Carmen's Banquet Centre is one of the most popular venues in Hamilton for hosting lavish, elegant events and weddings. Offering spacious interiors, sumptuous cuisines and boasting an inviting ambience, Carmen's Banquet Centre located 45 minutes from both Toronto and Niagara, is easily accessible from the highway. The venue, which opened its doors in 1987, till date has hosted thousands of events. Carmen's Banquet Centre features multiple function areas suitable for big and small events and also personalized services, for planning a unique celebration.
Facilities and capacity
Carmen's Banquet Centre has four exquisite, multi-purpose ball rooms that can easily accommodate an event for up to 1100 people. The halls feature towering 28-foot ceilings, two storey foyer space, mezzanine for cocktail receptions, hardwood flooring, and sparkling chandeliers.
Services offered
The venue boasts three decades of impressive hospitality. Popular for excellent catering service, with inspired menus, Carmen's Banquet Centre offers dedicated services with a great team, for perfectly planning your event.
Overall, our wedding with Carmen’s was a great experience. I just don’t think I can give the full 5 points due to some issues which I will outline below.
1. Decor. The decor supplied by Carmen’s was modern, had lots of variety and really saved you a lot of money over hiring a decor company. We brought some of our own and used some of theirs. One issue we had was we were going to use their table numbers. The day of our wedding the maître D showed us the room and they had black table numbers lazily put on the tables, which didn’t match our decor at all. When I asked where the agreed upon (in the contract) white table numbers were, she told me they were (direct quote) “shoved in a box and would take a while to get”. Again, this was the DAY OF my wedding at 4:45pm, 15mins before cocktail hour was to start. Not sure why these were not taken out weeks ahead of time considering that’s when the decor and contract was final.
2. Food & bar. The food was excellent, everyone had good things to say. I liked that they offered us signature drinks during the tasting and many of our guests drinks those all night long. They ran out of amaretto on the bar around 9pm. Again, minor but also annoying. As Italians this is a wedding staple... seems like a banquet hall should have more inventory considering our package specifically included amaretto.
2. Communication/planning prior. The sales meeting about 14 months ahead of time went great. We were impressed and all of our wedding hopes and dreams seemed to be something Carmen’s was happy to provide. Then that rep left and a few things that were promised as “no problem” at the meeting turned out to be “not happening”. I also found it very difficult to get quick responses from Carmen’s, often waiting over 2 weeks for a returned email. This was manageable when we were 14-6 months out, but when you’re down to the last 5-0 months planning, it’s highly stressful not to hear a response for weeks at a time. I found I was always the one asking about tasting dates, finalized contracts, final decor drop off etc and Carmen’s never initiated these conversations which was frustrating. Quite honestly this lack of timely communication was my biggest wedding stressor.
4. Decor/clean-up. Nobody told us that we would need to take our decor at the end of the night. We assumed we could pick it up the next morning when we checked out of the Carmen’s hotel. We were exhausted and headed out around 12:45am. At 1am, our guests left were told they had to take home all of these items THAT night for us. Luckily there were family members there that could put it in their car. However, how embarrassing at 1am that our last guests had to load up their cars with our items! This comes back to the communication point, this should have been discussed and we should have been told.
In conclusion, a majority of my guests noticed none of these things so it was still a fabulous wedding in their eyes, and it truly was. However, I just can’t give a 5 star review because it didn’t live up to that level.
Sent on 03/11/2019
Julia
· Married on 21/09/2019
5.0
Quality of service:
5.0
Responsiveness:
5.0
Value:
5.0
Flexibility:
5.0
Professionalism:
5.0
Best Day Ever!!
Carmen's was amazing!! They did everything I asked for and set the hall up amazing!! Love everything
Sent on 18/12/2019
Jenna Wild
· Married on 31/08/2019
2.4
Quality of service:
3.0
Responsiveness:
1.0
Value:
3.0
Flexibility:
3.0
Professionalism:
2.0
Lack of preparedness and communication
Let me start by saying my wedding was beautiful and the food was yummy. All my guests loved the late night buffet and wedding guests from the other weddings were jealous. Unfortunately, there were issues leading up to and including the day of the wedding that I thought should have been avoidable. When the wedding was less then 3 months away, it would take weeks of me following up with emails and calling in person to get answers to questions I had regarding details for the day. I would leave messages and I would not get anyone to call me back. This became very frustrating as we got closer to the day. In the weeks and days leading up to the wedding I would follow up to confirm the final details and frequently find a missing detail. It created a sense that we were not as important as other couples. This feeling was cemented for us on the day of the wedding. There were may decoration details that were blatantly missed. When we went to ensure things were fixed we were met with push back from staff. Ultimately we were able to correct most things, but it was disheartening to have to initially argue with staff to have things corrected. Additionally, we felt like we were being rushed to start everything at exact times but when it came time for something, staff were no where to be found.
I do want to emphasise that the wait and bar staff were wonderful and very responsive. The challenges of our wedding ultimately boiled down to the managing staff and a lack of responsiveness on their end.
The venue was beautiful and food was lovely. But the headache of the challenges we had to deal with, has resulted in me not recommending this venue.
Sent on 21/02/2020
Cass Nicholls
· Married on 10/08/2019
5.0
Quality of service:
5.0
Responsiveness:
5.0
Value:
5.0
Flexibility:
5.0
Professionalism:
5.0
Best night ever
The organization and food was amazing, it let us relax without having to worry about things going wrong. Only minor downside, is the DJ should check in to make sure the first dance song is the correct version, which ours was not.
Sent on 12/08/2019
Jesstine Carden
· Married on 31/05/2019
5.0
Quality of service:
5.0
Responsiveness:
5.0
Value:
5.0
Flexibility:
5.0
Professionalism:
5.0
Stress free
Everything went smoothly, and stress-free!
I loved working with Karen the wedding coordinator, she was absolutely amazing!
So happy with the results, she took my vision and knocked it out of the park! I showed up on the day and had no worries at all. Highly recommend if you want all things done in one spot and yo just show up and have no worries, also to stay within your budget!
Sent on 03/06/2019
Carmen's Banquet Centre by Carmen's Group's reply:
Hello Jesstine, thank you so much for taking the time to write us a review on WeddingWire. We pride ourselves on being able to offer an all-inclusive wedding experience that turns into an unforgettable moment. It makes us so happy to hear that your big day was stree-free as well as within budget and that you were happy with the set-up. Your compliments will be passed on to Karen and our entire team. We do hope we'll have the honour of hosting a future event of yours and thank you once again for allowing us to be a part of your special day.
Congratulations and best wishes,
The Carmen's Team
