Wedding - Choose Your Venue

Hello world! how's your day today? I was back to my parents's place for almost whole day today. It was a relaxing day, as the old folks say "home sweet home". Honestly I have zillion things to blog and on top of that, catching up on those wedding stuffs I had left for some time.

Back to our wedding preparation stuff, this post should be dedicated to exclusively "Choosing your perfect venue". The first thing all couples should do, IMHO, once they decided that the game is on is SET A DATE! Alot of stuff stay linked to this date. It plays one of most important part in wedding planning.

Once couples get their date set, the next thing to do is to choose the wedding concept and venue.

It's game ON! Get a DATE!

For our case, things were slightly more depressed and tiring in comparison with other couples because we lived in different countries physically. Thus I had to visit and chose venue, mostly by myself. Sometimes I went alone, and sometimes I was accompanied by my siblings, mom, or friends. It was sad, stressful part of the game. However, all couples just have to go through it. So, hang on tight, bride/groom!

Firstly, determine the number of guests you are inviting and your budget. Once you get the estimation, this should scale down venue options quite a lot. I'd like to highlight to all brides-to-be out there for not choosing the venue before you make your initial draft of guest list. This may cause you to sacrifice either one, your friends (because you have limited number of seats) or your money (and haphazardly invite friends in order to fill the seats)

Second step, visit each shortlisted venue and at the same time visualise about concept of your dream wedding.  In example: if you always fancy high ceiling classic wedding, chandelier litted room, a function room wedding won't make your soiree as perfect as you always dream of.

European Dream Wedding I used to have

Next, do your research by visiting numbers of bride forums. (For myself & many Spore resident brides, Singaporebrides is a very famous and richly visited forum. For indonesia brides, you can always check out Weddingku). From there, bride can share their thought or read on the venue review by various people. However, do note that imposters are out there! So, use their review at your own risk.

After all the above step, you should have a handful venue list to choose. This should ease you (or not really) in choosing the venue. Take me as example.

For my party, I always know I want something small and intimate dinner. A dinner which consists of 90% of my close friends (and maybe some seat fillers...oops~). 100 was my rough estimates on people I'd like to invite. However, I did give a room for that number, just in case I missed out some friends. So, I called up hotel and gave them 100-120 as my estimate number of guests. From there, I scaled down quite a number down into less than 10 hotels.

I know I always want something classic for my party. Flowers, high ceilings, grand entrance are those elements I couldn't strike of my checklist. Knowing what I want, this again scaled down the number. Any hotel function room/ball room that has pillar was taken out from my list. Hotel that has dark long entrance was also not my choice.

So, in the end, the final saga was between Four Seasons Hotel - Crescent room, Raffles Hotel- Casuarina Suite, and Mandarin Oriental Hotel- Garden Suite. And I will give my honest opinion on those venues.

I must say, I love Four Seasons Hotel so much that I still fancy to hold I-dunno-what party there (maybe my son's wedding). The Wedding consultant was so nice x 100 that I felt so bad to say no to her (her name is Elaine). She was so helpful and tried so hard to conjure what I wanted. But, sad to admit that the room is way too big for my 100-120 number of guests. I did not want too much of extra room in my party because that would create the empty feeling. So after so much deliberation, gone were the options to hold it there. ** I do not have pictures for 4seasons :(

Second option was Raffles hotel. Everything was fine and smooth. It was almost perfect and I was so close to ink the contract until I attended the Raffles hotel bridal fair. I wouldn't kick a fuss about their service, the wedding consultant, venue or anything. But it just wasn't perfect. With a little minus on each features, I realised it wasn't my perfect venue anymore. Especially the food was in medium note and not fantastic to me.

Casuarina Suite I wanted to hold my reception.
I went when they are cleaning the room, the pictures don't do the justice here

After so many rounds of virtual voting process in my mind, the winner was Mandarin Oriental Hotel - Garden Suite for hosting one of most important night of my life. I was assured that food won't be something I should suspect. I was also pretty comfortable with a wedding consultant who is quite savvy and understanding my dream wedding (her name is Bethany). And most importantly, as the venue name do the talking, the room gives me a cosy garden affair I wanted. Sad to say that the ceiling was on the low and plain side.  The stage too was tad empty. But I was pretty confident to turn the place into fabulous party venue. Now on hindsight, I thought nobody would notice that once they sat down, except the bride.

Garden Suite Entrance

The hideous stage, IMHO

Table arrangement : Happiness

View from the other corner

So, I inked my sign on the contract and tore my wallet hard with the deposit to the hotel and that's it! I started whatever I wanted and needed with the wedding preparation