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These articles were prepared for the November

10,

2004 issue of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.

U.S. 1 Singles: Weddings at Katmandu

It’s like ‘The Newlywed Game’ meets ‘Survivor,’" says Joe Surdo,

marketing director at Katmandu, the popular club in Trenton. To draw

attention to its growing business as a wedding venue, the management

put their collective heads together and came up with "Holy Katrimony!

Wedding on the Waterfront," a live reality event featuring couples who

are seriously dating or engaged. The grand prize? An all-expense-paid

wedding reception at Katmandu worth $20,000 – gowns, tuxedos, rings,

honeymoon (a cruise or destination resort), food, drinks,

entertainment by the live band Big Romeo, as well as gifts and extras.

"Our banquet manager, Michael Langsner, had been to a mock wedding at

another club," says Surdo. That idea morphed into a full-blown reality

event scheduled for February and March, 2005. The club is taking

applications until Friday, November 19 (www.katmandutrenton.com),

which will be narrowed down to 25 couples who will be interviewed

through December and January to arrive at 15 finalist couples.

Then on Fridays, starting February 11, three to four couples each week

will compete live during the club’s happy hour from 6 to 9 p.m. The

happy hour provides a built-in audience, says Surdo, of the 800 to

1,000 happy campers who show up every Friday for the $5 buffet

featuring a mashed potato bar, stir fry station, wing bar, pasta

station, carving station with prime rib or roast beef, or ham, and

about a gizillion other hot, fried foods.

Sounds like a wedding? That’s the whole point, says Surdo, adding that

the reality event is designed to meet two goals – to make Katmandu’s

already-popular Friday happy hours even better and to draw in traffic

during the traditionally slow months of February and March.

Surdo says that management has already started screening the

approximately 40 applications to date. "We’re looking for a

personable, diverse group of people who are a little daring, who know

how to have fun. It doesn’t matter what their age is, as long as they

are over 21. One of the questions on the applications is ‘What’s the

wildest thing you’ve ever done?’ We’ve had everything from someone who

drove a tractor through her neighborhood to the typical daredevil

couple who have been skydiving, scuba diving, and mountain climbing to

the couple who said, ‘We’re just a happy couple and we do nothing.’"

Other questions: Is there anything special we should know about your

history as a couple? Describe your dream proposal. List three things

that you usually argue about. Describe your most unique talent.

The happy hour crowd will be active participants in the process, says

Surdo, with paper ballots and other interactive involvement from the

audience. Results and details of each week, as couples are eliminated,

will be posted on Katmandu’s website. "We’ll post pictures of the

couples and send out E-mails like, ‘don’t forget to come this week to

see Johnny and Sally.’"

The final winner will be chosen from five couples on Friday, March 25.

The winner’s wedding will also take place on a Friday night in summer,

2005 – and the public will be invited, in addition to the winners’ 100

to 150 guests. So we’re talking a potential of more than 1,000 wedding

guests. says Surdo: "This is perfect for the person who wants to be

the center of attention." Stay tuned.

– Jamie Saxon