We regretted not doing any research about paying banquet bills until we were asked to make the payment. That's a mistake we made and we hope to share this.
One of the best cash back credit card is the Manhatten World Mastercard, which you can get up to 3% cash back up to a maximum of $800 a year! If the remaining cost of your banquet after deducting the deposit is above $36,000, be sure to ask if the hotel can let you pay by monthly installment when you make the deposit to secure the date and venue.
Why is it that only when the remaining cost of your banquet is above $36,000, it is then worth using the Manhatten credit card, and why must it be paid in monthly installment? Because,
1. In order to get the 3% cash back, your monthly spend will need to be at least $3000. Otherwise, the cash back will be only 0.5% and 1% for monthly spending amount between $1 to $999 and between $1000 to $2999 respectively; and
2. There is a catch, the maximum cash back earned and received per quarter is capped at $200.
Because of this cap, even if you made the full payment of $36,000 on your wedding day, for example, you can only get $200 cash back even though 3% of $36,000 is $1080.
Imagine you have a Manhatten card, and you charged a monthly installment of $3000 for one year period. You would have earn the full $800 cash back!
We were lucky that Swissotel accepts a maximum of 4 credit cards for the full payment and we sought help from friends who have Manhatten card to help us earn the $200 cash back. But even so, we thought the best solution would be to pay the banquet by monthly installment to earn the maximum cash back.
What if the remaining cost of your banquet after deducting the deposit is less than $36,000? No worries, there's UOB One Card for your cash back.
There are 3 tiers for UOB One Card rebate: $300, $800, $1500
| Min Requirement | Purchases made with UOB One Card | Rebate Earned | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Statement date | 15 Aug | 15 Sept | 15 Oct | 15 Nov | |
| Total minimum monthly spend tiers | i | S$300 | S$300 | S$300 | S$30 |
| ii. | S$800 | S$800 | S$800 | S$80 | |
| iii. | S$1,500 | S$1,500 | S$1,500 | S$150 | |
| Minimum number of purchases per statement period. | 3 | 3 | 3 | ||
* The above table was copied from UOB website.
# Remember, as the requirement to get the cash rebate is to have a minimum of 3 purchases a month, you will need to use your UOB One card twice a month in addition to the monthly installment of your banquet.
In this case, if your monthly installment is $1500, you will earn cash rebate of $150 every 3 months!
Take note that in order to pay the cost of the banquet using installment plans, you must have sufficient funds in your bank to pay off the credit bills every month!
One last thing to take note. If it is already too late to change to payment by installment plan when you are reading this post, please remember to call the credit card company to ask for an increase in credit limit at least a week before your wedding banquet.
Hubby and I only remembered it 2 days in advance and hubby had a hard time dealing with Citibank on the credit limit increase. In the end, we used 4 Manhatten credit cards for the banquet payment, thanks to the help from our friends :D
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