The search for the wedding banquet venue (Part 3)

The weekend visit to Park Royal on Beach Road and Holiday Inn Atrium did not turn out well. My family was not really impressed by the hotels. They all felt that the pillars in Park Royal's ballroom were too big and obstructive. The march-in route was also too short. As for Holiday Inn Atrium, they felt that the hotel was a bit old. But what really disappointed us was the carpark. We could not believe it when we realised that the hotel was still using the outdated carpark ticketing system. We were staring at the bulky, old-fashioned, yellow and black ticket machine as it churned out the exit ticket and giggling at the same time. We could almost imagine our guest to be as surprised as we were on the wedding night. It's a "face" problem. Since this would be our BIG DAY, we wanted every little bit of it to be perfect (as much as possible).

So ... we lost our first choice venues and were back to square one ... We had no choice but to continue searching again.

A Post-Work Sojourn to the not so 'new' York Hotel
On one of the weekdays after our one-week leave, I was surfing the internet and came across an unfamiliar York Hotel. We decided to visit the hotel and enquire further on their wedding package.

It was a pleasant surprise. The interior of the hotel looked new and classy. The ballroom looked grand and elegant too. The prices were within our budget and the biggest ballroom can accomodate a maximum of 38/40 tables (but we were strongly advised not to have that many tables due to space constraint).

The hotel lobby

The ballroom

The lift lobby at the ballroom area

In the event that we were going to have 36 and more tables, it would be an open-concept ballroom whereby there would be no doors (i.e. you would see the tables once the elevator door opened). But the coordinator assured that they would arrange for some nice foldable partitions to carve out a reception area.

The ballroom and the two projection screens

Bob and I were pretty satisfied with this "find". My family also went to view the hotel on one of the weekday evening. We were expecting them to be very pleased with this hotel .... but .... they were pretty neutral ... no strong likes or dislikes. I only had one conclusion from this experience. Either Bob and I were too easily pleased or my family was a bunch of hard-to-pleased people.

Sonia