Me, Real life

Wedding preparation – the venues

13 Nov 2019 / Kitty/ 302 Comments

In one of the previous posts, I mentioned about booking a hall to host the Bersanding event. This was back in February this year. After going through a list of places to host the event, we eventually settled for the Bridex Hall (no, despite the name sounding like Bride with an X added to it, it’s not a hall specifically for weddings). The people in charge of the Bridex Hall is Armada Properties so to all future couples planning to get married at BH, AP is the place you have to go to). To reserve the hall, it was far from a smooth process; mainly because the hall was already almost fully booked for events in 2020 (mostly weddings). Our parents wanted the event to be on Sunday since, well, it’s convenient for everybody. However all Sundays from early January to mid April were fully booked (Ramadhan starts near the end of April so nobody wants to have weddings close to that time). Thus we were forced to look go for a slot on Saturday. Saturday is a working day for government offices and some private companies so the only time you could host a wedding is at night time, which our parents aren’t keen about. Despite that, almost all Saturdays were also fully booked except for a Saturday a week prior to Ramadhan. We reluctantly reserved that spot (you need to put down a refundable B$500 deposit for that) but we requested the AP staff to notify us immediately should a Sunday suddenly becomes available. The AP staff said they would put us into a waiting-list as apparently there were others waiting for a Sunday slot to open up as well.

Several months passed and on one Wednesday morning, an AP staff called up saying a couple has withdrawn their reservation so AP offered the slot to us. The reservation is for a Sunday two weeks prior to our initial reservation. You could tell both our families were overjoyed with the news and immediately made the change. However, Bridex said in order to formalise the change, I have to write a formal letter to them requesting for the change, and it has to be done ASAP before they offer the slot to another couple in the waitlist. This would have been an easy thing to do however, the reservation was under my father’s name and the letter has to be signed by him. Unfortunately my father was away for several days on a trip so I requested AP to let me hold on the spot for a week. As soon as my father returned from his trip, I had him signed the letter (I had it all written up nicely for him) and then rushed it to AP. Everything was sorted up* after that and I could breathe a sigh of relief.

So that was for the Bersanding event. There are 2 more events but they don’t require as much headache.

The most important event, which is the Nikah, was initially decided to be at a mosque. After all, it is a religious occasion and many couples hold their nikah at mosques. It is also easier, since both the couple’s families can gather at the same place and host the event without having to turn their houses upside down in preparation for the incoming guests. My dad and I thought of having the Nikah at a nearby mosque where my cousin’s husband work and we thought of having him as the Kadi. The mosque also has a big space and parking area which would make it convenient for our guests. But my mum, being a traditionalist, prefers to have it at our house. So in the end it was determined that the Nikah would be at our house.

The other event is the Berbedak night. This is the easiest to arrange. Because it is only a small event where only the closest family members are invited, most people host their Berbedak at their own homes (the bride and groom host their Berbedak separately and they don’t even have to be on the same day – Victor will have it a day after the Nikah and I will have it a week after the Nikah). Some people may host the event elsewhere for various reasons, for example, my first cousin-once-removed host hers at a mosque because the location of her house isn’t suitable to host a large number of people. Victor himself would have his Berbedak because of logistics reasons.

* I did return to AP a few more times to clarify some matters.

Tags: wedding