Service Charge & Tax Charge

I have seen this with all of the venues we talked with while trying to pick ours. the tax is based on your location, but it is all pretty standard stuff.

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Its been about 50/50 for the ones I'm looking at. The tax I get but some of them tack on the 20% and that adds about $1000-$1200 on top of the venue

Yes, every venue we looked at charge at least 20% for the service charge and tax.

I’ve seen this with a couple venues in my area. You have to pay 20% service charge, sales tax and gratiuty on top of it... we went with someone that just does gratuity and tax. Sorry not paying another 20% on top of everything

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Right! and you'd be surprised how 20% brings your bill up! Geez!

View Quoted Comment I had major sticker shock with everything when I first started planning, especially with that 20%! LOL

There are a venues who will only charge tax and gratuity. My doesn't charge that service fee and neither did the other ones I looked at. I've been told by some people that there are venues who will add that if you "don't have enough people attending"

So let me ask you ladies, after you find out about the 20% were you still open to that venue? That has made me reconsider a few.

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That is just ridiculous!

Every venue has a 20% service charge and of our tax added in, at least all the venues we looked at did, but we didn't look at any bare space venues where everything was a la cart though - they all at least provided a DOC, Tables, Chairs, Linens and some form of set up and clean up.

I think every venue that we looked at had a service charge incorporated into it. They ranged from 18-24%. For any venue you are seriously considering ask to see a proposal. That will include all of the taxes and fees so you know exactly what you would be spending.

Yes - my service charge was 22%... it DOES include the tips though for servers and other venue workers.

Yep, every venue we looked at had this. Where I'm from taxes are closer to 15% so that plus the service charge can add quite a bit to the final bill.

Don't forget that gratuity (tips) are not usually part of the service fee and can add an additional 20% to the bill on top of the fees/taxes.

Yup and the tax here is higher! That's fairly standard.

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Considering all the venues in our area have a service charge - we just looked at the PP price and added on the service charge and tax to figure out what the final PP price would be. Then decided if that was in our budget for the amount of people we wanted to host, and if we liked the venue enough - was it worth cutting our guest list down to fit the PP price in our budget?

We ended up going with a venue where we did not have to cut our guest list thankfully.

Yes. Completely, 100% standard for wedding venues of any type to charge 20%, or more. Ours was 21% service charge plus 8.875% sales tax.

Seems standard from what i have seen. We have a 20% service charge and then also the Pa tax percent.

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That makes sense, My guest list is about 100 people so I figured we'll have about 75-80 if that so I just feel ridiculous paying $7000 after tax & gratuity just for the venue! I'll do the pp price when we are looking to finalize

Service fee was included in my per person cost. It will cover the staff that will flip the ceremony to reception and the wait staff and bartenders. Even with that included my per person cost was in the budget.

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Does your 20% include tips? Our is 19% and includes all the tips and various fees that come with the venue.