Kelly Chen weds long-time love in lavish ceremony worthy of a Canto-pop dream
Canto-pop star Kelly Chen Wai-lam tied the knot yesterday with her long-time boyfriend, businessman Alex Lau Kin-ho, at an extravagant multimillion-dollar wedding yesterday at the InterContinental hotel.
The singer-actress and her entourage, including manager Claudie Chung Chun and 10 bridesmaids, arrived at the Tsim Sha Tsui hotel in Salisbury Road at about 1pm, where more than 200 members of the local and overseas media, a number of die-hard fans and hotel guests waited.
At about 3.30pm, the groom and bride, wearing 10-carat diamond earrings and a six-carat wedding ring given by Mr Lau, 35, posed at the ballroom staircase for a press photo call.
Chen, 36, was wearing an elegant wedding dress worth hundreds of thousands of dollars designed by long-time friend and award-winning art director Yee Chung-man. The off-white dress had a 10-metre train decorated with the auspicious number of 999 flowers. It was matched by a 15-metre veil.
Hotel guests Elaine Lovit, 60, and her husband Louis, 70, from Los Angeles, waited for the star's appearance after learning of the wedding from hotel security staff. Mrs Lovit said Chen looked very beautiful, and that she would look up her music.
Chen also prepared a red gown for the banquet and another wedding dress by Karl Lagerfeld.
After the cake-cutting ceremony, Chen said she was not nervous and that she had skipped the hen's night so she could go to bed early to be in good shape for her big day yesterday. 'But Alex couldn't sleep. I thought I would be moved to tears but I wasn't because I was in a rush all day. I was too busy to shed a tear. I'm still not used to being called Mrs Lau.'
She said Mr Lau played games, including singing rap songs and performing pole dances, and gave HK$99,900 in lai see to the bridesmaids before meeting her at the hotel. But Mr Lau was too shy to speak to the press.
The couple officially wed at 8pm before hundreds of relatives and friends at 52 tables in the ballroom, decorated with champagne and purple carpet by a friend of Mr Lau's from the Netherlands. The room was filled with flowers from the Netherlands, South America and Taiwan.
Ms Chung said Mr Lau paid for the wedding and that the banquet alone cost about HK$3 million - nearly 13 times more than the spending of an average couple, according to an ESD Life survey released yesterday.
Chen's manager said the couple also hired a ballroom with 12 tables to entertain the media with a buffet, which cost HK$888 a head, because the media had been very kind to Chen and wanted to thank them.
