Despite my good intentions not to murder any trees for our wedding, mummy has reinforced the importance of having wedding invitation cards for the sake of our non-IT savvy relatives. I was determined to not expend a huge budget on invitation cards since nobody really stares at invitation cards beyond two minutes. Do you agree?
Nonetheless, I have to cater to my obsessive compulsive desire to have a minimally acceptable level of aesthetics for the invitation cards. After doing some online searches and conducting some email exchanges, we grudgingly settled on a rather unscrupulous dealer who tricked us into meeting him even though our choice invitation cards were out of stock. Of course, my rational mind was yelling at me to "DO MORE SEARCHES! COMPARE PRICES!" but I was determined not to add any ounce of wedding work to my plate.
The trickiest part of the wedding invitation was the writing of the invitation in Chinese. Peter, of course, does not have a Chinese name.
Peter: Why don't you give me a Chinese name?
Me: Uh.
Peter: What is the Chinese word for Stone?
Me: Why?
Peter: The name "Peter" stems from the word "Stone". Just name me "Stone" in Chinese.
Now, seriously. If I did that, it would be as good as it looks in English -
"Stone and Yee-Lin Lai requests with pleasure the company...."
The urban dictionary defines "stoned" as "a state of mind which occurs after smoking enough marijuana to the point where the user stares blankly into whatever catches his/her attention." I am not about to let people have the perception that my husband-to-be is drugged into marriage.
Hence, with the help of a friend who is much savvier in Chinese than I am, I used a variety of internet tools to help translate Peter's and his Dad's names. McGee, Pete's last name, is "麦吉", pronounced as "Mai Ji". Sounds like "Magic", huh? In reality, the words are translated into Lucky Wheat, or Lucky Cereal. We did a quick investigation to ensure that "麦吉" does not have any negative connotation. Apparently, there is a "麦吉减肥法" which is a "Mai Ji" weight-loss method. Hmm.
The names of Peter and his Dad (Joseph) were pretty easily translated. The common translation of "Peter" is "彼得", pronounced as "Bee De". I replaced the character "得" with "德" because the latter means "moral" or "value", giving the name a little more significance. The common translation of "Joseph" is "约瑟夫", pronounced as "Yue Se Fu". Doesn't quite sound like Joseph to me, though.
Well, I think the wedding invitation cards should be quite done. I spent about 10 minutes writing up the invitation cards in English, and about 2 hours for the Chinese one. Thank god we don't have to translate my name into Greek.
