Of course you now know I’m not the super traditional bride. It would therefore not be a surprise to you that I will not be having the ordinary 1-2-3 numbers for my reception tables, although I admit, going for an alternative for table numbers is getting to be a trend nowadays.

As I had been toying around the various possibilities of fairytale themes, I first thought of naming the tables after places in fairy tales, both classical ones and modern ones. There would be Cair Paravel for the bride and groom table, then for the guests

Rivendell,

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Andalasia,

Atlantica,

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Genovia,

Florin,

Frell,

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Agrabah,

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Maldonia,

Pixie Hollow,

Anvard,

Gondor,

Ivory Tower,

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and

The Shire.

This afternoon, however, while trying to layout the names on MS Word, I felt like there was something not so right in the picture. I guess it just felt cheesy and I was imagining certain friends giggling at the names of our tables. So I thought and thought and thought….

Until I came up with another idea. Instead of names, we’ll have letters as our table labels. Not the ordinary A-B-C to Z letters, of course.

While on the train on the way home from work, I started making a list of things that have a meaning to Prince Charming and me, such as our favorite things, our memorable places, etc. I listed them under each letter, depending on what letter each word started with. For example, for letter B, there was basketball, billiards, blue, B____ (his middle name), B____ (my hometown), etc. For P, there’s pineapple, Prince Charming, pizza, pool, etc. C has carbonara, chess, cars, chat, etc.

Now, for our tables, the letters won’t start with A, then B, then C, up to the whichever letter of the alphabet the number of tables would end with. We’re just gonna choose the letters which has the most number of memorable items. Then, on one side of the cardboard label would be the letter, while on its back would be something like

The B’s in our lives….

Basketball – one of our favorite sports
Billiards – our earlier unofficial dates were spent playing this
B______ – Prince Charming’s middle name
B______ – Sophia’s hometown, where we met
Blue – our favorite color

I thought this would be a more meaningful way of labeling our tables. It’s creative, original (I claim it to be an original idea, as the idea just entered my mind simple as that, I didn’t find it in other people’s weddings or blogs or magazines) and also, it shares some trivia to our guests.

Howdy, mates! Whew! I just got back from a variety show held tonight where lots of people I know performed… okay, including me, as a proxy for my sister who didn’t want to dance. Lol!

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Anyway, I thought there was gonna be nothing wedding-related at the show, but there was one interesting number that gave me an idea for the reception.

Since the theme was about lipsync, everyone who performed did some lipsync-ing.  (I just remembered that when I was in grade school, I thought the word was “lip-sing”.) There was this one young family whose number revolved around the love story of the couple, how they met and fell in love and finally got married.  I’ve always thought that they met in New Zealand, because I know the guy’s a Kiwi and just recently, I learned in Facebook that the girl also grew up in NZ.  So, really, I thought they were schoolmates or neighbors or something out there.  But it turned out that they first met in Utah, and that their friendship grew through one of those social networking sites.  Gee, really, lots of things aren’t what they seem, are they?

Enough of their story.  Now, I’d like to tell how they presented the story.

It was a combination of lipsync-ing to various songs and creative visual narration using a projector and white screen.  So it’s like they combined various songs that have lines related to the messages they wanted to tell.

For example, every time the guy travels to another country, he would lipsync and improvise some actions to “Leaving on a Jet Plane”.  At one part, the screen narration showed that the location was in Australia, and the guy goes there to meet the girl for the second time and date her, so they played the first part of “Summer Nights” from Grease.  But they broke up after a while, so they jumped the song to the last part the message was about saying goodbye.  Then the guy flies back home (”Leaving On a Jet Plane” again) and sits on the couch and a sad love song (I forgot the title) plays while he lipsyncs and acts out. Oh well, you get the point of how they did it.

Indeed, a light bulb suddenly appears and lits up while I was sitting in the audience and watching and I thought, “Oooh! We can do something like this at the reception, instead of the boring old MC-reads-the-love-story-from-the-piece-of-paper routine.” If I and the rest of the audience in tonight’s show enjoyed the performance and found it entertaining, surely our wedding guests would also enjoy such presentation.  Having wonderful entertainment, combined with other interesting elements, makes a wedding reception truly worth going to…something that would make other invited guests regret big time if they don’t come (I’m so cruel..hahaha!).

Nah, I’m actually really after providing a truly enjoyable entertainment for the wedding guests. Which bride wouldn’t?

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Now that I’ve got the flowers, I can’t help but thinking of ways to do the bouquet toss.  Once again, I do not want the traditional, ordinary way of throwing it to a throng of single ladies.  Why? It’s not just that I’m not being traditional.  It’s also a lesson learned from several weddings I’ve gone to.

The wedding reception of my friends J & C was the best example.  C, the bride, did the traditional, ordinary way of throwing it.

First attempt: the bouquet landed on the floor.  Did anybody from the big group of single ladies try to catch it at all? Nope.

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Second attempt: the bouquet landed on a table.  What did the single ladies do while the bouquet was hurling in the air? Stood still as statues, with their hands stiffly on their sides, pretending to be Corinthian columns, and hoping that the bouquet won’t even touch them.

Now C already got a bit annoyed at the girls and, without the tiniest smile on her face, crossly ordered them, “Will you please catch the bouquet?”

Third attempt: luckily, the bouquet went flying right in front of one girl, who most likely, out of surprise, raised her hands just to her chest level and caught the bouquet.

You get the picture.  This is one of the big reasons why I have to come up with a creative way of getting the bouquet into the hands of one of the single ladies. The ladies in my hometown and circle of friends are too shy to fight over the bouquet.  They just do not want the audience to get an impression that they’re desperate to be the next to marry.

However, I don’t want to just give the bouquet to, perhaps, the couple who has been married the longest, or to an attendant or relative I want to honor.  I still want it to be a fun process, with the bouquet going to just one single lady in the party.  Here are some ideas I came up with:

1. Throw a bunch of individual flowers, the total number being one less than the number of girls in the crowd.  Each one will then be able to get a flower, except one, who will then be the recipient of the bridal bouquet.  (This worked perfectly at my friend F.’s wedding.  We, single ladies, all scrambled to get a flower, so we don’t end up getting the bouquet.)

2. The name of each single lady in the party will be written in separate pieces of paper.  Then, without looking at the names, each lady will pick one and hold on to that name during the bouquet toss.  The twist is that, whoever catches the bouquet will have the option of keeping the bouquet for herself, or pass it to the lady whose name she is holding. (I just thought of this idea out of the blue, while brainstorming for a friend’s wedding a couple of years ago, but we never used this idea.)

3. Tie one ribbon to the bouquet.  Then have a number of other ribbons made to appear as if they’re also attached to the bouquet.  Now, all the single ladies will have to grab a ribbon each. At a certain time, each one will pull her ribbon.  Whoever holds the only ribbon which is tied to the bouquet gets it.  As for the other ribbons, nice charms or small trinkets can be tied to their ends, so that the other ladies will also get “consolation prizes.”

We’re booking the venue this week!!!

That’s the grand staircase at the lobby…

In the past weeks, I had been contacting hotels and asking them about their wedding packages. It’s usually easier and less stressful to just get a package, because each package usually includes free use of venue for about 4 hours, either a buffet or plated meal for at least 100 people, a room at the hotel for an overnight stay and discounts for other rooms, free assistance of spinner for music, free use of a bridal car for about 3 hours, etc.

At first, I inquired at this hotel which has a brand new extension, with a brand new ballroom and a roof deck swimming pool. I was interested with this hotel because I was part of the architectural team who prepared the building plans of the new extension, but I haven’t seen the finished product in person because I have already moved away when it was finished.

The package they had was wonderful and less expensive than others, and the place was luxurious and popular choice of many rich-and-famous folks of the city. However, they had one fault: they failed to reply to my email (containing several questions about the package)… and I had been waiting for one month already for their reply! Then, thinking they must have missed my email, I sent the same email again to them. Still, no reply.

A week later, I got tired of waiting for them. Of course, I cannot wait forever for them, because I can’t start working on my STDs and invitations unless I make the date sure by booking the venue.

While waiting for them, I had emailed other hotels and asked them about their packages. One hotel in particular, caught my interest. It’s also a new hotel, and I was also part of the architectural team that built it a couple of years ago, so I’ve been to almost every corner of that hotel, from the reception lobby to the elevator machine room. What particularly impressed me was their promptness in replying to my emails, which they answer in less than 24 hours!

Then, there’s also their wedding package, which turned out to be a lot cheaper than the other hotel, but has almost the same inclusions, and a couple of items which weren’t in the other hotel’s package.

Last week, I emailed my mom instructions and sent her the money, so she can book it in person, on my behalf. This week, she’s going there to book it. I’m excited!!!

Here are pictures I have collected of the hall we have chosen:

(okay, that’s me, clowning around with a colleague,
before the hotel officially opened to the public)

(the construction guys from our office, showing us around)

(how it looked with the lights on, on opening day)