We can't remember how many potential wedding venues we looked at, and we don't want to. Bonita searched them out in various ways, including the web and the Yellow Pages. Then we started to visit them. It was shocking what dingy places asked so much for their use. Maybe they look better at night. But we wanted somewhere with a gracious atmosphere - an innate style.
   With a short list, we then began the onerous task of sampling the menus and wine lists. A tough task, but necessary, and as it turned out we were well up to it. The short list all had good food and wine.

The acoustics were critical - it wouldn't do if you couldn't hear yourself when everyone talked at once. And an unamplified live band had to sound good, too, and of course a friendly staff was essential.   We finally took photographs of the few that were left, and went home to lick our wounds.

Our final choice was the Park Terrace restaurant at David Jones, under the skilled care of David Forsyth. The windows look out over Hyde Park (you can see it in the background of some of the photographs), it is spacious, classical, acoustically live but with good sound absorbancy for chatter and clatter, and the staff are friendly and thorough.

We paid our deposit and over a period of a month or so refined our ideas about menu, wine list, layout and all that. David assured us that he would personally see to it that would all go fine on the day. I have no idea where he got his confidence from, but as it turned out, he was right. His team did a marvellous job.