Hotel as venues

You have to price them out. Get an itemized list to make sure that you are not being charged extra for food/drinks, etc and you are able to negotiate on and cut items not important to you. Alot of people think that all you pay is a rental fee and don't realize that the food and beverage minimums are easily 4-5 figures on top of that, which many DIY/outside the box venues do not charge.

We got married at a hotel. They provided food, beverage, tables & chairs, linens, and place settings. We paid extra to use their bridal suite to get ready in the morning, for uplighting and to have our ceremony there. We could have had them provide flowers, but they were very expensive so we hired our own florist. One thing I didn't like was that we had to use their chairs and to upgrade to nicer chairs through them would have been insanely expensive, but we got have gotten them for cheaper somewhere else if we would have been allowed. We also had a $7,000 food and beverage minimum.

View Quoted Comment Was is less of a headache to go through them. Like a conviene thing? Was it easy to meet your minimum?

View Quoted Comment We only looked at hotels for venues since I wanted something with a ballroom for our reception. We also live four hours from where we got married so it was definitely easier have our venue provide the items that they did. As for the food and beverage minimum, we thought more people would attend so we ended up adding a late night snack to meet the $7,000 minimum.

If you want all inclusive pricing country club is the way to go!

For us it definitely would've saved money and it was more convenient. Our big wedding was supposed to be March 2021 but unfortunately it had to be cancelled because of Covid. But our venue was a hotel and it was all inclusive.


They included the catering, alcohol, linens, China, centerpieces, wedding cake, decorations for cocktail hour, a day of coordinator, a room for our bridal parties to get ready, a complimentary suite for my husband and I after the wedding etc. definitely convenient and would save us both time and money.

This is a local/math problem.

It's frustrating, but usually you just have to get quotes and compare. Where we live, for instance, it's usually much easier and cheaper to do an all inclusive venue, as those are "standard", as opposed to a venue where you have to bring in catering.

If you go to your local forum, sometimes there are couples who have saved spreadsheets and info and will share them!

View Quoted Comment Thank you becca

Personally I think this depends on your area and what hotels and other wedding venues you are looking at. For our wedding my husband and I looked at both hotel options & other venues. We ended up going for a regular wedding/reception venue that was not a hotel because we were able to get everything we wanted for much cheaper than it would've been at the hotels we were looking at. For our wedding/reception venue, food, drinks, cake and so on, we paid around $4,000 for our venue, $2,000 for our food (we did not use our venue's catering), $500 for our DJ (got a discount b/c he is one of my husband's best friend's friend) & $100 for our bartender (b/c we let her put out a tip jar). If we would've gotten married at the the hotel we were looking at, it would've cost us around $10,000 to $15,000 for what costed me $6,600 because all of the hotels we looked at would've made us use their catering, bartender & DJ. Of course our price that doesn't include the alcohol we purchased, our attire, bridal party gifts, favors, invites and so on. But I think $6,600 for everything we need for our wedding/reception isn't bad.

In my personal opinion, finding a wedding venue is all about research. When my husband and I were looking for our venue, I literally called the venues we wanted to see or set up a meeting with them and I basically interviewed them until I found the place my husband and I liked the most. If I talked to them over the phone and I like what they had to say, then I set up an appointment for a tour with my husband.

View Quoted Comment Very helpful thank you!

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This! The 7,000 food and beverage minimum.

I looked at a few hotels that were about $4,000 to rent for the day with a $7,000 food/drink minimum. Not including the 18% gratuity and tax that has to be added on.

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Our hotel didn't charge a rental fee, but we did have to pay a fee to have our ceremony there. Every place is different, but costs can add up quickly.

It definitely depends on what the hotel offers. I honestly think it’s about the same as another venue in our case, but it has its perks. 90% of our guest list will be at least 2 hours away and will be staying at the hotel. We figured it would be easiest to have it at a hotel where all of our guests could stay. Drinking and driving was a concern for us so if we chose another venue we would have had to arrange for transportation to a hotel block anyway. This saved some. The hotel also included our hotel room for the wedding night for free, but this was only like a $100 value and we had to pay extra to upgrade it to a suite.

Yea i booked a hotel and it's all inclusive for a responible price too . I think we got lucky cause my FH is a sergeant and he know everyone . For our wedding we got only 3 vendor for the complete wedding .

We had a destination wedding and had our wedding at a hotel for a few reasons. I’m not sure if it was more affordable than a venue that exists just to host weddings, but we went this route because:


1. We wanted our guests to have the option to Uber from the airport to the venue and not leave the property (except for our offsite welcome party, to which we provided a shuttle) again until the Uber back to the airport if they wanted. We didn’t want anyone to feel pressured to rent a car for entertainment or food—the resort had amazing pools and tons of activities built into the cost of a nights stay, which was a steal for a four-star resort.
2. We wanted a place that provided chairs, linens, etc. without us needing to go through an outside provider.
3. We wanted a property that handled lots of corporate events, which we knew from previous experience usually meant extremely quality food and customer service.
4. I wanted to be able to do pre and post wedding stuff right at our venue—spa, bars, etc.