Hi all,
We're new to this but were hoping to get some advice and wisdom from the community!
We've been searching for venues for months and put everything on hold with the pandemic happening. We recently started looking again and found a wedding venue recent that we absolutely love, but we had a quick question about pricing and negotiating with the venue.
We just got a price proposal from them, and there were a lot more hidden fees than we were expecting. On top of the venue fee, there is a labor charge (which was unexpected, as they had initially led us to believe that set up/clean up/staff were included in the venue fee), a 23% service fee on everything (on food and beverage was expected, but also on the venue fee, labor, and equipment), plus 15% gratuity (on food and beverage only), plus 11.4% sales tax on everything (our state/county tax is only 8-9%).
I guess my main question is whether these are all reasonable charges. Most other places we have gotten proposals from will charge a service fee on food and beverage (and some have included gratuity with the service fee) and sales tax, but that's about it. We were just a bit shocked to see the service fee applied to the venue, equipment, and labor in addition to the gratuity and the oddly high sales tax.
My second question is whether people can typically negotiate with wedding venues about pricing, and if so, how to go about it. We really love this particular venue, and we don't want to let it slip away, but we just feel a bit blindsided by all of these new costs that they never discussed with us until they sent the proposal.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts! Thank you so much!