Malay Wedding Reception Venue - Would You Choose Your Home or a Rented Hall?

“Direnjis renjis dipilis 

Ditepungilah tawar 
Hai beras kunyit ditabur 
Disiram si air mawar…”

If you have been to quite a number of Malay wedding receptions, I bet you must have heard of the song lyrics above, sung by R. Ismail, titled DiRenjis-renjis Dipilis.  Two decades ago this song was commonly played during rewang and tepung tawar. Today, it’s still a favorite choice among many, including those who are holding receptions in rented halls.

Wedding songs aside, let’s put our focus on the venue of your wedding reception. Would you choose your home, or a rented hall? Home, hall. Home, hall. Which one? Arghh! Still having headaches in deciding which one’s the best? Well, that’s pretty normal, so don’t worry too much, yeah?   

“Not to worry much? Are you kidding me?” Some of you might say that. If you did, forgive me. Yeah, you’re right. Choosing the venue for a Malay wedding reception is a big thing. With this one, you can’t make the wrong decision. You are going to invite hundreds of guests. Some of you might even want to hold a bigger reception. Could it be done at home? Sure! You have many good relatives and neighbors who are willing to lend a hand. Are you sure about that? Not really? Oh, gosh! It’s time to panic now.

Before you get surmounted by panic attack, why not you take a deep breath because I am here to help you ease up on the pressure. I am about to list down the benefits and drawbacks of holding wedding receptions at home and rented hall now. You can compare and contrast, and hopefully make easier decisions later on. Without further ado, let’s begin.

Benefits of home wedding receptions

     1.    Help is available in abundance

A day before your wedding takes place, relatives and neighbors will start flooding your home to lend a helping hand, voluntarily and free of charge. Work will be shared regardless of its level of difficulty. A special tent for penanggah (helper with specifically assigned duties) would usually be built at one corner of the house compound. In most situations, the tent would be as near as possible to the kitchen. Under the tent, all the ingredients will be prepared mostly from scratch. You will get to see heaps of garlic, shallots, gingers, and potatoes to be manually peeled and cut. Dried chilies will need to be soaked in boiling water and turned into paste. Chicken, meat and mutton will be cut into individual serving sizes. The greatest part? All that hard work will no longer feel as burdensome anymore.  

Shortcut approach: You could also hire a catering service when holding your wedding reception at home. It’s an acceptable practice and rather common these days.

     2.    No time or zone restriction

Holding a wedding reception at home allows all your family members, neighbors and friends to hang out for as long as they want to. The ambience will be less formal. Guests with suits and ties will be happily welcomed, and the same goes to those without. There will be no restricted areas for kids to play, even in the red zones like cooking areas and slippery bathrooms. Hmm… on a second thought, those places aren’t safe for kids but when they are accompanied by adults, it’s perfectly okay.

When the wedding ends, people could stay for another day or a week after that. It doesn’t matter. But, a majority of the guests would normally go home at the end of the wedding day itself. Those who stay for another night or two would usually be your close relatives, psst… because they want to watch you unwrap your wedding gifts. Haha!

Drawbacks of home wedding receptions

     1.    Limited parking space

A home with a small compound and surrounded with crowded, little streets could experience the hardest challenge in providing enough parking spaces for all the guests. For sure, everyone would try to park their vehicles as near as possible to your venue, resulting in a massive traffic congestion. Worse than that, your entrance gate could be blocked with parked cars. This could be really troublesome when the berarak ceremony is about to begin. You can’t expect your significant other and his or her family members to squeeze in between the small openings of parked cars to join you during the berarak. It wouldn’t only be troublesome, but also embarrassing!

Problem solving approach: You could use the help of auxiliary police to navigate a better flow of traffic during your wedding day.

      2.      Consumed by lethargy

      Although many people would be willing to help you out, you would find out that, sometimes with the absence of your conscious mind, you would be inclined to do a lot of work. Imagine the number of tasks that would need to be completed, and the number of people doing them. Whether you want it or not, you would have to check on them to ensure that everything is on the right track. A loophole here and there means you would need to jump in to provide rescue. A long line of incomplete tasks means you could get a severe headache; however, you couldn’t afford to have one during the entire day. Even teeny-weeny issues could make you drip in sweat, no kidding.

Viable solution: A wedding event is not a one man show. You could hire a wedding planner to reduce the work load when preparing a home-based wedding reception.

Benefits of renting a hall

     1.    Spacious

A hall could provide a more spacious environment, resulting in a more comfortable ambience. You could have a better arrangement setting for the reception and dining area. Your guests would not have to squeeze in to get the chance to meet you and your parents in person. Commonly, there would be more tables and chairs available, so all your guests could simply take their food, have a seat and dig in right away. There is always a stage in the center-front of the hall, where you can place your dais. In most occasions, a dais would look way more impressive in a hall compared to the home based version.

     2.    Bid farewell to daunting tasks and cleanups

When renting a hall, you would not have to do much of anything. Everything would be prepared by your appointed caterer or wedding planner. Literally, you would not need to lift up even a finger to get all the dining tables and chairs arranged neatly. No more cooking would be required, how nice would that be, right? No more worries about how and when to serve food, as professional ushers and servers would be readily available when you hire a catering service. At the end of the day, when all your guests have gone home, there would be no need for you to cry helplessly, trying to wash one dirty plate after another. All of these will be taken care of, completely. Of course, they will come with a cost, but, the bottom line is you will not have to deal with messy cleanups, I promise.

Drawbacks of renting a hall

     1.    Hiring a catering service is mandatory

Up to now, I haven’t heard of a Malay wedding reception that opted for rewang when the venue was at a rented hall. At least, not yet. Perhaps, there have been some that I am not aware of, but that’s a different story.

Although it’s perfectly alright to prepare your own food for 500 – 1500 guests in average, would it be a practical option? One thing for sure, there would be delivery issues. How many trips do you need to take to deliver the whole bunch of food and drinks, not to mention the desserts and wedding cake that are so fragile in nature? What if there is an overflow in the number of guests, resulting in not enough food to serve around? You could order in, but doing it would defeat your original purpose, which is to cook your own food. If you knew such a problem could arise, you would have considered hiring a catering service right from the start, isn’t it?

     2.     A costly option

     You must get ready to be ripped off down to zero! No kidding, especially when your budget is small. Renting a hall these days is not cheap. It could eat up thousands of dollars even when you’re only renting it for 24 hours. So yeah, be prepared.

Cost-effective solution: There might be cheaper halls available, but you have to ask around or Google for it. Or, you could split the cost with your significant other, especially when your parents would be the ones paying the bills.

Note:

Rewang is a term referring to communal work where neighbors gather up at the home of the bride and groom to help in the preparation of the wedding day. 

Tepung tawar is a ceremony performed at the dais where blessings are given to the bride and groom by older members of the family (usually the parents, grandparents, uncles and aunties) by throwing yellow-colored rice at the couple and sprinkling their palms with a few drops of rose water accompanied by a pinch of shredded pandan leaves on each palm. 

Berarak is a ceremony where the groom walks into the entrance gate of the bride’s home (accompanied by family) and joins the bride who already waits inside the home compound with her family.