I am sitting on my motorcycle with my fiancee outside the Wedding Dress shop in Paknam. We are waiting for my parents to come so we can go in and rent a nice suit for the big day. Tai’s wedding dress has already been sorted out as her mother made one for her. Our wedding day is coming very soon and I am really nervous about it. I still cannot believe that it’s going to happen.

Most of the things we need to do to get ready for the day have already been done. I am really happy that I finally have more free time now compared to last week. After we had handed out all of the wedding invitations, I thought that was it and I didn’t have to do anything else. But I was completely wrong. I have been really busy with the preparations. By the way, I definitely would have been much busier if it wasn’t for the people I thought I would never speak to again — my parents.

I have had a pretty bad relationship with my parents for a long time. I didn’t like it how they kept bringing up my past and how they treated me during my 18th birthday. I couldn’t really get over it and back to a normal relationship with them. Since my birthday I never had a proper conversation with them for more than ten minutes. My mum sometimes asked me what’s wrong with you? And all I did was say “nothing” and then walked away.

But since the day we went to my grandmother’s house for the talk about the wedding, they changed the way they acted towards me. They treated me more like an adult. I felt that maybe they had realised what they had done was wrong and that they were trying to make up for it. Or maybe the birth of their first grandchild had changed them.

I knew that one day I would have to start mending bridges with my parents and this seemed to be the perfect time to do that. I know that I have been very mean to them in the past. I am very sorry about that. As they were now being pretty nice to me, I decided to talk to them a bit more and start to be nice to them.

Now I really think that I did the right thing getting back with my parents because it would have been difficult to get ready for the wedding without their support. At first I thought that our grandparents would handle things while Tai and myself would carry on as normal. I thought all we would have to do is prepare ourselves so that we would look good on the wedding day. But I was wrong.

There are lots of things that need to be done before the wedding day and the more people helping, the easier it would be. There were things to do such as renting the tents and setting them up in the lane outside the house; arranging with the monks about when to come for the ceremony; contacting a caterer for the party; organising the parade to the bride’s house; setting up a web cam for people to watch around the world, etc.

I am really lucky that I got back together with my parents. I would never have been able to do it without their help. Now they are on their way here to help me choose a suit for the wedding.

A few minutes later my parents come and we all walk into the shop. I sit down with Tai and look around for a nice suit. I try lots of different ones on and at last everyone decides that I look best in a cream silk suit.

I feel so much better to have them help me. It’s good to have parents looking after you and helping you when you need them. I didn’t really think about that before. I really thought I could survive by myself without any of their help. But I was wrong.