What do old guys in their 50s, 60s and 70s have in common?
They all like to eat and drink together at the slightest excuse. For this occasion of the wedding dinner of Dr Tiong and Lilian Su at Restoran Golden Court in Bentong all the brothers-in-laws sat around Table 30 for a round of endless drinks, food and small talks. Likewise while the men were busy toasting each other their wives who are sisters would occupy another table exchanging gossips with their own kind.
Of all the old men shown in the picture Mr Yip, the bald and plumb guy in white shirt is the oldest and the most gregarious of all. After a few drinks he will become the spark of the group
Iremember the trials and tribulations that I had to go through when planning for the guest list for my daughter's wedding dinner in Kuala Lumpur. It was in June 29 2013 that my family had to organise a wedding dinner for my daughter's marriage to Nicholas.
Now 3 months after that event I have to go through the same exercise to plan the guest list for my son's wedding dinner in November.
However this time the planning should be much easier and faster as the I have the experience of doing the same work the last time to guide me.
I started work this morning using the Excel template for my daughter's wedding dinner guest list that I saved just for this occasion.
Learning from the previous experience my family has decided to invite less people than before. This time my family has decided to invite only immediate relatives and close friends. Cousins and nephews are excluded from the wedding guest list.
Nevertheless even with a shorter guest list I do not anticipate plain sailing. On the other hand I would expect many revisions to the first list before it is finalised.
A big thank you to all my relatives and friends for their kind support in attending the wedding dinner of my daughter, Amy. If not for them the event would not have succeeded according to plan.
When we planned and budgeted for a 20 table dinner function we had some misgivings if all the dinners in the guest list would come and whether the angpow receipts would be sufficient to pay for the cost of hosting the dinner. We were not interested to make money out of the function. We would be happy if the receipts would be sufficient to break even with the cost of the dinner.
By 7.00pm, the schedule time of the start of the dinner only half the tables were filled and we were wondering if we should cancel some tables. Then after 7.30pm more guest started to trickle in and we became more hopeful as the guests started to fill up the vacant seats.
It was only after the dinner had started that we realised why so many guests arrived late, after the scheduled time. The severe traffic congestion in many parts of the city due to the FA Cup finals being held at the national stadium in Bukit Jalil had delayed many of the guests from coming to the restaurant. No wonder I received sms messages informing me of impending delay in arrival by some guests due to the horrendous traffic congestion. Some even had to abort the journey to the restaurant in frustration mid-way because they had difficulty entering the city.
As we could not wait indefinitely for all the guests to show up we gave the green light to start the dinner at 8.30pm. Thankfully by this time we estimated that more than 95 percent of the seats had been occupied.
The dinner ended at 10.00pm. As a contingency measure I had brought along my cheque book in the event that I was required to issue a checque to the restaurant to cover any short falls in the cash receipts. After tallying all the angpow receipts we were delighted that although the cash that we had collected from the paying guests were insufficient to cover the operating cost of hosting the dinner, the deficit was minimal.
Incurring a total deficit of RM195.80 for hosting a 20 table dinner the figure translates to only a deficit of RM9.79 per table.
We were very happy that after accounting for prepayments to the restaurant the cash receipts were more than enough to settle the restaurant's bill.
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