My Sep 30, 06 wedding at the Lotos Club / now with pictures
I don't have too many pictures yet, but I thought I'd start the review now before things fade from memory. And I'll post pictures as I get them back.
Vendors:
The location: Lotos Club.
I'll start out with the hall. This is absolutely the most amazing part of the wedding, especially since I had both the ceremony and the reception there. It's thanks to them that I could put together the wedding in under half a year without much stress.
Before looking at the Lotos Club we looked at a few other places in Manhattan -- The Asia Society, the Kitano Hotel, but all of them turned out not ideal. We wanted a place that'll have only one event at a time, a nice ballroom, and able to have the ceremony at the same place. Also the food has to be good, since the Chinese usually do not like anything except a Chinese banquet. I heard about the Lotos Club not from any of the popular wedding sites, but on the chowhound.com website, where it was mentioned a couple times for the food. This was very impressive, since the chowhound was a board full of foodies who turn their nose up at wedding food in general. So I went to take a look, and decided on it right then and there. And it's absolutely the best decision I ever made.
First of all, the architecture is amazing -- I ended up doing very simple flowers and a couple candles, since the ballroom and the library are already so beautiful. I had my ceremony in the library in front of the fire place, and then did the first dance in the ballroom across the hall.
The food is as good as everyone said -- we choose to have the food stations instead of a sit down dinner, and picked Asian fusion dishes as well as two Italian stations, and all the guests raved about it, including the relatives from China, which must be a first. The dessert was particularly good, I gobbled down two plates of the mini tarts, and I usually don't even like sweets. I read all the warnings about brides not eating at their own wedding, and managed to taste everything. My only regret is that my parent and husband didn't read the post, and they hardly ate anything. And I forgot to ask them to put some food away in a box for us. ;_;
The staff were so professional and helpful. Anna, the dining cooridator, was amazing. She doubled confirmed all the vendors and checked all the details with me, so everything went off without a hitch during the wedding day. Basically, most of the work for the wedding was done by the club, and all I did was find the other vendors and chat a little with the florist and the DJ.
I just can't say enough good things about this place. I can't imagine a better place for a small wedding. It's <$200pp, which is an amazing bargain for Manhattan.
Florist: Shields & Warrendorf.
Since Lotos club was so beautiful, I thought I could get away with spending very little on flowers. Of course I didn't account for how much 'very little' would cost in Manhattan. I first went with the house florist of the Lotos Club, who quoted me something like three times what I wanted to spend.![]()
So we then talked with Martha at Shields and Warendorf, and liked her very much. She's very sweet, and very knowledgable about the Asian traditions and the flowers and colors to use. Their quote was about twice my budget instead of three times, so we decided to go with them.
Manhattan sticker shock aside, Shields did an amazing job -- we had red and saffron floating candles on the tables, and some large red/orange arrangments for the stations. Saffron for my husband, who's Indian, and red for the Chinese side of the family. It was gorgeous, and they're definitely a very professional shop that knew what they were doing. Everything was detailed and listed in the contract, and everything was delivered and arranged well ahead. All of Martha's advice about the flower arrangments were spot on, and she even made beautiful flowers for me to wear in my hair.
But if I were doing this again I would probably have gone with the house florist, Tom Anderson, who's a very elegant chap, and had absolutely amazing taste. He was willing to adjust the price a little, and with the various add ons eventually Shields came out to be about the same price. But it would have prevented a couple confusions between the Lotos club and the florist, such as how many cocktail table we had ( the number changes 3 times), and which table was the quaintly named 'monk table'.
More to come.
Vendors:
The location: Lotos Club.
I'll start out with the hall. This is absolutely the most amazing part of the wedding, especially since I had both the ceremony and the reception there. It's thanks to them that I could put together the wedding in under half a year without much stress.
Before looking at the Lotos Club we looked at a few other places in Manhattan -- The Asia Society, the Kitano Hotel, but all of them turned out not ideal. We wanted a place that'll have only one event at a time, a nice ballroom, and able to have the ceremony at the same place. Also the food has to be good, since the Chinese usually do not like anything except a Chinese banquet. I heard about the Lotos Club not from any of the popular wedding sites, but on the chowhound.com website, where it was mentioned a couple times for the food. This was very impressive, since the chowhound was a board full of foodies who turn their nose up at wedding food in general. So I went to take a look, and decided on it right then and there. And it's absolutely the best decision I ever made.
First of all, the architecture is amazing -- I ended up doing very simple flowers and a couple candles, since the ballroom and the library are already so beautiful. I had my ceremony in the library in front of the fire place, and then did the first dance in the ballroom across the hall.
The food is as good as everyone said -- we choose to have the food stations instead of a sit down dinner, and picked Asian fusion dishes as well as two Italian stations, and all the guests raved about it, including the relatives from China, which must be a first. The dessert was particularly good, I gobbled down two plates of the mini tarts, and I usually don't even like sweets. I read all the warnings about brides not eating at their own wedding, and managed to taste everything. My only regret is that my parent and husband didn't read the post, and they hardly ate anything. And I forgot to ask them to put some food away in a box for us. ;_;
The staff were so professional and helpful. Anna, the dining cooridator, was amazing. She doubled confirmed all the vendors and checked all the details with me, so everything went off without a hitch during the wedding day. Basically, most of the work for the wedding was done by the club, and all I did was find the other vendors and chat a little with the florist and the DJ.
I just can't say enough good things about this place. I can't imagine a better place for a small wedding. It's <$200pp, which is an amazing bargain for Manhattan.
Florist: Shields & Warrendorf.
Since Lotos club was so beautiful, I thought I could get away with spending very little on flowers. Of course I didn't account for how much 'very little' would cost in Manhattan. I first went with the house florist of the Lotos Club, who quoted me something like three times what I wanted to spend.
Manhattan sticker shock aside, Shields did an amazing job -- we had red and saffron floating candles on the tables, and some large red/orange arrangments for the stations. Saffron for my husband, who's Indian, and red for the Chinese side of the family. It was gorgeous, and they're definitely a very professional shop that knew what they were doing. Everything was detailed and listed in the contract, and everything was delivered and arranged well ahead. All of Martha's advice about the flower arrangments were spot on, and she even made beautiful flowers for me to wear in my hair.
But if I were doing this again I would probably have gone with the house florist, Tom Anderson, who's a very elegant chap, and had absolutely amazing taste. He was willing to adjust the price a little, and with the various add ons eventually Shields came out to be about the same price. But it would have prevented a couple confusions between the Lotos club and the florist, such as how many cocktail table we had ( the number changes 3 times), and which table was the quaintly named 'monk table'.
More to come.
