When my friend had asked me a few months ago if I could be her chauffer for her wedding, I was not very keen to offer my services, not because I didn't want to help her, but because I am not very confident on the road, I hardly ever drive nowadays unless I have to attend my reservist, so my driving skills are quite rusty.
I didn't outright turn her down, but instead told her to put me as her second option should she really have trouble finding someone else. She tried to look around but she couldn't find anyone, so she asked me again during the period when I was doing Reservist if I could be her chauffer, since I had was actively driving again when she asked me, I decided to help her out and agreed to be her driver for her big day.
For the 3 weeks that I had been driving, my road confidence definitely went up, I even started to do parallel parking, which I was never confident doing even when I was actively driving my Mum's car years ago. That being said, my parallel parking was quite shit because the car is still sticking out by quite a bit, but still, being able to shimmy my car parallel between two vehicle is a win for me.
My reservist ended about a week ago and it has been a full week since I actually drove, so the night leading up to today morning was one that had honestly been filled with quite a bit of anxiety. It is a huge responsibility because my friend was clearly more confident of my driving skills than I was and all I could think about the night before was all the "what if" scenarios that could happen...
What if I missed a turn and the bride and groom ends up being late for their wedding?
What if I got into an accident on the Expressway because it's during morning peak hour?
What if I got into an accident and the bride and groom got injured?
... the last one was the worst scenario that could happen and I am very happy to report that none of them came to fruition and my part of the wedding was a success.
The day started with the Groom driving the car to my house at about 9.00am, he swapped places with me and I drove back to my friend's place (the Bride), that drive also allowed me to get used to the car. It was a Honda Fit and it is not as good of a drive as the Mazda 2 I had loaned for my reservist, so it took me a while to properly get used to the car, and that honestly made me miss the Mazda 2 so much. The Honda Fit also brings up memories of the time I rented a Honda Fit for my reservist but ended up barely using it because I got Covid.
The drive over to the Bride's place was relatively smooth, the Groom was able to properly guide me on which lane I should stay on so it alleviated a lot of my anxiety about missing turns. After I dropped the Groom off, I had to send the best man and bridesmaid over to the hotel for them to prepare the venue, I was expecting heavy traffic and had estimated the travelling time to be about 45 minutes, it was a gross overestimate because it ended up only taking me half that time and when I got back, I was informed by my friend (Bride) that tea ceremony is taking a bit longer than expected, so the original plan to have them leave the place by 11am and head for the hotel got delayed.
I was back at 10.45am, the original schedule was for us to head to the hotel at 11am, we ended up only leaving at 11.30am. I had waited in the car for a total of 45 minutes, the only thought that came to my mind was the lunch hour traffic at Orchard Road, which is where the hotel is located.
The traffic was heavy on the Expressway towards the Hotel, thankfully there wasn't any jam, there was just a lot of car and because the Bride and Groom were already late, I was very anxious and wanted to get there as soon as possible for them, the Groom was getting calls from his guest asking where he was, that everyone was already arriving, the Bride was also anxiously looking at the time and just exclaiming that she was late, but neither of them were actually rushing me, in fact, they were asking me to not feel pressured and take my time because I had told the Bride before I accepted her request that I am not someone who drives regularly.
I knew which turns to take and which lanes to stick to because I had already driven the Best man and Bridesmaid earlier, plus I had been studying the route on Google Map/ Google Earth religiously for the past week to make sure I don't end up missing any turns, and we managed to reach the hotel a little before 12noon.
Both the Bride and Groom dropped off, the Groom took a while because he was moving a lot of things from the car trunk to the passenger seat for easier access when they have to do their outfit changes during the ceremony, so I was just parked at the drop off point for a little too long, and the drop off point was just congested with vehicles, by the time the Groom was, I was actually stuck in the drop off point for a good 2 to 3 minutes because there was a Grab right in front of mine that was waiting for his passenger who didn't seem to arrive, on the right were just taxis and private hires dropping people off and picking people up, it was really quite bad, but I did eventually manage to squeeze my way out whilst quietly cursing this one car who didn't want to give way to let me filter out of my drop off lane, fucker.
I had to drive around the block because the entry of the hotel carpark is located right before the drop off point and that stretch of road I had to drive was just packed due to lunch hour traffic, I was also on the wrong lane when I turned out, so had to do a bit of lane filtering again.
When I got to the carpark, it was tight, if my friend had actually rented a Mercedes for her wedding like she had intended, I would have been fucked because there was no way I would have been able to maneuver a Mercedes S-Class through that hamster opening of a car park lane without scratching the car. Thankfully I wasn't aware of how tight the carpark was until the day itself because it would have been something I would have been overthinking about the night before.
Once the car had been parked, that was when I could finally relax because my role was officially over. I grabbed all my belongings, locked the car and went to pass the car keys to the Groom. He gave me a red packet, which I was very grateful for and that was it, I saw the Bride but didn't want to disturb her since she was busy entertaining her guest, so I left after I said my goodbyes to the Groom and his Best man.
Headed to over ION Orchard right after to visit Sephora, the goal was to smell as much Tom Ford perfume as I could, sprayed a few on a few tester strips and then headed to the office for work. I did find this one particular scent that I really liked, unfortunately, because I was trying out so many, I didn't know which one was which on the tester strip. Well likely be dropping by again soon to confirm and see if I want to commit to the purchase of my first ever high end fragrance.
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