Hello to my already wedded friends - or anyone who has already booked their reception!

My FH and I are trying to decide whether to book our reception at a hotel restaurant - where they do it all for you, or hire a hall and do it ourselves by hiring tables, chairs etc etc.

Would love to hear what you did at your wedding and why, especially when it comes down to costs or if you have already booked your reception - also why you did what you did.

Thanx heaps!!!

We had our reception in the hall at the Church we regularly attend, which was also where we had our ceremony. I loved decorating it all myself (although it was a lot of work) and putting my own touches to it all. We did it that way for a few reasons. 1. it was cheap, the ladies from the Church catered it all for us and did a superb job. ($30 per head!) 2. it was convenient as that was also where we had our ceremony. 3. We're vegetarian and it's so hard getting really nice vegetarian food at restaurants

I think initially some people were like, oookay you're having your reception in the Church hall, but lots of people commented on the night that they almost could have forgotten where they were as it came up really nice

Oooh how exciting... I love picking out a reception venue, I thought it was one of the most fun parts of wedding planning for some reason!

We had out wedding at a Restaurant where everything was done for us. I sort of thought that with all that you have to organise for a wedding, that its one less thing to organise if everything was done for us in that sense? Our venue was amazing, the food was superb and the staff made sure every little thing was attended to Through our venue we were also able to get help with accomodation for the night of the wedding, DJ and other things if we wanted them such as cake and so on.

A friend of ours hired a hall and arranged caterers etc, they did a fantastic job and managed to transform a very basic, ordinary hall into something that looked amazing and almost magical Having said that they had a lot of family and friends helping out on the morning of the wedding, decorating and so on. They had to arrange caterers and staff, drapes for the ceiling, chair covers, ensure that there was cutlery, crockery, napkins and so on. All of these items then had to be accounted for at the end of the night. There was a lot of 'extra' things that they had to do as well, right down to making sure there was enough toilet paper provided!

Both types of venues can be great, but I do think that there is a lot less stress involved in going for a restaurant venue if you know what I mean?

Good Luck and happy planning!!

I can't comment because I didn't have either of those, we had our reception on board a yacht with a big buffet style dinner, the beauty of a destination wedding!

BUT I think it really depends on how much time you have to plan everything, and also how much stress you can deal with. On the day, instead of relying on the restaurant to coorindate everything, you'd have a whole heap of separate suppliers to keep track of to make sure they're on time, etc.

If you have the time, etc. then go for it - I am sure it'd save you a lot of money, but it just depends if the money is worth the extra work involved for you... good luck

For us we had ours at a resturant - we simply had my MIL do the table decorations the morning of the wedding - i had everything ready with instrucitons on how to set it each table with the place cards. I found it handy as i only had to worry about the table decorations and picking out from the buffet menu what to include for everyone.

I think there are pro's and cons to both. For hall hire you are either doing it all yourself with help from friends and family, or you hire people to set it up for you (like a wedding planner/ event co ordinator). To me the benefit of a hall is the potential to turn it into something personal, unique and amazing. CHeck out Style me Pretty to see some of the rilliant things people have done with barns, sheds halls etc.

However there is alot more pressure on you in that sense. A hall has potential for being cheaper, BUT this is not always the case. You would need to look at lots of different options to help you decide. For example:

Completely DIY - You would need to hire EVRYTHING. Mst halls DO include tables and chairs. However these are often old/ugly/plastic. So you would want to look into this. At the least, you would need to get tablecloths and chair covers for them to look good (unless you are lucky and they have nice chairs).

Other things you would need to hire/ buy:

Cutlery (unless you do finger food)
Serving platters
Bain Marie (if wanting hot food)
centrepieces
Glasses
jugs
napkins

Also, you need to consider who is prepping, heating and serving the food. WHo will set up the venue? Decorate? It is possible to get some halls the day before, or you may need to pay for an extra day. How will you handle the drinks??

An importantly WHO WILL CLEAN UP?

My Brother went for the DIY hire a surf lifeclub option. To be honest, my mother, sister and I pretty much did his wedding. This is what we did:

They decided on sunstantial cocktail food

We made all the food in the weeks before (we cooked and froze what we could) Some of the food we did were satay skewers, lamb kofta, meatballs, spring rolls, fried rice (brought from a chinese place) in containers, hokkien noodle, glazed chicken pieces, anitpasto plates, cheese plates, then wedding cake, profiterle tower (made by me) and choc fondue fruit platter for dessert. There was tonnes more but I can't remember!!

To make life easier we hired a woman my mum worked with who ran a catering company on the side. She agreed to basically prep & heat the food. We also paid daughters of a friend to be waitresses. I WOULD HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS. Although my sister and I still spent alot of the time helping out.

The cleaning was done by family once they left. To be honest this was hard, dressed in our wedding finest, tired after the wedding, but then had to pack away tables, chairs, rubbish, wash, pack away glasses, drinks, swep etc etc. We did it out of love, so felt it was worth it. (Mind you, in the years since, given what a B!tch my SIL has been i half wish we didn't. Neither of them have ever truley understood, or appreciated how hard we worked on their wedding, and how much we did.. but that's another story)

ok.. im gonna make this a two parter... next will be some suggestions to ease the burden... lol

Ok.. so some ideas to consider to help out.

Hire event palnner & caterer - This would 100% take away those other roles. However could possibly be exxy. I would shop around and see what you can get.

Hire caterer, set up by family/friends - This would be the minimum. You could do like us, provide the food, but look for someone to heat the food up/ serve. Or you can get them to do all the food. This would help out alot!! You would use family to set up. But if doing this consider how. WIll you get the hall the day before so the set up can be done then? Or will they be like us and have to bolt over between the ceremony and reception and set up tables, chairs and decos?

The benefit of the caterer is that they should also provide the plates, cutlery etc etc although check on this. Most likely you will still need to arrange tables, chairs etc.

Event planner to set up, family/friends to arrange food - This CAN work. But here I would say consider the food being cold buffet. Something easy that you can basically have made the day before, in the fridge. Then family/ friends just lay the food out before everyone arrives.

If you DO want some hot food, for our engagement we hired 2 pie/casserole warmers. hese are like massive benchtop pie ovens. We had all the hot food pre cooked, but popped them in there to heat up/ stay hot. This was GREAT because it held all the hot food, kept it hot, and we were able to just put it all out in one whack! But this still requires someone to be 'working' during your wedding.

The benefit of the event planner tho is that all the decoration/ set up etc should be all done/covered in their cost. Although you may still have to hire the plates etc etc

So... there are my tips!!! I hope they help!!!

Our original plan was a catered hall reception. But I didn't have the time to commit to making it spectacular myself, and by the time I paid someone to do all the food and cleaning up (with me still doing the setting up) it actually would have been more expensive than what we paid!

We got an amazing meal overlooking the Bay for $46, private function room in a hotel. Drinks were extra, but the catering at the hall would have been ~$50 a head.

THANK YOU so much ladies for your responses so far. They really do give me an insight into what is really involved with a reception...meaning LOTS OF WORK!

I'm the type of person that would rather just pay someone to do everything for me but I haven't had an expense such as wedding before so I'm still not sure.

Our engagment party was a hired hall and finger food and our parents basically did all the "work" for us. They were amazing and it was really hard for me not to do anything, they kept kicking me out of the kitchen! haha but on another note, I didn't eat all night coz I was too busy walking around and chatting, then dancing my feet off...so I know I definitely want a sit down meal for the wedding (no eating = extremely drunk Trezzybree!!!! ) and cleaning up the following day with an extreme hangover...never again!

Would still love to hear more stories about what others have done! thanx again! xx

Hi there,

I just booked my reception at a georges little boutique restaurant, I am having exclusive use and they have a min spend of $9000 . That may sound like a lot but unlike function rooms or halls that min spend is for me to use on everything. I found a lot of function centres give you a min spend then you find later that u pay for table clothes, napkins, theming and chairs so on.. I found trying to cater yourself is exhausting and ends up costing the same and a restaurant often has such a great theme or atmosphere already for you to build on.
Hope this helps

Agree with the above - we had ours at a Restaurant with a water view and it was gorgeous - it already had lovely decor and all we had to bring was some flowers and place cards.. another thing is that with a restaurant the food is usually of a higher standard than a function centre or cater as they have their reputation to uphold. ours cost around $9000 for everything however we also hired a marquee which cost an additional $1000 as we prefered to have an outdoor dancefloor. Also remember you may have to get council permission to serve booze at a hall and also have to hire waiters with their RSA licence. hiring linens and tables and chairs can also get quite costly.

I have included some pics below of how nice our restaurant turned out

For my first wedding we had the hall that we decorated (or I should say I decorated with the help of family and freinds)

this time around we are hiring a hotel venue and they are doing everything for us, we just drop the centrepieces off in the morning and they do the rest.

Thanx again ladies!

We ended up deciding to go hall hire coz we worked out we can save about $2,000+ this way. But of course the hall we wanted is now booked by someone else so we are still looking. A few halls around our area have bars and staff included in the price which is a bonus!

I'm having this same dilemma. I feel like getting a hall and a caterer would let us do more fun stuff with food, and be a bit different. The real question though is will it be cheaper?

Also, how to decorate? There are people you can pay, wedding stylists, but I feel like a caterer and a wedding stylist would blow out the budget. I would be ok with getting friends and family to decorate (I might be a bit busy in hair and make-up), but not packing up after a long day