| ae101 | 10-13-2010 11:32 PM |
McDonalds HK now provides a wedding service
did a quick search & nothing came up http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/SCMP...ng+Kong&s=News Quote:
Frenetic Hong Kong is about to supersize wedding planning - with fast-food McNuptials.
From January 1 selected McDonald's restaurants are to offer a wedding banquet service - you can even tie the knot with Ronald McDonald in attendance.
Instead of traditional - and pricey - banquet food, such as shark's fin soup or roasted pork skin, McDonald's Hong Kong will offer a fast-food banquet of French fries for starters, sundaes and milkshakes for dessert - and strictly soft drinks only for the wedding toasts - with the restaurant's piped music adding to the McRomance of the occasion.
And how could you want to miss the McDonald's wedding cake - specially made with apple pies, a burger of your choice, or even a Filet-o-Fish?
"Traditional weddings use cherries for the newlyweds to eat together and kiss. We will have French fries for them to kiss," Helen Cheung Yuen-ling, director of corporate communications & relations, at McDonald's Hong Kong, said.
The company estimates a wedding will cost a few thousand Hong Kong dollars, including food, a wedding cake and gifts - compared with the HK$200,000 to HK$400,000 for some hotel wedding banquets.
Cheung said Hong Kong was the first place in the world to launch a McDonald's wedding programme; McDonald's weddings elsewhere are carried out strictly on a one-off basis.
However, couples that wanted their wedding service in the restaurant would need to find the civil celebrant themselves, she said.
Couples can pre-select the menu, but Cheung said it was "better to order on the spot, like a kid's birthday party".
McDonald's also wants to stage couples' wedding anniversary parties.
The wedding parties will begin in three restaurants only - in Admiralty, Mei Foo and Smithfield in Kennedy Town - with more added if the response proves successful. But couples will not normally be able to book the whole restaurant for the exclusive use of their wedding, as the venues will still have to cater to regular customers.
McDonald's wedding plans were inspired after one couple successfully persuaded the fast-food chain to let them stage their wedding party in the Admiralty Centre's restaurant in March.
"Over the past two years, we've started receiving calls from people who want to have a wedding party in our restaurants. There are about 10 calls a month," Cheung said. "People said they'd dated here, or met here, and wanted to get married here ... We see this as a business chance."
Poverty researcher Chua Hoi-wai, of the Hong Kong Council of Social Service, said McDonald's wedding plans reflected a social phenomenon. "The social mobility and incomes of young Hongkongers have fallen," Chua said. "University graduates work for many years and still earn only HK$10,000 to HK$20,000. They have saved money for years and can't buy flats when they get married."
Cheung did not want to link McDonald's weddings to poverty. "[But] I can't rule out some come here because they have no money for a banquet".
Social worker Sze Lai-shan, of the Society for Community Organisation, said many people from poorer families she knew of did not have any banquet, and even a McDonald's wedding would be too expensive for them. "Some couples will just invite friends and close family for a meal with only one table in a cheap restaurant."
She added: "Should people give you yan ching [a traditional money gift from guests at wedding banquets]? You invite elderly relatives to a wedding to eat bread? It's best not to invite them."
| few pics in this site http://wedinator.icanhascheezburger....ces-apple-pie/
my dad just told me this in HK & i did a quick search, this just shows how bad the economy is |
