Royal Birthday Party

I've just come home from a royal birthday party.

It wasn't half as successful as it was last year when the dress code as a theme was a casual white shirts/blouses and blue jeans. I will now attempt to describe this evening.

This year's theme and dress code is all black or all white, not black & white together, so most of the er...more matured guests (like me) were in black whilst the younger generation (children/off-springs) were dressed in white. This created a really formal and sombre atmosphere. Being a royal party in Malaysia, many of the guests were wearing tudungs which created even more black because then, they were black from head to toe! Luckily there were lots of sequins and diamonds to add much needed sparkle!


The decor was creative but long strands of mother-of-pearl discs hanging from the ceiling separated dinner guests seated at long tables all night long. There were only two very long tables for more than 150 people. All along the tables, there were short fat black candles on high iron-black candelabras, dripping its black wax onto pieces of white tiles placed on white table cloth. In between the candelabras were square glass vases with a single bunch of tiny apple-green chrysanthemums each. Chairs were either covered in black or white cotton. Transparent apple-green voile were hung from ceiling to floor and a single black and white painting hung on stage in place of a backdrop. All guests were seated directly opposite each other at the very crowded long tables. This create confrontational energy all around.

More guests turned up than expected and seats were over-subscribed. Right from the start, there were a few sour-puss faces as some guests had nowhere to sit and it took the staff a long, long, long, long time to set more places. The narrow and long function room was too cluttered with people and chairs and decoration and the buffet line. The long strands of mother-of-pearl discs successfully divided the party and blocked everyone's view of everything.

Show time was an entertaining Chinese guy who was very talented and very funny and he made some of the guests perform funny dances on stage. Everyone enjoyed his act and finally, the ice was broken and laughter was loud from all around and there were hoots from the kids. This was the one reprieve to the otherwise sombre evening. Oh...and some of the teenage royal off-springs sang very well. I swear one of the young men sounded exactly like Patrizio Buanne!

The food was glorious and the guest list oh, so distinguished, but more than half of the guests left after the show, probably for greener pastures to continue Saturday evening. I'll bet if the decoration was better feng shuied and a little bit more auspicious, the party would have taken off as it should have....after all the effort put in, and everyone would have partied till the wee hours of the morn and my mind wouldn't have kept on thinking all night long of the Chinese phrase....'Choyyyy!'