Vacation Home Rental as Ceremony/Reception Venue?

kellyheartache

Hey Knotties, 

We're kind of down to the wire here with finding a wedding venue and I need some help. My fiance and I are trying for November 27 of this year, and would really like to use a vacation home as the location for our wedding and reception, and depending on the price we may rent it for a week or so for our honeymoon. The problem we keep running into is that no vacation home owner seems to be able to accommodate our 50-guest wedding, and the ones that can want to triple their normal price. 

We have a small but workable budget of $5000 as we're paying out of pocket for everything. We've got free chairs and table and photography as gifts from family members, so location is really our main focus at the moment. 

Has anyone else in Central TX used a vacation home rental as their ceremony and/or reception venue that can give us some advice?

Thanks in advance. 

hildeedee

there were a few vacation homes we looked at...pretty much any vacation rental for a wedding or party with 50 guests is going to have fees added on them. if you haven't checked them out yet, here are a few places we contacted, but decided on something entirely different in the end:

http://rockinyranch.com/ this place charges and extra $400 for events

http://www.airbnb.com/rooms/14913 this one is inexpensive, but more for a casual wedding i would think

http://www.haciendadellagoaustin.com/

http://www.homeaway.com/vacation-rental/p251362 this place charges an extra $500 cleaning fee, $20 per guest and $150 coordination fee (they want a representative to be there during the event.



good luck!

sheaday

I work in the vacation rental industry and thought about renting one for our wedding but I came up with more cons than pros. The biggest cons were the added fees, lack of parking, not enough bathrooms for the guests, etc

In the end it was cheaper to go with a traditional venue. Good luck!

Hawaiianpunch512

I attempted to go this route and searched through soooo many vacation homes around Lake Austin, the Soco area, Barton Springs and Lake Travis for days!  Most of these places had some major restrictions about allowing people to throw parties.  Furthermore, there were other things like the PP mentioned such as the lack of parking, lack of adequate indoor space, noise restrictions, extra fees for additional day visitors, etc.  I discovered a few listings on some vacation rental sites that allow for private parties, like weddings, but the pricing was usually the same or more than some of the other venues in town.  But the cool thing is your guests, or some of them, will have a place to stay.

We're having a small wedding as well.  Palm Door gave us a great deal on their space.  If you're looking for more of an outdoor venue, I would recommend Umlauf. It's under approximately 2K to rent it out for four hours.  Pascal's, our caterer, gave us a fabulous deal on our wedding meal.  (We're planning on doing a heavy hors'd ouerves setup)  So the total for our catering and venue is about 4K for 50 people.  So if your budget is around 5K and most of that money is going to venue and food, you have alot of great options!

kellster22

Sounds like a great idea, but parking would be a problem. Brides have posted some very reasonable venues in the past on this board, you might want to put out a message asking for suggestions. I know that there are plenty of very reasonable venues out there.

ChrisChelsea10/08

Try beach resort services-it's in surfside but the'll rent houses pretty cheap that can sleep 30-40 people so you might just get two. there really cheap durning the off season, were renting one for our honeymoon.

smokyhills

I want to do something kind of similar, but I have some complications - One, J. and I are in Canada right now, so it's not like I can go *see* anything in person for a few months until it cools down. Two, it'll likely end up being a 20 person wedding - my "side" consists of 8 people, all coming from Canada, including me. His side is probably 8-10 more, all in Austin. (We're still debating whether to invite his aunts / uncles / cousins) The other big one is that we're not planning this as a "wedding" per se but more a movie night where a ceremony will break out in the middle of it for about an hour. I have no idea how to approach the place I'd like to rent, because it's not a typical wedding (no aisle, no dress, no flowers, no rentals, dinner is either burgers on the grill or MAYBE catering from threadgills, etc), and I don't want to end up overpaying... argh.

Hawaiianpunch512

Smokeyhills-  There's a boutique hotel that may work with what you are looking for off south Congress called Kimber Modern.

http://kimbermodern.com/accommodations_courtyard.php

You can rent the whole hotel and they don't have any restrictions, other than the request the whole place out.  But it's a pretty good price for what you are getting (lodging and a venue).  They have a really pretty courtyard that's perfect for bbqs I think.  HTH! :-)

smokyhills

Hey, thanks! The place we were looking at is about 40 miles outside of austin, which I was not really looking forward to. I'll fire them an email.

abbiewebster

I am also getting married in a vacation home , but in florida, and they told me they had a 50 guest limit (im only having around 60) so hopefully no one will come and check, but it definately wasnt cheap origianlly it was supposed to be 3000 dollars for the week and now its working out at 5800 somethiing...as soon as people hear wedding they raise the price, i seriously just wished i hadnt said i was having a wedding there now, but too late for i wish..hope u find the perfect spot

smokyhills

I'm kind of ... negotiating, I guess, with the people at the vacation home I want. Apparently they don't normally allow that kind of thing, but will allow it if I use a particular country club for catering, and won't charge any fee on top of that. (The house is very near that country club, and the property manager works for it as well.) J. is insistent on the food consisting of a fajita bar, so I'm curious as to how *that* will go, but I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm looking at about $1200 a night (I want it for friday, saturday, and sunday), plus whatever a fajita bar for 30 people will cost (What sides does one even get with a fajita bar, other than rice and beans, anyways?)

richelleleigh11

I was looking at renting Vacation homes recently when I was planning my finace's 30th birthday and in the back of my mind thought how pretty some of them would be to host a wedding. I did bookmark this one place, sounds like something you might be interested in as well.
http://www.tripadvisor.com/VacationRentalReview-g55892-d1651258-San_Gabriel_s_Horn_Secluded_Private_River_Retreat-Georgetown_Texas.html