Vendor Selection #1: The Venue!

We (well, I) knew that I had always dreamed of a city wedding. But, like you, my first thought was city wedding = $$$$. In a sense, that proved to be correct until I sought out an untapped and underutilized wedding venue: city business hotels.

Somewhere in my research of seven billion venue options, I stumbled upon a blog or wedding resource that suggested trying out hotels in business districts as a cheaper alternative for a city wedding. Immediately, I began to focus in that direction, and by God, it worked!

See, as it turns out, financial districts of major cities turn into ghost towns on the weekend. Business functions are generally Monday-Friday, and on the weekend, with businesses closed, there often isn't much activity that takes place. Additionally, the bread and butter of these hotels are business functions that take place during the week. Since they aren't the most desirable locales for weddings, coupled with the fact that there isn't much activity on the weekends means that these city venues can often be procured for budget-friendly prices.

Since I was looking in the Boston area, which is a more expensive area of the country to begin with, I was pretty excited about this, and even more-so when I realized that this benefit extended to the larger hotels in the Cambridge area (right across the river from Boston).  Fate officially took over when my mother mentioned the Marriott hotel right across the street from her office, in fact, her office even overlooked the rooftop garden (wait, what, rooftop garden!?) Yes!

 The venue even boasts opportunities for photos with a Boston-skyline background. Compared to other venue options in the city, this place was by far the cheapest. We loved that it offered an outside ceremony and cocktail reception site (and thus, our city garden theme came about), free parking in the attached parking garage for 24 hours for our guests, and that everything was on-site and close to public transportation. The cons are that compared with venues outside of the city, while the price is comparable within a few thousand dollars, it offers less. We found venues outside the city that offered more apps, and included more in the cost.

How many venues did you research? How did you pick your venue? Were there any must-haves that you were looking for while making your decision?