Of A Wedding Dinner

The groom is the son of my grandfather's tenant. Basically, I don't know anybody at the wedding dinner except for my extended family who all occupied one table. Since I don't think I'd ever get married, and even if I do, there'd probably be no such pompous celebration, I think it was actually quite nice to bask in the atmosphere of a wedding.

I always thought, the earlier one gets married, the earlier he/she divorces. The earlier he/she divorces, the earlier he/she remarries. The thing about remarriage is that the won't be that lavish a wedding anymore since much of one's savings has been spent on the earlier lavish wedding. What if one remarries someone who's marrying for the first time? Would the wedding be lavish or simple? If we go by traditional, simple normal people standards, and assuming that the groom is the person paying for the wedding celebration, I guess if the one remarrying is the groom, the wedding would be kept simple. Ahh... Better make this clear, the wedding I was at was a first time marriage (I am quite sure) for both parties (because they look really young). I'm just letting my thoughts run while again...

Anyway, this newly wedded pair is very short. Nothing against short people, but they are really really short. The groom is already very short, probably about 1.6m or less, but what struck me was that the bride was one whole head shorter than the groom without heels.

It was an air force wedding along with the guard of honour and everything, this wasn't the first time I attended one such, but this one lost all the solemnity it was supposed to have connotated because the emcees sucked. Not that the emcees were bad, but they were extremely inappropriate. Apparently they were supposed to be deejays from some Chinese radio station, as such they talked a lot, too much. Through the march in to the ballroom along the guard of honour and everything, they started saying stupid things that made the atmosphere look damn crap. They even tried to make fun of the bride, the groom and the whole guards of honour, when it was supposed to be solemn. Really, sometimes, times like this, silence is better than words.

There were 28 tables. Me and my cousin started a little discussion about the number of tables at a wedding. With little experience with weddings, the both of us started speculating what is a big wedding and what is a small one. I remember an aunt of ours had a 63 table wedding dinner held at Ritz Carlton. To me that was the biggest wedding dinner I and we have been too. The others were about 30-40 tables. We started asking the other elderlies at out table, the youngest aunt had about 30 tables, my cousin's mother had 20+ tables. We started asking about where the wedding dinner was held and stuff like that. Then my sister asked my parents where were their wedding dinner held. I suddenly remembered. "Silver Star, right?" I burst out. I don't know why I remembered, think I've been talking about it with my mother before.

Silver Star apparently was some night club restaurant thingie and has since disappeared from the face of the world. My dad then launched into a story about how they'd found a place, but because my grandfather said there was enough tables and they had to last minute look for another bigger venue and stuff like that. The total number of tables? 70. That's really like a lot.

My mother said her side of the family was given 20 tables, her parents had 15 tables while she invited 5 tables of friends and colleagues.

Hmm... DO I have 50 friends to invite to my wedding? I don't know... If I go by the turn out for my birthday, perhaps ba... And considering that this group of friends are the ones that will stick by me till I age... oh well...

My dad was saying that there was so many guests that he was so blur with everything. Come on, I bet my dad can't have known all 500 of those people my grandfather invited, like I know for sure that that David (the groom) doesn't know me.

As usual, I shall go right all ahead and diss the service standards of those part-time banquet waiters and waitresses. I have something against bad service. lol~ I don't understand why waiters can't talk in an audible tone. It's already bad that my cousin had a wrong order, but not assuring her that she'd get the order right, is something weird. My cousin said the waitress did mumble something. Can't she have like said out clearly that she's sorry and shall go rectify the order? Instead of leaving my cousin there unsure if she needed to reorder from someone else or wait for the right order to come.

But other than that there was no big peeve happening that night. The only entertaining moment came from this waiter called David Lin. Okay, I've part-timed with a hotel before and I know that name tags can be fake ones, so there's a high chance that he's not David, just that he picked that name tag for use that day, unless he's a full time staff there, which I don't think so since he lacked common sense. Okay, we knew his name and remembered it because the name was very close the the groom's name, David Lim. If I ever get married, I'd want to make sure that none of the crew bears the same name as me or my groom.

Anyway, the funny bit, waiter lacking of common sense.

My table as I've said is a table of a conventional extended family with my grandfather being the patriarch and the parents and aunts and uncle, and me my sis and the cousin. I'd think that if a waiter were to serve the table he should start of with serving to the oldest, then to my father who was the second oldest and also happened to sit beside my grandfather, the proceed by serving in a circle round to everyone else. He started with my dad instead, then as he served my sis and me he suddenly realised that my grandfather was giving him dagger stares and then served him.

Mistake number one.

Then there was another one. There were some bones of pork ribs left in the communal plate on the lazy susan, but the waiter wanted to clear them. He turned and asked, of all people, my sister (who was the youngest in the table other than the kid cousin, son of my dad's cousin).

waiter: Can I clear it?
sister: (giving a very blank and blur look) I don't know. Don't ask me. Ask the old ones.
waiter: (suddenly realised his mistake, was damn damn paiseh, turned to the old ones) Can I clear?
old ones: You've already cleared out plates, there's no way we can eat those.

My sister's really cute. You can't fault her for saying it since she wasn't intending to suan that guy, it just turned out to make that guy look damn dumb. And my sister's innocence about that matter made it seem even funnier. Me and my cousin ended up laughing about it the whole time.

Sorry, poor waiter, think you might need more experience.

Or perhaps he was just too tired about it since it was very late, the dinner started proper at 9.30pm and ended way past 11.30pm.

But the food was good, so oh well...