Weddingbee Blog

Mr. D and I do not have a very big budget. We are paying for the wedding ourselves, which has meant that we have had to be very creative with our choices. Much like the ceremony site, we were having problems finding a venue budget that fit our personalities and our budget. It was obvious something was going to have to give. We simply could not afford to pay $1,000–$2,000 for the rental price, plus another $3,000 for food and another $1,200 for drinks. Plus the odds and ends of decor and linens. I understand the reception is typically about half of your budget, but this would push us close to 75% of the budget, and we still had a lot of other things to pay for that were equally important, like my dress and the photographer. And for those of you not familiar with Iowa, an outdoor wedding and reception is not something you gamble with in March. It can be sunny, raining, or snowing, or possibly all three. So what were we to do? We started looking long and hard.

We were hoping for something like this place:

I loved the wooden floors and the windows, but the price was just too high for our budget, so we had to pass. / Image via The Avacentre

Or maybe this place:

The Bella Sala in Tiffin, Iowa. It’s so gorgeous, but SO out of our price range. So once again, out of the running. / Image via Bella Sala

Just as we were about to give up and push back the wedding date to allow us to save up and hold the wedding at one of these places, we found one more option. It turned out that Bella Sala does their catering exclusively through a company in Cedar Rapids that actually also has their own event centers. It wasn’t shiny and new like the Bella Sala, but their pricing was solid and they had good reviews. So Mr. D and I made an appointment to tour the “A Touch of Class Banquet Center.”

The building itself isn’t exactly what you’d call gorgeous…it’s large and brown without a lot of flair. When you walk in you can either go up the stairs to their larger room, called the Crystal room, or downstairs to the Champagne room. Since the largest our wedding will be is 150, we only have enough for the Champagne room. I wasn’t overwhelmed with what I saw: the generic round tables and banquet tables. There was a dance floor in the corner and a built-in bar. Two bathrooms were also attached to the room.

It may not look like a lot, but it will be… / Image via A Touch of Class Banquet Center

But something else attracted me: the price. You see, the price of this place simply cannot be beat. We get the room rental, the basic white linens, the china, the food, the drinks (including unlimited keg beer and wine), cleanup, and numerous other bonuses for only $26 dollars a person. Yes, you read that right. It is not a mistake. We simply cannot beat the price of this venue. Now that our reception venue, food, and drinks are only taking up about 35% of the budget, we have money left over to really snazz up the place on our own—and believe me, I have some awesome ideas floating around in this noggin of mine…