Choosing a South Asian Wedding Venue in Queens and Brooklyn
What to look at when you walk a hall — from a photographer who has worked in most of them.
We are not venue agents and we do not take referral fees from halls. What we do have is a camera in most of them, several times a year, which gives us a particular and fairly unromantic view of what makes a room work.
When you walk a venue, here is what we would look at.
Look up
Ceiling height and ceiling colour decide more about your photographs than the carpet ever will. A high, pale ceiling lets us bounce light and keeps skin tones natural. A low ceiling painted deep red will push a warm cast over everything, and it takes real work in editing to pull back.
Ask about the windows
Not whether there are windows — which way they face, and what time the light leaves. A hall that is glorious at two in the afternoon can be a cave by six. If your ceremony is late in the day, visit late in the day.
Find out where you can go outside
Couple portraits need somewhere that is not the car park. Some halls have a garden, a courtyard, a decent doorway. Some have nothing, and then we are working with the lobby. Neither is wrong — but you want to know which one you have booked.
Separation, if you need it
- Is the partition solid, or a curtain that moves every time someone passes?
- Is there a second entrance to the women's side, so nobody has to walk through the men's hall?
- Is there a private room for the bride that is not the toilet corridor? You would be surprised.
The practical ones nobody asks
What time can vendors load in?
If decor cannot start until two hours before guests, your getting-ready photographs will have a half-built stage in the background.
Is there a hard finish time?
Many halls in the city do. It determines whether a send-off is possible at all.
Who controls the lighting?
Uplighting set to deep purple will tint every face in the room. Ask whether it can be changed, and whether anyone will be there who knows how.
Where does the food come from?
An in-house kitchen and an outside caterer run on very different clocks, and the clock is what your timeline is built on.
The best-photographed weddings we shoot are rarely in the most expensive rooms. They are in rooms where somebody thought about the light.
If you have narrowed it to two or three halls and you want a straight opinion on how each one photographs, send us the names. We will tell you what we have seen.