All Inclusive vs individual vendors?

erina27

I am REALLY new to planning and am researching venues in the Airport/Canonsburg/Washington Area.  I have a few places in mind but am not sure what to do?  The place I'm really interested in, I need to rent/buy everything separate including the alcohol.  The other venues are for the most part hotels that have 80% of everything included in the price.  Any suggestions tips for choosing one over the other?  I don't mind the extra work with having to coordinate everything, esp since we're looking at over a year away, however my parents are pushing the all inclusive angle, basically to save mine and their sanity.  How did you chose?  Any advice is helpful!

emilyb213

Figure out what you can afford and how many guests you're planning to invite. That will help you to compare what venue provides the most value. You'll have to do some number crunching, and take into consideration things like whether or not centerpieces and linens are included. As far as coordinating everything for the venue where you have to rent everything separately, you may find that you are saving enough money there (usually, the biggest savings will be in the cost of alcohol) to hire a day of coordinator to handle everything. Good luck!!

manjermj

Like Emily suggested, lay out your budget and see what you can afford. It's easier to plan a wedding on a lower budget if you do more yourself and carefully plan/pick out your vendors. We chose an all inclusive venue and paid a bit more, but we wouldn't have wanted it any other way. From our engagement to our wedding was 6 months and we didn't want to spend tons of time mulling over vendors and decisions. After booking the venue, we literally had our entire reception planned in 1 day then only had to choose a photographer, florist, and transportation- so so so nice and easy. For us, that was totally worth every penny of it. 

Caitlynmk

I personally saved myself the trouble and went with all inclusive at a hotel. But thats because I'm OOT. It really depends, like the others said, on whether you can keep the costs controlled when working with a bunch of different vendors and if you have the time and ability to contact them and meet with them. There are a few places that we looked at that would have required us to work with individual vendors, and I have to say I'm glad we didn't go with those although those locations are generally more interesting and unique than a hotel.

VickiK17

I also went with the hotel.... To me it was important that neither myself, or my mom, bridesmaids, FMIL would be setting up and taking down decorations and things before and after the wedding. I feel like I would have been way too stressed out doing everything seperately but thats just me! The only downfall to a hotel is the food. If you do not like it you're kind of stuck, where as the other places you can pick a caterer to meet your tastes. Luckily we liked our food so this wasn't an issue for us. Good luck!