the angry bride

yup, uber angry bride coming through.

my little early bird failure had me going and i "booked" a restaurant that both will and i and our parents were happy with in april. why "booked", you ask?

first some back story. I always asks what happens if someone else wants the date and all restaurants i spoke to will hold your date, until someone inquires about the same date. if that does happen they will contact you and ask that you give them an a deposit to secure your booking or if no one else wants the date they usually ask you to put down a deposit 6 months prior to the date. this happened to me when i was looking at kirin starlight. i was second on the list and the manager told me that the couple before me had until so and so date to decide and if they don't put down the deposit i would get the date. all is fair. first couple gets priority, if they don't want it.. it's free for me and if i didn't want it the 3rd couple (yes, there was a 3rd couple) could have it. unfortunately for me the first couple did put a deposit so that restaurant was out of the running.

THAT did not happen with the restaurant we ended up choosing and "booking" with. now i won't mention this restaurant by name since i've heard of bloggers getting threaten with legal action if what they write reflects negatively on the restaurant (no free speech i guess?). but i will say for all vancouverites that this restaurant is located where the old flamingo restaurant was and near glad tidings church.

will and i had yet to put a deposit down and were told that they would contact us. i went in yesterday to put in a deposit maybe a month and bit after i booked the date with them since i figured we really did decide to go with this restaurant and just to get it done. the manager took my deposit and all was well. today i get a call from the same manager saying that he was sorry and had to return my deposit because the restaurant took another person's deposit for the same date. my inner bridezilla took over and needless to say, i was not happy and that guy got an earful. that manager told me that another manager will give me a call in the afternoon. no call. i had to call them and went in to talk to them. prior to all this i had received NO call to get in a deposit earlier. the manager and owners reasoning for not calling was... " if i called you and you weren't home and when you do call us back and maybe you tell us that you don't need the restaurant anymore, and those other people left then i've lost business". OKAY. the moment i heard that i just wanted to flip the table and leave (my inner gangster bride.) then they tried to convince me to change my date and they will cut me a deal since they were wrong, but i told them that's not happening since i've already booked some big ticket items. they offered to print my invitations among other things but honestly, i was done. i was so disappointed that wasn't called to put in my deposit. but what's done is done and i'll find a better restaurant. never going back there. ever.

in fact i've already looked in to some.. my second question after asking if my date is free, was "will you contact me if someone else asks about the date". their answer... YES.

lesson learned: chinese restaurants are sometimes really shady about their practice. beware.

early bird failure... =/

sorry i've been so neglectful of my blog. after getting back from 2 AWESOME months in australia (btw, everyone should go once) i just didn't feel very blog-y. lots of wedding things have happened in the last two months but for now, my early bird failure....

alright, it's not that bad but i have to kick myself for it. the whole point of having a long engagement (*ahem* not by choice *ahem*) is to make the most of it and be able to book all the vendors i like, plan everything ahead of time, etc! will and i agreed that we would have a wedding with 200 guests, which is small by asian wedding standards. i was super confident that we would be able to do it and nothing was going to stop me! when will was back in vancouver, we had went for dimsum at a restaurant in richmond. the restaurant held 20-24 tables, very modern looking, clean, and the food was decent. put down our name for our date. DONE. we even planned that if we went over our 200 we had room for an extra 3 tables.

Last week, we started really planning out our guestlists to see how many people we wanted to invite, how many our parents would want to invite and the final number..... 263!! i'm POSITIVE that i can't cut anyone. so our original restaurant isn't going to work. i started calling other restaurants that we originally ruled out for being too large. one was already booked on my date but luckily, one is booked on every saturday of june except for mine. bad part is i can't put my name down without a deposit so i'm meeting with the manager on saturday.  i thought i had a restaurant done in december with 1.5 years to go. now everyone is starting to book! oh the stress!

looks like my wedding of 200 people has ballooned up to a wedding of potentially 300. i mean if we're at 263 already lets just go all the way to 300!


lesson learned in all this: do a rough guest list!!!!!

fun fact: sun sui wah on main street- min. amount spent to close the restaurant to the public- $35,000
min. amount at other restaurants- $13,000-16,000

sun sui wah holds 40 tables x $700 dollar menu= $28,000. still short $7000.......