Weddingbee Blog

Our venue search was exhaustive. And by exhaustive, I mean ridiculous. And by ridiculous, I mean certifiably insane. Mr. Socks and I went to over 80 venues in our search. And we didn’t just look them up online. We drove to every. single. place. Who knew we were so freakin’ picky?? It wasn’t that we didn’t know what we wanted, but it was VERY difficult to find not only a venue that suited us, but a staff that fit our style as well. Very few venues were right near us. Most were about a half an hour away or more. The most we traveled in one weekend on our venue hunt was 450 miles between 5 or 6 venues, I think.

Oh yeah. We were dedicated. There will definitely be an abridged rundown on those locations later.

But right now, I’ll tell you about our experience when we decided to look at restaurants as our potential venue space. It seems pretty standard in the Philadelphia area that $20,000 is needed to rent out a restaurant for a Saturday night and $10,000 (or a bit more, depending on the restaurant) for a Sunday night. That amount includes the facility for the night, the food, the staff, and the alcohol. If you don’t mind Sunday evenings, it’s not bad, huh?

But wait!

Taxes and gratuity! Most places do not include this. Tax in Pennsylvania is currently at 7% (at least, I’m pretty sure of this) and gratuities at restaurants are a required 18-20%. So now the 10 grand is nearly 13 grand and you could have done SO MUCH with that extra 3 grand, right? That’s our budget for the photog and the DJ!

Source

Boo! It never ends!

It’s definitely a bummer, but taxes and gratuity are unavoidable, and the sooner I learned to accept that, the more I could focus on comparing just where we could get more for our money. Of course, we ended up going over our original projected budget for the restaurant we chose, but we’re okay with that since what we’re getting is EXACTLY what we want! I’ll definitely do a breakdown of our budget before this whole thing is over so you know what we got for the money.

In the meantime, here is my list of pros and cons when it comes to restaurant receptions:

PROS

• If you live in/near a foodie town, the options are limitless
• Less expensive food (let’s face it––catering companies jack up the prices for some reason. I would know, I used to work in catering)
• Experienced staff who take orders, cook the food to order & don’t pre-make absolutely everything
• Tables are already there!
• You have full control over picking the quality of the food––if you don’t like the restaurant, you certainly don’t have to get married there. Many receptions halls have “preferred” caterers in which you have no control over how much they charge or the quality/style of the food
• It’s an off-the-beaten path option

CONS

• Buying out the restaurant can be quite expensive
• Taxes & Gratuity often not included
• Staff may not be experienced in handling weddings
• Alcohol mark-up may be high
• Rentals may be necessary–tablecloths, dance floor, etc
• Many of the cooler restaurants in the Philly area seem to be on the small side for some reason!

In the end, having a restaurant reception worked out best for us because it was a little different, but it was also because of the quality of food, the experienced staff, and the location––it really will allow our guests a taste of the city we fell in love in.

Would you ever consider a restaurant reception?