I haven’t really read reviews for RiRa on the message
boards but I would HIGHLY recommend this place for a reception! We chose it because when we looked into
places at Mandalay Bay, we went to meet with Paula (the events coordinator) and
she was great! She made everything sound
so easy and stress free (which it turned out it was). There were no extra costs and we charged the
whole thing to our room. We booked the Parlour
Room that has couches and comfy chairs in it.
She told us that we could have those, we could have tables for dinner or
we could have both. We chose both. She also told us that the booking was
normally for 3 hours but since we were starting at 5 pm. we would just have the
room for the whole night. That was
really all we had to do other than pick our food from their menu. When we got there for the reception the room
was all set up and looked great. I had
made bundles of personalized M&M’s and dropped them off the morning of the
wedding. When I did the manager was
setting up the room right then and he told me what it was going to look
like. He even took the leftover M&M’s
and arranged them around on the tables around the candle centerpieces. The tables were set exactly as they had been
described to us, the cake was ready and on display and we had a glasses of
champagne ready for everyone as they entered.
We had cocktails for about a half an hour before dinner was served. We chose a family style meal that turned out
to be way more food than we could all possibly eat. People were really raving about how awesome the
corned beef and cabbage and the salmon was!
One of the desserts was a sampler which ended up being cookies and
brownies on trays that were left out around the room for people to snack on
throughout the evening. One of the best
parts was that we had our own private bar with a bartender (Fitzy). He was great and had a really good time with
us. One of my friends kept going up and
asking him to surprise her with fun drinks and he did a great job with
that! RIRa has a live band that plays
there every night at 9:00 pm right outside of the Parlour Room. When the band started we opened the doors and
people started wandering out to dance to the band. They took requests and we ended up having a ‘first
dance’ that was dedicated to us. There
was a good, fun crowd out there and we definitely enjoyed the music and dancing!! There was another wedding party that was out
there that we ended up mingling with a lot.
Our reception that we took about an hour to plan ended up being 7+ hours
of enjoyment! I think the #1 thing that
we enjoyed the most about the whole thing was how nice everyone we dealt with
was. They were friendly, accommodating and
so easy to work with! We ended up
spending $2700 on the whole night including a $500 tip. I think that’s pretty reasonable for a
dinner for 25 people and open bar all night!
That was our whole weekend! I hope everyone else has as much fun as we did!!!
Jenny