Meeting with venue= overwhelmed.

LoveAdopted

We met with our venue yesterday, and while we had our tasting and chose our meals and made a few concrete decisions, I still feel like so much is left up in the air. I still don't know what I want to do for centerpieces... need to get to IKEA to see if the candle lanterns they have come close to matching the ones I already bought, and then decide if I want to use them for centerpieces or do something else. Also, we need to decide on so many things with our DJ, and just have a lot to get done in general. We were told that since we are working without a wedding package through our venue, there is a $90 charge for the bar, and our tasting supposedly costs $25 pp, which I didn't know about. Annoying...

Also, now that we have the timeline written out, I feel like there is a huge amount of time after dinner for just dancing... after dinner and dances with parents are over, I really don't have anything planned, so dinner should end around 8 at the latest.. reception ends at 11. Is that too long? We thought about maybe shortening it by 1/2 hr-1 hour, and maybe going to the bar for an afterparty for whoever wanted. Thoughts?

vtbm

Those extra charges, especially for the tasting is insane!! I don't think having too much time for dancing is a problem at all. I'd be more worried that there wasn't enough time. That's the best part!!! Sometimes dinner ends so late and dancing is cut short.

Karen's MOH

I'm more worried that there won't be enough time for dancing. You are fine on that end I think. Those charges are really annoying though.

caralinda1985

I'm feeling very annoyed with my venue as well.  We booked back in October of 2008 to lock in the low rates before they went up. Now the price has gone up on certain things.  We have our meeting with them next week and FI is ready to put up a fight if he has to on a lot of the stuff since we had told her we wanted this stuff from the beginning and she told us we had time to do that afterwards.  Little did we know she wanted to say that she had plenty of time to jack up the price!

CCBelle

We had 2 hours for dancing after dinner, and I wanted more!

lnarey

I don't think that's too long at all.  Sometimes things run a little longer then expected (Dad's in the restroom when it's time to dance etc....).  I think you'll be more disappointed if it feels like it ended quickly then if you have a little extra time to dance.

EKobrenski

In Response to <a href="http://forums.weddings.com/Sites/Weddings/Pages/Main.aspx/local-wedding-boards_massachusetts-boston_meeting-venue-overwhelmed?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Local Wedding BoardsForum:89Discussion:790feaab-d87a-4756-800b-ad558a9b89c0Post:9daef8e2-2527-4dfe-aeea-392264861c81">Re: Meeting with venue= overwhelmed.</a>:
[QUOTE]I'm feeling very annoyed with my venue as well.  We booked back in October of 2008 to lock in the low rates before they went up. Now the price has gone up on certain things.  We have our meeting with them next week and FI is ready to put up a fight if he has to on a lot of the stuff since we had told her we wanted this stuff from the beginning and she told us we had time to do that afterwards.  Little did we know she wanted to say that she had plenty of time to jack up the price!
Posted by caralinda1985[/QUOTE]

Did you save the emails where she said that? I was able to get my venue to not lift prices by showing them emails where they quoted me an original price.

noodle_oo

No, I think 3 hrs is perfect for dancing!  (Unless you have a small crowd and you think they won't dance much).  At FSILs wedding, they only had like 2 hrs for dancing and when they said "last song" I was shocked!  I thought we had more time!  (this was mainly due to them running really late I think).  I took a break to eat cake and have some tea and if I knew it ended so early, I wouldn't have.

caralinda1985

EKobrenski I have saved all of the emails.  Unfortunately as far as the ceremony outside goes it was said verbally.  We'll see how it goes though. 

LoveAdopted

Thanks for the input. I guess what I'm most worried about is if dinner ends early at 7 then it will go for a long time.. but we forgot to factor in the receiving line and maybe we can have the cocktail hour go an extra 15-120 minutes.

Thanks!

And caralinda, that really stinks that they're trying to add costs on even though you booked so long ago. When I looked at the menu the other night, the prices hadn't changed since we booked with them, but I don't know if they would have for someone booking today.