NEW DATE MEANS NEW SITE

To visit my new blog and hear about the new wedding date click here.

***POSSIBLE CHANGE OF WEDDING DATE***

It is not April Fool's Day. The title is true. The wedding date is going to be changed (either week before or after) pending vendor discussions.

The Search for the Reception Site Part II

Okay, when we last left the bride to be and her groom to be, they were just told that Stage 6 will adjust their contracted prices for inflation. So no locking into 2007 prices for a 2008 wedding. We leave Brooklyn and headed into Manhattan and end up in Battery Park which is where we wanted to be.

We go and look at Battery Gardens. It has a great view of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island and is right on the water. However, there is a ton of construction going on and they cannot tell you when it will be done since it is the Parks Department doing it and not them. Though it looks like a kick ass carousel is going to be built and that is exciting for me.

We walk swiftly through the space (it is being set up for a party) and we are told the prices. That is it. The coordinator does not waste a second on us. She is very professional - almost too much. Coincidentally, these prices are $20 more per person than we were quoted in an email.

Also, the coordinator does not offer us a beverage (the only one of the day who does not), we take that as the ultimate sign and move on to the next site.

However, it is as we leave the Battery Garden and sit down on a park bench, I have the first (of possibly many) wedding related breakdowns. The feeling that I will never find a place we both like, and is us, overwhelms me.

I someone how pick up the pieces and trek from Battery Park all the way to Central Park South where we visit the Park Lane Hotel. We enter the hotel and are transported back in time. In the hotel, Leona Helmsley (may she rest in peace) has not yet gone to jail and Michael Jackson is not crazy yet. Seriously, this place has not been updated in long time. We are escorted around the hotel by this small, maybe Russian, woman. And it is okay. But we notice a few things and the main thing that jumps out (to Brendan - I didn't notice this) is that they are not setting up for a wedding or party. And being a Saturday in June, they should be booked. The other thing is that the reception room doesn't have any windows and it feels like we could be in any hotel room in Manhattan or Brooklyn. As we sit down and talk to the wedding coordinator, we receive the proposal and this time, it is $25 more than we have been quoted in an email. We express some surprise in the per person price and the wedding coordinator tries to tell us that we are getting married in a high time. According to everyone else we talked to, the wedding high season is May to October. However, according to this hotel, it is May to September and then November to December. Um, okay. But at least she did offer us coffee.

It is at this point that we head back downtown to Chelsea and visit the only meeting we arranged this weekend. At Moran's we both breathe a sigh of relief. We entered into the restaurant and immediately felt comfortable. It is a dark wooded, Irish pub with a large back room. The place is lined with displays of Waterford crystal and an awesome tin ceiling in the back room. They were setting up for a party and luckily, appetizers were about to start circulating. While the manager talked to us about options and prices, we dined on all the appetizers and a pint of Guinness. Finally, we felt like we could host the reception in Manhattan on our terms. Though I had a concern about us fitting all of the guests and a dance floor in the space, I relaxed a heck of a lot after this meeting.

Now, we were just hanging around Manhattan waiting to visit the last place arranged by this head hunter like company. Honestly, at this point in time I do not remember much about it. It was a restaurant and it was cool and funky but the seating would be disjointed and segmented. Also, the person we met with was not authorized to give us pricing. In fact, we never received pricing. Oh well.

So to recap, we ended the day with one potential reception site that I found.

Miscellaneous items

In response to the reader's comment about who is Abigail Kirsch. According to Random House: "Abigail Kirsch is a well-known New York-area caterer with a national reputation. Her sites include Abigail Kirsch at Tappan Hill in Tarrytown, New York, The New York Botanical Garden, and Pier Sixty in Manhattan. Trained at The Culinary Institute of America and Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, she is the current president of the New York chapter of Les Dames d'Escoffier. She is the coauthor of The Bride and Groom's First Cookbook and lives in Pound Ridge, New York."

Also, a reader asked if Brendan would be contributing to the blog. He can if he wants to provide a guest post but it will be subject to a rigorous approval process and possible editing. Besides my point of view is not biased at all. :)

Another reader asked for more pictures. I will post pictures as I can. I didn't take pictures the first day of reception site hunting - sorry. But I offer this picture of Keith, the one who requested more pictures.

An aside - vendor requirements

When we set out on the wedding planning both Brendan and I had few requirements. Actually, it is only one. We didn't want to feel like we were getting screwed. The wedding industry has gone crazy and I didn't want to feel pressured or taken advantage of.

We will see how we do sticking to this requirement.

The search for the reception site - Part I

Once we picked a date, we realized we had one year and four months until we are to wed - plenty of time to plan this wedding. However I did not want to wait around and then make all the plans and also I figure the earlier we plan the better our chances to find a great reception site at a price we can afford.

To begin, we try using this wedding head hunter of sorts. You tell them your wants and budget and they schedule appointments at various places through out the city - mainly Manhattan. While I had been doing my own research online from Boston, I figure another resource cannot hurt.

Two days before we are to arrive in New York, we are emailed our appointment list. Right away I have a bad feeling about the day. All the places on the list are outside of our budget, even if we could negotiate them down. Brendan being the optimist that he is tries to convince me, the realist, to give it a shot. But to make myself feel better I try to squeeze in a visit to a place I know we can afford and could really like.

Saturday comes and we visit site #1 - Stage Six at Steiner Studios. It is located in the Brooklyn Navy yard inside Steiner Studios. This is very fitting for someone obsessed with pop culture like myself. And it is an Abigail Kirsch location so I know we would not have to worry about food or service. We begin the tour and the place is very nice and has a nice view of the water and city once you get past the industrial part of Brooklyn. Also, the neighborhood surrounding the studio lot is not the best. But luckily there is plenty of parking, valet parking. So annoyance number 1 with this place is that you have to have valet parking (albeit with a red carpet for guests to feel like a star). Now there is a HUGE parking lot available and only one event at night so the whole lot is ours and just 10 feet away from the door. But you have to have valet parking and it costs $10 per car. Even if you don't want valet parking you have to have it just like the bathroom attendant. I hate the bathroom attendant because they make me feel funny. I just want to wash my hands and I can do it myself.

After going through all the costs we are firm in the thought that we cannot afford this place. It is at this point that the most annoying and kind of sleezy aspect of their contract is revealed. They have a CPI clause in all of their contracts. On the date the contract is signed, they record the consumer price index and then record it again when the final head count is provided. If there is an increase (meaning inflation which most likely there is) they adjust the price accordingly. So - you cannot lock into any rates. While we did not want to start anything I do wonder what they would say about a client asking for the interest earned on the deposit to be deducted from the bill or a fight about the CPI clause. This to me is a perfect example of vendors taking advantage of the engaged couples. And proves how crazy the wedding industry has become.

On the way out the salesperson told us that we should tell the other reception sites that we visited an Abigail Kirsch location and notice their reaction. They will admit Abigail Kirsch is the best. Um, okay lady we'll do that.

More on the reception sites to come...

$$Budget$$

The next step after we had the date and church decided was to tackle the money issue. I didn't know where to start because all I could find was the average of a wedding costing approximtely $28,000. However, I take national average with a grain of salt - nothing costs close to the average in NYC. So I still needed assistance in figuring out how to allocate my slowly accummulating wedding dollars. In came the Internet to the rescue, I found the budget calculator on the Knot. I entered in what we could afford to spend on the wedding, the number of guests, and the number of attendants. Out popped an estimate of what we could spend on each aspect of the wedding. However, I also went to Wedding Channel and repeated the exercise. I then put both budget estimates in excel and took an average of the two budgets. This was a good starting point but because we are getting married in NYC, I knew some of the estimates were near impossible to stay under (reception and beverages especially). So I went line by line and took money "away" from some of the aspects that were of low importance and added those dollar amounts to the reception budget. Slowly, a NYC reception seemed feasible. Additionally, once I started to get actual costs from vendors, I was able to play around with the numbers some more. My only fear is the expenses that I am not yet aware and the Knot and Wedding Channel have forgotten to warn me about.

Interestingly enough, after we had started planning and set the budget I found this interesting website called Cost of Wedding. Here it gives you the national average by ticket item and allows you to type in your zipcode to get a better understanding of wedding costs near you.