The Big Decisions: How to evaluate venues

Here are a few things we suggest you ask or think about when choosing your venues! | August 15, 2023 | 5 minute read

We couldn’t be happier with the venues we chose for our wedding events - which included Woodbine Banquet Hall (Etobicoke), Markham Convention Centre (Markham) and the Avani Borgata Event Centre (Vaughn). We like to joke that we covered every zip code in the GTA.

We picked all of our venues based primarily on the quality of their food - because that is really the thing we knew all guests would be partaking in and is usually the #1 way people rate a South Asian wedding! But we also carefully considered many other factors when booking our halls.

Here are a few things we suggest you ask or think about when choosing your venue(s):

• Are you restricted to using the catering at the venue? And if so  - are you allowed to bring in external catering of any kind to supplement their offerings?

• We planned to use the internal catering but since most of the halls we looked at catered primarily Indian food we knew we wanted to also bring in a few Sri Lankan dishes from another caterer

• Does the venue charge a fee if you want to bring in any external catering (including food trucks outside)?

• Some venues we investigated charged an additional fee to bring in any external food, whereas some just required we signed a waiver stating that we acknowledge the hall was not responsible for any external catering we brought in (ex. So they were not liable for the quality of any external food)

• Where is the kitchen located in regards to the hall? Will staff need to walk through your main events in order to replenish a buffet?

• Does the hall force you to use any of their in-house vendors

• It’s quite common for a lot of venues to require you use their In-House food and Power/AV/Sound 

• It is not typical for a hall to require you use their DJ or decor company - so question that if they tell you it’s required! 

• Is the lobby space one that you would have to share with another party at the same time?

• Part of the reasons we chose our Sangeet & Reception venues was because we knew we would have private lobbies for each of our events, allowing us to plan our grand entrances the way we liked and also place the additional entertainment we booked (ex. 360 Booth) in the lobby so that it didn’t cut into space for our dancefloor, or bar set up. We were also extra wary of private spaces for these events because we knew we’d be playing music loudly and didn’t want it to interrupt someone else’s event next door (or vice versa).

• Having a large enough lobby for our Hindu ceremony was very important for our Milni & other functions that had to take place before Rohan could enter the mandap, and Markham Convention Centre had enough lobby space for each of its halls, including a beautiful setup for photos for our pre-ceremony traditions and our entrances.

• Ask to see the bridal suites & make sure their location/orientation work for your planned entrances.

  • Also it’s always a bonus if the bridal suite has an en-suite washroom!

We needed to make sure we had a reception venue with high enough ceilings for Rohan’s jumps… | PC: Flashing Lights Photography

• When booking multiple venues that your guests will be coming to you may want to think about how different (or similar) the food and menus will be from each venue to another

• We were cautious to pick completely different items (as much as we could) between all 3 venues to keep things interesting for our guests

• Does the venue offer menu options for Gluten Free, Dairy Free food as well?

• Hot tip: Avani had amazing menu options for our vegan and gluten intolerant family & friends as well! 

And I can’t stress enough how much you should read the fine print when booking your venues! 

In our case, we almost got roped into a much more expensive reception venue that seemed great at first but had questionable things written into the contract that would have driven up our price when it came closer to our event. Eventually the upper management of the venue had to get involved and when they were unable to refute the misleading information I pointed out, they conceded, refunded our deposit and we moved our reception to Avani which we loved. 

In the end we were extremely happy with the look, food and amazing service we received from each of our 3 venues, and we would highly recommend them to anyone looking for spots in the GTA for their wedding!