Winston's Stag Night

We celebrated Win's stag night, starting with a meal @ Checkers Brasserie, located at Hilton Hotel.

Youming, the organizer for the night picked this place for one reason only

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Free flow of sake! Checkers Brasserie, renowned for its daily themed buffets & Sunday Champagne Brunch, offers a surprise in store for guests each day of the week. Youming purposely picked the night where they offer free flow of sake & of cuz, Japanese cuisine.

The early birds catching the worms

Started the night with salad.

Sushi & sashimi

more plates being piled on the table. The AF gang really like to whack buffet and all of them can really eat!

Desserts, but there wasn't a huge selection, kinda disappointing.

We celebrated Yunfa's bdae using one of the cheese cakes! And his wish did came true, so happy for him :)

Full after the meal and it was time Win passed the brothers their stuff for his big day.

HAHA! the theme was geeky and all the guys had to wear geeky specs. Leecher wore his own specs, which was deemed geeky enough by the rest.

Don't you think Yunfa looks like Smarty from Bookworm Club?

The brothers & the groom

Since when stag night is just about buffet? LOL, Youming was afraid that his reputation was at stake as he was the one in charge for organsing Win's stag night and if words leaked out that the night is not happening, he would lose face, heehee! So, round 2 @ CMPB!

The guys looking up the most potent drink to tekan Win.

more (finger) food for the stomach!

Win was still unaware of what was in store for him.

Then, the partying start. Or rather, the drinking session to tekan Win started. He got called up to the bar counter and patiently wait for his fate.

I think the guys ordered Waterfall, where flaming alcohol was poured into a martini glass of liquor and Win had to suck it all up with a straw.

All gamed for the drink, just for our viewing pleasure! haha!

He must be thinking "What have I gotten myself into?"

A picture first before Win collapsed for the night, lol!
Starting to feel uncomfortable....

Almost gone

Had to resort to dragging him up to take pictures.

This was after he came back from his puking visit in the toilet.

One final round of drinks before we called it a night.

Just when we were walking out, Win couldn't take it anymore and need to rest on the grass patch.

Chuan Yew kindly offered his legs for support.

The rest of the guys quickly gathered around him, haha!

Ended the night with this epic picture :) I'm sure Win will remember this night forever, haha!

Wedding Venue at Grand Park City Hall

It wasn't till we begin searching for hotels did we know that 30th Oct 2011 was a super hot day for weddings. Naturally, we were quite stressed up over finding the ideal location, praying that no one else had made the booking for these hotels, even though we started the search 1.5 years ago! Talk about being kiasu, LOL!

One of the reason why we confirmed our wedding venue to be at Grand Park City Hall (GPCH), besides meeting all our requirements, was the buffet treat, LOL! Out of the many hotel coordinators that we met up with, only Janice signed us in for dinner buffet after our 1st meeting with her. In fact, when we met up with Janice for the 1st time, we were only interested in finding out more about their wedding packages. It was a short 30 min meeting, where she gave us a round-through of what they have to offer. At the point in time, we were still undecided and shortlisting other hotels to visit. After the meeting, her kind gesture took us by surprise - she signed us in for buffet dinner!

Where we had our buffet dinner :)

Leecher starting his feast.

They offer quite an extensive selection of starters & surprisingly good as well!

The laksa was so delicious that we had to have 2nd & 3rd helpings of it!

One of the few desserts that we took.

Personally, I think the most important is the hotel coordinator. I'm glad that we were able to click well with Janice and of cuz, we did a background check of her in the forums and she received positive reviews so far, which is a plus point for us. As such, after a long discussion with Leecher - weighing all the pros and cons etc - we decided on GPCH as our ideal wedding venue & signed the contract 2 weeks after, for our big day :)

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Janice mailed us our invitation for their wedding show. Though we have already confirmed the hotel, we decided to pop by to take a look :)

Mini Cooper! One of the cars that we were considering renting (way before we bought Jet)

The mini van which you can hire for your bachelor/bachelorette party!

Some of the themes on displayed. Janice informed us that some of the items will be changed in 2011, and that their ballroom will undergo a new facelift in late 2010 :) So we will be hosting our dinner in a brand new ballroom, yeah!

The dome light which were replaced by crystal Chandelier in the new ballroom :)

And lady luck shone on us when we won the 7th prize in the lucky draw :) But, the prizes were not that fantastic as we didn't use any of it, except for the spa voucher. Nevertheless, a huge load off our mind as we confirmed our venue!

Sourcing around for Hotels

Hello 2012! Started NYE with a countdown celebration @ Beds and ended the night @ 6am with a hangover, haha! Spent the rest of the day sleeping before gg out for dinner. Anyway, let's continue with the wedding journey. Looking for the perfect wedding venue was quite a headache, as we need to consider a lot of factors. In fact, this was the first item that we began researching on, once we have decided on the date for the big day.

Firstly, we came up with the list of invited guests, to look at the number of min tables that we have. This approach is quite effective, as it allows you to eliminate the hotels in which you can't meet the min tables. After much discussion, we had to look for a hotel that is able to fulfill the following requirements:

* min of 25 tables on Sunday
* pillarless & high ceiling ballroom
* convenient location
* preferably a private ballroom

Venturing out on a wkend to look at the ballrooms. One of the place that we went to was Furama Riverfront. Yeah, this picture was taken eons ago!

I realised that I only took pictures of the first hotel that we went to, but after visiting countless hotels, we decided to confirm our venue @ Grand Park City Hall. More on our decision-making process in the next post!

Welcome 2012!