FINALLY we have a reception venue and therefore a date!
The big day will be Saturday 12th April 2008 and the venue we have chosen is north of the river (not saying any more than that in case we get gatecrashers).
It's a big room and we can decorate it ourselves and have our own caterers.
I'm very glad the reception venue quest is over. I think Duncan's more relieved than me. Just about every time we spoke, I'd tell him my latest plan of action, combing Perth's suburbs for the right place. And notice I said right place, not perfect place. It just had to meet the following criteria:
- Available on our desired date
- Reasonable cost
- Allows us to have our own caterers
- Seats 180-200 people comfortably
We looked at so many places it's not funny. Big expensive specialised reception/function centres were immediately ruled out purely on cost. A lot of other places we ruled out just by looking at their websites. And a lot of other places didn't have websites so we had to call them. Some weren't answering their phones so we left messages but our calls weren't returned (how rude). A lot of the yacht clubs, surf lifesaving clubs and golf clubs required you to become a member or were already booked. There was no way I was paying a membership fee to go yachting with random men....no thanks! ;)
We also found that a lot of the bowling clubs wouldn't let us have the venue all to ourselves. They were going to let the regular members into the club while the reception was on and they would have to keep coming into our area to use the toilets. Other places insisted that we could pack more people into the place even though it was obviously too small. Hmmm yeah our guests would love that...sitting on each other's knees and being packed in like sheep on a truck!
Other places sounded reasonable until they mentioned that we could only have access to the place a couple of hours before the reception was due to start. How on earth we were meant to decorate and set up when we and all our guests would be getting ready for the wedding, I don't know. When I mentioned that we would need the room from Friday morning onwards to decorate, they slapped a big hourly fee on top of that. I was only talking to them on the phone but I could see the dollar signs flashing in their eyes.
The place we decided on comfortably seats 300 people, has a dance floor and even a stage. Dance floor was non negotiable ;) And we get it from Friday morning to the early hours of Sunday morning for a flat fee.
If you're getting married, then maybe you might learn from our experience. Finding a reception venue was not the easy process we thought it'd be. But I'm glad it's done :)
More soon.......
2 comments:
YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BELIEVE THIS!!! We were married on the 12th April 1996 so your wedding day will be our 12th anniversary!!!! Golly Gosh!
Cool! My parents' anniversary is the 13th. They got married in 1974 so they would have been married almost exactly 34 years before us.
So many people get married in April...it's usually such a nice month though :)
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