Tonight is Dr Tiong and Lilian Su's big day; their wedding dinner being held at Restoran Golden Court in Bentong
Restoran Golden Court which used to be located in the market area in the town centre has found a new home in a purpose built stand alone building at 1st milestone Jalan Tras. This impressive two storey building now houses the newest and biggest Chinese restaurant in Bentong
On this night there were three wedding dinners being held simultaneously. Ours were held on the first floor level while the other two were held on the ground floor.
The open staircase leading to the first floor has an impressive wall facade with decorative koi fish features stuck to the wall. At the centre of the stairwell the ceiling-hung chandelier further enhances the beauty of the staircase.
At the registration counter I was assigned to Table No 7. Table No 7 was the table where all the sisters sat together. As I thought there might be a mistake in assigning table numbers I decided to join the rest of my brothers-in-law at table 30
Nicholas and Amy came in at 7.30pm after being delayed by traffic congestion and loosing their way in the town centre.
The dinner started promptly at 8.00pm when the bride and groom's parents walked into the banquet hall to be closely followed by the beaming bride and groom. The groom wore a white suite while the bride don a red dress.
The groom's father dressed quite simply in a short sleeved white shirt, black pants and wearing sandals. They do look like the part of simple rural folks by the way they dressed> I would have thought that since their son was getting married they should wear something more appropriate to the glamorous occasion.
The food was good and in big portions.
All the brothers-in laws had a good time drinking and toasting each other. Yip the most senior brother-in-law was at his elements when under the influence of alcohol. As for me I didn't touch any red wine, beer or brandy. As I had to drive I stuck to Chinese tea.
The dinner ended at 10.30pm.
After the dinner we headed back to KL instead of staying the night in Bentong.
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.
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| Wedding Flyer |
Most of my friends would have thought that, with my daughter's wedding dinner done with last Saturday I can now afford to sit back for a lay-back lifestyle. Well, that is not going to happen, at least until the end of this week.
Mindful of the wedding ceremony and dinner that is going to be hosted by my son-in-law's family in Malacca over the weekend I am working feverishly to compile the Malacca wedding programne for the benefit of my 12 relatives who are invited to attend the church wedding ceremony and the traditional Chinese wedding dinner on Sunday 7/7/2013.
Being the coordinator of the event it is my job to ensure that everything goes smoothly according to plan. Thus I have kept myself busy liaising with the groom's family over the fine details of the church ceremony and the dinner arrangement.
To ensure all the invited guests are informed of the itinerary I thought that just making calls over the phone and sending sms messages are not enough. So I decided to make a flyer so that all the necessary information is recorded in writing. At the very least the flyer should provide the reader clear information on the event dates, venue and schedule, maps, images of the wedding invitation card, GPS locations of the guest house, church, the groom's house and the Chinese restaurant and some explanatory comments on what to do and not to do.
The result is a flyer consisting of a two page A4 size tabloid sheet that I designed with the aid of the MS Excel spreadsheet programne. To enhance the appearance of the flyer and to give it a professional look I inserted a snapshot of Nicholas and Amy and an image of the church ceremony programne on the first page. Satisfied that everything is in order in the flyer I then digitised it and sent copies of it to all the invited guests via FB for their reference.
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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