the search for dinner banquet in hotels

after getting the auspicious dates from master long, we quickly go search for hotels... yesterday we called up several of our top priority like carlton, orchard & M hotel... all booked already.... i was like OMFG shock... like seriously people are damn hardworking & book the hotels so long in advanced... we intend to get married end of 2014 so I thought now is still not too late to book hotels but i was WRONG!!! so frantically i quickly go to the SGbrides site to take a look at whatever hotels that fit into our selection criteria....

Selection criteria: 
Hotel vs restaurant: of coz hotels are more grand & high class but restaurants are definitely way cheaper for similar menu... but the down side about having banquet at restaurant is that, there is no preparation room.. those bigger restaurant might have a partition to create a temporary room but you see... need place to put ang bao, gowns & makeup... i think a private room is essential.. so we go for hotel... of coz... restaurants INSIDE a hotel can also be considered
Number of tables: this is very important coz it determines the hotels that you can choose... for us, we are looking at approx 20 tables since we have neither many friends nor army of relatives to come for the banquet
Price: definitely an important issue coz we dont have $ to throw.. we are hoping to find a hotel that have approx $1.2k Nett/table... of coz this is very ideal cases & after some research, we know that this price range is almost impossible to find unless couples of years back....
Location: depending on you... we try to be nice guys & go for more convenient locations... also reason being, if the hotel is situated at some ulu place, the turn up rate will be low = ultimately we will lugi...places like changi airport or east coast are out for us... not many of our friends or relatives drive ma.... then cant expect everyone to take cab to & fro wad
Lunch vs dinner: this is important too coz most people will chose dinner, if you can have it over lunch then there will definitely be more choices & also cheaper

after deciding on these criteria, i came out with the list of hotels that we can select (just a modify version of what you can find on SGbrides site)

the modified hotel list that i came up with

based on the list, i start calling to those more preferred hotels & sadly most of them are FULL already.... kns sian lo.... & then becoz of the complain from my mama that the auspicious dates given by master long was not good enough... we have to pause the search till we have the consultation with master david.... so till then.... keep our fingers crossed