Hey all, We just had our wedding banquet last Sunday. It was wonderful to say the least. The food was well received with majority of our guests rated it as good. Just some assurance for any couples with upcoming banquet at Regent.
Anyway, just enjoy your evening and leave the worrying to the Banquet manager and team. I feel the Banquet team is highly professional and efficient.
There are of course some things that can be improved and I wish to share with you.
1. Have your main co-ordinator (normally your best friend) step away from the reception table (and not be involved in the guest registration) and be aware of the growing crowd of guests. Once he/she feel that cocktail reception area is getting crowded and about 60% of the guests have arrived, have the Banquet Manager open the doors to the ballroom. For us, the feedback was that the doors should have been open sooner as it was over-crowded outside the ballroom.
2. Bring your own portable printer (if you keep everything in a laptop) in case of last minute table re-arrangements (which I had quite a bit)so that you can re-print your guests lists without too much changes made to your existing ones. This will reduce confusion.
3. Brief your parents properly and prepare them for the confusion that will likely happen (e.g. Auntie A found her seat occupied by Uncle B, or Uncle C wants to sit with Uncle D and refuse to return to his allocated seats.) Task them to handle such cases as relatives will tend to relent only when your parents intervene. Brief your parents not to usurp the Banquet Manager's or your main co-ordiantor's authority (This is critical). My parents actually wanted to have the ballroom's doors open to let the guests in on their own accord. My father even 'hijacked' the guests list so that he can let his friends know their seating arrangemnts leaving my friends stranded at the reception table without the list and a queue of guests forming.
4. It is important that your main co-ordinator and AV co-ordinator (for projector and songs) are not playing multiple roles. They need to focus solely on their tasks so as to ensure that the evening unfold as per planned.
Oh, by the way, if any of you are bringing in your own projectors (one on each side of the ballroom) and require the 30m long high quality SVGA cable to connect up the 2 projectors, I can lend it to you for a token sum (for transportation to and fro actually). I bought the cable from Sim Lim Square as I simply refuse to loan the cable from Regent's AV equipment vendor for $150. Anyway, I bought it for only $89.
Interested parties can email me at
[email protected]
Cheers and all the best for those with upcoming banquets.