DINNER WAS LATE
MUSIC DIED
GLASSES NOT REFILLED
Couple see red over nightmare hotel wedding
They withheld payment from the hotel, which stopped nine guests, who paid for rooms, from leaving
By Chong Chee Kin
IT TURNED out to be the wedding from hell.
When engineer Chim Voon Wai and his wife Susan Irawan tied the knot on Oct 4 at the Carlton Hotel, the dinner was more than an hour late.
Did hotel do enough to make up for its bad service?
Nobody opened the ballroom doors for the couple, the music died even before they made their entrance, the food was bad, and no one filled the guests' glasses during the toast.
The couple refused to pay for the 16 tables, and the hotel stopped nine of their guests, who had already paid for their rooms, from leaving.
Madam Susan Irawan, 27. She and husband Chim Voon Wai, 29, said they withheld payment from the hotel because they wanted an explanation for the poor service. -- STEVEN LEE
Madam Irawan, 27, a bank officer, said: 'It was supposed to be the happiest day of my life, but it was ruined by the hotel.'
Mr Chim, 29, ended up having to apologise to the guests for putting up with the bad service.
As if that was not enough, their guests from London, Australia and China, who had stayed in the hotel for the banquet, were stopped from leaving the next day.
They were not allowed to go until the police were called in to mediate between the couple and the hotel.
'I withheld payment for the banquet because I wanted the management to meet me and explain why the service was so bad,' Mr Chim said.
Lawyers say the hotel had no right to stop the guests from leaving, especially when they had already paid up.
One of them, Mr David Ng, 35, said: 'If the hosts had not paid the bill for the banquet, it was an issue between the hotel and them. The management should not have dragged the guests into it.'
The Singapore Hotel Association declined to comment on the incident. But the Consumers Association of Singapore said it smacked of bad management.
Its executive director, Mr Seah Seng Choon, said: 'The hotel could go through legal channels to get the money. But they have no right to confine the guests.'
A spokesman for the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) said it had not received any formal complaint from the guests or the hotel.
'Generally, any form of bad service to guests... will tarnish the reputation of the country and will not be condoned by the STB,' she said.
In response to queries from The Sunday Times, a Carlton Hotel spokesman said there had been no delay to the start of the wedding banquet.
Explaining the silence during the wedding march, he said: 'The sound system was in perfect working order at 6.30 pm... A lady, believed to be a relative of the couple, took control of the remote control and the mute button was accidentally switched on.'
However, it did not respond to the couple's complaint that the glasses were not refilled for the toast.
Still, the hotel management admitted that 'better coordination between its operations staff and the wedding couple's coordinator could have avoided the incident'. It has apologised to the couple in a letter for the embarrassment caused.
As for preventing the guests from leaving, the spokesman acknowledged that 'the situation could have been handled with more tact'.
'To settle the issue amicably, the hotel management has met the wedding couple to reach an appropriate settlement,' he said.
The hotel has offered to write off the costs of three tables.
Mr Chim and his wife are not making any decision on the settlement until they return from their honeymoon.
