Venue Indecisive!

terribleglamour

Hi beautiful brides,

I have been searching high and low for a budget friendly venue with some sort of rustic/romantic/fun charm for next Spring. I've looked at the Lyman estate in Waltham and loved it, I'm only concerned about how pricey it could possibly get with outside caterers, etc. I also really liked one of the farms in Peabody, but it's insanely expensive.

Any tips on where to look or how to keep the budget under control if the venue doesn't offer catering and I need to look for outside services? 

Any all advice is very welcome! Thanks in advance!

Lexi

JBs_Bride

How much are you looking to spend on the reception and how many guests are you looking to invite? This info will help the girls here give you great recs.

octnites

Have you considered a Friday wedding? I'm using a relatively expensive venue but decided to do a Friday and the price is way less! Same goes for Sundays. Usually the site fee is cut in half at least. Not sure about outside caterers, but I imagine most vendors should lower their prices for days that aren't in high demand.

anastassiiat

I'm doing a Sunday wedding for the reason octnites mentioned above, it's way cheaper then Saturday! We are also getting married in southern NH, so if travelling is not that big of an issue for you, maybe try looking at some venues there, since from my experience the prices tend to go down the further you get away from metro Boston area.

terribleglamour

Thank you all so much for your feedback! I'm going to continue to sift through all of the great resources on here and hopefully I'll be able to come up with something. I'm planning on having about 100-115 guests and hoping to keep the reception budget within the $10,000 range.

I'm still very in love with the Lyman estate, we'll see what happens!

Cookie1231

We have to hire all of our own vendors and are actually finding that it is cheaper than it would have been if we went to a place with their own caterer! If you are still considering Lyman, I highly recommend Tastings caterers. They will work within your budget and are really great to work with. I don't know what the rental fees are for Lyman, but Tastings quoted us less than $10K for 100 guests including a pretty extensive menu, chairs, linens, cake, staff, etc. You could definitely cut the costs to less than that if you were flexible on the menu - unlike me who HAD to have an ice cream sundae bar

If you really love it don't count it out just yet!