Florida Wedding Venues: Catering Minimums

November 19, 2020
Florida Wedding Venues

Out of this World Rates at Planet Hollywood

We are starting a new blog series on Florida Wedding Venues. Tour a new venue with us in each post. Learn about the different processes involved in looking for and booking a wedding venue. Gather information on available options, policies and innovations. Today’s post will discuss catering minimums and Planet Hollywood, Disney Springs.

When you announce your engagement, everyone asks the same question. When is the big day?

Securing the wedding venue is the first step to setting the date. If your heart is set on a particular date, but your favorite venue isn’t available, you have some hard decisions to make. Do I choose the venue or the date?

There are a few things to question when searching for your venue.

Start with, what is your catering minimum? When it comes to this catering conundrum, there are three different types of venue catering options.

First, there are venues with in-house catering. However, they may give you the option to secure an outside catering company. Typically, but not in all cases, a caterer must be on the venue preferred list. These are vendors which meet the standards and guidelines set forth by the wedding venue.

Second, some venues have only one option. To use their in-house catering. This is an important consideration if you have already set your appetite on a particular catering service.

Third, there are venues with no in-house catering and no preferred vendor list. Allowing you to freely choose your caterer.

What are Catering Minimums?

Regardless of the option available at your venue. Make sure you ask any potential wedding venue if they have a “minimum spend”. You also need to know what services count toward that minimum. This is where the catering minimum comes in.

It is vital that you ask about their catering minimum before you sign anything. Many couples secure a wedding venue based off the actual space rental fee and forget to ask what the catering minimum is. After you have signed a contract, you don’t want to discover that your venue has a catering minimum of $15,000. What if your wedding is only 50 guests? Now you are locked into a catering minimum that is larger than your entire wedding budget.

Multiple Options Available

Every wedding venue has different minimums, requirements and policies.

For example let’s look at Florida Wedding Venue, Planet Hollywood Disney Springs. They fall under the second type of venue above. They require couples to use their in-house catering.

Additionally, venues like Planet Hollywood offer multiple options. For instance, they do have catering minimums, but it does not apply to every event. You can have your wedding reception or rehearsal dinner in one of several different spaces with-in the venue. Some of these space do not have a catering minimum unless you require the entire floor or terrace for your wedding. This is incredible for a venue located right in the heart of Disney Springs.

One option is to rent out their space called Stargazers. This area is their patio on the left hand side of the entrance. The minimum in that space is $2,500!

Stargazers is fantastic because they can fit a DJ, cocktail tables and round tables in this space. With the $2,500 catering minimum, you will have the entire area for your private event.

Planet Hollywood’s upstairs patio, and several indoor spaces have been featured in the photos in this blog. These images came from a recent private event we hosted. They created a unique experience for all of our guests that was out of this world.

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