Mark on your calendar -- 14 Oct 2007 -- Wedding Banquet

Phew...finally squeezed some time to update this blog. Since our last post, we've finally managed to confirm our wedding banquet. Ladies and gentleman, put this in your diary-- 14 October 2007 @ The Oriental Singapore. It was quite a struggle to source for a venue. The search began as early as Oct 2006 and as it was, many hotels were already booked. The one I wanted, MM, was so full, they had no wkends available for me from October 2007 onwards! can u believe that? I basically emailed and called up all hotels in the Marina region and the more conveniently located hotels and mostly were booked for the date of 27 oct 2007. Auspicious according to our 8 characters. Well, apparently, many couples must be sharing the same characters as us, coz 27th is a damn good date. HOT! totally booked out. hotels, restaurants...everywhere. Thus we selected a few other alternative dates which we ourselves felt auspicious (of coz we've also checked the tongshu to play safe). hmm...even those dates chosen were Hot hot hot! finally, we found Grand Corpthorne Waterfront (next to ZOuk for you party animals). the package is $838+++....pretty ex for a 4 star hotel. in fact, during negotiation, we had to give up our wedding favours in return for free foodtasting. I felt utterly unbalanced to be paying so much for so little. Only 12 bottles of wines were given and no freeflow beer. :-(. So i dragged n dragged. finally the contract came in, and i thought i should give myself a chance again and tried my luck with Oriental who did not reply me on my first email. Apparently they have this major problem with communicating on time. BUt....surprise surprise...they've got a slot for 14 Oct!. After nego and attending their wedding show....I made the final decision. Isn't a cheap one esp with the impending 7% GST...per table is more than $1k! we just hope and pray that people will be reasonable in their angbaos...else the loses will be unimaginable. but well, at least we are getting much more, n FREE foodtasting, Corkage waiver, Free flow of beer ....one bottle of wine per confirmed table (ok guys, be prepared to party on!)...etc...the package was pretty attractive, thus we made the deposit of $3k (after nego, coz it's suppose to be $5k!) and confirmed 33tables.