My fiancée and I were saving hard from our salary to hold a wedding ceremony so that we could invite all our families, friends, loved ones and colleagues to come and have a get together.
As we were nearing the date of our wedding, we realised that we were still short of quite a huge sum if we wanted to hold a wedding of such a scale.
However, as we have already signed and made downpayment to the hotel, we did not want to forgo the deposit and therefore we decided to approach my parents for a loan.
After some discussion with them, they agreed to give us a loan to settle all the outstanding amount that we have to pay on the condition and use the ‘ang bao’ (red packets) that we collected to pay the loan from them back.
My fiancée and I thought that it was still doable, so we agreed to the terms of the loan from my parents.
The wedding day arrived, and everything went on smoothly.
We received a lot of ‘ang baos’ with generous sums and when we counted them, we had received much more than the amount that we loaned from my parents.
Thats when the demands for repayment changed
After deducting the loan amount, we counted that we had an extra $6,000.
We were thankful, and thought that we could save the rest up for any future needs, but that was when my parents came in to demand more repayment for the loan.
They told us that the condition for the loan was for ‘all of the ang baos’ instead of just the sum that they loaned us.
Which means that if the sum of the total ‘ang bao’ received is more they will take everything and even if it is lesser, they would also just take everything.
I told them that that was not the agreement that we had discussed prior to the loan but they continued insisting that we had not heard their conditions of the loan properly.
They also said that even we loan from other places there would also be interest and therefore their demands are reasonable.
Honestly think they are worst than ‘ah longs’ but decided that we should not spoil the relationship and ultimately we just gave in to their request.