Historical high with 87 lovebirds getting engaged in recent years on Heart’s Day 2019

In recent years, 2019 is a special year with nearly a hundred of couples are expected to register their marriages on Valentine’s Day.

In a press statement, the Registry of Marriages (ROM) noted the 87 couples who are set to register this Feb. 14 will the highest number of solemnisations held on Valentine’s Day for the past three years.

In 2016, 66 couples said “I dos” while 58 a year after. For 2018, 65 couples tied the knot.

In 1995, this was considered the most popular Valentine’s Day for couples ready to face the married life in Singapore. About 1,082 couples said ‘I dos’ that year.

What made the 1995 Valentine’s Day extra special was that it was also the 15th day of the Lunar New Year. This is popularly called Yuan Xiao Jie or similar in Chinese to Valentine’s Day.

The anticipated 87 couples to register only involved marriages of the non-Muslims. So this could go higher as expected.

One of the couples tying their knots on Heart’s Day is Pang Keng Hao, 29, a service engineer and his partner, Miss Yap Wei Xuan, 26, a research engineer.

Pang noted they chose Feb. 14 as their day of marriage to make it more memorable and easy to remember during wedding anniversary.

They were schoolmates. They first met each other at Nanyang Polytechnic where they were studying. It took them nine years of getting to know each other before they decided to say ‘I do.’

The groom said it was Yap’s smile that captured his heart. Pang described her bride as straightforward and candid.

He added Yap is very real and cute. She’s very confident about herself and that is a plus factor for me.

They have been engaged about four years ago. The keys to their Build-To-Order flat will be released by mid-2019. This October, they will be married through their traditional Chinese wedding reception.

In line with celebrating Valentine’s Day, the ROM rolls out a campaign on Feb. 14 to encourage couples to share special memories of their solemnization, which will be called “My ROM story.”

This love campaign is facilitated by the Ministry of Social and Family Development, ROM’s umbrella ministry, and the Singapore Memory Project.

The Singaporean public can provide their photos and share memories about ROM, including fond moments when they step in the building and post them on the Singapore Memory Project website at www.singaporememory.sg/campaigns/myromstory.

From Feb. 14 to Mar. 1, the ROM will be hosting a National Heritage Board exhibition known as “Romance, Hopes, and Dreams.” This exhibit will be showcasing the different wedding customs and rituals of the existing various ethnic groups in Singapore.