Only two weeks late, but here they are finally. The photos from our company awards dinner. Since there are so many photos, I decided to make collages of some of the good ones. It starts off with the venue.  Well, doh, yes it is at the Madinat Arena; at Fort Island to be precise.

The venue was under the stars and within perfect view of the Burj Al Arab. It was a cool night, with threats of rain but Mother Nature gave us a break. The 18 tables we had were all comfortably scattered around the main area of the fort with a bar to one side, the buffet tables at the back, a projection screen up in front along with a table where the awards were displayed. Oh and a dance floor up on the lounge area!


It was not supposed to be a black-tie event but a few people suggested it would be better if it were. Bernie invested in a suit a couple of years ago so I had no problem agreeing to the change in dress code. I had this maroon dress from before that had a flimsy rectangular stole which would not warm me up at all so I decided to re-dye my Seraphim Shawl, yes that’s the one I teased about a few posts ago, to match the dress. It kept me warm all night!

Standing next to Juvy made me look every bit the frumpy housewife and mother that I am!  All the girls in admin made a great effort to dress up for the evening which was awesome.  The group photo was not very successful as there was too many of us but it was great trying to get them into some sort of order.

Here are some of the lovely people that evening, clockwise from top left: dashing men (Scott, Neil and Carl), gorgeous ladies (Katy G, Sadie and Katy J), lovely people (Tina and James, they’re not a couple btw) and our host for the evening, Tim.  There were 3 silent judges walking around the cocktail reception eyeing all the guests who voted on best dressed individuals and couples of the evening.  It was fun, but nerve-wracking because everyone cleaned up well and it was so difficult to make a decision.

Eventually, the judges selected Sally as Best Dressed Lady, Sam the Driverman as Most Dashing Gentleman and Katy and Christophe as the Couple of the Night. Sean was awarded Cock of the Year for putting on a pair of hot pink boxers at our Secret Santa last December not realizing his client whom he was meeting shortly arrived in our office and witnessed him being all silly! It’s all good fun.

There were plenty of lovely couples that evening and here are just four of them. Mr and Mrs Jones looking pretty together – would you believe this tiny woman has 3 kids? Juvy and her fiance Giovanni were the star couple of the evening. Shony and his date Jancy, whom I was not introduced to now that I think back on it. Hmmm. And Edelyn and husband Jonel looking cute as buttons together!

In case you don’t know, I work in financial services (come back here – I won’t sell you any pension plans, promise!), and that evening we recognized the company’s top business writers and earners. Clockwise from top left shows Abi who was awarded Admin Star of the Year, Jamil was the Most Improved Wealth Manager of 2010 and who was not present as he was travelling, the top 3 Business Development Managers and then the Wealth Managers (or Financial Advisors as others call them).  The awards ceremony went on almost without a hitch – the projector’s remote clicker kept getting blocked and Tim was skipping through the slides a bit too fast so I had to take over and click while he speaks.  Can’t blame him since he only had 5 minutes to review the slides before we started.

And finally a quick glance around some of the tables. Table #1 is where the boss sits along with special guests of the evening and their spouses, or the Board Housewives as Tim calls them. The admin team were split into 3 tables, at least, that just shows you how much the company has grown in the last 3 to 4 years. The boys all scrubbed up well and hopefully had a great time.  The MENA team rounded things up nicely – glad to see preggy Nancy enjoying the evening as well.

And that’s all folks! All the photos are courtesy of Major Miles and Rael.