Venues/Hotels allowing outside catering in Charlotte?

Mercy36

Hello all!

I'm planning my spring 2014 wedding and looking for nice, large venues that allow outside catering in and around the Charlotte area. I'd prefer a venue like a hotel where staying very late is an option, as we'd like to have an after party style dance after the reception until 3am. We're anticipating 150-200 guests. 

Help is much appreciated! 

Lexi

pearls687

Roof with a View

http://www.roofwithaview.com/


Magnolia Room

http://www.magnoliaroom.com/wedding.html

delujm0

I don't know if you're specifically looking Uptown, but that's the only info i have because that's the only place i was interested in doing it (most of my guests are from out of town, so easy access to hotels/ability to walk around to entertain themselves throughout the weekend were very important to me).

None of the uptown hotels allow outside catering.  The Mint Museum and Foundation for the Carolinas both allow outside catering, HOWEVER you have to get your booze through them.  I went with Foundation, but be aware that their liquor license will only allow for open bars for up to 4 hours.  So we're just doing a 4 hour reception and then will probably arrange an after party at one of the many bars that are within walking distance of the venue for afterwards.  I'm not sure if the Mint allows longer open bars.

The Ritz allows longer open bars, and if you have the budget for it, would be great even though you do have to use their food - their food is excellent, but if we went with that our budget wouldn't have allowed for several other things that we wanted to include, so we decided against it.

I didn't look at either of these places for various reasons (including lack of skyline view, size of space, etc) but I believe that the Levine Museum of the South and Harvey Gantt center also have reception sites available that would allow outside caterers.  The Bechler Museum does as well i think.

If you want to do this uptown in the Spring of 2014, I'd suggest settling on something ASAP - we wanted to do March/April 2014 but couldn't get a date at Foundation until 5/31/14 because it was booked solid.  If you have a lot of people coming in from out of town, you might also want to consider other things that will be happening Uptown on your proposed date because if certain things are happening (big concerts, Speed Street, etc) it will be harder to get a cheap hotel room block.