Three weeks before my youngest daughter's wedding, our family sat down for breakfast one morning. It was during that time the topic of wedding invitations came up for deliberation. The conversation then drifted to issues like arrangements for wedding reception, wedding dinner and wedding photos.

After breakfast, my young grand-daughter asked her mother to see the wedding photos of her grandparents. She answered: "OK, Dear, but there aren't many wedding photos of grandma and grandpa's."

Upon the little girl's insistence, her mother came to our room and with our knowledge and acquiescence, took out an envelope containing some old photos. The colours of the photos were faded and the pictures a little yellowed and blurred, for these were taken in the 1940s when colour photography was in infancy. There was no digital colour photography nor high-resolution picture taking then.

"Mum," asked my grand-daughter, "why grandma and grandpa were not wearing wedding dresses? Grandma was not wearing a wedding gown and grandpa was not in suits. Why?"

Before she got an answer I and my wife came out of our room. Her grandma held her in her arms and smiled: "Audrey Dear, why do you ask? What's wrong with the pictures?"

"Every bride wears A Wedding Dress and every groom wears wedding suit. Why not you and Grandpa? Did you make any wedding invitations, by the way?"

I now joined the conversation by telling Audrey that we did not put on the conventional wedding gear because 1: we did not want to wear them and 2: we could not at the time.

Little as she was, Audrey's curiosity was aroused. I explained to her that at that time there was a war going on. Food was scarce and difficult to come by, household necessities hard to obtain and wedding dresses a major luxury only the very rich could afford. Her Grandma added by saying that yes, we could not afford the wedding dresses and even if we could it would be well nigh impossible to procure them. Most people in occupied Singapore at that time were living in fear of the Japanese Imperialist Army who, just days before we got married, invaded and occupied the British Colony.

The truth is that I and my wife got married in some haste because her parents were not agreeable to having me as a son-in-law. The fact that the Japanese had occupied Singapore had made the situation quite impossible. But for me and my fiancé at that momentous period it was a golden opportunity to tie our nuptial knots with or without her parents' blessings. Hence the wedding photos without the bride and bride-groom wearing the normal, mandatory wedding garb. As for the wedding invitations list, there was for all intent and purpose none. Only a select few of our closest friends were present to witness our marriage and to wish us a life of eternal conjugal bliss and happiness.

Looking back, it was not without a tinge of regret that we could not undergo a proper, formal, and traditional wedding complete with photos of wedding gowns, evening suits and dresses. After all, isn't marriage a once- in- a lifetime affair deserving of our preservation, in pictures and in our memories?