The wedding of two friends

When Lin Kiat and I got married in 2003, we needed plenty of help on the day itself. I roped in my friend from junior college, Mandy, to handle reception duty at the church. My brother offered the services of his jc buddies too - a group of four guys who really helped out with the dinner at Conrad, the little choir at church, counting lanterns, directing traffic, cueing the start of the church ceremony. One fellow in particular, Alvin, made friends with Mandy at the dinner. Turned out they had friends in common. Or so he claimed when he called me after the wedding for Mandy's number.

A year later, they joined my brother's and Lin Kiat's tennis group (Mandy is very good at tennis), and she got to know the group of guys better than I ever did. And Alvin got to meet Mandy's jc classmates, some of whom are good friends of mine as well. It's amazing, this collision of social circles. Alvin is my brother's tallest friend, and Mandy is my tallest friend. They're also fans of The Lord of the Rings (they've already been to New Zealand, and I, the one who once drew Mandy maps of Middle-Earth and explained the diaspora of the Elves, have yet to go!), so for a little while, we called them The Two Towers.

Today, I got an email from Lin Kiat with a forwarded message - Alvin has proposed to Mandy! The wedding will be in April next year. This is one wedding I'm looking forward to - it gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling knowing that all three of us, my brother, Lin Kiat, and I, had a little something to do with their first meeting. Even though we were all oblivious to it that night - Lin Kiat was waiting desperately for his boss to arrive at the dinner, I had scratched my silk dress quite badly with the bracelet my mother wore at her own wedding, and my brother was sitting at the piano waiting for us to enter the ballroom so he could start playing the song he'd been practising for the past few months. In the midst of all that, two people found each other. However, Alvin began it all with a bad quip - Mandy was wearing an au dai, the Vietnamese outfit, and Alvin could only come up with, "Where's your AK 47?" She was not pleased, but they got over that quite quickly.