So Grand Plaza Park Hotel City Hall was renamed to Grand Park City Hall at the start of 2009, as part of a rebranding exercise to consolidate all hotels in the group under a unifying name. Its undoubtedly a good move on the part of the hotel group, but its a bad move when customers like us have to hear it via online forums instead of from proactive hotel staff.

GPCH is changing their wedding themes in May, so we’ll get to choose the ballroom decor later.

GPCH provides free wedding invites for up to 70% of our guests through the printing company T Dragon. They seem to specialize in wedding invites, and pictures of most of their cards are available online through their website. The cards aren’t very pretty though, to be honest, but I guess you get what you pay for. But I do think their cards will do for most people, being plain, simple and sweet. Their ready templates with English and Chinese wordings were definitely helpful. They emailed us the final proof, we asked for some changes to font sizes, they re-emailed us the new proof, we approved via email and off it goes for printing. 2 weeks till pickup.

T Dragon
5 Coleman Street
#03-23
Excelsior Shopping Centre
Singapore 179805
Tel : 6292 8338 / 6333 5761
www.tdragoncards.com

We are finally almost done with the first round of e-invites, less some missing email addresses. Have you replied to yours yet?

Factors to consider	General advice	Our hotel (GPCH*)
Size of ballroom	Have a good idea of total number of guests you’re expecting before starting your hotel search. Some hotels have multiple ballrooms (of varying sizes) to accommodate different crowds.	Only 1 ballroom, holding 25-35 tables. ≤30 is comfortable, >30 may be tight. Only one exclusive event at the hotel on your AD. No chance that staff is preoccupied with other events.
Ballroom layout/pillars	Some ballrooms are wide but short, or long and narrow. Some are nicely squarish, and some have pockets protruding from the main bulk of space. Ask if the ballroom is pillar-free. Pillars or odd shapes may block some tables from seeing the stage, screen or your walk-in. The shape of the ballroom will also affect how long/short your march-in is.	Nice, classy and regularly-shaped rectangle ballroom. Pillar-free too. Only problem is that it’s wide and short, so march-in will be shorter. But it also means that the back/corner tables can still have an unobstructed view of the front.
Price of package	Nett or ++ (service charge and GST). Nett price will not be affected in the future if GST rises. Price is as discussed upon signing of contract.	GPCH prices are all nett prices.
Food quality/ # of courses	Read forums on singaporebrides.com or styleweddings etc on pple’s comments on food quality and their satisfaction in general. Also, some hotels have more than one dinner menu (with varying prices). If you’re willing to top up a little, you can get the fancier menu. Dinner is usually either an 8- or 9-course meal. Tip: you may wish to just change one item in the menu for a more expensive one, try to negotiate!	It was all praises for GPCH’s food. The couples who were done with their ADs were assuring the newbies in the forum of the excellent food served. 9-course dinner served, and we decided to top up $20 per table to get the slightly better menu.
Tasting session	Most hotels give tasting for 10pax. Some hotels though only had tasting for 6-8 pple, and one even require a 50% payment!	Free tasting for 10 pple
Beer/Wine	Varies widely. Beer: Hotels usually give 1 20- or 30-litre beer barrel; few give free flow of beer. Wine: Some hotels give 1 bottle per table, while some do not include, only limited to ~25 bottles or only included with credit card promotion. One hotel we asked only provided free flow beer OR 1 bottle per table.	Beer: 30-litre barrel if <28 tables, free flow of beer if ≥28 tables. We’ll very likely have 30 tables anyways. Wine: 1 bottle per table
Corkage charges	Check carefully! Some hotels have no corkage charge for all liquor/ wine/ champagne brought in. Some hotels only waive corkage charges for liquor, but not the rest, while other hotels have corkage charges for any outside alcohol brought in. NOTE: only duty-paid items. Corkage not waived for duty-free items. Tip: Many couples who are done with their AD sell off their leftover wines for cheap. Check the forums for good deals!	Waiver of corkage for all duty paid liquor, wines and champagne brought in
Location/ accessibility	Depending on your guest crowd, think about how accessible you want the hotel to be via public transport (especially MRT). Do you want it in town, on the east near change, or even in Sentosa?	Super convenient. Right smack in town, 5 mins’ walk from City Hall MRT.
# of nights’ stay	One night guaranteed. Some selected hotels give 2 nights’ stay. Credit card promotions may give the additional night’s stay, or you can try bargaining for it.	GPCH not known to give much perks. Couldn’t bargain for additional night (we sux), but we’ll likely be swapping 1 night’s stay for helpers for the additional night’s stay in a normal non-bridal suite room.
Helper room	Some hotels give a complimentary day-use room (2-8pm), most don’t.	Gave 1 night’s stay for helpers. But as mentioned, we’ll likely be swapping for additional night for ourselves.
Wedding invitation card	Usually 60-70% of final attendance. Most hotels just provide you with the blank cards and you’ll have to pay a printer (like t dragon) for printing (although one hotel covers the printing cost too!) Tip: You can mix and match card designs, perhaps getting one design for all relatives from the guy’s side, and another for the girl’s side.	70% of final attendance
Complimentary parking	Usually 20% of final attendance. Take note of alternative parking lots in the area that you can direct your guests to should the hotel lots be completely full on that day, especially if your hotel has multiple ballrooms.	We got an increase from 20% to 25% of final attendance.
VIP lots	Usually 1-2 lots in front of the hotel, or a prime location in the car park	2 VIP lots in front of hotel
Video projector	Some hotels charge for projector rental, while some give one free and charge for an additional one. Also check the size of the projector screens. One hotel had the small sized TVs attached to the pillars and had to be pushed out every time when needed or it’ll block the aisle/passageways. Inconvenient and no class!	Was $300nett charge for rental of 2 projectors, but we had the rental waived. 2 big screens at the front of each half of the ballroom. Very clear to everyone, even those sitting at the very corner.
Decoration	Ask for pictures for the aisle, stage and table-top decorations, and try to arrange to go down prior to an actual wedding to see their setup. From the pictures of some of the hotels, the décor seemed plain and unappealing.	We saw the brochure of the current décor options, and went down to see the actual wedding setup too. Nice!
Real/fake wedding cake	Not a concern at all to us, but may be a factor for some of you. If the hotel has an in-house bakery, the topmost tier of the cake will likely be a real cake. If not, the entire cake is probably fake, and there is a slot for placing the knife in during the cake-cutting.	No bakery, so all 5 tiers are fake. But the current cake design is really cool! It’s a staggered, spiraling cake.
Miscellaneous freebies	Some selected hotels give F&B vouchers, spa vouchers, live duet musical string accompaniment during cocktail reception etc etc.	Free spa treatment for the couple at their in-house spa, Spa Park Asia.

If you’re flexible with dates, not in a rush etc., be wise and ask if they have any upcoming wedding shows. Wedding shows always give freebies/discounts for couples who wait until then to sign the package. GPCH had a wedding show yesterday, but we couldn’t wait that long to secure our precious 080809 date! Couples who signed on that day were given 2 tables free (worth ~$2000).

There was also 2 lucky draws on the day of the wedding show for attendees: one for all couples who came but didn’t sign up, one (with much better prizes) for the couples who signed up for a package on that day itself. The top prize included a free upgrade to the Presidential suite! (the largest room in the hotel, one grade higher than the Oriental (bridal) suite)

* Post updated Feb 11 2009 to reflect the rename of Grand Plaza Park Hotel (GPPH) to Grand Plaza City Hall (GPCH).

Meanwhile, the excited bride-to-be started looking at hotels already! Not knowing where to start, Jas simply hum-dum bo-lah and sent out email enquiries to a total of 25 hotels!

After getting the different packages and prices, we collated a spreadsheet to compare amongst them. Hotels which din reply were auto-eliminated, and hotels out of our budget range were taken out of consideration. We then read up on the shortlisted hotels (Singaporebrides.com was really a great resource!), looking at comments, praises and complaints they had on the ballroom, the food, the service etc.

After additional emails to clarify and further enquire, it was surprisingly easy to narrow down our choices. Grand Park City Hall* came up as our clear top choice.

• Central location (5min walk from City Hall MRT)
• Reasonable price within our budget
• Best deal so far: free flow beer, 1 bottle wine per table, no corkage charge
• Good ballroom: nice, classy and pillar-free, regularly-shaped rectangle ballroom
• Past couples were all praises about the hotel, service, and food.
• Only complaint was that the ballroom did not have a central door, allowing only an L-shaped march-in… but that was of little concern.

We enquired further about visiting the hotel and meeting the coordinator, Veralyn. Then we learnt that 2 other couples were asking about the same date for the ballroom dinner banquet! Panic!!! We had to act fast. We were in the midst of our grad sch interviews during that period and were flying to the states very soon. We had to settle it quick, or risk having the ballroom taken when we returned 2-3 weeks later… arghz! Immediately, we arranged for a meeting with Veralyn that very evening to view the ballroom and discuss the details of the package. We were very satisfied with the package and the ballroom, and after a few hours of consideration, we decided to simply go ahead. Email was sent immediately that night, and confirmation received the next morning. Settled! Kudos to the quick and efficient darlings! ^_^

~Grand Park City Hall, 08 August 2009, Grand Ballroom, Level 2~

* Post updated Feb 11 2009 to reflect the rename of Grand Plaza Park Hotel (GPPH) to Grand Park City Hall (GPCH).