Okay, no. I’m not going to get married but I have a lot of friends who are and are really having a big headache as to where to hold their wedding dinners.

I first heard of this (relatively) new hotel Park Royal on Pickering some time last year while helping a dear friend source for a wedding venue but I didn’t think or know much about it till this year when my very amazing cousin and her fiance held their dinner banquet there.

Some wedding photos at my cousin’s wedding! 🙂

If you are ever reading this Cheryl and Barnabas, I just want to say that the love you share is absolutely inspiring and humbling. 🙂 May God continue to bless and guide both of you in every step you take! <3 <3

Anyway, back to the topic-

I REALLY HIGHLY RECOMMEND THE PLACE because the menu is just awesome.

I was a little taken aback when the dinner started and there was no sharksfin soup in sight. Often wedding dinners are very awkward for me because I went on a learning journey to Sentosa when I was in Secondary 2 and my bunch of giggly girlfriends and I signed a pledge to never eat sharksfin ever again after learning about how they are killed and on the brink of extinction. So for the past 11 years, I have sat awkwardly through the second course of every chinese wedding banquet while relatives and (new) friends jibe and question my choices. I have sat through countless of people slurping up their soup with zest trying to entice me back to having a bowl or saying things like “you eat chicken what. why you eat chicken, don’t eat shark’s fin? Why? Is the chicken less worthy than the shark?”

But more often than not, I am thankful for curious questions because they give me the opportunity to spread the message of cruel finning. It is not that I don’t respect the chicken as much as I do the sharks. I think animal cruelty is all cruelty and to be honest, I’ve been trying to cut down on my consumption of meat because of it. What I really oppose about finning is that when sharks are killed for their fins, not the entire shark is killed. Most finners actually go after the shark, slice off their fins, and leave them bleeding in the water because they have no use for the rest of the body parts. As such, the mutilated sharks are left bleeding in the water where other sharks/ animals pick up their blood scent and attack the halpless creatures. I figure if you want to take down the shark, you eat every single part and make its death worthwhile man.

Secondly, the reason people eat sharks is absurd. We were given a bowl of soup to taste during the learning journey programme and the soup had NO sharks fin inside and yet it tasted EXACTLY like sharksfin soup. The i/c told us gravely that the flavour we love in the soup comes from chicken stock and not the sharksfin at all which is pure cartilage and actually has no taste. It neither absorbs the soup flavours nor add anything to it. Also, sharksfin soup is served as a matter of prestige at wedding dinners. (hello, old school) So the bottom line is, this magnificent beast of the ocean was cruelly finned of 5% of it’s body and left to die at the claws of other sea creatures so you could have a piece of tasteless cartilage in your soup to show off your “wealth” to your relatives.

To my delight of course, Gordon Ramsay agrees as well that sharksfin has no taste.

So coming back off the tangent, I was delighted to find that the wedding I attended at Park Royal had no sharksfin at all. And not just that, the food all tasted different as well to my (well trained, haha) tastebuds. A bit of research when I reached home and I found out that ParkRoyal on Pickering is actually a ‘green’ hotel! This means that it’s ballrooms are flushed with abundant natural light with the usage of elegant glass walls. Their commitment to eco-friendliness also means that their set menus for their chinese weddings are all free from shark’s fin and other endangered produce! And, and, and, they offer a 9 course ORGANIC chinese wedding set menu featuring sustainably source ingredients. 

How great is that?!

Just some pictures taken off their website… apparently they won many environmental sustainability awards as well.

Back to the food, they have many options of solemnisation, weekday lunch/ dinner and weekend lunch/ dinner. Here’s a sample of their weekend dinner menu and package:

I wish I took actual pictures of the food but I was too busy eating. It was good!

So if you are planning a wedding or helping someone plan or know someone who is sourcing for a venue, help share and suggest a place like this! 🙂 I am neither paid nor sponsored to write this but I really do think organizations and people who make efforts in environmental sustainability and conscious eating should be recognized, applauded and supported whenever possible!

Help save the earth and the sharks! Support places that do as well! You never know how your food dollar might change the world! 🙂

ParkRoyal on Pickering
Wedding Info Website: Here
Address: 3 Upper Pickering St, 058289
Phone:  6809 8888