I think of these lines from one of my favourite poems as I stand, DOTA 2-inspired cocktail in one hand, kueh salat in the other, bopping along to a Jewish song I don\u2019t understand. It\u2019s four days into the New Year, and in front of me, guests from nearly a dozen different countries have just hoisted their hosts into the air, clapping and cheering and dancing along. Everyone looks drunk with happiness.<\/span><\/p>\n I just crashed a wedding in the name of work,<\/span><\/em> I think,<\/span> and it\u2019s been a pretty incredible day.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n In case you\u2019re wondering, I didn\u2019t technically <\/span>rock up to the wedding of a random couple, pick up a drink, and pretend to have been invited. Nor has this publication suddenly turned into <\/span>Her World Brides<\/span><\/em>; I\u2019m not going to spend the next 1,500 words waxing lyrical about floral arrangements.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The story is much simpler. On New Year\u2019s Eve, I got a text from my boss asking if I wanted to cover a wedding\u2014an \u2018unusual\u2019 one, apparently, between a British Jewish groom and a Singaporean Chinese Catholic bride. I agreed, partly out of curiosity (I\u2019d written about the Jewish community a couple of years ago), and partly because I am a sap who loves seeing other people in love.<\/span><\/p>\n I had no idea what to expect, but that didn\u2019t matter in the end. It was a party like no other.<\/span><\/p>\n But let\u2019s back up a bit. The story really starts a few years earlier, when the said Catholic and Jew walked into a bar in Angel, London. Sparks flew, the heavens smiled, and the former, in her own words, clubbed the latter over the head and dragged him back to her cave.<\/span><\/p>\n It sounds like the opening of a mildly blasphemous comedy, but this was how Sam Tournoff and Andrea Fam met several years ago, when Andrea was attending university in the British capital.<\/span><\/p>\n When she moved back to Singapore a few years later, Sam followed, and the two settled into life in a HDB flat in Clementi. Despite having lived all his life around London (\u201cWe\u2019re from Watford, but we normally just say London because no one outside Watford knows where that is\u201d), Sam took to chope-ing tables with tissue and ordering kopi with a sense of humour and an open heart.<\/span><\/p>\n The couple wanted their big day to reflect not only how their different backgrounds have come together, but how they\u2019ve always viewed these differences as something to be celebrated.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve been lucky enough to be brought up exposed to different cultures\u2014British, Jewish, Singaporean, Chinese, and Catholic, to name the few that impact us directly. Being a couple allowed us to deepen our understanding and love for each others\u2019 differences and similarities,\u201d Andrea tells me over text. (Their wedding hashtag, Mazel Huat, was a mash-up of their cultures, being a portmanteau of \u2018Mazel Tov\u2019\u2014a Jewish phrase meaning \u2018congratulations\u2019\u2014 and \u2018Huat ah\u2019.)<\/span><\/p>\n Although Sam is Jewish and Andrea is Catholic, neither will be converting. Both of them identify as fairly non-religious, and there was no expectation that they should give up their own faiths to be with each other, even from their families.<\/span><\/p>\n Sam\u2019s dad, John, described it to me as two traditions meeting in the middle. (He was raised in the Orthodox Jewish tradition, while Sam\u2019s mother, Carol,\u00a0 observes a more liberal strand.)<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSam and Andrea love each other, and their mutual happiness is all that really matters,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n