Raw wedding venue and cost

That’s how our venue is, we don’t get married until May though so I don’t know how the cost is gonna add up. I liked the idea of being able to use whatever vendors I wanted.

My venue is a complete raw space. They provide nothing but the rooms, everything else is rented and hired. I’m in New York so it’s all expensive anyway, but I will tell you the event ended up costing me more than an all inclusive. There are so many expenses and little details to coordinate, you’re absilolutely right thinking that you’ll have to hire people to help you. Yet another expense. That said, I have been able to make this the wedding I wanted with no limitations on decor or anything else! Good luck to you in your decision making process and congrats!!

I started looking into raw venues as well and i compared them to my semi inclusives and the cost were more when i had to bring in everything myself. I could tailor a few options to get it close to a cheaper semi inclusive. However, there were many things to consider when picking a raw venue. The museum i chose provided the tables, linen (napkins), security, additional space for cocktail hour, and chairs. Small costs were adding up. I picked an affordable caterer who even had the cake included and all plateware (disposable but pretty of course). Bartender fee's and purchase of own alcohol could be brought in. Some caterers had an add on option for this. Others had to find separately. Many of them had inflated delivery/travel costs which sort of made things increase. For me it was too many moving parts to consider as opposed to one place handling all the initial set up, food, cake, security, tear down. Help would definitely be needed. Making sure each detail is included. Some of my caterer options didnt provide tableware so you just have to really see what all you are getting for the price and if it includes any set-up. The perk is you can make all the choices.

DO THIS!! You save BUCKETS of money, especially if you can get friends and family to help out! This is what I'm doing, and I've got tons of work to do, but all the diy projects are fun, and everything is customizable to your own preferences instead of being required to go with their caterer, etc.

I looked into one that was just space and tables. In theory it seemed like it could've been cheaper but then when you think of things like silverwear, glasses, etc it can add up. Because you want some extra forks in case someone drops or some extra glasses, but it added up quickly

My venue offers table, chairs (round and rectangular) and farm house tables for an additional cost. They also offer a wedding coordinator for additional cost who will be in charge of ensuring the vendors are doing what they need to be doing and ensuring everything runs smoothly for setup and break down. My caterer provides all the linens, plates, drink ware silverware and utensils.
I definitely wanted a venue that included these options to make it less stressful. I hear the biggest complaint from brides after their wedding was not hiring someone to set up and break down the space so I’m avoiding that all together.

Our venue includes the venue, tables & chairs. We get to use the venue for 12 hours, and it has a bridal & groom's suite. The cost is $9,900. The china & linen rentals will be around $1,000.

Our venue is just the space though they do have tables and chairs if we want to use them (they dont really fit with the aesthetic of the room - a reproduction Medieval Castle hall, looks like The Great Hall at Hogwarts! But the tables and chairs are the cheap plastic folding ones. So we may decide to get different ones if we end up having the money for it at the end. We get it from 8 am to midnight for $3000 plus a $500 security/cleaning deposit that we get back as long as we leave the place the way it was when we arrived. (We arent taking our honeymoon right away so we are planning on making sure we leave it better than we found it - we are both Girl Scouts! and using that money towards our honeymoon after). We are looking mostly at a caterer that includes a DOC and will do at least some of the set up and clean up and from reading reviews has the linens and dishware/silverware/glasses. They are really local and only do events in other spaces (they dont have an event space of their own) so there shouldnt be crazy delivery fees.

One thing we really like about having the raw space is that we dont have to use their DJ or photographer - we can pick whoever we want even do it ourselves. Same with bar - though if the caterer offers we will go with them. The space doesnt really need decor so we will be saving on that but we can just buy what we want to use and either keep it for our home (the Christmas lights we are going to string over the room - we dont have any yet and we LOVE decorating for holidays) or resell after. We arent using a florist besides for the altar arrangement at Church but we are going to just use the one the church uses already and just let them know what we want in it. So besides the caterer we will end up saving on everything else by using a raw venue.