Gigi and Carl's Wedding, 15th October 2005

On 15th October this year, my old school friend Gigi Wong got married to Carl Hsin at the Chinese Church in London. Gavin and I were lucky enough to get invites and we planned quite a splendiferous weekend in London for the occasion!

We travelled down on our separate ways on Friday night, me on the plane to Heathrow, Gavin on the train to Euston, and met up at Gavin's brother's house in Purley. Because there were going to be major disruptions to the tube on the day of the wedding, we'd decided to hire a car. The church was in Hammersmith in West London, the reception in the Docklands in East London. I did have my reservations about driving around London, but I really didn't fancy hopping on and off the tube and various replacement buses in my finery. So hire car it was.

We picked the car up in good time and headed off on our merry way, looking forward to the day ahead. For about 5 minutes, anyway...

It soon became apparent that London was living up to its name for chaotic traffic. We'd allowed a good hour and a half to travel only 11 miles or so. By the time we got to Earls Court, almost walking distance from the church, we'd already taken over an hour and it was complete gridlock. We'd managed to drive into traffic for the Ideal Home Show taking place at Earls Court that day. Oops! Anyway, we just about made it to the church on time. Just minutes ahead of Gigi, so it was perfect timing really.


The ceremony was interesting. The Chinese Church of Lonon was set up in the 50s so that the Chinese community had somewhere to worship. Christianity in China has developed almost non-denominational, more recently because of the restrictions imposed by the communist government (giving higher authority to the Pope is a no-no) but also because the Chinese have always tended to take any outside influence and make it Chinese. Works better that way. They had a fairly "modern" way of worshipping in the sense of new hymns with modern words. It was all really high-tech, too! Gigi studied media and has worked at the Chinese TV Channel in London for years, so we shouldn't have been surprised to see 3 camera men, several people with boom mics, extra microphones in every available space as well as an official photographer. The words to the hymns were projected in English and Chinese onto a screen via a beamer (no dodgy OHPs here!) and you generally had to be careful not to trip over any of the hundreds of wires. The ceremony was led by Pastor Tang in English and he was quite a character. He was really jolly and cheery and kept the whole thing light-hearted, which I thought was nice. For example, whenever the bride and groom had to say anything, he made a big gesture of cupping his hand to his ear, in case either of them were in any doubt that this is the bit where they say "I do."

Gigi had been terribly organised about the whole thing and had set up a website where people could follow the developments of events leading up to the wedding. This included a big long list of who was going to be photographed with whom and when once the ceremony was over. I have to say Gavin and I weren't entirely sure where we belonged but we were sure we'd be fairly far down the list, so we infiltrated the "Gigi's London Friends" category. They didn't seem to mind. We all smiled madly and the results can be seen on Gigi's website.

Gavin and I then felt we should rush off as we only had two hours to travel 16 miles across a very busy London in order to get to the reception on time for 4pm. We briefly toyed with the idea of going a different route to the way we had come, but decided that getting lost in London would be just as catastrophic as getting stuck in London so we followed the route the AA had given me. And that's where it really went pear-shaped...

It took us 40 minutes to travel about 500 yards because Earls Court was even more chocca than it was when we'd arrived. We thought we were being clever by driving around central London, but it seems everybody else knew that that was the secret route to the reception venue! We'd booked a room at the Crown Plaza in the Docklands so that we wouldn't have to worry about getting back to Purley at some ungodly hour so the plan was to drop the car and our bags at the hotel before heading to the venue, which was supposed to be within walking distance of the hotel.

Having left the church at just after 2pm, we finally made it to Docklands at about 4.30. We then couldn't figure out how on earth to get onto the access road to our hotel, so we didn't make it into our room till 5. We were also disgruntled to discover that parking at the hotel wasn't free. But, no time to argue, we had a wedding reception to get to. I asked how best to get to the Yiban Restaurant where the reception was being held, only to be told that it was too far to walk. We were to take the DLR for two stops and then walk from there. So off we went. Got off two stops later and had no clue where to go. There was a big exhibition centre ahead of us, but nothing that looked remotely like a very swish Chinese restaurant. We managed to flag down a cab and after thinking about it for some time, our taxi driver decided he knew where we wanted to go and proceeded to take us there. Only a few minutes later, we found ourselves back at the hotel! There was a Chinese restaurant next door. It was the wrong one.

Another taxi driver was able to tell our guy where he should have gone, he reset the clock and off we went. Again. We finally made it to the restaurant -which was THREE not two stops away on the DLR- at 5.45pm, nearly 4 HOURS after we'd left the church, having missed the parents' speeches, the tea ceremony (which I was particularly looking forward to having never seen one performed) and the first two courses of the banquet. Luckily there were another 10 courses to come, so that wasn't such a hardship! :-)

Once we actually got there, we had a really good time. Gigi and Carl had chosen an extremely swanky riverside Chinese restaurant for their banquet and what a feast it was! We'd been dreaming of the food for weeks before the wedding, having seen the menu on Gigi's website. Wedding banquets tend to include lots of fish and seafood as the names of various fish and crustaceans have auspicious meanings if pronounced a particular way. Despite my accute of phobia of anything fishy, I was looking forward to eating lobster for the first time ever and was curious to find out what shark fin soup tasted like. I have to say, I wasn't desperate to experience sea cucumber and I did turn my nose up at the braised abolone (squishy flat rubbery looking scollop-type thing). So we stuffed our faces to make up for the stresses of our journey, and we stuffed them very successully. I briefly inspected the chocolate fountain before the kids demolished it completely and then it was time for the Bride and Groom's speeches and games. The speeches, unfortunately for me, were all in Cantonese so I didn't catch much but I think I did a good job of nodding along and laughing in the right places.

It's traditional for "tricks" to be played on the happy couple by their closest friends. This involves them having to perform tasks that could be considered risque in some way and how risque they are is decided by their friends, who know how far they can go without causing embarassment (in front of the parents!!). Carl was first up. He was blindfolded and a string of grapes was draped around Gigi's neck. She then had to give him verbal commands like up, down, left, right to guide him to the grapes so that he could eat them. Of course, the joke was that the person holding the grapes kept moving them so that poor Carl kept bumping open mouthed right into Gigi's breasts, but it was very amusing to watch! I think Gigi definitely got the raw end of the deal (find the pun there later!) as she was also blindfolded and then had to thread a raw egg up one of Carl's trouser legs, across the crotch and down the other side, without breaking the egg.
She did a marvellous job (looked suspiciously like she might have been practising!). Unfortunatley, she obviously hadn't bargained with dress trousers having a lining at the top because the egg quickly got firmly stuck between the layers of material right in the middle of the crotch which left poor Gigi juggling a raw egg around Carl's most precious possessions with no sign of finding the other trouser leg whilst the rest of us were wondering if we should perhaps avert our eyes! We were all in shrieks of laughter and Gigi finally managed it on her third attempt. Lucky Carl!

The last official part of the proceedings was a fantastic fireworks display on the riverside. After that, it was every man for himself on the dance floor. Gavin and I did a good job of rounding up all the half-empty bottles of champagne and after that the evening gets a little hazy...

I did manage to get a little bit of Chinese practise in when Carl invited me to go and see Gigi in the bridal room of the restaurant where she and her team of wedding planners (yes, there was a team) were busy totting up the pressies. Most of the people in the room spoke cantonese, but were able to understand the couple of sentences I managed to squeeze out. They do say alcohol loosens the tongue...

Needless to say, we had lots of fun. Gigi and Carl look extremely happy together (and he has the cutest dimples I've ever seen!). Gigi looked fabulous, of course. She had no less then four different dresses, each one more spectacular than the one before and her parents were beaming like a pair of cheshire cats. Gigi, thanks very much for a fab day!

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