Banquet Hall Theme Review

General design

Graceful, stylish and shapely appearance is what this theme is reputed for. That's extremely perfect for a wedding planning website. Every element is well-proportioned and attractive. Especially, the artistic decorative patterns and the curved lines in the design remarkably emphasize how aesthetic this theme is.

Decoration in the first screen area

Other elements

In this theme, the author uses two typefaces with artistic design: Playfair Display and Merriweather. They make me feel so merry and joyful with their beautiful curved style, but they still help me read posts very easily. I think that this typography so coincided with the general design of this WordPress business theme.

The color scheme is also really fitted with the whole style. The white and peach color bring about joy and happiness for celebrations or events of your customizer.

On the homepage of this free version, you don't have the pricing, call to action, testimonial, and portfolio section. Yet don't worry, I promise that your homepage is still so stunning with the full-screen featured slider, and the full-width featured post.

On the first screen area, the well-organized header lies directly on the slider, which is a wise arrangement to save space. The header and other elements are so harmonious with the slider that I don't feel any distraction at all. Especially, to grab the attention to the important buttons, they are highlighted, becoming far more prominent than the other factors.

The highlighted buttons

After having a strong first impression on the first screen area, you will surely be surprised by the animation when other parts appear. They slowly but impressively show up, making visitors amused and so excited.

The animation when first go to the front page

The archive page has only one default layout: a list with small left featured images and the right sidebar. This page and other inner pages focus on readability so they are a bit simple and less prominent.

Archive page

Especially, the inner pages don't display the featured image and the featured image is so "modest" like this.

Single post page

Responsive

The design is good on different viewports. But I find a small matter when I use this WordPress theme on my iPad: the Service section is shown in a single column and it leaves a blank space on the right, looking quite empty.

The responsive design checked by ami.responsivedesign.is

To use this WordPress business theme right after install, you don't need any enclosed plugin or extra step at all. Furthermore, if you want to have all the demo data and a similar page like the demo quickly, the One-click demo import will help you. It's so simple and quick for the importing process. You just need to read the documentation carefully before using this feature.

If you don't want to use it, just switch to manual set up. It's compulsory to set up a static homepage to have the beautiful front page like in the demo and you can quickly do it in Customizer. Then, stay in Customizer and you can edit and create all the front page elements without any difficulty.

The Testimonial, Portfolios, and Call to Action are just available in the pro version. In this free theme, you are still given enough common things to use.

No plugin is recommended by the author so you have to figure out the compatible plugin by yourself.

You have a favorable condition for customizing this theme. The Customizer with live preview helps you easily edit the basic features and homepage elements.

The common things like color, background image, and header image are easily editable just like the other themes.

There are only two sections for the custom colors but they can still considerably change the appearance of this theme.

Customizing color

As for the header image, it forces you to crop the image according to the default aspect ratio. And I don't think using a header is a good point as it may distract the header area as I did here.

Customizing header image

The layout and typography are fixed, but I see the default styles are okay to use for me.

As for the Homepage section, it's so convenient for you to quickly show/hide them and select items from the dropdown menu. However, the number of items is quite limited. For example, the Slider Setting has only a maximum of three items and the Home Section One and Two have a maximum of four selected pages. To have more selections for these elements, you have to upgrade to the pro version.

Customizing Slider

Customizing Home Section one

All these standard post formats provided are easy to use and look really okay. If you are a beginner like me, you can still use them properly within one or two days.

A gallery displays the images very neatly even when they have different sizes.

Gallery

Video is quite modest, but still clear to watch even without zooming.

Video

Blockquote will help your citation so much easier and more beautiful.

Blockquote

I verified the SEO optimization by some tools. The result is that this WordPress business theme hasn't got ready for SEO yet so you have to install a plugin to completely use it. However, the author doesn't suggest any plugin for SEO at all.

PageSpeed Insights analyzed how fast this theme is and the result is not good. The speed still needs work to help people have a better time load.

Website speed checked by PageSpeed Insights

There is enough information for installation, demo data, and customization of this WordPress business theme in the documentation. It's detailed, understandable with step-by-step instructions, illustrations, and a video tutorial.

You can seek for help in the support forum. However, you just can view the questions from users and answers from the author if you don't buy any premium theme from SKT Themes. To have an account to login and create a topic, you must be a premium theme user.