Saturday, May 17, 2008. Today, Debs and Terry are hosting their wedding banquet.

1 am: I should already be doing the final audio mixdown, but I am still tweaking the edit. I am in the final stages of finishing their video, most of which we shot in China in February. I am still marveling at how I’ve managed to cut a story together from the seven hours of footage we had shot. We did not know what the story was before we went to China, and we still did not know what it was after we returned. I am reminded of the adage, “the film is made in the editing room.”

2 am: Mixdown. Personally the most excruciating stage of postproduction, where I have to ride the volume level of all the audio clips in the edit and ensure that the overall volume stays constant. With some 80 cuts in the five-minute video, that is a lot of leveling to ride.

4 am: The render is almost done. I prat about the apartment gathering my photography equipment. As part of the groom’s entourage, I had to report at his place at the ungodly time of 5 am. Not that it mattered, since I haven’t slept all night.

4:45 am: It feels so odd to be walking beneath slumbering blocks of HDB flats while dressed in a suit at this hour.

5:20 am: After a detour to the office to pick up the lenses I’d so cleverly left behind the day before, I finally reach the groom’s. He’s up and about already. I begin clicking away. Today, I am not the official photographer; I’m only standing in to cover the events on the groom’s side while the official photographer is over at the bride’s. There is a plate of breakfast waiting on the table but I politely decline.

“My stomach’s still in bed,” I quipped to Terry’s mom.In the next half hour, the rest of Terry’s entourage stream in, some groggy, some already wide-eyed and bushy-tailed.

6:30 am: The sky is beginning to break, and is a shade of rich, deep blue. I have not seen a sky this blue in a while. Ahead of the clock, the brothers—all of whom are in their Reservoir Dogs best—mill about the carpark.

Apparently, the bride’s entourage is running late. Eddie shows up here and, upon seeing how I already have two heavy cameras slung on me, promptly relieves me of my tote bag.

7:30 am: We’ve broken in! That was earlier [and easier] than expected!

9 am: The morning is winding down. Customary tea ceremony now…

9:30 am: The bridal party is about to depart for the church. Eddie and I part from the group; we both have stuff to prepare for the banquet later the same evening. He has yet to work on the speech he needs to give, while I have to prepare the deliverables for the video.

6 pm: Technical check in the ballroom. Everything okay. The theme for the banquet is Oriental, and I am dressed in a pair of black slacks, a black shirt and a black suit topped off with a cream-colored Georgette silk scarf matched to Violet’s cheongsam. Oh, and a black hat to complete the Shanghai gangster look. I would get many compliments later into the evening for looking dapper.

7:40 pm: I have, by default, become the audio/visual coordinator. I am wearing an earpiece connected to a walkie-talkie, and darting about the guests who are just beginning to stream in, feeling very much like I’m in the Secret Service or something…

8:20 pm: We are running very late. The emcee has just finished his opening preamble for the evening, and as I hover a finger over the spacebar of my laptop in anticipation to play the video, the music for the first walk-in suddenly blares over the air. Eddie, Sam and I trade confused looks: what the hell is going on?! We’re supposed to play the video before the walk-in! Later we would learn that the hotel AV staff fucked up and got the running order wrong. Fortunately, the guests were none the wiser and the swap went undetected.

8:35 pm: The video is playing. The first bouts of laughter. And at the right moment, too. Looking good…

8:40 pm: Applause and wolf whistles. My heart swells. It feels like a movie premiere gone very well.

1:40 am: A year on, Terry, Eddie and I are once again milling at a corner for a cigarette break after a day of busying around. The last time we did this was half a year ago, on the day of his wedding solemnization. We take a well-deserved and healthy chug of red wine.

I have been awake for 36 hours. But it has been worth every minute, every second.