Weddingbee Blog

On top of planning the actual wedding, we also have a party to plan! Since we’re only having family in St. Thomas, we wanted to have a big party back home that wouldn’t break the bank, but would give us a chance to get all of our friends together for some post-wedding celebrations. First things first, we had to pick a venue.

My first thought was our parents’ backyards. They’re right next to each other so we started throwing around the idea of having a big summertime barbecue between the two lawns. Pros: easy parking for everyone in the ‘burbs, no charge for renting space, everyone could celebrate where we used to play as kids, and we could make it casual or fancy. Cons: I started thinking about everything that would have to go into it – the food, drinks, tent, tables and chairs, tableware, music, and what would we do about the bathroom situation? I know I wouldn’t want 150 people coming in and out of my house to use my bathrooms—that just spells disaster to me. But I also didn’t want to have to rent Port-A-Potties – they don’t exactly scream ‘let’s celebrate’!

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On to the next idea…

One of my friends suggested the Downey Mansion at Berger Park. I looked it up and discovered it is run by the Chicago Park District, and it’s right on the lake not far from our apartment.

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I liked the fact that it’s so open and I started picturing what I could do with that space, but then I read a little further on the Park District’s website and you have to use their preferred vendors and caterers for everything you bring in. So we would have the same issues as with our parents’ backyards as far as renting everything goes.

Next!

Our next thought was to find a restaurant nearby and rent out a portion of it. I thought of all of the nicer restaurants we’ve been to (and some I’ve walked past) and started sending out emails for quotes. Holy cow, were they expensive!! And just for poops and giggles while I was on a roll getting quotes that were way over budget, I emailed the Signature Room which is a phenomenal restaurant on the 95th floor of the Hancock Building. I’ve eaten there once and the view was breathtaking and the food was fantastic. I was really just curious to see how much they could get away with charging for these views and I knew there was no way it would be an option…

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Grrr, I just went back to my email and looks like I deleted it. If memory serves though, it was something insane like a MINIMUM $15K or $20K just to rent part of the room, not including food and drinks! A girl can dream.

I continued my search and emailed a ton of restaurants. All of the quotes I received back were still out of our price range (we were really hoping to keep it under $5,000 total). We started thinking that maybe a restaurant was out of reach, or maybe we should change our plan. From there, we decided instead of trying to plan a dinner, we could maybe host a cocktail party with appetizers and drinks, but we didn’t want it in a bar-like setting… we were looking for something a little more fancy.

And so, the search continued…

Did you consider an at-home reception? Did you find when all was said and done that it was more expensive or cheaper to host an at-home reception than it would be to host at a restaurant or banquet hall?