How to choose right marriage hall / venue for your wedding reception?
Elite Caterers has prepared the comparison chart for wedding venues (Banquet hall / wedding hall) for your ready reference, here is the link to it, simply download and enter the details of your shortlisted / top 5 wedding venues for comparison.
In general, the process to finalizing the wedding venue or Marriage Hall (popularly called as Shadi khana in Hyderabad) is:
- Determine your budget for the venue
- Figure-out the number of guests
- Choose feasible location of the wedding venue
- Decide on the possible dates for your wedding
- Do a research on the venues in your desired locality
- Shortlist few venues
- Visit each one of them
- Do an in-depth analysis
- Jot down all the points on what’s included and what’s not
- Compare all the venues, and rank each of them based on your requirements
- Choose the best one with highest ranking in your list
Also read – “Best Valima Dinner Menu” and “How the Catering Process works?“
Now, let’s discuss all these parameters in detail and why these parameters are important in deciding the venue.
1. Budget:
The prime component of any event is Budget – everything is totally dependent on how much you can spend on a particular element. Hence it is very important to determine how much of your total budget you can allocate for the wedding venue. This will greatly help you save time on choosing the venues especially when the cost of marriage Halls in Hyderabad vary hugely from 1L to 5L or even more with moderate facilities. So setting-up your budget will not distract you to seeing the venues which are out of your budget.
When it comes to Catering Hyderabad City, you can find some of the best food caterers in Hyderabad like Elite Caterers who have been offering best catering services for Weddings for years.
Wedding Reception Catered by Elite Caterers @ Red Rose Palace Hyderabad
2. Number of Guests:
Cost of the marriage function hall is directly proportional to its seating capacity, so if you come-up with your expected guests count, this will help you in choosing the marriage hall. Even before budgeting of the venue, you need to decide on the number of guests you’re expecting will attend your wedding. First decide on the guests count at your end then enquire your spouse how many guests’ they’re going to invite and how many of them are expected at the event. Consider 10% extra to avoid overcrowding of the marriage hall.
You should also ask the management what the optimal occupancy of the marriage hall is, because with the guests attending the event are exactly as the seating capacity – it may look a bit over-crowded, hence asking for optimal occupancy of the hall is good.
3. Venue Location:
Another important parameter in choosing the venue is the location – like is it with-in city @ prime location easily accessible from all 4 sides of the city. You have to consider this aspect not just for you but also the convenience of your guests. Now, we know it’s your wedding day and it is all about you, Keep yourself in your invitees shoes and ask how are they going to commute from their dwellings to the venue you’ve choose.
Example: most of your guests are with-in city while you have decided to host your wedding at a venue far away from the city. Considering the late night weddings of Hyderabad will all the guests you’ve invited come from one corner of the city to the other? – If most of them won’t then the marriage function hall will be mostly empty and good amount of food will be left-over. And the money you paid to the caterer and the marriage hall for xyx seating capacity will go waste. So when deciding on the marriage hall / venue, keep all these points in mind.
Valima Catering by Elite Caterers @ Khaja Mansion Hyderabad
4. Wedding Season:
Not just the date (any day of the week) but season of the year also determines the cost of your wedding venue. Cost of the venue is higher on week end days due to high demand than on the week days. Likewise, if you are planning to host your wedding in wedding season, not only will it highly impact your venue budget but also be heavier on your overall wedding cost. Hence if you don’t mind you can marry in off-season.
It is also important to know “when exactly to book the wedding venu?”, marriage halls are booked based on “first cum first serve”, If the wedding hall you’ve chosen is most popular in town, book it well in advance, so no one else will book it on your D-day. Some even consider booking 1 year in advance so that they don’t miss on their dream venue.
5. Research:
When you have decided on the area (location) where you are planning to host your wedding reception, start a quick research on all the venues available in and around that area. Best way is head straight to google. From the list of venues shortlist some based on the google rating. Visit the websites of these venues (if there is no website, google their name to gather information from other platforms), do the same exercise for big websites related to wedding like wedmegood, weddingwire, weddingz.in etc.
6. Site Visit (Venue):
Based on your rough analysis shortlist few marriage halls. Contact the management inquire about venue specifics. Fix up meeting with them. Prepare a checklist and take the list along with you and ask all the points one by one. Here is a handy checklist for your reference, you can download it and take the same or modify it per your requirement and fill the details for each venue side by side for comparison.
Also, try to visit the venue when there is a wedding happening so you can see the venue all dressed up and get the idea on how this venue is going to look on your wedding day
Wedding Ceremony @ Red Rose Palace
7. Comparison:
Now based on the input you received from all the venues, filter-out and retain a handful we recommends 3 to max 5 venues. Once you have this list of potential venues, do a detailed comparison with your requirements and what wedding hall / venue is offering, this will ensure you are comparing like for like prices.
Layout:
If the venue spacious enough to accommodate the facilities kitchen, live station cooking, separate dining hall for gents & ladies, seating area (separate for Ladies & Gents) etc.
Venue Restrictions:
Are there any limitations like restricted cooking, close out timings ie, if you will need to pay for extra hours etc.
Facility Extras:
If the marriage hall has a set theme just ensure the décor is to your liking – (you can do a quick visualization of the D-day and check you love it all). Beyond the decor, ask specifically about the AC charges if it is an AC marriage hall because most of the marriage halls in Hyderabad charges per hour for the AC, and some marriage halls despite taking the payment for AC in full, sparely keep the AC on – you can come to know about this from reviews in the google by the customers. Some halls do not have AC, but have coolers and some don’t even have the coolers but only Fans, so make sure everything is clear.
Catering:
Sufficient space for the kitchen so that the caterer can carry out their activities conveniently and if live cooking stations can be arranged at the venue etc. Additionally confirm from the management serving staff, dining essentials (ensure the cutlery they’re providing is worth what you are paying for the venue) and other reception ceremony essentials is being provided by the marriage hall. Almost all these items such as tables, chairs, linen, crockery are all included in the venue rate some marriage halls do charge additional fees. So clarify these points.
And lastly, be clear on the price breakdown and ask if there are any hidden charges, and if the venue has a contract then ask for time to revert and sign, go home read all the points clearly including the cancellation policy, ensure the terms and conditions are clear. Once satisfied come back and sign. If they are pushing to sign then and there, take your time to carefully go thru the contract page by page and line by line, after all it’s always good to be safe than sorry 😉
Get on call with us to discuss the best catering service for your wedding reception.
Hi . What an interesting blog. I have a granddaughter who is looking at getting married shortly. She was brought up by myself and my wife and is like our own child. Therefore I will be paying for all the wedding costs. She is a wonderful person who has always looked after us when we needed it so now I want to give her the best I can. Your article on choosing a wedding venue and all the listed things we need to think of will save us a lot of time and effort. I will get my granddaughter to come back to this site and we will go over all of the pointers you have given us, such as the budget, size of venue etc., Thank you for providing us with this information. Jim
Hey Jim,
Glad that our post is helpful to you, and yes by following these points you’ll save lot of time finalizing the menu and also will be able to find an excellent venue for your grand-daughter. I must say she is very lucky to have doting grandparents like both of you. Sending love and great wishes for her.
Thanks for stopping by.
Excellent article on How to choose wedding venue, I’ve really been helped through your write-up, I give kudos to your writing prowess.You have mentioned the core consideration in choosing a venue of a wedding or an event;knowing someone’s budget is very crucial because you might love to have your wedding in a location and the financial capacity is not there,which means to really to the order at which you arranged it was awesome, affordability is important and the rest point are highly need to checked, this post is helpful to me,its gives me an insight to prepare better for any occasion,thank you for sharing.
great blog