Negotiating venue price?

You can alway ask.....

Just ask them if there is any flexibility in the price and if they are willing to work with you on it since it is just a little over your budget. If they say no I would leave it at that.

That is one thing that is not taxed for our venue.......the room fee/ceremony is not taxed. Clearly this varies state to state. You can always ask since you are booking so close. We will always try to work with the couple if they are booking a date in the near future. Edited: did you not realizze that there is tax and gratuity on the food and beverages? Is that what put you over the budget?

Do they have the Friday of that weekend open? It might make the difference.

All they can say is no. We've negotiated with most of our vendors.

You can ask, and be prepared to walk away if it won't work out for either of you. It's not rude at all. I would just lay out the issues you described (over-budget, love the venue, you really want to make it work, since it still open and so close and off season, they may not get another event for that day, etc.) and then give them the price you are willing to spend. Take it from there. But if they say no, find another venue. Best of luck!

We can't do a Friday, but ya we are doing an outside caterer and already calculated for tax and graditude for food/drinks. Just didn't realize a service fee would be $800. Thanks for the advice everyone, I'll ask tomorrow!

There is no harm in negotiating! Plus if you are planning a wedding 6 months out, and it is an off month (ie Feb) feel free! If they can't budge on price maybe they can throw in extras so you can cut in other places. There is never harm in asking- and most vendors will respect you, as long as you do it politely. Negotiation is never tacky!!

I got a discounted price on my venue because it's "winter deal" however my date wasn't part of the normal winter deal. They just extended the deal to us as a courtesy.

Ask if there is anything you can cut that you are willing to cut. I managed to get our per plate price reduced close to -$10 for taking our meal from 4 courses to 3 courses. They might have flexibility on those types of fronts.

I started by telling them how much I loved the venue and how pleased I was with meeting and speaking with them. I expressed how happy I was to give them my business and then stated that the venue was a little outside my budget and asked if they were willing to work with me. They offered 10%.

Never hurts to ask. Are you getting an off season discount?

Give us an update when you figure this out!

You can ask but only if you're willing to negotiate what you get in return. I saw you won't do a Friday wedding so what else would you be willing to give up?

WED18: yes we already are getting 500 off for an off-season wedding (as stated on their website)

Kathleen: we just have the basic package (room rentals, chairs, bartender, etc.) with no extras and since we are going food from an outside vendor (only option at this place) there unfortunately isn't whole lot of things we can forgo.

I did. We told them what we can afford and they made something happen. It doesn't hurt to try.

You can ask, but I've found that venues are pretty set on their prices.

I know my venue, and several others I looked at, offered discounted rates for "off season" weddings (Dec. - April) or on a Friday/Sunday vs. a Saturday.

You can always ask and see, or if the price is by person you can cut the guest list down

Where do you live? We're in a major city with a high demand for wedding venues/vendors, so if we attempted to negotiate a price they would have laughed in our faces. However, I've heard of many brides in more rural areas who were able to successfully negotiate a significant discount.

You could ask? I was told by friends to name drop their names because they recommended mc/DJ/photo booth and photographer for me. I didn't ask the venue but the photographer gave me a 20% off deal for winter wedding. The mc/DJ/photo booth people just gave me a discount when we said we couldn't afford both mc/DJ and photo booth at the current prices.