Wedding Venues

When we started thinking about wedding venues (usually the first thing that any couple would tick off their checklist), we had to first think about the general concept of the wedding, as the venues determined, to an extent, the flow of the programme, the atmosphere, the number of guests, and to some, it was telling of their personality as a couple. Eg. A wedding at Shangri-La/ Capella/ some destination wedding was going to portray a different image from a wedding in an unassuming restaurant, or a hipster cafe (which increasingly, people are doing).

Being rather open to new ideas, though still bounded by our conventional roots, we explored many different ways of doing the wedding, while still bearing in mind things like budget, feasibility and amount of effort needed. At that point, we had no idea how many guests we wanted to invite, but as we considered each option and its capacity, we started to understand our preferences. Han Yang didn't want a wedding that was too hipster. I was open but preferred something classier, to which he agreed.

Just to name a few ideas we played around with:

1) Wedding (Matrimony) at church with all guests, followed by lunch banquet with family/close friends nearby

Pros: Banquet lunch would be cheaper than dinner 

Cons: Too rushed, no time to hang out with rest of the friends, would have to find a church and a lunch venue close to each other, and that made the cut with our requirements and availability. Most lunch venues would have been restaurants, and those were not good places for a wedding programme

2) Wedding at a fancy non-church location (Eg. Old parliament house), followed by lunch at the premises

Pros: The Old Parliament House was the perfect place as a classy venue. Venue rental cost would be manageable. Sit down Chinese lunch could be catered for in their rooms. 

Cons: Catering could only be done with their preferred partners, and it was pretty expensive. Would have to hold lunch in multiple rooms and this was not ideal for programme again. Venue rental did not come with sound system, so after adding up all these frills cost would have been high

3) Wedding at a fancy non-church location (Eg. Old parliament house, SAM) in the morning, followed by dinner at Han Yang's house, which probably could contain max 80 people at the front porch

Pros: Similar to above. To add on, it would be such a cosy affair to have family and close friends over at HY's house. Not only that, it would be an alfresco wedding, and that would have been amazing. We could have all the time in the world to decorate the place, and we could have fun activities as well. Cost would have been lower compared to other options as there was no venue rental.

Cons: It might rain, and being risk adverse, that would mean tent-age, which defeated the whole purpose of an alfresco event. Capacity was also not enough for family and close friends.

4) Wedding at a fancy non-church location, no lunch/dinner

Pros: Low cost, frills free. This was an attractive option. Not only that, we got the rest of the day to ourselves

After much discussion, we decided to shelf this idea, as HY felt there was something missing without a banquet.

5) Wedding at church, Dinner banquet

Pros: Time to prepare for dinner and rest in between events

Cons: Likely to incur higher cost as wedding would have to be done on Sat because of church venue availability, and Sat dinners are most expensive 

We decided to go ahead with no. 5 mostly because it gave us the luxury of time, and we preferred the ambiance at dinner.

Next, we explored venues. TheWeddingScoop.com was my best friend. I lost count of the number of times i trawled through that site till the wee hours of the morning, obsessively shortlisting venues that were suitable.

wedever.co/ Toa Payoh Methodist Church

mindytan.com/ St. George's Church

For churches, I wanted a place that had pews, and looked simple but presentable. There were a few really nice places, like Toa Payoh Methodist Church, St George's Church, but those required membership, or only opened up to non-members a few months before.

Thomson Road Baptist Church

I decided to go with Thomson Road Baptist Church, since I had seen photos of it, and it was presentable. If I were pickier I would have continued looking for the perfect place (frosted glass, traditional looking, nicer reception area, etc) , but the hygiene factors were pretty much fulfilled (pews, neat, could seat up to 500 and gave us that flexibility of expanding guest list, easily accessible). Han Yang and I didn't recce the location because he had been there several times for weddings, and I was fine with looking at photos.

As for dinner venues, that took a little more time, plenty of emails exchanged, a comprehensive excel sheet and some recce sessions. We wanted a Chinese dinner (for tradition and for the parents), but with most restaurants not able to accommodate a stage, we were left with the hotels. And it was a headache picking hotels. I lost count of the number of blogs/ wedding sites i visited just to shortlist a few nice venues. Tacky decor, low ceilings and gaudy colours/lights were a no-no. At that point we decided on a 20 tables or less, and it was impossible to find a place with high ceilings that accommodated that capacity. Most places specified a minimum number of 25 tables for a ballroom. Anywhere less, they offered the option of combining 3 partitioned seminar rooms, which made the layout long and awkward. There were 2 nice venues which offered smaller capacity:

operationwoohoo.wordpress.com/ Four Seasons (Crescent Ballroom, up to 15 tables)

Though they could really afford to tone back on the stage decor, this was probably the only hotel in Singapore to have a ballroom with small capacity. However, HY's brother had already held his wedding here in 2015.

fullertonhotels.com/ Fullerton (The Straits Room, up to 13 tables)

Colonial, and total white - extremely gorgeous, but also costly.

I wasn't too happy about the high cost of getting married in a pretty ballroom. We were also undecided about the number of guests we wanted to invite. Though we wanted a cosy affair, we were also aware how guest lists had the propensity to expand at the last minute.

pinterest.com/ SICC Grand Ballroom

Singapore Island Country Club was one of the options we considered, since we had family who had membership. The cost was really reasonable from their packages online. However they also stated a min. 35 tables for their ballroom. We decided to email them just in case they could accommodate a smaller capacity. Surprisingly, they did! Their min. tables was just 10, and upon meeting them, they said min 10 meant just 2 parts out of 3 of the ballroom would be partitioned for our event. The ballroom was also really nice (high ceilings, yes!), with the spacious reception area overlooking the golf course. Also, we had the option to decide the capacity nearer to the date (anywhere from 10 tables to over 35 tables), and that bought us lots of time for that decision. Not only that, SICC was also less pushy on closing a sale with us, extremely flexible with the payment terms, and also extremely helpful. We were sold. Later we came to appreciate the flexibility of table capacity because we ended up with 36 tables. Haha, don't ask me how that happened.

On 3rd Sep 2015, we set the date for the wedding! We ruled out the earlier months of 2016 (need time for Han Yang to propose and to plan wedding), and also the 7th month (August).

3rd Sep 2016 - It was exactly a year from then ;)

As for Malaysia, there really weren't many options! Since we were holding it in Malacca, the heritage town, I didn't really fancy hotels, especially since we had only 10 tables. Since we were left with restaurants, it didn't take me long to chance upon Beizhan restaurant:

taychinwhei.com

Pretty, white coloniel shophouse setting with amazing Chinese food. Later on, when my mum came back excitedly telling me she had an idea of which restaurant that we could hold it at, it was the same restaurant! We set it on the 10th Sep, a week after the celebrations in Singapore.

//Heaved a sigh of relief after a long journey of research