Solemnization at M Hotel

Hi all, back to my blogging habits. I have been blogging on my ROM recently. Though my status has changed to Mrs, but things largely remains the same. I am still calling his parents "aunty" and "uncle" as we had not gone through the traditional wedding. At home, he calls my dad "uncle" too. Besides submitting my marriage cert to company and owning the house together, I am still me.

In case you are wondering why we had decided to change from a banquet wedding dinner to Solmnisation dinner and what did M Hotel had done to accommodate our request, you read more details here.

Checking -in

We held our Solemnization on 16 September 2016, Friday. As September is a 'hot' month for wedding dinner, we were informed by our then coordinator, Fiona, that weekends were fully-booked and had to look into the weekday. We decided 16 September because not only was it within my mum's 100th day, the date and year were both 1616 (Kinda easy to remember?).

On that day, we went to Bedok Central to collect my hand bouquet, bought some flowers for my reception and had a simple lunch. After all was done, we drove to M Hotel since it was about 20 minutes to 2pm. At 2pm, we reached the hotel, carrying our luggage, gowns, hand bouquet and flowers to the reception. Once we reached the lobby, I called our new Coordinator, Anna (Fiona quit her job just weeks before our ROM and that was when we knew that she is no longer with M Hotel). to inform her so that she can help us with the express check in. As she didn't pick up the phone, we thought that she was be busy and she would get back to us later, However, after waiting for about 5-10 minutes, there was still no calls or reply from her, Xiong decided that we try to check in ourselves since we were holding our event there.

At the reception counter

With the hand bouquet on my hand, we walked over to the counter and asked for a room. We knew that we were entitled to a room as it was written on the contract. The counter staff looked at us with a blur face and ask: Room? My hubby was very kind to inform that we were having our Solemnisation that night and there should be a room for us. Apparently, the counter girl was unaware of it and she went into the control room to check with someone.

After sometime, a man came out and ask: Mr Lim? My love is a Lim so of course he said yes. So the guy came, helped us with our stuffs and said: Mr Lim, please follow me. I though that we were able to settle down after waiting for so long. The guy brought us to level 28 for express check in and another 2 staffs usher us to the room. When the staffs opened the door, me and Xiong were like raising our eyebrows: Are you sure that you had given us the correct room? For a while, I thought we had a free upgrade to bridal suite.

We lay our things down as we were getting tired from those load. The guy gave Love a A4 size paper and said: Mr Lim, please sign here.

The paper turned out to be some other Lim and not Lim Wei Xiong.

"Er, this is not my name".

The guy's face was like a million shock. "You are Mr Lim right?"

"Yes, I am Mr Lim but not this Lim, we are only entitled to a Premier room actually."

My 'Mr Lim' is an honest guy and so, we carried all the things (with the help of the staff of cause) down to level 28 again and waited. The guy was so sorry and he felt embarrassed about the whole incident. Finally, we had our room and it was almost 3pm. Anna had finally responded to me by then and I was so upset with all the hiccups. What made the matter worst was that our room was not decorated as promised upon check in. We should be given a champagne, fruit basket, pralines and bridal room decoration (i am guessing some rose petal scattered on the bed and perhaps bathtub filled with water and rose petals, etc) but all were not seen at all. I requested Anna to come down to our room and discussed on all these issues. After a while, a staff, strolled in with the fruit basket, champagne, pralines and placed them on the table in the midst of our discussion (but the bridal room decoration was not done and i suppose it's too late to be done).

Aren't these items supposed to be prepared beforehand?

After our complaint was made, the duty manager, Andy, accompany by 1 of the staff who brought us to the wrong room, came to our room to offer their apologies and also offer us 1 bottle of red and white wine each. Though Love and I didn't have the time to enjoy those alcohol, we acknowledged that they had made an effort to do fast customer recovery action. At 3.30pm, my MUA came. She had mistaken the time and came in 1 hour earlier. For once, I thought what was truly happening on that day.

I had a quick bath, dried and hair and began with the make up. After about 2 hours, I am finally done with the makeup and hair-do. Now I really felt like a bride.

Credits to Wei Teck

All these were not over until love was completed with his hair-do. My friend, aka the photographer and his assistance (aka our friend too) took those decoration down to level 2 to assist us in laying out the stuffs. We were given the Anson Room at level 2 instead of the Sheraton room at B1 since there was no event going on at night.

Our ROM table

Reception area

Canapes but Xiong and I didn't have any of it.

Vows and ring pillow - Credit to Ah Teck

It wouldn't take long to decorate since we had friends to help out. We completed our decorations just in time as our guests made their way to the reception.

Since it was a Friday night, many of them came from work while some of our relatives took a day off. Our Justice of Peace, Mr Alex Tan, came early at around 7.15pm though there was a heavy traffic from his location to M Hotel. We waited till 7.30pm as a few of my relatives were late due to bad traffic. Mr Tan is very patient who wouldn't mind waiting a while for my relatives and also, he is punctual. *Thumbs up! He is one of the popular JP and we were glad that he was available on that day. His speech is serious yet funny at times. He would ask if we have preference to hold our ROM in English or Mandarin. But we requested for both and he was able to accommodate with it.

It was both a significant and genuine moment for both of us, like literally, I am 'upgraded' to be someone's wife. That moment of upgrade felt like a new beginning and marked the end of single-hood.

Big room with not much decorations. Credits to my relative

The banquet manager was Ken. He is a great guy! He was able to give us free flow of beer, wine and even to throw in a champagne for us! The food portion was huge and delicious. My relatives commented that our ROM was done up nicely and they were impressed. They got us 4 servers, with each of them portioning the food individually to guests though we did not specifically request for it. All of us enjoyed a lot.