Hello all! My fiancé and I are trying to decide between two venues for our reception for our December wedding, as our old one burned down a week ago!
1) banquet hall (we are not banquet hall people AT ALL). On Saturday, just under $19k for 170 guests. You get unlimited passed hors douevres, a soup, a salad, sorbet, entree, wedding cake, sweets table, late night snack plus 5 hours of premium open bar and wine service at dinner. There will be a corporate holiday happening in the room right next to us. Everything is all in the same room (cocktail hour and reception), there’s no outdoor space. Beautiful but just not us.
2)Venue that has separate space for cocktail hour and reception. Has an outdoor balcony with heat lamps included. On Friday for $22.5k. Has 3 passed hors doueveres, salad, entree, wedding cake, late night snack. 4 hours of standard open bar and wine service at dinner. TOTALLY our style and GORGEOUS venue. But I was digging into old reviews and saw that 2 years ago multiple reviews reported 80/200 person wedding god food poisoning at the wedding. Most reviews are very positive. Other negative reviews were bashing a coordinator that no longer works there.
I’ve been struggling with finding a new venue because we wanted something that looks like our old venue SO BADLY, but should we take the risk???