows exactly what she’s doing,” Lorena said ominously.
At that moment, Eleanor Young walked up the aisle in a gunmetal-gray pantsuit that shimmered subtly, clearly delighting in the attention she was getting. She caught sight of Rachel and forced a smile. “Oh, hello there! Look Philip, it’s Rachel Chu!” In another designer dress. Every time I see this girl, she’s wearing something more expensive than the last time. My God, she must be draining Nicky’s money market account.
“Did you and Nicky stay up late last night? I bet you kids really went wild after we old fogies left the dato’s yacht, didn’t you?” Philip asked with a wink.
“No, not at all. Nick needed to get to bed early, so we headed home soon after you left.”
Eleanor smiled stiffly. The cheek of this girl to call Tyersall Park “home”!
Suddenly a hush fell over the crowd. Rachel thought at first that the ceremony was beginning, but when she glanced to the back of the church, all she saw was Astrid leading her grandmother up the aisle.
“My God, Mummy’s here!” Alexandra gasped.
“What? You must be hallucinating,” Victoria shot back, turning around in disbelief.
Oliver’s mouth was agape, and every head on the groom’s side of the church was trained on Astrid and her grandmother. Walking a few discreet paces behind them were the ubiquitous Thai lady’s maids and several Gurkhas.
“What’s the big deal?” Rachel whispered to Oliver.
“You don’t know how monumental this is. Su Yi hasn’t been seen at a public function like this in decades. She doesn’t go out to other people’s events—people come to her.”
A woman standing in the aisle suddenly dropped into a deep curtsy at the sight of Nick’s grandmother.
“Who’s that woman?” Rachel asked Oliver, mesmerized by the gesture.
