Michigan-Detroit

Detroit Area Wedding Venue help broke students in grad school

Hi! Just recently engaged and am trying to find a place in the detroit area to have our reception at. We are looking early it won't be until 2015 but I'm currently living in PA so its hard to plan and find venues when you can't actually look at them. I was interested in the ford piquette plant but I heard the number is now only 160 guests which is way under. We will have at least 250. Being in medical school and my fiance in his masters program we have little to no money so any venue under 4,000 at most would be greatly appreciated. We also were looking into the MSU farm venue in novi but again haven't been able to check anything out living in PA and in school. Thanks!

Re: Detroit Area Wedding Venue help broke students in grad school

  • Detroit is actually more pricy city to have your event in than I thought it would be. I looked all over Detroit for my wedding in Feb 2012. I think you will have an extremely hard time hosting a wedding that size for under $4000 even if your guest amount was cut in half. However, there are many budget friendly venues in metro detroit. What time of the year do you want?

    What do you expect the $4000 to cover? The venue fees? food? alcohol? Linens? If all of those apply or even without linens, that would mean you want it to cost $16 per person. With acohol, I would say thats probably impossible. For a low budget, you may want to think about cutting down your guest list if at all possible.
  • In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/local-wedding-boards_michigan-detroit_detroit-area-wedding-venue-help-broke-students-in-grad-school?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Local Wedding BoardsForum:88Discussion:dfa615e8-71fd-481c-becd-d78385ba8d82Post:e0148ad5-b722-48f2-b8ec-0b95f1559972">Re: Detroit Area Wedding Venue help broke students in grad school</a>:
    [QUOTE]Detroit is actually more pricy city to have your event in than I thought it would be. I looked all over Detroit for my wedding in Feb 2012. I think you will have an extremely hard time hosting a wedding that size for under $4000 even if your guest amount was cut in half. However, there are many budget friendly venues in metro detroit. What time of the year do you want? What do you expect the $4000 to cover? The venue fees? food? alcohol? Linens? If all of those apply or even without linens, that would mean you want it to cost $16 per person. With acohol, I would say thats probably impossible. For a low budget, you may want to think about cutting down your guest list if at all possible.
    Posted by kmschwartzkopf[/QUOTE]

    sorry to have to say all that but take it from me, the sooner you can figure out the realistic costs of the things you want, the easier the other choices become. Good luck planning.
  • I agree with the above poster, without knowing what you expect to get for $4000, it's impossible to help you.

    We spent about $6000 for EVERYTHING for 73 people. And I had a location where we could bring in our own food & alcohol. And made a ton of DIY stuff. And my DJ was only $600.
  • Oops sorry yeah we were just hoping to get a venue for under 4,000...we understand weddings are expensive even if you try to to cut costs at every corner. We were hoping under 10,000 total but we understand it might be closer to 14,000 or more with having around 280 guests
  • So I would probably start with venues in metro detroit. I am not familiar with any detroit venues that will be within that budget with the size of the wedding- aside from a few of the places you can bring in your own caterers, that may be managable. I would suggest reading more information about setting up your total budget what to expect to spend for each piece of the wedding. My wedding had about 250 guests and I used a venue just outside of detroit, but my reception budget was close to 50% of my total budget. Also, I would suggest trying to set a strong budget amount, theres a pretty big difference between $10,000 and $14,000. It will help keep all your planning in line with want you want and what you can afford, realistically.

    There are definitely ways to cut corners and you can get a lot of ideas from the blogs. another way to gauge costs for everything would be to read some of the posts from the vendor review board. Not everyone posts their costs for each but some do.

    Pi Banquet hall is the venue I used, the owner is the manager and he seemed to be very flexible with making the package we wanted match our costs. Luckily with your wedding so far out, you have a lot of time to do your research and fine everything. Do you have a specific time of the year you plan on having the wedding? If you do it during an off season, you can get a pretty big overall discount. If you do it at an outside venue, you could probably be able to use your own caterer and alcohol (if you choose to) which provides a great deal of flexibility.
  • Try the Lafayette Grand in Pontiac. I had my wedding there 6yrs ago and people still talk about it.  The building is an old art deco Masonic Temple (read- no need to spend extra for decorations).  The food was good and the price for buffet was really reasonable and included a full bar. The bar bill alone for 250 people will get very scary if you don't find a place like the Lafayette that has unlimited included in the per person fee.  They also cater out of the building for something like $25+/person. You could rent a picnic area in a local park for next to nothing, but alcohol may be prohibited. Good Luck!
  • There are some groups like the Knights of Columbus and VFW that have halls everywhere and are very cheap. They aren't what I would call nice but if you're priority is the guest. it is a nice option to do it cheaply. 
  • 1LadyV1LadyV member
    Eighth Anniversary First Comment
    @ Sue and Kevin where did you have your reception I'm looking for a facility like that to hold my husbands 30th birthday party and I don't want to spend as much as I did for our wedding reception.
    BabyFetus Ticker
  • Check out Lakeland Manor in St. Clair Shores- their prices seemed very reasonable and they have a large capacity
  • St. Josephat in Warren is reasonably priced and holds up to 400.  You can also bring all of your own liquor in.
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