Rental... checked

Rental for our wedding venues were signed. I ought to find an idea to transform the damn "gymnasium" room into a ballroom fit to welcome the ball of the century. At a restricted budget, of course.

Two

Bad news. Our chef de cuisine refused to work in the old and (very) restricted kitchen of the community room we picked - the one in which we had always wanted to have our wedding.

We would for nothing in the world change with another one, so we switched to plan B and went ahead for a two-venues wedding: a cocktail party in the original room we wanted and a wedding dinner in another room with a kitchen that suited our chef de cuisine. He agreed to it and gave us the address of the room with his standard of "adequate kitchen".

We called to check out the room during our Christmas break. It was a room in another Alsatian village next to a highway - about two exits away - to Strasbourg, Alsatian capital. The kitchen turned out to be very well equipped and certainly fitted for a chef looking for a perfect condition in breeding out his masterpieces but we worried about the room itself. This is very far from the friendly and cosy atmosphere we wanted.


My husband-to-be cheered me up and said that we could certainly do something with the decoration to fix it up. Knowing that we did not have much time - works were stacked full at office and wedding was due in 6 months time - to go back and forth from Paris to Alsatia looking for another room agreed by our chef, I reluctantly agreed.

I braced myself for the challenge - this was a real test to prove that I did merit my architect diploma - and the tons of work that waited to take that gymnasium-look off the room.

Home for Wedding

We had already known where to celebrate our wedding even before the day we decided to get married. We attach a lot of importance to tradition and family and the moment I learnt of his family long history of origin rooting in a very small village in Alsatia - a French region bordering Germany - I agreed with his idea of going back there for the celebration.

His father's family has been living there as farmers for more than a century and very probably even longer - we only manage to trace it up to his grandfather's parents. I love the village even if people are staring at me as if they have never seen an Asian in their whole life, and certainly because I come around the corner with a guy whose family is the oldest one in the neighbourhood. Simple curiosity, I guess, and I do not mind it.