South Asian Weddings

Friday or Sunday Weddings...Halls vs Hotels

So over the past couple of weeks we have been going to many different PA, NJ, and NY venues.  Here are my questions:

1.  Would the crowd be significantly smaller if we had a sunday wedding?  We are already planning on only inviting 200-225ppl

2.  Halls vs Hotels- we like the idea of people being able to go bakc to their room in between the wedding and reception and not having to drink and then drive.....but some the halls are stunning!!

Any thoughts... oh and by the way this is NYCchica..I had to switch my profile
Thanks!

Re: Friday or Sunday Weddings...Halls vs Hotels

  • kpwedkkkpwedkk member
    Combo Breaker First Comment
    edited December 2011
    Hi Mimosa -
    1 - From the guest's perspective, if you have out of town guests, depending on when your wedding is, during the day, or the reception, for out of town guests, you might put them in a bind... trying to catch their flight for getting to work on Monday.

    - we did a Saturday wedding (morning) and a Saturday reception (evening), and Sunday was reserved for hanging out at my parent's home, or sight seeing so that the guests could get the most out of a mini-vacation :)

    2 - Most people are accomodating when it comes to picking out a designated driver and figuring it out by themselves. 

    - We did a hall across the street from the temple where the wedding was.

    Hope that helps!

    "The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched, they must be felt with the heart." ~ Miss K ~
  • edited December 2011
    1.  Would the crowd be significantly smaller if we had a sunday wedding?  We are already planning on only inviting 200-225ppl -- Yes, if you don't have it on a weekend that has the Monday as a holiday like pp said it will make it hard for the guests. Granted my friend did this and I just took off Monday to hang out with family. I didn't care, he was more important then a day of work.

    2.  Halls vs Hotels- we like the idea of people being able to go bakc to their room in between the wedding and reception and not having to drink and then drive.....but some the halls are stunning!! -- If you find a hotel close enough then it should be fine. You can do a shuttle back and forth, but it adds to your budget. We are doing a few hotels so they have options. No shuttle... most are in town or will have cars. The OOT will have rooms there or will have a family member taking them places.
  • MrsBMMrsBM member
    First Comment
    edited December 2011

    Hi There,

    A lot of SA's have weddings in halls...in fact it is more the norm in Toronto than doing it in a hotel..plus its less expensive in a hall and you can bring in your own alcohol (Halls in Toronto allow for outside alcohol to be brought into the location...hotels do not)

    The thing about doing the wedding on a Sunday is that people will find it inconvenient and may leave early... If you are okay with that ...than go for it...You'll save loads of money by having your wedding on a Sunday.

  • edited December 2011
    We're having our wedding - this Sunday (yay!) and I will tell you that it does impact your attendance. We had invited 173 and have 129 total attending. We are totally fine with this and actually prefer it to be this way!

    We scheduled things to be earlier so our ceremony is at 2, our cocktail our begins at 5:30 and reception at 6:30. The whole evening will wind up around 10:30 which is early but then again it's Sunday night and I am sure people will leave well before that.

    We opted to have it in a hotel so that way we would also have changing rooms not only for us, but for our guests, too. Plus that way out out of town guests were already where they needed to be.

    You can definitely negotiate cheaper prices for a Sunday and if you do it off season, that helps, too.
    ExerciseMilestone
  • edited December 2011
    The 3 Hindu weddings I went to this year were all on Sunday, and every Indian wedding FI has been invited to has been on a Sunday. I have no idea how any of these really impacted the invited vs actual attendance count. These are my observations:

    #1) Sunday, June 27th - FI's cousin - Chicago

    Almost everyone from FI's "immediate" family came. When I say "immediate", I'm also referring to the immediate aunties & uncles. There were only 4 people that were absent in this catagory. Pretty much everyone in the "extended" family, who reside in the US were also in attendance except one thread of family... and they were planning to attend, but there was a family emergency.

    I think the overwhelming attendance by FI's family to this wedding was because it occurred a week before the July 4th holiday... and it was summertime.... kids were out of school. A lot of us, including FI and me, did in fact leave Monday morning.

    #2) Sunday, August 28th - FI's nephew (or cousin, depending which side you trace) - Bay Area

    I'm not really sure about this one. FI is kinda distantly removed. It seemed that the majority of the bride's family were in attendance (she's from the area). I'm pretty sure we were essentially invited to bolster up the groom's side since we live in the area.

    #3) Sunday, October 17th - FI's cousin - Toronto

    This is the wedding where the was definitely a drop-off in attendance from FI's family. I'm sure a lot of it was related to school schedules of the kids; harder to take a chunk of time off when school is in-session. Toronto in October was probably a deterant for some.... it's a bit cold then.

    I think if you are wishing to cut costs and hoping some people will decline, thus reducing cost, a Sunday ceremony is the way to go. If you have other family members who have been married recently, maybe see what their experience was between the invited vs attendance. That's what we're doing to get an idea of how many from his side. Then we're going to add about 40-50 as an estimate from my side to attend. For us, we do expect a large turn out from our invited people.

    Halls are cheaper, but if you are going to have a lot of OOT guests, a hotel might be a better way to go for them. We are looking at hotels since all of FI's family will be from OOT.
    Daisypath Anniversary tickers
  • edited December 2011

    We're actually having our wedding the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. This means that a lot of people will be able to come because of an extra travel day and the best part was that we got all the Sunday discounts at our venue. I think this is the best of both worlds- saving money while having all the guests we want there!

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