$300/person or $30k minimums for a wedding when the exact same restaurant does private dinners for a third of that. can someone explain what we're actually paying for
becuase i cannot get a straight answer from any vendor and its starting to feel insane
i've been quoted completely different prices for the exact same event depending on how i describe it. same date, same headcount, same menu, same hours. "private party" gets me one number. "wedding reception" and suddenly its $300 a head or a $30,000 minimum spend just to walk in the door. at places that do corporate buyouts for way less. nothing about the actual event has changed
the explanation i keep getting is "weddings are high stakes and emotional so there's more pressure on our team." okay but that's a reason for YOU to charge more for your own stress tolerance. that's not a service you're providing to me lol. if anything you're billing me for your anxiety and expecting me to nod along
and like a corporate dinner for 80 people in manhattan isnt exactly low stakes either?? nobody's charging those clients $300/head to manage the "emotional weight" of thr quarterly review. somehow they figure it out
i get that NYC is expensive for everything but the gap between what these same venues charge for other private events vs the second you say wedding is not a cost of living thing. its a "we know you'll pay it" thing
is there an actual justification i'm missing or did the industry just collectively figure out that people planning weddings will pay almost anything and never bother correcting it
genuinely asking btw, not being rhetorical. if there's something real here i want to understand it