Oh February...

Posted Monday, February 18, 2008 5:01 PM

Where to continue this saga that is Wedding Planning?  The practice "pommander" that I made this past weekend?  The preparations for our scuba certification?  Dealing with the fact that our reception venue closed the freak down?

Yeah, let's start with that one.

My mom calls me last weekend , distinctly remember it was a Saturday night.  She asks me if I'd eaten yet and if I had a moment to talk.  She tells me that our restaurant for the Chinese banquet has closed down.  I'm oddly calm at that moment, asking her if she knew for sure, if she had seen hints of "closed forever" with her own eyes.  She said this was based on what a friend had told her earlier that day, but that she would check for herself tomorrow (Sunday).  I say, cool, maybe they're just remodeling.  My mom is suspicious of the fact that the manager did not give my parents a heads up.

Sunday rolls around and my mom tells me that the restaurant is closed, but all the furniture is still inside.  She managed to find a security guard that works in the plaza and he tells her that the manager has just packed up and left.  She tries to get in touch with the manager of the plaza, but to no avail.  She then heads to the Chamber of Commerce to try to get some contact information, but is given only an address (to what, she did not specify....my mom tends to be very vague which is seriously frustrating, especially in times like these) and that it's "useless".  She also mentioned something about not being allowed access to phone number information.  I shrug.  All I know now is that it's less than 3 months to the Big Day and I am without a reception venue.  Both sets of parents have already mailed out the invitations.

At first, I am absolutely fuming.  THIS is what I get for trying to make my mom happy and allowing her to throw a traditional Asian banquet.  I toy with the idea of starting over and having the wedding in the SF Bay Area, but then I come back to reality when I think about the cake and photographer and the chocolate fountain, all vendors we have put down deposits for.  Ugh.

MOH and BMs are supportive, which is nice.  MOH offers addresses of other restaurants in the area.  Mom is already starting the hunt for a new place.  Alfred is trying to keep me from pulling hair from my head and consoles me by saying that he'd take care of the corrections needed for our invitations.

Being at work that week was not helpful.  I was utterly distracted and unable to stay still at my desk.  I was tired from lack of sleep, anxious....it was not so great.

Thankfully, by the middle of the week, my parents told me that they would most likely be able to book a restaurant we had been considering earlier, when we first started shopping around for a reception venue.  The pluses are that we won't need any partitions to separate our party from the rest of the restaurant because we get a whole room!  The sound system is already built in, so no worries about renting equipment.  The linens (choice of colors included) are included.  The venue itself is much prettier, I think.  There's also an upstairs, so I'll be able to get those aerial pictures I dream about.

We probably will need to tweak the menu again, which will hopefully be only a minor pain.  It's slightly more expensive, but for everything we're getting, it seems to be worth it.

I didn't expect to have a crisis like this, but dang, I'm glad it ended well.  It's just a little scary that even though we put down a deposit and signed a contract at the old place, that this still happened.