Archive for » August, 2010 «
How to Select a Caterer for Your Wedding?
Wedding comes only once in your life and for Pakistani it matters a lot because they usually get married only once in their lives. People look forward to have everything best for their wedding because even a single mistake could leave a long lasting bad impression of your wedding on others. Food is the most important element in a traditional Pakistani wedding, because majority of guests join wedding ceremony just to enjoy good food. They decide about whether a wedding is successful or average on the foods that you serve them. People remember your wedding dinner for a long period of time, while other things forget easily.
Taking into consideration the importance of cuisines in your wedding, you must select a reliable catering service that will make your wedding memorable by adding up delicious tastes into it. It is quite a critical task to select which caterer you should hire for your wedding. Following are the useful points that you should consider while selecting and hiring a caterer for your wedding.
- First of all, search the market and find out how many caterers are offering reliable services.
- List them all that you think are best in their services. To do so you can take help from your friends and relatives who have worked with caterers.
- After selecting a good number of caterers, contact them and find out their packages and cost.
- Get complete information about each of your selected caterers and make comparison between them.
- The information that you should collect about your selected caterers must include:
- Number of Packages
- Number of dishes in one package
- Cost of package per head
- Complementary Items
- Quality of Food
- Cost of adding up 1 or more item into existing package
- Number of Packages
- Check the total cost of your selected package by multiplying it with the number of your expected guests. To check the cost, use this formula: Cost of food package per head x number of guests = Total catering cost.
- Use above listed factors to make comparison and after making comparison, find out which caterer suits you best.
- After selecting an appropriate caterer, go and negotiate the prices that they are offering.
- To check the quality of their food, take a tour to their kitchens and inspect the cooking practice.
- Ask for complementary items if they provide any.
- Ask them if you want to add up or remove any food item from the existing package. Set the price of that package according to the changes that you have made.
Tip: always try to keep the popular foods in your wedding, such as those foods that are popular among people. For instance Biryani, Quaorma, Chicken Kadhai, Triffle, Kheer etc are few of the most popular traditional Pakistani wedding foods.
- After carrying out all such activities, it is the time to book the catering service that suits you best.
Food holds great importance in any function. Make sure that you are not going to make mistake because people will remember your wedding for years just on the basis of the food that you serve to them. And presenting good food to guests is the best way to thank them for joining your wedding day.
Marriage Hall Booking Tips
Not to mention again the importance and significance of wedding day in the lives of Pakistani people. The wedding ceremony involves extra ordinary preparations in Pakistan. Wedding in Pakistan is based on set of functions and the responsibility of the arranging and organizing these functions is equally distributed between bride and groom’s family. That simply means that few functions are the responsibility of bride’s family, while others are the responsibility of groom’s family. The main and the most significant function in entire wedding ceremony is the “wedding day” or “Barat & Rukhsati”. The entire responsibility of arranging and organizing this day is on bride’s family.
The wedding day usually held at bride’s home, but due to large number of guests, the tradition to arrange this event in marriage halls, lawns, hotels, and big gardens is very popular. Bride’s family remains under stress from the first day of marriage till the wedding day, because they have to prove their selves best in every arrangement. Wedding day arrangements holds great importance, because you have to accommodate all the guests and welcome them in an organized way. There are certain things that you should remember while selecting and booking the wedding hall for your wedding day. These things are as follows.
Select a Venue
Select one from a number of wedding venues that is going to be your wedding venue. To make your selection easy consider following points:
- Venue Location
- Venue Capacity
- Venue Total Cost
- Venue Services
- Safety & Security
- Administration & Support System
Note: For more info read “how to select a wedding venue”.
Take a Tour To Wedding Venue
Once you have selected your wedding venue, then you should take a tour to the venue when there is another wedding going on of somebody else. This practice will give you an idea about wedding arrangements.
Ask If There Are Any Hidden Charges
In Karachi, majority of wedding halls and marriage lawns charge hidden charges that they disclose on the time when you make full payment. These hidden charges include generator charges, extra guests’ accommodation charges (even if your guests are under your declared limits), and other charges. When you book any wedding hall or marriage lawn, make sure that you have cleared all such matters, such as hidden charges with the wedding hall administration.
Check Your Budget before Booking the Wedding Hall
You can make estimation of the total cost of the wedding hall that you are going to book by asking them about their packages. Normally, wedding halls and marriage lawns charge for decoration and accommodation per head. For instance, 150/head, by simple multiplication you can make estimate about the total cost of your guests’ accommodation. In simpler words, use this formula, Booking Cost + (Decoration Package/head x no. of guests), for instance, Booking cost is 10,000, per head decoration cost is 120, and number of your guests is 100, then the it would be like that 10, 000 + 12,000 = 22,000. You can calculate extra services charges by adding them into the total cost.
Check for Extra Services
Majority of marriage lawns in Karachi are open air and during rainy season or winters they need to be covered. To cover open air marriage lawns on your request, wedding halls charge extra money for covering. While making hall reservation, don’t forget to ask about covering the lawn and its charges. That’s because some marriage lawns do it by their selves and they don’t take your permission. On the time of payment they demand you to pay for it. You should clear these matters with your wedding lawn administration beforehand. Likewise, there are also other services, such as family sitting or family table etc, make sure that you have asked about these services, as well.
Don’t Pay Whole Amount At One Time
You should only pay the booking payment at the time of booking and pay the remaining payment after the ending of your function. While paying the remaining payment, make sure that you are paying only the amount that was decided to be paid between you and the marriage lawn administration.
When You Should Book Your Wedding Venue?
Make sure that you book your wedding venue at least before 6 months of your wedding. That’s because Karachi is quite a busy place, where popular wedding venues remain booked in advance.
How To Select A Perfect Wedding Venue For Your Wedding?
Karachi is the biggest city of Pakistan, where different types of people live with different backgrounds and traditions. Wedding ceremony’s preparations are common in almost all types of people of Karachi. All the wedding ceremonies are held at any specific separate venue, such as it could be a marriage lawn, marriage garden, wedding hall, hotel, banquet hall etc.
The responsibility of arranging and organizing wedding day is on the bride’s family and everything supposed to be flawless at any cost. Selecting a suitable wedding venue is a critical task. That’s because in this kind of stressing situation, when you have to do everything without a single mistake, little mistakes are inevitable and knowingly or unknowingly they can happen by you. To avoid these small mistakes you should be extra careful. You should consider following features to select a perfect wedding.
Type of Wedding Venue
First of all, decide what type of wedding venue you would like to book for your wedding. You can make selection of the type of wedding venue according to certain factors, such as season in which your wedding will take place, cost, accessibility etc. There are a variety of wedding venues in Karachi because majority of people like celebrating their weddings at big venues, these are,
- Marriage Lawns & Gardens (Large & Open Air)
- Marriage Halls (Large & Indoor)
- Hotels (Both Open Air & Indoor)
- Banquet (Large & Indoor)
Location of Wedding Venue
Always try to book a wedding venue that is located close to your house and you can conveniently get access to it. This is for safety reason and for convenient accessibility. If you think that safety and quick accessibility is not an issue for you, then you can make reservation at any wedding venue that you like.
Capacity of Wedding Venue
This is one of the most important things that you should consider while booking your wedding venue. Make sure that the capacity of wedding venue is greater than the number of guests you’ve invited.
Tip: Always try to book extra seats and tables to accommodate extra guests. Such as, if you have invited 50 guests, then make sure you have booked seats for 75 guests.
Services Quality
This is another important point that you should check before booking your wedding venue. The best practice to check the service quality of your wedding venue is to take a tour of any function that is held at the same venue before your wedding.
Safety & Security
Make sure that the administration of wedding venue that you are going to book ensures you the safety and security of your guests and objects.
Administration & Support System
Make sure that the administration of your wedding venue is cooperative and their support system is fast and efficient.
Wedding Venue Cost
Before booking your wedding, search the market and check the packages that different wedding venues are offering to you. Sophisticated people don’t take this point into consideration, as they are only care about their name and prestige, and they like holding their wedding functions at sophisticated venues that charge higher amounts. If you are on strict budget, then you should search the market. Check if the two venues are offering the same services on different prices, such as one is offering the same services on higher price than other, then go for the lower price. You can also negotiate with the manager about total cost of the wedding venue.
Wedding Invitation Card Tips
Invitation card is one of the most important elements in the preparations of wedding. Wedding card is the first thing that you present to your guests to convince them about attending your wedding ceremony. It is very important to get impressive wedding cad printed for your wedding ceremony. That’s because people judge your efforts that you made for your wedding preparations and an impressive wedding invitation will set the real tone of your wedding in people’s minds.
How to Select a Wedding Invitation Card?
First of all, find a printing press that can print your card within appropriate limit of time on reasonable price. You can go all these printing press shops and ask them to show you wedding card samples. Select any sample card that matches your requirement. Make selection of your wedding card invitation n the basis of these features:
- Color
- Content
- Design
- Material
- Cost
Note: You can change, argue, and replace any of above mentioned features according to your taste and choice.
Types of Wedding Invitation Cards
Wedding invitation cards are available in great variety. There are simple cards from fancy cards. Select the color of your wedding invitation card according to your choice, generally in Pakistani, red color and other shades of red color are considered as the symbol of wedding. So you can select red colored card. Other popular colors for wedding card invitation are maroon, purple, navy blue, golden, silver etc. Designing of invitation cards hold great importance and it makes a card either a simple or a fancy one. Likewise, wedding cards of different materials are also in business, such as velvet, paper, card paper, net etc.
Write an Impressive & Correct Content on Your Wedding Card
It is the most important thing while you go for printing your invitation cards. Make sure that you have used the correct words, information, such as time & date of your wedding occasion etc. You can include the name of the person who is supervising your wedding. These points must be included in your wedding card information:
- Your Exact Wedding Date
- Your Exact Wedding Ceremony Time
- Venue of Your Wedding
- Name and Contact Info of the person who is in charge of your Wedding
Design Your Own Card
You can design your wedding card by yourself, but for this purpose you’ll have to carry out little work. It is not recommended to do so, because majority of printing press shops will not agree to design your card according to your choice. If any one of them agrees then there is no surety they will design your card according to your imaginations. Moreover, it can cost you more than the normal price and collecting material for designing your card will be time consuming, as well. For designing your own card, make sure that you have a lot of time in which you can find a reliable printing press.
Cost of Wedding Invitation Card
Normally in Karachi, a wide range wedding invitation cards is available that ranges from PKR 15 to PKR 40. The cost of wedding card depends on the material that it is made up of and designing of card.
Quantity of your Wedding Invitation Cards
Always make few extra prints of your invitation cards, so that if during naming any card gets damaged due to writing or other mistakes, then you’ll discard it and use one of the extra prints. Furthermore, sometimes customer doesn’t need to make extra prints, because the printing press provides complementary invitation cards on to their customers if they order a certain quantity of cards.
Where To Get Your Wedding Cards Printed?
In Karachi, the main market from where you can make your wedding invitation cards print, is Pakistan Chowk. You will find a number of shops that will print your cards according to your choice on reasonable prices.
When You Should Make The Print of Your Wedding Card Invitation?
You should make the print of your wedding card invitation at least 20 days before your wedding day. This is very important step because you have to distribute all your cards before at least 4 days from your wedding day. Make sure that you have ordered your wedding cards on time to save you from last minute problems of distributing your cards.
When You Should Distribute Your Wedding Card Invitation?
Try to distribute your wedding card invitation at least 10 days before your wedding day.
