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The Reception...

VENUE: The Rafflesia Ballroom, Promenade Hotel, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah.
DATE: Thursday, 09 November 2000
TIME: 1930 till 2230
EMCEES: Mr. John Watuna and Mr. David Watuna from the bride's family.
USHERS: Ms. Julia Michael for the bride's family and Ms. Vivian Ervina Tseu for the groom's family.
NUM. OF ATTENDANTS: Approximately 300 guests.

~ Our reception was held in the evening of our wedding day. We started our receiving line at around 6:30pm in front of the ballroom and stood there for around an hour receiving guests. In the line were Dony's parent, the newlyweds, and Lorna's mother. While each of us in the line went through the whole ordeal and wishing it would end soon, Lorna's mother kept missing in action, getting in and out of the line, going in and out of the ballroom, chatting away happily with long-time friends from faraway, playing with her grandchild (daughter of Lorna's elder sister, Lydia). She was certainly enjoying herself, which is what the whole wedding was suppose to be :) Our photographer took shots as we received our guests.

Around 7:30pm, we entered the dimly lit ballroom with a resounding applause from the guests, and we headed towards our head table with spotlight on our faces and a loud Wedding March song exploding through the speakers. We couldn't stop giggling and feeling awkward about the grand entrance.

(We'll add more on what happened during the reception later)

Commenting on the food, the 9-course dinner was scrumptious. The menu was as follows:

APPETIZERS:
Four Hot & Cold Combination
Eight Treasures Shark’s Fin with Crab Meat Soup

ENTREES:
Deep Fried Sesame Chicken with Celerac Sauce
Deep Fried Sweet and Sour Sea Fish
Yam Ring
Braised Shiitake Mushroom with Char Par
Fried Rice with Ikan Bilis

DESSERT:
Honey Dew Sago Ice-cream

Free-flow of Chinese Tea and soft drinks

We had a 9-tier wedding cake in which only the top-tier, 1kg cake was the real deal. As we have finished up our previous fresh-creamed, chocolate-filled wedding cake that we had after our wedding ceremony, the 1kg royal icing cake was definitely not enough for 300 people! Fortunately, in our reception package we also requested for each guest to have a complimentary fruit cake for his/herself. The top-tier cake was sent to our bridal suite in the hotel the next morning. 

Non-alcoholic drinks were served, out of respect for our Muslim family members, relatives and friends. Those who wanted one needed to pay for themselves. Which is OK with us, because we noticed that less than eight of the total guests in our reception actually ordered one. Besides, right next to our ballroom was a karaoke pub where our friends and relatives stopped by afterwards and partied the night away.