Skyscraper

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Kheang and Leanne's Wedding Reception

I attended the wedding of my good friend Kheang and Leanne. You can read about the actual ceremony here.

The wedding reception was held at Gold Leaf Restarant in Springvale. It was heaps of fun and I caught up with so many friends from high school days that I haven't seen for a while.

Here is what the restaurant looked like.


From left, Justin, Tuan, Mov behind and myself.


Kim Anh and I. Kim Anh was looking great, having lost weight since high school whereas I have gained lots of weight.


The bride, Leanne looking a million dollars. I looked more like $79.95, the cost of my shirt and tie.


The happy couple, Leanne and Kheang looking great.


There was music and speeches all night, with a speech from Tuan, the best man being extremely funny. It relayed a story of a fishing trip that we all went on right after high school. It was highly memorable trip and everything he talked about I also remembered so clearly. It was a trip that nearly killed us all, but also brought us all much closer.

The night also included dancing and some fun games, such as this one where the groom tried to get the bridal garter.


In terms of the food, it was a very traditional Asian style wedding meal, with lots of course. It started off with a cold platter of meats, roast pork, cured beef and jellyfish. It was all very good, accompanied by the XO sauce.


The crab claw didn't have too much crab, more minced prawn, but was still good.


A seafood bird's nest was the next dish. It was probably the worst dish of the night, with the flavours not working for me.

The lobster with noodles was good and I gobbled down every last piece without having to use my fingers at all. I loved the noodles that have absorbed all the flavours of the lobster.


A shark fin soup with crab meat then gave a bit of cleansing between more dished. The soup was a bit runny for my liking and the flavour of the crab wasn't strong enough.

A quarter of a squab was then served with it's crispy skin. A sprinkle of salt and pepper made it even more delicious. The head was even served, and Jo helped me gobble mine as I don't like the head too much.


In between the eating, we also did some drinking. Here is Kin holding a fairly full bottle of V.S.O.P Cognac.


Those who didn't have to drive drank away at the beer and Cognac. Here is Jo having a drink.


The foods that followed were a whole Barramundi, steamed with soy sauce and spring onions. There was also some fried rice and noodles. I liked the fish and fried rice, but the noodle was too good. By that last savoury dish, we managed to finish off the cognac. I was starting to feel it a bit, so forgot to take photos of the food towards the end. You can just make out the noodles in the corner of the photos.


Some little red bean desserts finished off the meal. I then talked to a lot of people and got people's details to catch up more. We all danced around and the bride threw the bridal bouquet. Everyone congratulated the happy couple and headed off home at about midnight.

Edit: Just for the sake of accuracy, Stickyfingers was saying how the only thing missing was abalone. Well I must have been more drunk than I thought since when I was writing it up, I totally forgot about the abalone and sea cucumber that followed the squab. It was very nice indeed.

8 comments:

  1. Nice blog and pictures. Mine is http://elbaluartedeoccidente.blogspot.com/
    Cheers
    Luis

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanh, totally unrelated to your blog but I wanted to ask you a question... how do I know if people have looked at my blog but not left a comment??? And can I get that counter thing that tells you what countries they are from and is it free or is it something you have to pay for??? I am confident you know EVERYTHING so I am eagerly awaiting your reply!! Vida x

    ReplyDelete
  3. Luis, I don't know any Spanish so couldn't read a word of your blog.

    Anonymous, I don't think it's spam this time. Otherwise, I will press the delete button.

    Vida, you can view stats on your blog using free web counters. I use www.sitemeter.com. Just go there, sign up for an account, set up all the settings and then it has instructions on how to add the counter to your blog. Since it is free, you get basic data about your blog traffic. I find it is adequate for me. You can get data about how long people view your blog, pages they clicked in total, links that brought them there, location etc etc.

    Send me an email if you need more detailed help.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Wow - expensive dinner banquet! All that's missing is abalone & suckling pig...Yum.

    Vida I use Stat Counter
    http://www.statcounter.com/
    It's free, gives me maps of where in the world my viewers come from, how they came to the site, unique visitors, return visitors, ISP details and page load details.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Stickyfingers, glad someone is on the ball. In my confused state, I totally forgot about the abalone and sea cucumber that follwed the squab. I will edit the post now for accuracy sake.

    The suckling pig was missing though. They used cheaper roast pig in that cold platter instead.

    Vida, stat counter is another popular free counter and works great too, I gave it a quick try at the time.

    ReplyDelete
  6. WAAAAH! They pulled out all the stops! Very expensive!!! Reminds me of when three of my Chinese cousins got married three weeks in a row - must have been an auspicious month for maariage in the Chinese Almanac. By the end of the month my family had eaten enough to feed all of southern China and their pets.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Well this month must be a good month for weddings. On the same day that I went to the wedding, two other work mates also went to Asian weddings.

    This week, just went to my cousins wedding which I still have to write up about.

    ReplyDelete