I have to say...over the past year my fiancee, and my family, and I were under an immense amount of stress because of the reviews posted on this website. In truth, we had the night of our lives at Elite Palace. Igor Tsan catered to our every need and was truly concerned with my wife's happiness. Now I won't say that there were not any bumps in the road, however, with any venue there will be bumps and it's up to the bride and groom to plan around them and hedge against them. The following was our experience with Elite, their recommendations, and their vendors.
1. Choice of Ballroom: Florintine ballroom (downstairs - commonly only used for ceremony). We used this ballroom for both our ceremony and reception. It is of course a matter of taste, but we loved it so much. It is much less ostentatious than the room upstairs (in our opinion), and we were really going for a less bold look. It is exquisite - silver and clean and beautiful. It comfortably fits a wedding of up to 150 people (plus band), using 12 -person tables. There is a perfect amount of space to keep the dance floor full, but not crowded. We had our ceremony first, then our cocktail hour, then went back into the ballroom for the reception. The cocktail hour in the lobby was beautifully set up and went off without a hitch. We had one bar with two bartenders and it was great. The food was amazing. We added the Viennese dessert table and it was placed in the lobby at the end of the night which was a great idea. We were able to set up a beautiful lighting scheme downstairs in which the candlelight overshadowed any lights in the ballroom and not the other way around. Bathrooms were clean, the bridal suite was impeccable and so beautiful and the wait staff was attentive to all of our needs. Now, all this certainly comes with a caveat: Elite is up and coming, which essentially means that if you want something (or, more importantly, do not want something) you must make it crystal clear to the banquet manager (as we did with Igor). Brides and grooms must remember that venues like this do a wedding every weekend and are typically used to huge weddings that are similar to one another; therefore, if you are looking for something a bit more toned down (as we were), it takes a lot of conversing, explaining, and, most importantly, a very detailed contract hammered out as early as possible (ie types of alcohol, food, attire, extras, lighting, dos and don'ts). Additionally, with this ballroom, we were able to have an amazing wedding downstairs even while there was an exceptionally large wedding going on upstairs and no one even noticed it. Further, this illustrates our point made above: we discussed this at length with Igor because we were concerned about it; as a result, everything was incredibly smooth and there was no overlap between the weddings. In fact one of our concerns was that it would be awkward and tacky have the bride from the other wedding walk through ours (the bride upstairs had the groom suite). Igor was so professional about this and mitigated any contact with our wedding that no one even noticed or cared - including us.
Comparison: By way of comparison, we have been to half a dozen weddings in the past 6 months ranging from the Pierre in Manhattan and the Trump National Golf Course in Westchester, and though we may be biased, we believe that Elite and all of our vendors not only measured up but made our wedding day just, if not more, memorable and elegant.
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