We had a venue all picked out. For the ceremony and reception it was going to be around $16-17k for everything including alcohol and catering. Fairly reasonable. But then they decided to hop on this boat of event minimums for their 2023 pricing and changed it on their site after having already given us cost lists. So the minimum was going to be a few grand more than the actual final cost. This new trend of event minimums is actually the reason I had to exclude my hotel this time. They didn't have those before. And as with other places, the event minimum was above what the cost would be for our invite list. We started looking elsewhere and found another reasonable venue, but we have to find another place to do the ceremony if we go there so trying to find a place.
Anyway, I was kind of hoping to find a place that the ceremony and reception could be done to not have the stress of coordinating with two places releasing booking schedules at different times, but I'm happy to do it to stay within cost. But just to price compare, I reached out to some other venues and the quotes keep getting more insane! I was quoted $23k at another place, $30k at one today for a barn and that doesn't include any catering or alcohol. I understand compensating venues for staff time, food cost, facility use, ect, but I wish people would stop paying such insane prices, especially for places that don't include any catering. I know they don't care, because there's other couples already lined up to take our place and pay those prices, but we just can't. People who don't have resources to DIY on someone else's land or insane amounts of money shouldn't have to be priced out of having a nice day with their closest loved ones. I get that it's just business, but some of these places are going to continue asking above reasonable market and unreasonable event minimums if people keep paying it
I know some folks may disagree with this or have other feelings about it. I know some folks will say have a smaller wedding or you just have to save for it. But with a large number of siblings and their kids having them there being important to my fiance, that's tough. And it would be rude to ask people to travel for a wedding and not feed them. Of course saving the money is important, but I'm just frustrated by how unreasonable these venues are making wedding costs nowdays. Even beyond reasonable expectation of inflation.
I know this really accomplishes nothing other than maybe venue owners and couples thinking about the ballooning of wedding pricing. But at very least, thanks for allowing me to vent. I'm sure some others have faced similar frustration in this process and at least know they're not alone in that.
