Venue Hunting: A Couple Options In

So, we've now spoken to 2 venues.
One, the Beefeater Plaza here at home, is quite pricey, $550.00 to start, plus all the add ons for things that they "require" you to have. I haven't done all the pricing, but it's seeming to look like $900-$1000 in the end... maybe more.
It is handy in some ways, they set up, they tear down, they clean, you just put up your decorations and call it good. They will supply bartenders... but they require 1 per 100 people (so we're looking at 3) at $13.00 per hour each. We'd have to get our own liquor license, but they will pick up our alcohol 2 days before the wedding and start chilling it for us. They have table cloths, but unless you have a supper (and they cater), the cloths are $3.50 each to rent... and required. Corkage fee for your wine, of course, I doubt we'll have wine, but if we decided to down the road... it's $2.75 per head corkage fee. But there's no cake cutting fee. Whoo-pa-dee-doo. Then of course if you want a midnight lunch, a helper for that is $13.00 per hour and 2 are required. Unless you have them cater the midnight lunch, for $6 a plate, then they'll throw in the helper. And the same with the bar. If you let them do the bar at their prices, they'll throw in the bartenders. But you could buy their bar prices down, if you still wanted a cheaper bar, because the prices they told us they charge people for their bar were certainly not cheap.
But on the other end, they do throw in some freebies. When booked with them, they supply a "change room/break room" in the hotel for the wedding party. They will throw in a hotel room for the night for the bride and groom (approx $83.00 value), but for an extra $25.00 they'll upgrade you to the jacuzzi suite. And they will book a block of discounted rooms for out of town guests to reserve. If we were to decide to have the ceremony there as well, they would set up for the ceremony, then switch to the reception seating themselves, but you have to send someone to go change your decorations around. And the ceremony, the ceremony setup, and the ceremony teardown, is apparently included in your rental price.

Our second venue is the Midale curling rink's Cabaret Hall I spoke about before. It was certainly different speaking to Treba than it was speaking to Melody from the Plaza. Treba said it was $150.00 to rent the hall. We might have to get our own liquor license because they usually only have theirs over the winter, but if we book with her to check back closer to the wedding and if there's a lot happening they may have it already again. Tables and chairs are all there, speakers and whatnot are all there, they don't have table cloths, they don't restrict anything, but if you have confetti, they ask that you clean that up or try to do that outside. And basically we're on our own. We find our own help, they just hand over the key and say Have Fun.

I've a couple more places to speak to before we make a decision, but there's the update on our venue front.

My Mood: Tired