Post-Mortem of Wedding Preparation

As someone who organised 'events' as part of my work, there were some situations during the wedding yesterday that were worthwhile learning experiences. I am sharing them here.

First, change in dinner venue. The original location was at the sixth floor poolside. When I reached the poolside around 5.40pm, Sinclair told me that there was a problem as the hotel had informed it was likely to rain and the dinner venue had to be shifted to a "ballroom" at 3rd floor. The "problem" was that instead of the original planned 13 tables, the ballroom can only take 10 tables and some guests had to stand.

Two lessons learnt here. First, which was quite elementary but I forgot to ask earlier was the wet weather plan. Second, in the end, we insisted to the banquet captain that we had to have 13 tables although he gave the usual response: "in consideration of your guests' comfort, they would feel squeezy if we had 13 tables." On hindsight, if we had only 10 tables, the guests made to stand would be even more uncomfortable.

Second, marching-in route of the couple. Because of the shape of the ballroom which did not have a proper stage, the couple's march-in would be a short 5 metres from the door to the solemnization table. So Shawn and I decided to give the couple more marching-in distance and planned for the couple walk round the tables amidst the guests. In the end, because of the proximity of the tables, it was really difficult for the couple to move around. For the 2nd march-in, we reverted to the 5-metre route.

Third and most important lesson. There was to be a photo montage to be shown before the 2nd march-in. Reading recently on the importance of testing and re-testing IT equipment, I asked Shawn to plug up the laptop to the hotel's LCD projector as early as possible. When we had the opportunity to do so, to our horror, the laptop was a Macbook Pro and the VGA slot on the Mac cannot be used with the normal cable for Windows PCs. I offered to drive home as my wife uses a Macbook and we had purchased the converter. The time was 6.30pm but I was confident that I could be back by 7pm. I did arrive back at 7pm, but another surprise awaited us. The converter was the wrong one! The slots on the Macbook and Macbook pro were different!!! Checks with the hotel personnel was not much of a help, they also did not have the cable and also could not loan a spare laptop for us to transfer the files.

In the end, Ben, his wife and my wife were to rush to the Apple shop at Suntec to purchase the converter and be in time before the 2nd march-in. They did, and we had a very enjoyable montage show.

Now, I have learnt my lesson and the all important question to ask whenever doing slide-shows, montages, videos is whether we are using a Windows or Apple hardware.