Venue with exclusive catering is refusing us a tasting unless we pay a deposit??

Can you get your deposit back if the food sux? I understand they dont want to have tastings for everyone cuz alot of ppl would eat and not book but i see your point cuz its your big day and you dont want to book a venue with crap food. This is a tough one. Ask if you can get the deposit back if you hate it lol good luck

Loren--That's a REALLY good idea! Wow; I didn't even think of that! Silly me. x-P

Would it be unreasonable for me to say that the food is our top priority, we can't book a place with exclusive catering without knowing what the food is like, and that all our other venues on our shortlist are either automatically letting us have a tasting, or else waiving the "deposit" requirement? (We only heard about this from one other place, and, yes, they waived it for us.) I mean, I REALLY don't want to be "THAT customer," but for heaven's sake, it's EXCLUSIVE catering! >.<

We were giving a tasting on a specific day but if we wanted to go on a different day it is $36pp. maybe ask they if they could do something like that. being out $80 is better than a deposit

Our caterer does mass tastings (like 50 couples come in once a month, they make certain things). If you want to taste other things on their menu, they price it based off what you're tasting. Could you see if you could pay them somethign to just do the tasting like Leanna said?

I would move on and wouldn't look back. When I worked in a catering hall, we had guests come in all the time that I would make random plates for so they can try. No deposit necessary. It just doesn't seem right to me.

I agree it is ridiculous. we were narrowed down to 2 places to continue to tastings, one place wouldnt do it until booked but fortunately we have been to weddings there before and knew the food. my mom was turned off by this and their attitude so we decided not to book there in the end. the place we did book with gave us a full tasting for 6 people free of charge and everytime we went there, be it to look at the room again or to show family or whatever the case there were always servers waiting on us to offer cocktails and anything else we needed. sometimes that extra mile stands out and made us feel important. i would keep options open to the other places.

Wow, Vanessa, I want to book with THEM! :-P

This place bills itself as "The premier venue in Michigan." Of course, there are a few who claim that supposed title. Anyway, it IS a nice place, but you'd think they'd be earning enough money to be able to give a tasting. All of the "smaller" places are totally cool with tastings. It doesn't make sense.

Most places around here (in Jersey) don't offer free tastings until you book. If you want to pay for your tasting, most will do it at a cost.

For example one of the venues we looked at does tastings every 3 months or so. They advertise it as free to booked and confirmed brides and grooms otherwise it's $50 per person.

We didn't do a tasting at our venue yet but they hosted a bridal show and we tasted the samples of food they offered. Now that we're booked we do get a private tasting with the chef and that's included in our cost.

I think, if they don't respond positively to the email I just sent (and, yes, I tried to stay as calm and polite as possible, because I know I've been on-edge lately), I'm going to ask if we can pay to do a tasting. We're doing that with one other place, but honestly, THAT place is one of our top two, so we don't have so much of a problem with it.

If she says no, I will ask if they refund the deposit if the food sucks (IF we're even able to find the time to go back to their stupid venue to even DO a tasting). If no, I don't think we're going to bother.

Ballet i'm so happy we went with this place, although the cost is up there and im fortunate enough that my dad was left some money that he is paying for it. food to us is the most important and my dad said this is where we are booking lol.

jac-jac all the places i looked at were in NJ and all offered tastings prior to bookinb, not sure where you looked. i would rather pay the xx pp for a tasting as long as it is a full tasting and not just a sample of this or that, think of it as going out to dinner, if not move on

We're at the Jersey shore so we looked from Toms River on down. All venues that offered tastings at a cost though were full tastings. Cocktail hour through dessert.

We had to pay extra to do a tasting prior to booking and it was not cheap. I haven't met a single caterer that would do a tasting for free, you either had to pay or have already paid a deposit. That's a huge waste of time and money for them. A lot of cake places don't even do free tastings anymore.

Ahh ok we looked more north jersey, originaly from staten island but now live in monmouth county

Exactly what Jac said the first time. Except substitute Philly suburbs for Jersey.

We obviously booked already and have had our tasting, but I've never seen a venue do a full tasting before at least a deposit.

@Vanessa: I'm originally from North Jersey and have family in Monmouth.

Most "venues" are also restaurants, we don't have a lot of reception only venues like North Jersey does. So if you really want to taste the food beforehand you can always just go out to dinner.

Our venue has exclusive catering for everything except cake and does a mass tasting of all menu items in January for all of their upcoming spring/summer wedding couples. We booked and made our first deposit in May and will likely have made our second deposit before we go to our tasting. When we heard this we weren't concerned with it because we knew first thing when we started planning that it'd be our venue and we've eaten there many times/the restaurant owner is a family friend of my FH, which makes us have very few doubts about quality.

In your case, where you're flying in and have more extenuating circumstances to not be able to just swing in for their scheduled tasting, I'm sure they'll be reasonable and at least let you do a paid tasting, especially since it could mean the loss of business for them if they don't. If not I'd say go with one of your top 2 choices.

Our venue gives 30 days to cancel the deposit/contract so we tasted within those 30 days. They were pretty lenient on the # days as they went under a total teardown renovation after we booked.

We had a semi private tasting (2 families were there) while another party was going on during the week

Also our county (Suffolk, long island) has a law that you can cancel up to 6 months prior and get everything but $100 or something like that back.

What!? Our venue let us taste everything before we booked and without a fee. That seems like a sneaky way of locking you in. I would be really worried that I wouldn't be able to cancel or get my money back if the food was bad. I would nix that venue because you wont know what you're paying for.

I doubt if they would refund a deposit if you choose not to go with them. Otherwise they'd just do the tasting for free up front I would think. If they respond to your request with a "no" then I agree that you should not bother with them.

Thanks, everyone! No response yet, but that's totally reasonable, because she's probably just getting in right about now.