Hello blogger.com!
It's been years since I used my blogger account and had decided to do so now :D If you have been a reader of my previous blog on wordpress, thank you so much for your support! Well, ain't sure if there are many followers to start with.. Haha.
As my friends would have known, I had just turned 21! *throws confetti* It's been a year full of 21st birthday parties and I'm glad I'm finally one of them! My Korean friends back in Korea texted me to ask if turning twenty-one is a big event in Singapore and my reply is, yes! 21 is essentially the legal age for you to do almost everything in Singapore. From what I can think off-hand, here's the list:
Nonetheless, back to topic. For you all who had held and organised a 21st birthday party like I did, sincere applauses to all of you!! It was definitely not as easy as I thought it would be. I am thankful to Facebook for having made my RSVP-ing job much simpler. Nowadays, with most people owning a Facebook account, I am able to send out my invites by just creating an event on Facebook. From there, I can post notices and directions, and guests who are going will be able to see them. One drawback of Facebook RSVP is that, not everyone checks their Facebook notifications always. From personal experience, some of my friends did not even realise that they were invited to my birthday party till I told them personally. Sometimes, it's still good to go through the traditional way of face-to-face communications :)
After gathering the responses from the Facebook event page, the next step is to order your catering. I was recommended Neogardens by most of my friends who had done their catering with them BUT I ended up with my orders from Select food Catering instead. Reason being, I just wanted to order for a small pax of 30 people at a more affordable price. I do not seek for 5-stars hotel quality food but just a decent quality enough to feed my guests. I understood from most parties experience that there are always leftovers from buffet. And I do not want that to happen. For my party of 40+ people, I had 30pax ordered and guess what, it was ADEQUATE! (with just really minimum leftovers)
Frankly speaking, the turnout was greater than I expected and I know I wasn't a good enough host to everyone. I knew that I wasn't able to speak to everyone as much as I love and want to, but I am very thankful for my understanding friends. And I know I'd said this on my Facebook, but I'd just like to reiterate again, I believe that this birthday party is not just a celebration for me, but also a great opportunity for family and/or friends whom had not been able to meet up, to gather together for a good reunion and catchup. I am thankful to all my friends, especially my secondary school friends whom some of them I had not seen for years. Thank you so much for attending my birthday, it really means a lot to me. ♥
It's been years since I used my blogger account and had decided to do so now :D If you have been a reader of my previous blog on wordpress, thank you so much for your support! Well, ain't sure if there are many followers to start with.. Haha.
As my friends would have known, I had just turned 21! *throws confetti* It's been a year full of 21st birthday parties and I'm glad I'm finally one of them! My Korean friends back in Korea texted me to ask if turning twenty-one is a big event in Singapore and my reply is, yes! 21 is essentially the legal age for you to do almost everything in Singapore. From what I can think off-hand, here's the list:
- You can drink legally.*
- You can get a driving license. (Heard it's been recently changed to 21 instead of 18)
- You can watch a R21 movie.
- You can marry legally.*
- You can buy a private property.
- You can smoke legally.*
Nonetheless, back to topic. For you all who had held and organised a 21st birthday party like I did, sincere applauses to all of you!! It was definitely not as easy as I thought it would be. I am thankful to Facebook for having made my RSVP-ing job much simpler. Nowadays, with most people owning a Facebook account, I am able to send out my invites by just creating an event on Facebook. From there, I can post notices and directions, and guests who are going will be able to see them. One drawback of Facebook RSVP is that, not everyone checks their Facebook notifications always. From personal experience, some of my friends did not even realise that they were invited to my birthday party till I told them personally. Sometimes, it's still good to go through the traditional way of face-to-face communications :)
After gathering the responses from the Facebook event page, the next step is to order your catering. I was recommended Neogardens by most of my friends who had done their catering with them BUT I ended up with my orders from Select food Catering instead. Reason being, I just wanted to order for a small pax of 30 people at a more affordable price. I do not seek for 5-stars hotel quality food but just a decent quality enough to feed my guests. I understood from most parties experience that there are always leftovers from buffet. And I do not want that to happen. For my party of 40+ people, I had 30pax ordered and guess what, it was ADEQUATE! (with just really minimum leftovers)
Here is my food list:
- Signature Curry Chicken with Potatoes
- Dory Fillet with Authentic Thai Sauce on Banana Leaf
- Golden Torpedo Prawn with Tartar Dip
- Garlic Broccoli and Carrots tossed in Butter Glaze
- Golden Egg tofu with Enoki Mushrooms & Seow Bai Chye
- Steamed Mini Carrot Cake with Sweet Sauce
- Singapore Style Fried Rice
- Hong Kong Fried Bee Hoon
- Chilled Honeydew Sago
- Iced Peach Tea
My favourites are the ones that are bolded. Overall, I'd say the food is decently yummy. It is $10.70 per pax inclusive of GST. The only con about ordering a 30pax for 40+ guests is that the drinks and disposables (cups, plates, utensils, napkins) aren't enough. Totally oversaw that part, but I am thankful to my friend, Bryant and my sister who ran down to get them for me. So, please do take note if you are gonna hold your party! My dad was pretty unhappy with me for overseeing that :(
So with my buffet catered, the next most important thing for a birthday party is no other than THE CAKE!! I was really lazy in my whole birthday party planning at first. I guess I was happily in my summer break mood because ever since I came back to Singapore for my vacation, I just wanna laze and do nothing. Friends of mine had been asking how's my party preparations going.. if I had ordered my buffet and cake.. if I had plans for my deco.. my answer to them was, no. And trust me, good friends are honest people and they pretty much nagged at me to get my party planning kicking. Hahaha. That's what I love about my friends, they are always there to get me motivated! Love y'all ♥
Got my cake customised from Charlotte Grace Cakeshop. It was AWESOME. I am truly impressed, by their talent! It was exactly what I wanted and as seen from the photo reference that I gave them. This 2-tier (chocolate) cake was 2kg, pretty sufficient to all my guests. I had some leftover, not too much. And that is because some guests were too full by then to have cake, or simply didn't want it. Do check out Charlotte Grace Cakeshop's Facebook page for their amazing cakes and cupcakes designs! I have 3 friends who ordered from them previously, and so I trusted my friends' recommendation and got my cake from them, and I never regretted a single bit :)
Now we've got the buffet catered and cake customisation ordered, next in the party planning list will be d e c o r a t i o n s . And before I could get into deco planning, I had to come up with a theme. I've seen themes going from Sailor, School-Geeks, Floral, Prints, Princess, Pinky, Polka Dots, Rainbow colors, etc. I wanted my party to be minimalist, classy and easy for guests to follow. So the final decision was to set my theme as monochrome - black & white.
Didn't want too much for my deco since I know at the end of the day, deco have to be taken down. All I had for my decorations were simply helium balloons and a simple poster.
There were three sets of the bunch of balloons that you see on the left. They are used to decor different parts of the function room. All the balloons were actually a package - 35 helium filled latex balloons and a theme balloon, which is the 21 balloon on the right. (Sorry, in this picture, the 21 was flopped)
It may look plain above, but the balloons could serve as good 'props' too as seen below :)
JJ 29th Council friends
Dearest sister, Collen
And the other only things I bought for my party is for the guest messages. Instead of the usual cliche guestbook, I decided to go for something more unique. Searched and found so many different guestbook ideas online but i decided to go with the JENGA GUESTBOOK idea. Got my set of Jengas from Kiddy Palace for S$24.90 and the stand & photoframe for instructions from Daiso (S$2 each). Credits to Michelle for decorating my photoframe with her artistic talent. Love her craft designs so much!
Specially designed by Michelle
Jenga Guestbook
Chocolate Spoons, DIY
And I also made some chocolate spoons as door gifts for my guests. Honestly, it's my first time making them. Ain't sure if they tasted good, but well it's the sincerity that counts right? Hahas.
Some photos from my party...
SIAH Family - Sister, Mom, Me, Dad & Bro
Maternal Side Family - Uncles, Aunts and Cousins
Secondary School Classmates / Schoolmates
Junior College 09S29 Classmates
Junior College 29th Council Members (Part)
Junior College Schoolmates
Fellow Yonsei University undergrads, Yunghian & Thanh
This guy friend really came alone w/o knowing anyone from my party. Thanks alot, Weishen
Girlfriends for life - Esabel, GJ, Peiling, Me, Fitri, Esther & Brenda
Have to really credit this guy friend here, for being such a great photographer of the night! Thanks alot, Jun Jie
The rest of the photos can be found on my Facebook, here :)
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After party celebration was with my favourite group of girls. We headed to Beer Market at Clarke Quay because one of my girls have a membership and we could get a bucket of 10 beers for FREE! (Because it's her birthday month as well, yay!) Further discounts go to the bottle of hard liquor that we ordered. Original price was S$180 for a bottle of Chivas but with the 30% discount that we got, it was S$126!!
2 buckets of Hoegaarden and Budweiser Beers, respectively
Esther and I
Fitri, Brenda, Esabel
Loving these girls so much, ♥
Last group shot for the night @ Dream
Moved on to our second destination at Dream, the new Clubhouse in Clarke Quay. It's not really new, but it's new to me since it's my first time there ever since I came back to Singapore. The last time I went to a club in Clarke Quay was when Rebel & Zirca still existed, lol. This shows how lag behind I am.
Technically, we were only in the club for about 30min. Yep, not even an hour and we left. Hahaha. We headed to Mcdonalds for supper. And we left to grab a cab home. This is where the nightmare begins. It felt like HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE were trying to flag for a cab. We literally took almost an hour to get a cab, gees.
That is all to conclude for today's post! Sorry if I had bore anyone off with all these length.
Till then!
{OOTD: 2 pc Lorrent Floral Set in White | Runway Bandits}
xoxo,
irenesiah
- 22:38
- 1 Comments
