tiredThe reception was at 6pm at the East Manor, a large restaurant type place in the Chinese part of town (it was held upstairs in a private room). At the cocktail hour they had things like dumplings, eggrolls, sushi, and chicken. I'm not a huge fan of Chinese food (I do like it but don't like to eat it all the time), but the stuff they had there was pretty good. The stuff they had for the main meal though was pretty..... um... interesting. It was family-style dining, so they'd bring out large platters with each course and would serve the food to us or let us help ourselves. The first course consisted of pork, beef, vegetables, baby octopus, jellyfish, and duck. I'd never had duck before so I wanted to try it. Well, the duck ended up being duck tongues. I'm not a very adventurous eater so I didn't even try it. Beef and pork was pretty good though. Then they had actual duck (not the tongue *whew*) meat with spring onions in what looked like a rice wrap, which was a bit sweet. That was pretty interesting.
They also had lobster and chicken, but the chicken was a whole chicken that was sliced right through the bone, so there were pieces of bone throughout it. And of course the chicken's head was also on the platter. (*shudder*) While my dad was in the restroom everyone at our table was laughing over the fact that he ate the baby octopus and they decided to put the chicken head on his plate, along with a lobster head, just to see his reaction. Unfortunately it didn't faze him, LOL... but fortunately he didn't eat them.
The most interesting thing was that they didn't serve dessert (except the cake) at the end. After the chicken etc. they served cookies and fruit. After that they brought lo mein and rice, and then finally red bean soup.
Aside from that it was a pretty traditional reception with the bride throwing the bouquet (which I didn't catch though didn't expect to) and the groom throwing the garter, the bride dancing with her father, showing pictures of the bride and groom through the years, etc. The only thing different was that the bride had a ceremonial tea service with the close members of her family.
All in all, it was an interesting experience and I'm really happy for my cousin and his new wife. We were exhausted and when we left after 11pm it was still going on. We didn't get home til after midnight and I'm still pretty tired from it today. But still had a good time.
