LPT: When looking for a wedding venue, get a general event quote first, but let them know it's a wedding before committing to anything. You might end up getting a better deal than you anticipated.
Planning a wedding is difficult, especially if you're like my fiancée and me and would rather spend more on a honeymoon and planning for our future.
I've seen a lot of advice here and elsewhere about how venues will jack rates up if they know the event is a wedding and it's made me pretty nervous when dealing with prospective vendors.
All-in-all, I do think it's worth the effort to downplay the fact that you're planning a wedding to see where they come in with the initial quote, but it is absolutely worthwhile to make sure that they do know it's a wedding once you've gotten those baseline numbers established. At that point, if they do raise the rates, you're working from a position of strength and you can ask, specifically, what justifies the increased cost.
This comes from a specific experience we've had with a venue recently:
We recently checked out a place near us and, in our correspondence with the venue, we said that we were just looking to host a get together and we'd basically simply need food, drinks, and room setup.
The quote was very reasonable, so we shifted gears with them and mentioned that it would be a wedding reception. We were very up front about the fact that we positioned it as a get together because that's essentially how we want our wedding to be - more of a fun party with friends and family than some huge thing. We asked if that would, at all, change the rates or if they had additional fees and services that they would need to tack on.
Not only were the rates exactly the same, they also include extras for weddings like the cake, some floral arrangements, and other little touches - all for the same rate that we got for just a general event inquiry. Additionally, they've been incredibly helpful with suggestions about ways we could hold the event to save some more money.
Obviously your mileage may vary, but it also seems like a great way to weed out the places who will try to nickle and dime you from the people who really want to help make your event a success.
