3 venues that we loved and all you need to know about them!
Our Venues
We ended up working with 3 venues for our wedding celebrations. After prioritizing iFly as our solemnisation venue, we worked out the rest of our budget and schedule based on that. We really loved all of our venues, and the coordinators were great to work with, so would definitely recommend having a look at them! :)
1) Empress@ACM
First up was our tea ceremony and dinner celebration with my mum's relatives. We held it in January 2019, a month before our wedding festivities.
Empress@ACM is a really lovely place! It's a modern Chinese restaurant beside the Singapore River. I really like the aesthetics of the place and I'm glad we included it in our wedding celebrations.
The service was good (even for a small event like ours with only 12 pax). The staff even wrote us a cute card and presented it to us with a polaroid at the end! The food was fabulous - the coconut soup especially is refreshing and tasty. If you are considering this place for a wedding, the seating capacity is 120 indoors and 60 outdoors. Last I checked in 2018, min. spending is $10-12k for weekend indoors, and $12-22k for weekend indoors and outdoors.
2) iFly Sky Garden
Photo by Arture
It's a funny story how we ended up with this place. I had my heart all set on a garden wedding, even planning out the decor and envisioning the set-up. Then one day, Janan was telling me about how his friends asked him what his 'dream wedding' would be. He jokingly told me how he imagined a romantic beach wedding, and how fireworks would go off as the ceremony ended. Then we laughed as we thought about the cost of fireworks in Singapore. And that was that.
But one day, when I had nothing else to do, I typed "Singapore wedding fireworks" into Google to see how much fireworks would cost (for fun really). To my surprise, iFly Sky Garden came up. I absolutely loved the backdrop when I saw it, and I realised it's a perfect combination of a garden wedding by the beach. We would both get what we wanted, and Janan could actually get his fireworks!
Photos by Arture
I also had this specific criteria of wanting the place to be bright indoors, since it didn't make sense to me to pay so much for my photographer only to have half my photos taken in dim lighting. I would say that a good photographer can probably fix all that easily though, based on the photos I've seen of other places that are dim at night (e.g. Wheeler's Estate photos by Andri Tei). But don't forget that there's also photos taken by your friends and your videographer, where lighting is less easily fixed. iFly fit that criteria perfectly. I love how gorgeous the cake looks, and how bright the lighting is for our photos and speeches. As a bonus, there's this greenery wall that you can use as a photobooth backdrop, although it probably can't fit large groups if you want to place a registration table there as well.
Photos by Arture
We both fell in love with iFly, and looking back at the photos, we have absolutely no regrets. Everyone also commented on how beautiful the place is, with a sunset and fireworks to match. Having found our dream venue, we still had to work around other constraints. We kept our guestlist small as the space can fit up to 150 pax (130 pax with long tables like ours). We had less budget to work with for our lunch banquet, but Qian Xi fit the bill perfectly in that aspect. Our wedding was held in February before iFly's renovations started, and it is also supposedly the month with the least rainfall. The coordinator told me that they have had a 100% no-rain rate for weddings!
Know what you want, and figure out how to make it work
I think the main thing is to work around constraints once you know what you really want. I've been to so many hotel and church weddings, and I knew I wanted something different for my own. For a lot of Singaporeans, hotels are the best option because of the large number of guests and traditional requirements of a banquet. We worked around this by having the solemnisation and dinner at iFly for our immediate family and friends only, and a lunch banquet the next day for our relatives and more friends and colleagues. We had a total of 260 guests over the 2 days. I think the extra effort and lack of sleep was worth it really. I have zero complaints about iFly itself - our coordinator Marjorie was always efficient and detailed in her follow-ups, and accommodating with our requests.
For those keen to know more, iFly organizes an event called "Say Yes in the Sky" every year where you can visit the space and meet with their vendors. The place is not open otherwise as it is mainly an event rental space. There is a minimum of 100 pax to book, and you would have to use one of their 3 caterers. The good thing is that the venue rental cost is already included, and pricing starts at $130++/pax. For food, you have the options of buffet or Western/Chinese sit-down menu. The fireworks are actually from the show nearby, called "Wings of Time", and they go off twice at 8pm and 9pm. Even in the case of light rain, the show normally goes on.
3) Qian Xi Summer (SAFRA Mount Faber Club)
For those keen to know more, iFly organizes an event called "Say Yes in the Sky" every year where you can visit the space and meet with their vendors. The place is not open otherwise as it is mainly an event rental space. There is a minimum of 100 pax to book, and you would have to use one of their 3 caterers. The good thing is that the venue rental cost is already included, and pricing starts at $130++/pax. For food, you have the options of buffet or Western/Chinese sit-down menu. The fireworks are actually from the show nearby, called "Wings of Time", and they go off twice at 8pm and 9pm. Even in the case of light rain, the show normally goes on.) 3) Qian Xi Summer (SAFRA Mount Faber Club)
photos by Oolphoto
Last but not least, we held our lunch banquet at Qian Xi for relatives as well as colleagues and more friends. I would definitely recommend Qian Xi for banquets as it was fuss-free and all-inclusive with reasonable pricing. Signing our package with them was probably the fastest wedding discussion we had - everything was done in 10 minutes. Our package included the works: 9-course lunch, free-flow of alcohol and drinks, free invite printing, champagne tower, dummy cake-cutting, smoke effects entrance etc. We also had the surprise of bubbles blowing at us during our champagne pouring lol. The coordinator Xiu Ping was easy to work with during the planning process, and the other coordinator helping us out that day was really sweet - she was so excited while watching our wedding video and was always there to help me with my skirt. As soon as I began to walk, she would appear behind me, helping me up and off the stage.
Left: photo by Janan's sister showing our coordinator in action. Right: photo by Oolphoto
Also, you don't have to compromise on quality of food. Their food was so good I told Janan I want to go back to eat it again. I wasn't particular about the decor this time round, and the venue already had their own floral arch at the entrance and onstage. However, if you do want a prettier ballroom, you can go for their main ballroom which has floor-to-ceiling glass panels with natural sunlight streaming in. But if I remember correctly, it has a min. of 250 pax.
You can also check out the next post on wedding venues if you would like something other than the conventional hotel banquet!
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