Venue food/drink minimums

It sounds to me that the are geared toward minimum people of generally more than 50.

I was running into that at some venues. I quickly marked them off my list. One venue we absolutely adored, minimum for a Friday night wedding was over $10k... Nope. A Monday evening minimum was $5k.. Nope.

We ended up selecting a venue that doesn't have a minimum, and catering is $3600- 4500 for 36 guests. Depending on the package we choose.

You may find more flexibility if you don't get married on NYE! My venue dropped their minimum because I'm getting married in the off season

Venues near me need a minimum guest count. My venue minimum is 150

$100/head on NYE is a steal.

Yeah, NYE is going to be hard to find a venue with a low minimum. Many host NYE parties, elaborate ones. At least where I am.

Minimums here are more on holidays or peak dates, and NYE is a peak date. If I were invited to a NYE wedding, I'd be expecting black tie affair... keep that in mind, that others may have the same expectations.

Your wedding date may also play a role in the higher prices.

NYE's weddings are a prime and high rate. How about the day before. I would imagine the minimums would drop. Most places, well at least where I work, will have minimums in f&b. Fridays and SUndays our minimums drop...(assuming Monday is not a holiday). Can you just make it up by offering more to your guests?

We chose a venue that doesn't have a minimum for this reason. My original first choice was spectacular, but we would have pain nearly $3000 *extra* to meet the minimums due to our "small" guest list. It was disheartening at the time, but now I'm excited about our current plans.

That's a tough one, especially on that day. If you're in NJ, I can send you my list of restaurants, but many of them do parties for the public that day......

We were able to find a venue with a $3.5k minimum for our 100 guest wedding...that's what worked for us vs the $7.5k min venues we saw.

Our venue (and others we checked out) had minimums in terms of guest count only. I've never heard of a minimum amount of money to be spent so I don't really have advice.

I think most minimums are to ensure that the venue makes a certain amount of money. is 5K in your budget? If so you could discuss how to upgrade things to meet that minimum

We are running into that. We are having a destination wedding and only want to have 25 people at most and most places want $5000 for f/b minimums and that's for a wedding during the week. We can't even have a wedding on the weekend because we can't afford the f/b with only 25 people and it's crazy to think $5000 just on food.

@Carol, how our venue works is like this.......on a Friday night our smallest ballroom has a minimum guest count of 100 and a $125 minimum in food and beverage. So , the min. they would need to spend is $12,500. So, you can have 50 people you would just need to meet the F&B. I would think most places work like this.

Our minimum was for 125 people/$4500, but we only have 73 people. We upgraded and added more food options to easily meet the minimum (but only went over by $0.23 since the venue worked with us to only have certain amounts of some foods to not go over the minimum by much). Honestly for what any place I saw would offer at their minimum I didn't think that was enough food choices. I would want more.

ETA: our minimum was just for food not bar

Yes, most places have a dollar amount that can be spread out over a smaller group of guests on a prime night.

Our venue's f/b minimum is $3500 ... with our 30-ish guests we'll have no problem hitting that ... by the time we do the appetizer package, open premium bar, dinner and dessert (we're probably not having a cake) we'll hit that number and then some ...

Can you upgrade things like apps, booze and go for a plated dinner to hit that minimum?

We signed a contract for 175 guests and a $XXk minimum (including service charge). We ended up with 225 guests and 70 percent above the minimum. It adds up pretty quickly.

Had we gone below that contracted minimum, there would have been a room rental charge.

Our venue has a minimum of $7500 and our wedding is only 75 people max (prob closer to 60). We may find ourselves scrambling to meet the minimum depending on the final guest list. However, we budgeted for at least the minimum and possibly more, so it's not a huge deal. Our venue has many different options, like we could add late night snacks, add desserts, upgrade our menu, etc. so we aren't worried about making it work. I would suggest budgeting for at least the minimum (obviously) and fund a venue that allows different options that you can play with to meet the minimum.