S1 E6 - Why Bali? Choosing the Perfect Wedding Venue in Paradise

Why did you get married?

I did get married in Bali. Yes. Which is kind of, I guess, how Bali brides was born. Look, long story short, my ex husband, I'm not married anymore. Let's make that very clear. My ex husband and I used to come to Bali quite a bit on holiday. We loved it here. We loved, you know, the culture, we loved that the people were so nice. It's warm all year round. There's so many different beautiful settings. If you're having children at the wedding, there's a lot of venues I do not recommend with kids and that's because there's cliffs or there's very lots of water, there's open spaces. So one of the things that we insist on as a company is if there is going to be children under the age of five, we get nannies. And you're at a beach venue by the water, you have a swimming pool or any place that's water. Nannies are compulsory because as much as those parents say that they're not going to drink.

They do, they do.

And they don't look after the children. Even though you'll have a private space for the actual wedding, you're going to have onlookers. Like we're seeing people down the aisle and there's people maybe 10 meters away, like just watching.

And they're literally in their Budgie Snugglers swimwear.

And I don't know why, but I would not be compelled to go and watch a stranger's wedding and take photos. But they do, they take photos and videos.

You know, I am sometimes really mean. I go stand in front of them. I do.

But the biggest thing for us, if we work until 2am, we can't work the next day.

Yeah.

Because we're zombies. We're so incredibly tired. Our feet are sore, our body's sore, we're probably dehydrated, we're probably hungry because we haven't eaten enough. So, like, the next day is a write off as well. So you're also covering us to have the next day off as well. So it's not an hour of overtime, it's actually the next day as well.

Hi and welcome to another episode of Bali Weddings Unveiled. My name is Tristan.

And my name is Britta and we're.

Going to be your hosts. And today's episode we are going to be covering off, like, why get married in Bali? And how to choose a wedding venue here.

Yeah. So I think the way to kick this off is why did you get married in Bali?

I did get married In Bali, yes. Which is kind of, yeah, I guess how Bali brides was born. Look, long story short, my ex husband, I'm not married anymore. Let's make that very clear. My ex husband. I used to come to Bali quite a bit on holiday. We loved it here. We loved, you know, the culture, we loved that the people were so nice. It's warm all year round, there's so many different beautiful settings. And I come from like a quite a big family. Realistically, like, I've got half brothers and sisters. My mum is Maori, which means our culture. Like, I had a lot of aunties and aunties and cousins and I never wanted a big wedding, which I kind of made very clear to him when we got engaged. But it's kind of funny because we hadn't really spoken seriously about it, but we'd always joked we'd get married in Bali. Yeah. And maybe two weeks after we got engaged, I was making a coffee in the kitchen one day and my ex husband said to me, oh, by the way, I've booked flights. And I was like, what for? And he's like, bali? And I'm like, what? And he goes, yeah, for our wedding. And I was like, what?

So there was no previous conversations about this? No.

But he was very like, love bombing, if that makes sense. Like, when we got together, he told me he'd love me very quickly. He told me he's going to marry me very quickly. He proposed within like a year and then he just wanted to lock shit down. Everything was, it was very fast paced with him, which in hindsight, red flag. But, you know, he basically said, you know, I booked the flights and I was like, holy crap. Like, we've literally newly engaged. I haven't told my family we've got a date yet. And he's like, well, these are the dates, we need to pick one. So we did, we picked a date. And like, Bali was never an issue for me. I always knew we were gonna get married in Bali. I think for me, I was just blindsided by how fast that kind of happened and I didn't really get a say in it. But then, yeah, from there I was like, it was always going to be Bali. It was more bang for the buck. Yeah. It was far enough away that, you know, my key family could come, but I didn't have to invite everyone because, you know, it's a destination wedding, you don't have to invite everyone and not.

Everyone'S going to be able to make it. And sometimes, you know, who the ones are, you know, aren't going to come.

Exactly. So for me, it was just a no brainer. It was warm, it was beautiful. There's so many places it was better value for money and we could keep it small and intimate. Being a destination. Yeah.

So finding a venue, how was that for you?

Honestly, it was a nightmare.

Yeah. What were like the key things that you kind of wanted? Like hotel.

I wanted toes in the sand.

Yeah.

I wanted to be, you know, I wanted to get married by the beach, but be on the beach. But then for dinner, I didn't want to be in the sand.

Yeah.

So I wanted to be able to dance and, you know, have a good time. So I just sat on Google for hours, like literally hours, and started researching venues. We did this together. We eventually found wedding photos of a venue that we really loved, which was the Western and New Sedua. They had a beautiful setup in their photos, which was basically exactly what I wanted. I was very easy. I was like, that's the one I want. So I saw the set up on the beach and I was like, that's perfect. That's exactly what I wanted. And then to find the reception venue, I can't even tell you how long that took us.

We did things also. Did you have a split venue?

I had a split venue, yeah. So the venue that we found for the ceremony, I didn't like the options where dinner was. I didn't want to be on the grass because I wanted to be able to wear heels and I didn't want to sink. You know, I wanted to be able to have that fun party time. I wanted a sunset, which Nusa Daw doesn't have a sunset. It has, you know, sunrise and, like, nice days, but it doesn't have sunset. So I wanted the white sandy beach for the ceremony, but I had a very different vision for the reception. So eventually we found a venue that had a beautiful restaurant that was all decked, which I really liked. Like, I like that decking feel, especially being from New Zealand, Australia. And it was on the sunset side of things. And it was just quite intimate. It was a small space. It wasn't a massive, you know, restaurant or ballroom that we had to make use of the space from.

Yeah.

So we did a split venue and we had this ceremony at the Western and Noosa do up, did photos, then we put everyone on buses and then we had our dinner at the Mandarin Leg yard, which back then was. There was no toll road.

Yeah.

So it was probably like an hour and a half commute for everyone to get back there. But you Know, it was our day. They just put them in a bus and they had to deal with it. Yeah. It's not about you, it's about me.

I think we're really good with that now. Whenever we do have a split venue, it's like, okay, we're going to make sure the bus has like drinks in it. I think it was the big church wedding.

Yeah. We filled them up with Eskys.

Yeah, yeah, big Eskys.

What do we have in there? Like Santai soft drinks, water. Yeah.

Oh, how good. So jumping in to venues.

What are people looking for? Like, budget wise, how does, how do you pick a venue now? Because there's so many.

Yeah, well, look, there was a lot back then. There just wasn't the Internet as heavily like a lot of venues. And they still don't necessarily say hotels didn't have websites. Whereas now everyone's really good with their website. So venue wise, the biggest thing I think you need to think about is one year numbers because a lot of venues here have a capacity you can't fit. You know, there's a couple chapels, they only fit 40, 50 people in there.

Yeah.

And then there's dinner venues that might be able to fit a maximum of, you know, comfortably 60 to 80 sat down if you want to have a dance floor and space for a DJ and a party time. So first thing, people need to figure out their numbers and have a rough idea of how many guests are going to come. I actually had an incident years ago that we, the clients came over, they picked their venue they loved. Was pure Temple Hill, one of my favorite venues.

Yeah.

And back then, period temple was smaller. They renovated a couple of years ago to have bigger capacity and clients sent out their invitations thinking, you know, we might get around 80 to 90 people, 180 people RSVP. We no longer fit at their venue.

Oh my God.

And this was like three, four months out. So luckily the venue was very gracious and, you know, let us out of our contract. Actually, I think we lost like $1,000 deposit. Wow. And we had to book a new venue like with three months to go because we literally could not fit them all in that venue.

Where did you go?

Puri Bhagawan.

Oh, so just. I think I remember this.

That was the wedding that we didn't wrap up all the speeches until like 10:30, 11:00 clock at night. We had so little party time because it was like cultural. So it was dances and hakas and speeches and songs. It was like very big, but it was absolutely gorgeous. Wedding still one of my favorites to date. But, yeah, they obviously didn't factor in that everyone would say yes. So very important thing, you need to look at the sizing of a venue and how many people it can actually cater for. Yeah. Then I think the next thing is, like, narrowing down the vision. Like, I was very clear. I wanted to have my toes in the sand.

Yeah.

And that's what I wanted. Ceremony. But I wanted something different for dinner. So just working on a vision of, like, where do you see yourself getting married? Are you a sans sandy beach wedding? Yeah, girl. Are you? No, I want to, you know, I want a white Hampton style wedding and I want to be in a beautiful villa or restaurant that's all white. Like, you need to work out what the idea is because there's so many different options. Like, we've done weddings at, you know, waterfalls.

Yeah.

We've done weddings in the jungle. We've done weddings cliff top overlooking the ocean. We've done weddings in gardens. We've done weddings with rice patty as a backdrop. There's so many different settings here that if you just come to us and say, I want to get married in Bali and this is my budget, that's not enough. Like, there is way too many choices. And if I send you 200 choices, you're not going to be able to.

Yeah. And I think that's whenever we jump on sales. Calls yourself, myself, I think the first question I asked them was like, what's your dream? Yeah, like, what do you want? And then they start to build it and I'm like, okay, I'm seeing it now.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's one of the biggest things that I have to go through. I ask so many questions when I do have a client that's in the initial stages of, you know, we're getting married and we want to get married by the beach. Okay, great. What color stand do you want? Do you want white sand? Do you want black sand? Do you want to put your toes in the sand? Are you going to want to do photos on the beach? And do you want a sunset? Because some of the island has sunset, some of the island has sunrise. If you don't want toes and sand, what's the setting? Are you in, like, you know, a ballet? Like Nusa do? A beach hotel has that beautiful hut so they can walk up there and they're not on sand or grass or anything. They're in, like an actual building. Do you want to be on the grass? Do you want us to build you a stage? Like, what is the vision and then what does dinner look like? Are you inside a ballroom?

Yeah.

Are you on the grass? Are you on the sand? We don't have a lot of weddings these days that people actually on the sand. Sand. But we still do get a few. So it's really important to have a very clear vision in your head about what your dream looks like. And if you don't know, we'll just spam you with photos and you can go, I like that one. Yeah. Or jump onto Pinterest and search Bali weddings and find some photos that you'd like the look of and send them over to us so we can have a better idea.

Yeah.

Other thing that you need to look at is curfew. If you're getting married at a hotel, there's other guests. The curfew is going to be 10:00pm you can't have a DJ playing loud music until 11:00 clock because guests are trying to sleep. There's families, there's children, whatever it's going to be. So if you're a big party animal, hotel's probably not going to be for you because you got to Finish up by 10. To be fair, some hotels do have an after party room, but it's a ballroom and you have to hire it and there's a minimum spend and then.

There'S a double step that's a few grand at least. I think Conrad, for instance, I think we were looking into that. I feel like it was two or three grand for the extra few hours. And I was like, seems a bit steep.

I had a hotel wedding earlier this year, one of my favorites. Five and a half thousand dollars minimum spend to extend the curfew from midnight to 2:00am yeah. By midnight everyone's drunk. You're not going to drink that much alcohol after they still wanted it. So we spend that on pizzas and things. But there was so much leftover bar tab at the end of the night that we literally just were buying bottles so that they could take them home. But to hit the minimum spend. So curfew is a really major thing everywhere across the island, apart from three venues that I know of, has a latest midnight curfew. Hotels at 10pm There's a couple of villas that have 11pm There are a couple of venues at midnight, but there's only three venues that I know of that have a later curfew. One of them being to the uluwatu.

Yeah.

Which 2:00am curfew. But again, you have to move into the party room.

Yeah.

Stone Villa has that Gorgeous villa, little nightclub downstairs, 2:00am curfew. But again, you have to wrap up on the main lawn by 11 and move downstairs to that room. And then of course, Villa Vedas, incredibly popular venue for weddings as well. Oh, they've got the after party room as well.

I think that's like 2 or 3am as well.

And okay, Villa Vetas. I don't know what the rules are, need to double check, but I think you had to book out the glamping as well or there was some sort of rule because that got built. So, yeah, curfew is a massive one because if you think you're going to party till 3am, you're wrong.

Yeah. No, and it's.

We're the ones that have to be there as well.

Yeah. And I guess that's the other thing. I actually literally had a call a couple days ago, someone's about to book the stone villa. And they said to me, you know what? We want the after party room till 2am I said, great, we've got a fee that applies for us after midnight. And they were like, why? And I'm like, because if your wedding wraps up at 11pm yeah. By the time we packed down, do our final checks, we leave there around midnight, I'm home in bed because we're going to go to the office and drop everything back off. We get there at 1, I'm home in bed by 1:32am and then I've got to work the next day.

Me personally, I don't even wind down until like two hours after I get home.

Yeah, because you've got to like most of the time we have to go home, we have a shower, we kind of unwind, let the brain decompress and then we go to sleep.

I usually read my book, like, when am I going to get tired?

Yeah. So I think it's the other thing as well. But not just us, like the DJ, if you want to party till 2am, extra fees are going to apply after that.

Exactly.

You know, we're going to need to extend the bar team so everyone has to work late. And, you know, for the DJ and the bar team, it's not that big of a deal, let's be honest. Like the bar team start at what, 3pm in the afternoon, maybe two to set up. Yeah. DJ starts at five, but we're literally.

On site where the first ones there.

We're the first ones there. We get there at 10am, which means we've left home at 7am to the office, leaving at 8am so it's a massive day for us. So, yeah, if you want to have an after party, you have to think about, you know, how much extra do I need to pay in wedding planning fees to keep a team there? And for me, it's a safety issue. Most of our team are girls, so I also insist that after 10pm at.

Night, we have security.

We have a security guard on site because it's happened that we have been verbally assaulted by guests. We've been yelled at almost physically aside as well. I had someone take a swing at me earlier this year, as.

Last year.

Was it last year? Yeah, it was too. Yeah. That, that wedding. But, yeah, guests get drunk and then they become aggressive. Especially when you're saying things like, you know, I think you need to have a water now. Or that person shouldn't be drinking anymore because they're vomiting in the garden, they're.

Letting off fireworks on the bar.

Yeah. Which is what happened. And I cut someone off in the bar and he tried to take a swing at me, like, literally. And then started a fight with the groom. Yeah. So for me, it's a safety thing as well. Like, if you want to go till 2am, that's great. But included in our fees, we do put a security guard to protect not just us, but also your guests if there's a fight that breaks out. Like someone needs to break up that fight.

Exactly. And no one else is capable to do it.

Yeah, exactly.

I'm not going to go stand in the middle of two men.

Well, also, this is something that people don't think about as well. Like, we do so much more than just wedding planning. Right. Like, you know, we're drawing floor plans and we're having to do basic maths to figure out how many tables are going to fit in there. And we're also like, wedding mummy. And. And I say this because I literally was leaving a wedding at a villa a couple of weeks ago, and as I was walking out, very drunk guests sitting on the scooter, and I'm like, what do you think you're doing going home? And I was like, you were not riding that scooter home. You were wasted. No, it's just fine. You were not riding that scooter home. And I literally had to, like, get physical and take the keys off him and take them inside and say, someone take these keys. He's not riding his bike home. And that's. Honestly, it's not my job.

No.

But we still do it because we care about the people. And that's also where, you know, A security guard comes in handy because if he'd gotten really aggressive, I would have insisted the security guard take the keys off just to protect him. Because if he drive, drove home and died, like, that would be. Yeah, not my fault, but I'd feel responsible.

Absolutely. I stayed back at a wedding until 1:30am at Wonderland a few months ago, and there was three people left over. They didn't get any in any of the transport that was provided because I think they were going somewhere else. They were all wasted. Yeah. And first guy, he gets on a gojek. All right, I'm gonna. I'm gonna come back. I'm gonna come back and get. Get you girls when I'm gonna go get my bike and come back. And I'm like, is he serious? And I was like, you girls are not to get on that back of the bike with that guy if he comes back. And then ended up bribing a gojek driver, a scooter man.

Yeah.

Because no one was taking their order because it's so late. They wanted more money. So, yeah, I ended up. I was like, you're gonna have to pay him more money. They're like, okay, no problem. And they still wanted to wait for the friend. I'm like, you were not waiting for him. You were to go back to your villa and you were to stay there. Yeah. Do not get on the back of a bike with him. Like, you're their parents. Yeah, it is.

And, like, someone said to me, like, what do you do when everyone's in party time and I'm like, I babysit the kids. I'm literally watching the dance floor and making sure no one's getting drunk and, you know, diving in the pool.

Broken glasses. We're making sure people's feet don't get cut open. We gotta clean it.

And I think, you know, so when you're looking for venues, you want to make sure that, you know, if you're going to go late, you need to factor into your budget the extra costs.

Yeah.

Other things to consider as well as access, which is not something that a lot of people think about. But if you've got elderly guests or, you know, children, is it good access? Like, I had a guest in a wheelchair. Their brother was in a wheelchair. And we had to make sure that any venues we looked at were wheelchair friendly. So have a think about the guests that you have attending and, you know, especially, like, your key people. We had an inquiry a few years ago. Grandma could walk, but not very well. And they were looking at this venue And I was like, do you know how many stairs are at that venue? How's grandma gonna get up and down? And they're like, oh, I didn't think of that. So think about your guests as well.

Yeah.

If you're having children at the wedding, there's a lot of venues I do not recommend with kids. And that's because there's cliffs or there's very lots of water, there's open spaces. So one of the things that we insist on as a company is if there is going to be children under the age of five, we get nannies. And you're at a beach venue by the water, you have a swimming pool or any place that's water. Nannies are compulsory because as much as those parents say that they are not going to drink.

They do, they do.

And they don't look after the children. Alyssa's last wedding at Bali Beach Camping. This is, this one's hilarious. This one will like forever live with me. We're packing down. It's like everyone's gone off to the pool at the end of the night and they're, you know, they're swimming. And this particular wedding, we had a couple of nannies, but they were for set kids because, you know, that one's a baby and they're going to look after, yeah, the baby. I'm like, okay, cool. And at the end of the night, I was like, oh, someone's left the pram here, let's move this pram. And I went to move it. I was like, oh my gosh, there's a baby in there. The parents were drunk in the pool and left their six month old baby in the middle of the wedding area. To be fair, it wasn't far. It was maybe like, I don't know, you know where the lawn is at Bali Beach Club. Yeah. Like, it's not overly far, but they literally left the baby in the middle. And I'm like, what am I, what am I supposed to do with this baby? Like, we're packing down. I don't know where mum and dad are because there's 40 people in the pool. I don't recognize exactly who they are. And so I literally was like walking this prayer. I'm like, does this belong to anyone? And then the dad comes running, yeah, that's mine. She's cute, isn't she? I was like, you're lucky. I almost stole her. She's adorable. I could pass her off as mine. And he's like, oh, no, she's really sweet. And he just goes and parks by the pool and gets back in. So have a think about the venues. If you're going to be having children there, if it's actually a kid friendly venue and then again extra costs that will be associated with nannies. What other things do we look for in a venue?

I think it's what's going to come within your budget. Yeah. Because obviously we've spoken about. There's so many different ones. There's jungle, there's cliff, there's beach, there's. Yeah, there's villas.

So yeah, that's the other thing as well, private villas. So you've got basically three categories of venue you can go for if you want to do ceremony reception at one. Obviously if you split them it's a different story. But category one is hotels. Yeah. So you can stay there or you don't have to stay there. You could literally hire the hotel just for the wedding and get ready there. But when you get ready you need two nights accommodation because you can't check into a hotel till 3, 2 o' clock and you need to get hair and makeup done. So hotels is category one benefits you can all sounds like or you cannot. They're normally pretty affordable for the venue hire. They normally include a lot. So they'll already have, you know, basic furniture. They've got catering stuff, they might have lighting. There's going to be some bonuses of having it at a Hotel. Downsides 10pm Curfew, public. So even though you'll have a private space for the actual wedding, you're going to have onlookers. Like we're seeing people down the aisle and there's people maybe 10 meters away.

Like just watching and they're literally in their budgie smugglers, some swimwear.

And I don't know why, but I would not be compelled to go stand and watch a stranger's wedding and take photos. What they do, they take photos and videos.

You know, I am sometimes really mean. I go stand in front of them.

I do, I do the same thing.

And then they try to like budge like out of the way and then I go stand aside them a little.

I did exactly the same thing.

There's so many weddings and I'm sure they probably attended weddings. It's not like I don't understand why you need to stand there and watch it. Yeah. Someone's private personal wedding. Like I understand you're at a public venue and there's not many private places to do your ceremony but Noosa do a beach hotel for instance. Like that's very open. Yeah. But I don't like. You can go sit on your beach chair and watch it from there.

Yeah.

Like there's.

I don't know why you need to come that close.

Crowding around it.

Yeah.

Getting so close.

Yeah. So that's category one, we've got hotels. Category two is private event spaces. So this is a space you hire purely for the day. Like in western countries or other places in the world. You know, you might hire a hall, you might hire, you know, a golf club or a banquets place or a bowling alley or whatever you want to hire for your wedding here. The private spaces are basically just a private venue that is set up for weddings. So we've got like wonderland, stunning venue.

Yep.

Puri Bhagawan, Taman Bhagawan. New cuda golf.

I love new cuda golf.

I really. It's very underrated. New Kuta golf. So those are just private event spaces. We hire them, we get access to them for the day, we go and we set up and we leave. Some of them have on site preparation rooms. Some of them don't be in private event spaces. Most of them have a later curfew of about 11pm, which is fantastic. Benefits. It's private.

Yeah.

There's no public. Like you've got that space for the.

Day and you've got security out the front. Like if they look like they're wedding guests.

Yeah. They're obviously letting.

Yeah.

And then I think one of the other good things as well, it's a blank slate, which is a blessing. But also for some people it's a killer because, you know, we have to take absolutely everything in. There's no furniture, there's no electricity because it's, you know, just a private event space. So we have to take a generator in, we have to hire the chairs, the tables. The table where we have to hire the catering company. They need to bring a tent set up.

So Bill 1 Taman Bagawan and Bill of Vedas. They've got the in house catering though. Yeah. So they've got all the plateware, standard cutlery, everything standard been banquet tables.

Yeah.

Silver cutlery, white napkins is pretty standard industry. So you've got the private event spaces and then we've got a completely different aspect which is a private villa. So. So the private villas are great. One private. The only thing I personally don't like about a private villa wedding, I'm. If I was getting married on my wedding night, I'd want to be having wedding night fun. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

I feel like that Would be awkward in a private villa because you're staying with other people.

Yeah.

So you can't really have that honeymoon night, which is, you know, fine for some guests, but I also love my family, but I wouldn't want to be around them for every day of my wedding.

Yeah.

And when you go to a villa, you have to stay for a minimum. So the minimum is two night stay.

Yes.

And it goes all the way up to a seven night stay, depending on the villa you choose in the season you get married in. And the pricing also fluctuates a lot. So you're stuck with those people two, three days. And like you would have seen me at the party the other day. We had almost 300 people there and I had to go stop and step out. So did you actually found you in the room? At one stage I was like, I just need a private moment and you already there. I was like, oh, too many people out there.

I was like, it all just happened at once. And I'm like, I just need a moment.

Yeah.

I was about to do a speech as well and I was like amping myself up about it. I'm like, I'm nervous and I feel.

Like when you say to villa and you've got all your friends and family there, that's great. But you don't really get privacy and you don't get to have those private moments. So for me, those are really the only downsides upsides. Private venue, completely blank slate. So we can make it anything you want. People that aren't very imaginative or creative can sometimes struggle to understand the concept of a villa wedding because, you know, it's blank. We have to go in and decorate it, we have to make it beautiful and we have to decide where the ceremony is going to take place, where the reception is going to take place. Yeah. So those are kind of the three different styles of venues, I guess. But then we go into a subcategory. What's the setting of that villa? What is the setting of that hotel? Is it a waterfall? Which there's not really many that have that.

No.

Is it the jungle? Do you want to be in a forest? Do you want just a garden or rice paddies in the background? Do you want the ocean in the background? Do you want the cliff in the background? What's your budget?

Yeah.

So those are the other things that we really need to factor into venues. And then once you kind of start narrowing it down, then we look at budget. The budget would probably be the last first is what kind of settings you want Hotel, villa, private venue. Second, what kind of landscape do you want? And then said, what's your budget? And this is probably the trickiest part because no one really knows their budget. No hotels, venue, higher, cheaper, but food and beverage, expensive.

I think I had an inquiry call the other day. I think you did too, actually. And their budget was between 20 to $40,000. I'm like, that's a very big jump. Do you want 20 or do you want 40?

Yeah, and it is. And that's great because I guess I've kind of got a guideline. But you know, someone comes to me and says, I don't have a budget, I could quote you a $30,000 wedding or I could quote you $100,000 wedding, but I don't know where to quote you or what venue is going to be suitable because I don't know how much you want to spend. Like, we've got one particular five star venue and it's a hotel. And the dinner There starts at $200 ahead just for dinner. The drinks packages, like 50 bucks an hour. And even if you were to do a bar tab, the cocktails, like $22. Like it's a premium venue. So if you had 100 people at that venue, you'd be looking at like 40, 50 grand. Before we even add on photography, hair and makeup, flowers, everything else.

Yeah.

So I need a rough guideline of where to quote you. Because if I send you a budget for, you know, $80,000 for your wedding and you, you might have a heart attack, you know, and they're like, Bali is not for me, but it could be for me. You just need to give me a realistic budget to start with. Yeah. So I think if you're planning a cliff top wedding, realistically, bare minimum, let's just say, what's an average wedding? 50 guests. Yeah, bare minimum. For a cliff top wedding, I'm just going to throw it out there. $40,000.

100%.

Okay. Yeah. If you wanted to do a beach wedding in Seminyak, $20,000.

Let'S say Nusa, do a 25 to $30,000 because it's more expensive out there because it's mainly resorts. If you wanted to go to Ubud, you're probably along the same line. Canggu. There's not really anything except for villas in Canggu.

Yeah.

There's no hotels. We can really do weddings.

I mean, people love being in Canggu because it's so close to everything. Yeah. It's easy for the guests to find accommodation. And I Think that's like, that's the grab for Changu.

And I'd say with Canggu, like, because again it's all villas, there's not really hotels. You need to be budgeting a minimum, bare minimum of $30,000 out there. And when I say dollars, I'm speaking like you know, Australia, New Zealand currency or what's that, an idea? There's too many zeros, I get confused. But I'd say that's the bare minimum. But again, that could range all the way up to $100,000. You just need to sit down and work out a rough budget. As a guess, like venue alone for a villa, you'd be looking at probably around $2,000 a night minimum.

Yeah.

For the villa minimum three night stay plus an event in Banjar fee, which is probably about the same as a one night stay. Yeah. So I think the bare minimum for a villa just to hire that particular villa is going to be about $10,000. And then you've got to factor in everything on top of that. Now the way a lot of people work this and they subsidize that is let's say you were my bridesmaid. I'd say, hey, do you want to come stay at my villa? It's going to cost you 500 bucks. And then you do that to every single guest that's going to stay there.

And then you might think completely fine.

I actually had this conversation a couple of days ago with someone. They said, we feel bad asking our guests to pay for the accommodation because they're already spending money on flights, they're already coming for a holiday. And I said yes, but if you got married at a hotel, you're not paying for the hotel for your guests, are you? They said no. And I said, well, why should you be expected to pay for the villa? And I said, I'm not expecting you to. They're picking quite an expensive villa. And so I think if you were to break it down by room, it's like they'd have to charge them a thousand dollars a night for a room, which I get it, it's expensive. So I said, look, if you're not comfortable charging us thousand dollars a night, you just say it's $300 a night or 500 getting some of that cost. You just pluck a figure out of your head and you say this is how much it's going to cost you to stay there. I don't think they're going to object if they were already going to stay to it at a hotel. And you know, if they don't want to pay that, you could pay that just for that person or you could ask someone else to stay. So if you're looking at venues where they can stay, that's how you can subsidize some of that cost back to make your budget go a little bit further.

Yeah, that's a good point.

What are some of your favorite venues? Cliff Top. Let's say your top three favorite Cliff Top venues.

I love the Unger Sun. I think it's just gorgeous. And depending on what package you take, there's just so many different areas. It really is like a journey for you guests.

What would you say the minimum budget you'd need for Ungersane is.

Like 40 to 50?

Yeah. You have to hire, you have to hire two venues and obviously we have to use our in house catering. So I'd say 50 to bare minimum. Beautiful venue. We will actually pop these venues, our top favorites, into the comments section so you can take a look for yourself.

Yeah. Ungersan. I love Pandawa Cliff Estate.

Yep.

I think that is if you're taking the two villas, what are they? Is it Marie, Parlor, Rose Parlor and Rose.

Yeah. Marie's the one at the back and then Marquis is the other one.

Yeah. Parlor and Rose combo. Combo.

Great.

You can start in the garden and then move down to ceremony.

It's got really nice flow. I feel. I think that's probably out there with my favorite. Especially when we put all the guests up the top welcome area. We open the doors and let them down for the ceremony.

Yes.

Transition to cocktail hour next door and then dinner up the back. Beautiful.

It's just so easy. And the staff there are wonderful.

Honestly, the staff there, like I will say, if you're a venue owner, staff make or break your venue. And whether or not I want to work there, like I went to Pandawa months ago, you'll remember this. We have to set up a marquee. Yeah. And the marquee company had to start at like 6am and for villas we have to be first on site. No one's allowed in unless we're there to supervise. Because our responsibility to make sure they don't damage things. Like we literally sign contracts to say it's legally our responsibility if any gets damaged. So again, precious being a wedding planner, the client doesn't sign that. We do.

Yeah.

And so Yeah, I. The 10 companies said they were going to be there at 6am So I left home at 4:30 that morning and I said I will volunteer as tribute. I will Be first on site because it was one of our newer planners weddings. And I said, look, you can come later at your normal time. I'll go out there first.

You're going to have a big day.

Yeah, you can have a big day. You're going to be there talking midnight. Like, I'm used to it. You're not. So I was out there at 5 to 6 and I messaged them already here. You know, the robot. Sorry, Tristan. Running late. They didn't shop till seven. But what I loved is the villa staff. Everyone was still sleeping inside the villa. So I literally was out in the dark in a jumper, in the cold, just sitting there with my bag because there's no lights on, getting attacked by mosquitoes because I'm waiting for the tent company and the villa staff like, oh, someone's out there. And they're like, oh, Tristan, do you want a coffee? And I'm like, yes, please. It's cold. But it was beautiful. I got to watch the sun come up. You with the bads?

Yeah.

10 company eventually. Right. But the staff, like, straight away, would you like a coffee? And I just. I love when the staff at the venue look after us as well. So what's your next favorite?

Next one.

As. I feel like I loved it at the start.

Yeah. I can't say it anymore.

I feel like I can't really say it anymore, but I loved it at the start. But now they've got construction going on both sides.

Such a shame, Wonderland. Such a shame.

Because it's beautiful.

And again, it's got nice flow. There's multiple areas you can use. I feel like that's, like, that's Bali, I guess. But it's such a shame, particularly on one side, the construction that's going up there, because it's so noisy, it's so loud. The workers do not give a flying F what's happening and will deliberately turn music up and make noises, you know, the ceremony is due to start. But the venue, overall, stunning. It's so well thought of. It's so well laid out. There's multiple areas, there's a pool, the sunsets, even the gardens. The gardens are stunning.

It's really beautiful.

Look, I would probably still say it's going to be up there, my favorites. But it's not my top three anymore. Like, I still love it.

I haven't done any weddings there personally yet. Well, Wonderland, yes. But I've actually got quite a few for next year. Stone Villas, my new favorite. Yeah.

I would say at the moment, Stone is my number one yeah, the only thing I hate about it, the 2:00am curfew. Everyone wants it and I think that's great for a wedding. As a wedding planner it exhausts me thinking of working there because the last wedding that I did there, it was such a big setup that I had to be there at 9 so I left the office at 7am and I we stayed at a hotel close by to make it easier. But I didn't get back to that hotel till 3:30 in the morning. So I worked 7am Till like 3:30.

Like we have to do it after the Stone Villa wedding especially. I think it's. I feel like we just do it now. Like just book a hotel because to travel home all that way that night, unless we've got meetings or something on in the morning. Yeah, it's like we need that hotel.

Well, this is the other thing as well. Like we do charge a fee after midnight. So if you want our team to stay back after midnight, we charge a fee. It's $500 now and that's for a team of two. But everyone's like, well that's a lot per hour. But it's not actually just our time, it's also the hotel, the driver that we have to pay to take us home because we're not physically.

The driver is there all day just.

Like us, we have to pay the driver. We also have to pay for our dinner, our drinks. But the biggest thing for us if you. We work until 2am, we can't work the next day.

Yeah.

Because we're zombies. We're so incredibly tired. Our feet are sore, our body's sore, we're probably dehydrated, we're probably hungry because we haven't eaten enough. So like the next day is a write off as well. So you're covering us to have the next day off as well. So it's not an hour of overtime, it's actually the next day as well.

Yeah.

So that's your favorite. So my favorite, I reckon stone definitely number one.

Yeah.

I love the multi areas. I love that they protect the grass. The grass. And as much as I hate it because they make our suppliers walk around and they're so pedantic on it. The grass there is beautiful. Most wedding venues the grass is dead so fast. This one's probably going to be a bit controversial. It's a brand new venue. Oh, it's not as high class but I loved Glampanoo Sedua. Yes, it is gorgeous.

That was beautiful.

It's absolutely stunning. Again, the staff are Fantastic. This doesn't happen often, but when you do in house catering, obviously the in house catering only caters the events and they've got a separate kitchen team. The food was great.

Food was good.

I had a steak. It was fantastic. Yeah, the cocktails were amazing. The actual venue, the views are best.

Taking and yeah, their apparels were delicious.

They were delicious. I mean the service was a bit slow, but as a brand new venue that's only been open a couple of months, you know, I teething, you do have to buy out the venue. So minimum, you need about $12,000 a night, which covers 40 tents. But again, when you reimburse those costs back from guests, a couple hundred bucks.

A night because you're not paying for.

You're not paying for it. So literally. And they're so helpful with that as well. If you book the venue, you just pay your minimum deposit and then they guests can pay directly to there. But I love that venue and what they're doing with the rooftop as well and the undercover area, like that whole venue I just love. So I reckon that's probably in my top three. Yeah. And then I really like Latitude.

Yeah, latitude's nice. It's very white.

It is very white. I feel like it's very.

It's not as white as Planin Leo.

I can't do that. It hurts my eyes. Yes, it's beautiful but I have to wear sunglasses all day like and because it's so white, it's really hot as well. So I do like that venue but visually for me, I can't do it. That sounds really like. It is a beautiful venue. Don't get me wrong, but it's just too bright for my sensitive blue eye.

I know.

So yeah, Latitude I love because I feel like that's also very like Hamptonsies. It's a little bit more classy. I love that the rooms are private.

Yes.

You know, so the bridal room is all the way by itself. And that other room, there's actually two rooms that are completely separate but being side by side so you still get the privacy of staying by yourself without, you know, being on top of your guest, which is great. And the views from there as well, Gorgeous.

And we, we love the Rave cave.

The rave. The Rave cave. So this venue is not actually.

There's no rave cave.

There's no rave cave. We made it.

The Rave Cave.

But what happened one day is we had a wedding and we swear by the rain stoppers guys, we'll dive into that in another episode. But we booked the rain Stopper. And I'm talking like, there was not a blue patch of sky that day. And the rain stopper said to me, tristan, I'm so sorry. There is nowhere for me to put the clouds.

This is the first and only time that's ever happened.

Only time it's ever happened. The whole island was, like, covered in cloud. It was rainy. It was really depressing. But I said to him, look, I just need, like, I can do dinner inside. There's nowhere for me to do the ceremony inside. It was too late for a marquee because it was supposed to be a beautiful day. And, you know, Bali just being Bali and being outdoors, like, we just had to roll with it. I said, I need half an hour for the ceremony.

Yeah.

I just need half an hour. We can figure out the rest. And I kid you not, it stopped at, what, 20 minutes before the ceremony started. The rain stopped. We set up the ceremony. We ran like, whoosh. It was so fast.

We were drenched that day.

We were drenched that day.

So it was not a moment that we were dry.

No. So we ran out. Ceremony set up. We did the ceremony, we did photos, and then it poured with rain again. We put everyone inside for dinner. And then I said to him again, I don't know what we're going to do. We've got fireworks. We can't get a refund. Fireworks are a couple of grand. You know, we've had to pay the banjar fee. Like, they were supposed to do it during first dance. And he said, give me an hour. I kid you not. The rain stopped for, what, 20 minutes. We went outside, we set the fireworks up, we did the first dance with the fireworks, then it poured down with rain. And because we'd done dinner in the inside area, there was nowhere for us to party. And we didn't. There wasn't enough space.

Yeah.

So what we did is we put the DJ into the corridors of the underground, like the downstairs bedrooms, and we turned that into, like, the dancing area, and we called it the Rave Cave. And it was the best night ever. Which was.

It's really funny because we would walk out of the Rave Cave and you could barely hear the music because it.

Was pouring down with rain and it was, like, pumping. The only thing that I didn't love about it was very hot. We did put a couple of fans in there, but it was really hot because it's. Obviously, it was a corridor. It wasn't a bedroom. It wasn't a room that had air because.

And it's beautiful in there. Like, all The Stones. And when she put some party in there, it was really nice.

Yeah, it was absolutely beautiful. So latitude up there was one of my favorites. One of the things I think we should touch on as well is backup option, because rainy wedding. The thing here, we don't recommend getting married November, December, January, February. Of course, we want to do your weddings. But if you want to get married during that time, we do recommend an indoor venue. Yeah.

Because Bali, tropical climate, have the budget ready for the marquee.

I think for December, January, you just have to have a marquee anyway. And the thing with the marquee is you probably need to. Because if you want to do the ceremony outside and the dinner.

Yep.

Where are you going to put guests while we turn over everything, you know? Exactly. So a lot of venues don't have an indoor option. Like, let's say Stone's good. Stone actually has an undercover area in case of rain. That's fantastic. Pandava Cliff Estate. If it rains, you're screwed. We're not allowed to go inside because that's not part of the event space. You must have a marquee. So don't get married from November to, let's say, February, unless you've got a budget of about $5,000 minimum to install a marquee for those events. Hotels. You go into an ugly ballroom. I don't recommend them. I hate ballrooms. The carpet's ugly. It's. I don't understand why you'd get married in Bali and have a ballroom.

I just hate ballrooms.

Me too much, actually, to be fair. The one at Sofitel Nusa Dua. That ballroom is beautiful.

Yeah.

The one at Rooma Louis. Even though I don't want to do another wedding there because the staff are just, you know, that ballroom.

Beautiful.

Okay. There are a few places. If I was to get married in wet season, and I know I say this a lot. Puri Temple Hill. It's my favorite venue.

It is gorgeous.

Okay. Like, they've got an undercover area that's beautiful. We can, you know, put people in the chapel. We can move you into the undercover grass garden area. The inside restaurant's beautiful. Like, it's just beautiful venue.

So my main concern right now is I've actually got a wedding coming up in February. 150 people.

Where is it again? Piri Temple Hill. We can fit them there.

Yeah, figure it out.

Rain stopper.

I'm really good with my floor plans. It might take me three months.

Rain stopper. We'll get the rain stopper. It'll be good. I mean it's supposed to be raining. You know it poured down with rain last night. Did it pour down on a party night? No, because I had the rain stopper. So let's go through let's say beachfront hotels. Pick two favorites.

Beachfront Nusador beach hotel. Yes, definitely that one. I actually don't mind Conrad.

Yeah.

I really love that big lawn space.

The big lawn space. The chapel as well. And the walk to that chapel I think is very majestic.

It is. Well, you got the water on both sides and it's just your walkway. Yeah, it's nice.

Yeah, it's really nice. I really like Sofitel.

Yeah.

I feel like besides the on the day staff that were really painful to directly get to do anything in a timely manner. The multiple space again the chapel but that massive grass area. Remember we did the birthday party there, the next anniversary party the next day there. That's gorgeous. And that's ballroom being able to go late. Fantastic.

The way that you dressed that up as well actually it was really nice.

Yeah. So I really like that one. Nusador is always going to be a fave and I think that's just because the beach there is gorgeous. Even though it's public, it's still about as private as you can get inside a hotel. I also love and this is not a hotel Tam in Bhagavan for a beachfront wedding. Private event space. Absolutely beautiful. There's options in case of rain to move undercover downstairs nightclub which no one knows about. We didn't know about for the first five years. And vivre catering to work with. Very reasonably priced.

Yeah. And the food's good.

The food's good.

Yeah.

What would be your favorite non ocean view space?

Well, there's villas. Can't think of what Villa though do.

You know, I loved and I don't love it anymore because again of all the construction and everything going on around, I really liked Ivan Villa. I'm in Eamon.

Oh yeah.

That was beautiful. But last I haven't been there. Yeah. There's a lot of construction going around in that area. It was really beautiful. Well laid out, multiple areas.

I actually really like Colony Villa.

Yeah.

It is a little bit dated just with I think. I think it just needs a general like refurb.

Yeah.

Over time. But that lawn space is gorgeous.

Yeah.

And very gardening.

And even upstairs that wedding we had where it was raining, we put them upstairs.

That small wedding and we threw Ryan in the pool.

We threw on in the swimming pool. Yeah. The only thing I don't know about that. Villa is the residents around. They get really weddings and it's like.

Well, we hired it, so suck it up.

And we've paid the banjar fee, which is like the council fee and everything. Exactly. I really like. I haven't actually worked out there because legally, under my work permit, I'm not allowed to work. Yeah. But I've been loving some of the weddings that Meet has been doing recently out in Ubud. I need to talk to her about it. But there are some stunning venues out there. It's just, you know, just us as Western staff that falls outside our agency to work there. We can if we registered a second office out there and we updated our visas, but for now, we're just not allowed out in Ubud. That's fine.

Well, maybe we need an office so we can have a little stick. Absolutely.

What about Changu Way? Favorite venues that way.

I think I really like. Where was that wedding we did last year?

Villa. Katie and Pete's wedding.

That's where Hayley and Dan got married as well.

That's really beautiful. I Obviously it was my first time working there, so just trying to do, like, floor plan everything. I was just like, how is that all gonna work? But no, I think it's a really, really nice venue. Chenggu area.

I feel like Vegas is always going to be really good. I just don't love how many weddings they do there because it does feel very.

Yeah.

Pushed out straight away.

I hate working the floor plans for those.

Oh, yeah.

I feel like hate is a very strong word. But I feel like I've done so many weddings there this year. It's just. And all of them have been different.

They do really good marketing. So I feel like it's a very popular venue choice because it's just in your face all the time.

I. I love it. The staff are wonderful.

I love the staff.

Yeah. Leah is great. But yeah.

Just the floor plans are tricky.

The layout of the villa is awkward at times when you're trying to fit so many people in there.

I think under 50 people, it's very easy.

Yes.

Anything, like up to 100, you're like, oh, my gosh, where are we gonna put it?

Well, it has to fit 15 people in there.

I know. We spent hours on that floor plan and, you know, can. Can it figure out where am I.

Meant to put everyone?

Yeah, where we get. Oh, we've got it. No, we've got no space for the DJ and dancing. Damn it. Yeah. I also really like. And we haven't done a wedding there in a while, actually. I think that's because we haven't done a lot of hotel weddings. But I really like the Bandar in Legion. The rooftop there.

That's beautiful.

Like you're literally on the rooftop and it's not a chapel. I don't know what you'd call that building, but overlooking the beachfront there. And then I like the combo of doing the ceremony there and then right next door they also own the Nicks Homer Hotel, doing the reception down there. I think that's a beautiful combo as well.

I'd actually say going back to hotels. Bali Mandira. Yeah. I really love that, like rice paddy lawn area.

That's pretty down there.

Yeah. And it can be quite private as well. Well, there's not really us walking in.

Besides the restaurant above there. You don't really have anyone wandering down there, so. Ceremony there.

Yeah, yeah. So I'm really there while you. You even did dinner there.

Yeah, I've done dinner there. Small amounts. It's fine. Yeah. Any.

Styles or trends you think are going to hit this year for weddings for next year?

Lots of cliff top. Yeah, I think that's always just going to be a staple. There's been more and more people. Obviously stones a little bit newer, but we're getting a lot of stone weddings.

Yeah.

And I think that having a villa clifftop, you know, they're already fully booked.

From May till September next year.

Holy moly.

We just had the clients we just had here for site visits. They loved it and they said we're flexible on dates. June, July, August. And I email them. They're like fully booked. I'm like, what? Every single day? Yeah. And they've. But do you know what I really appreciate? She did give me three days in September and she said, tristan, I was reserving these specifically to do maintenance, but if you want, I can give you two nights and we'll do maintenance on one. And I was like, okay.

Oh.

But yeah, they're already fully booked.

Wow.

How far in advance do people need to be booking a venue? I think that's something that's really important to cover off on. Like, you know, for the wedding planning in general. We've got plenty of time. But how far in advance do we need to book the venue?

I'd like to say a year and a half to two years. Yeah, definitely.

Yeah.

Which is. Can be quite annoying. I feel like booking your wedding two years in advance. It's not annoying, however, it's. I feel like I've come into this so Many times over the past month, actually, I think I've had two or three clients say, which is amazing, great news, I'm pregnant.

Or something's happened and we need to.

Postpone going into hardships or, you know, and it's just two years. And then you start going into the whole planning process. It's like, all right, this is when, like, now is the time we're going to start doing everything. And it's like, oh, no, I wasn't going to tell you, but I'm pregnant.

Actually, that reminds me, I've got a client I need to go back to. And we were waiting until they hit 12 weeks to decide if we're postponing.

That wedding or not.

So I need to go back to one. I do actually really enjoy that about being a wedding planner because we're not family or friends. Like, we get. We get the news first.

We do.

Because it's not like we're going to tell any of the friends or family.

Exactly. And they're like, we haven't told anyone yet. I'm like, I'm so excited. Excited for you.

Yeah. But now I have to postpone everything and postpone these hards, like planning a wedding. Like, and this is the thing as well. Like, when we work out our fees, we have to factor in for not just the work that we're doing for a wedding, but if you come to us to postpone a wedding, the amount of work we have to put in to work out what date suits every single supplier we've already booked and when it's going to be good on our calendar. And, you know, like, it's a lot.

Of background work because we've got weddings that we've already pre booked as well. So we're not just available for your new date. Like, we've got to check if we're available.

Covid honestly was such a nightmare because we had to postpone so many weddings and like having to line up, you know, by then most of our weddings are planned, like having to line up 12, 13 supplies. Are you all available on this date? Because one of them's not. You don't get your money back on the deposit, that deposit's gone. So I found that it's very tricky.

Yeah.

Absolutely amazing. And are there any things to look for that are like, no, we don't want to get married to that venue. Or like, when clients are trying to book their own venue, what are key things that they need to be looking out for, do you think?

Think. I think it's setting the expectations Early. I think we've got to ask them, what do you want? What's important to you? Yeah, if you want a private venue. All right, here's some great options.

Yeah, what about if they're booking their venue? Because I've had a lot recently where clients have already booked their venue and then brought us on board for planning. Not ideal, because there's not as much control. And it was like, well, have you asked this? No, I haven't. Yeah, I just had one the other day and they've booked a villa. The village said, yes, we can do the wedding there. But I'm like, you're gonna need lighting and a sound and things. Can I park a generator down that street? And they're like, we don't know. We've never been to Bali before. And I'm like, oh, my goodness, we need to go see if you can actually do a wedding there. Because it's not just, you know, yes, it's a beautiful villa, but the Bali street's small. If I can't get a generator down there. I'm sorry, babes, but you're not having a DJ or lighting because it won't run off the villa power. So what other things like that do you think we need to just mention of if you're looking for your own venue? 1. You need to look at capacity. You need to work out the budget.

You gotta have a look at the roads. What are the roads like in there? Can we fit. Well, as you said, a generator. Can we fit a truck full of furniture down that road? Is the cake going to fall upside down if there's, like, big potholes?

You know what, it's actually hilarious. So one of our first weddings post Covid was in, like, January, February. It was like wet season and something we didn't think about in hindsight. But, you know, it was a. I think it was a. Elite havens, actually. No, Maybe they booked their own venue. Yeah, and we'd had a look at. It was fine, beautiful space for a venue. We've never done a wedding there. So since. Though, to be fair, because it was wet season, it rained, the road going in flooded the one access road to get in, to the point that when I arrived, suppliers were stuck, they couldn't enter. And I was like, well, I'm the wedding planner, I need to get in. And I literally pulled my dress all the way up to here and waded through the water and it was up to here. But we couldn't get any cars there, which means the guests couldn't arrive at either we booked the rain stopper last minute. Luckily it stopped by like one o' clock and the roads dried up to get it out. But I'm like, if it hadn't stopped raining, they wouldn't have been able to have their wedding because they were there. But no supplier could get in.

So that's something else. Like we wouldn't even thought of that. Like.

No.

This is also why, you know, our light up letters business that we have on the side. I try not to take bookings in December, January, because the warehouse road floods. Yeah. So if it floods, I can't get the team out to the wedding. So I just try not to take bookings during those seasons just to be safe. Because what if, sorry, your letters aren't coming today because the road flooded. You need to think about that. So I think the other thing to ask as well is like hotels in particular, can we bring in our own alcohol?

Yeah.

It's a question we get asked a lot. We're going to bring our wine over duty free. What you don't know is that in Indonesia, if you have a license venue, you can't bring in duty free because you have to pay tax to serve the items. So you actually have to buy the alcohol locally or declare the items and pay tax on them to be able to serve them in a license venue.

Yeah.

Bathrooms. Bathrooms are a big one. If you're in a villa especially where are the guests going to go to the bathroom if you've got 100 people there and only three bedrooms with a bathroom?

Yeah.

What other things? Multiple spaces. So we need someone to do welcome and Cocktail can be in the same area.

Welcome, Cocktail.

Where are we gonna do the ceremony? Where are we gonna do dinner? Is there enough space for us to do all three events in there?

Yeah. What's the capacity?

Yep, capacity is a big one that we've been over. Can we actually install a marquee in case of rain? You know, not all the villas are capable of building a marquee inside them because there's not infrastructure, it's not big enough and things.

Things, yeah. Can we bring in our own catering? Yes. At hotels? Absolutely.

Not restaurants? No.

You, you have to, you have to use their buffet, their set menu. Yeah, everything.

And I think another thing as well, I just had a client say to me the other day, we want to bring in our own if it was a celebrant, but it was a supply. And, you know, our standard answer is like, no, they have to have a working permit. But there's like some cases that I'm like, you know what, I just don't want to know about it. And that's fine. But what they don't realize is their venue will ask. Yeah, so like Mulia Hotel, for example, when we go in for a wedding there, even when we go into Unkusan, they ask for our ID on arrival. And if you're a wedding venue, you must produce your work permit and show them a copy of your work permit. So if you say, hey, I'm the celebrant for the wedding today and you come in or they see that you're working, they're going to come ask you for a copy of your ID and your work permit and they're going to hold on to that. And if you don't have a work permit, no entry. Yeah, Mooli is really strict on that. Like we've got to send that through in advance and a lot of hotels do. So, you know, what supplies are we allowed to bring in as well? Is probably a big one. Curfew, Always ask for the curfew. What time do all my guests have to be out and what time do I also have to have everything out by?

So yeah, what time do we have to pack down?

I made a bit of a boo boo earlier this year because Wonderland changed their. They've changed their rates and terms like probably four or five times since they opened, which is fair because they were new. But one of our weddings we booked on the very first lot of pricing and terms and conditions and it was a partial buyout and it said on there like we had venue hire till midnight. And you know, at Wonderland, like the Curfew is normally 11 unless you pay till midnight. But because it was the old terms and conditions, I was like, no, we've got the venue for midnight. And they said, no, you have to be out by midnight. And I was like, what? They're like, curfew 11 out by midnight. And I was like, oh my gosh. We ended up, we ended up fixing and staying a bit longer. But you know, check what time the curfew is. One, for the party and two, what time does everything need to be packed down and offside by?

Because typically I think one, we got to be out of there by like.

1 or 2am 2am Otherwise we pay overtime fees. Yeah, yeah. And then load in time. I think that's incredibly important. What time can all my suppliers come in? We have this issue a lot with one particular venue that does a one night stay option. If you can't check into your venue till 2pm do you know how long it takes us to set up for a wedding? Like if you tell me I have access to set up your wedding at 2pm, your wedding needs to be like 8pm that's not enough time for me to set up an entire venue.

You are now having a Twilight ceremony.

Well, even then, like, you know, we had an issue the other day and thank God the venue gave us early access. Access. But it takes all day to set up lighting. It takes hours upon hours to set up a wedding. It comes down like that. But we do need access from the.

Lighting takes the longest, a bare minimum.

We need access to your venue from 10am start setting up. Absolutely amazing. Any other things we need to look for in a venue?

I think so.

I think that we covered it. Amazing. So hopefully that helps our listeners get some insight into, you know, why get married in Bali and you know, the key things you need to be looking for when choosing a venue. And go take a look at the venues that we've recommended. If you want to book them in, flick us an email, contact, you know, your wedding planner and say, this is the venue. You're better working with a wedding planner to book in these venues because then we can negotiate your packages.

They know what questions to ask.

Yeah, we can negotiate the packages, the inclusions, you know, we can check the accommodation. We can cross check. We do all that hard work for you. So thank you for tuning in on the next episode. We are going to be diving into our next supplier episode. We will be meeting, greeting with a supplier and going through their processes. I think we've probably narrowed that down to either florals and decor or photography. So we'll figure out the availability and get that locked in. Thank you for tuning in. Again, we are running a competition so if you're listening whatever platinum form you're listening on, please be sure to like subscribe. Tag 2 friends in the comments and you will be going in the draw.

To win a iPad and some AirPods to help you with your planning and to listen to our beautiful voices.

Amazing. So we'll chat to everyone next week on another episode of Bali Weddings unveiled.

Sam.