师傅，别念了!

Warning, a long whinning entry...

As some of you might know, eve and i was supposed to "officially" get married this year. To startup Pitstop Cafe, we delayed to early next year instead. Time flies past and till now i have not really got the time to plan for it. Mum has been nagging. I now understand the pain of Sun Wukong...

"师傅，别念了，徒儿知错了..."

Hence i put my act together and try to pick a venue for our wedding dinner. By the way we are planning for 20th Jan 2007, more than 9 months away. To my disgusted horror, most places are not available anymore. I am starting to get cold sweat, eve sure gonna be piss.

The more places i check, the more jialat it seem. Its as if everyone is getting married. Some of the available places are charging an arm and a leg for their packages, $900 plus per table! Even my progress package can't get me a wedding table. Some even hit 4 digits! I will really need more of this and this!

I tried a few more alternatives and then i thought, why must dinner leh? Cannot lunch meh? Lunch will be great too mah. People do not have to rush back (ever been to wedding dinners with guests started leaving by the 6th course of the dinner?) and perhaps we get to mingle abit with the guests. It will be a sit down lunch and we could have the tea ceremony in the hotel. Relatives can come for the ceremony and proceed to lunch. We could have a nice chocolate fountain fondue so that even after lunch, people could stay around and interact. The hotel i found was Grand Copthorne Waterfront, a rather nice place. At night still can go cheong! Everything seem cool i thought....

When i suggested to eve, she still pretty ok about it. The concerns are will we ended up in another debt as people think lunch is cheap and maybe just give tissue paper for their angbao even though the truth is that lunch and dinner are similar in prices.

When i told Mum and Dad, they aren't exactly please with my suggestion. There are concern that people would not turn up, no atmosphere at home since tea ceremony is in the hotel, no MRT near hotel, lunch not presentable, blah blah, 别念了...

Even Timo had advise me to follow the social construct and feel that lunch does not have the mood. Just follow SOP he said. Friends and relatives i spoke with seem skeptical too..."Har, why lunch?" was the common response.

I am now confused as well. Venue for dinner options is really limited and to me seem so typical and boring. Do lunch, likely i will ended up paying alot more because people will think its cheapo. Furthermore lunch is not the conventional and it is my first time doing it, i am not confident if it will turn out as well...

Sigh, what a tough decision! Really got to make a decision soon, else in the end cannot get lunch or dinner, my head definitely going to be on the chopping board! Do i really need to follow the convention???

Astroboy