Venue and Catering rollercoaster

So today two important things happened. The first one was YAY! The second one was NAY!

The first thing that happened is that we got a contract from St. John's to sign, thus securing our reception venue that we both love! YAYAYAYAYAY! I was so excited this morning and afternoon. In all the excitement, however, I neglected to look at the OTHER email I got today from a potential caterer. So, I casually opened the sample attachment and started adding up the individual prices. At some point I started to be concerned, but when I skipped to the totals at the end, I was flabbergasted. The grand total? Well, I am not sure I want the actual numbers out on the internetz even though no one reads this, anyway. However, I will say it is well over 80% of our TOTAL BUDGET! Granted, I am sure that they overinflate the initial estimates and also that there are many things we can do to cut it down. However, the menu, service, and rentals all seemed like reasonable options, so I am not even sure what the heck we will really be able to do besides the obvious, like buying used linens instead of renting, etc. I don't think we will be able to bring it down by enough to make it do-able. By the way, this estimate does NOT include alcohol (although it does include ice and bartenders), the cake, or the actual venue. With the venue fees? 95% of our budget!

So what, you are thinking, just go with a different caterer, right? Wrong. Our venue, that we have our hearts set on, only allows their in-house caterer or this one outside caterer. I have not gotten any firm numbers from the in-house caterer, but I am very concerned. They look like they have very good food, but let's face it. They are a college dining hall food service. Even Bowdoin, which famously had the best college food in the country, would have been iffy catering a wedding. I am sure they are used to catering events, but I am far from sold. Sigh. This could be bad. Couldn't we have had a day of just good news!!!

No News is Good News? I hope?

In case you weren't sure, today is May 9. St. John's had said that the academic calendar gets set "at the end of April or beginning of May". Now, I don't know what your system is for determining the beginning, middle, and end of the month, but mine is thusly: 1-10 = beginning, 11-20 = middle, 21-31 = end. So May 9 is getting really borderline for St. John's to not have confirmed their calendar yet!

In addition, I have realized that Memorial Day weekend is pretty much totally impossible for us. One reason you might know Annapolis, besides being the capital of MD, is the Naval Academy. And it turns out that their big graduation and commissioning generally falls on Memorial Day weekend. There is no way we would want to hold an event when every hotel will be booked and there will be all kinds of craziness going on the same weekend. As it is, May 17 will be the weekend before Memorial Day weekend, and the festivities start that weekend. I am hoping, however, that the weekend before will be much less in demand than the week of! One (hopefully possible) option for places for guests to stay, however, will be in the dorms of St. John's itself. They are saying right now it will be $75 a night, which seems really awesome, especially considering that it is so super close to the dining hall!

On other fronts, we have the choice between two caterers - the in-house Bon Apetit or Ken's Creative Kitchen. I am a bit worried, because last week I requested to make an appointment to review menu options and costs, but I haven't heard back from either one of them! I don't know what to think of that.

One thing I am starting to get very nervous about is the guest list. We have a limited number of guests, mainly due to the size restriction of the reception venue. Our dream guest list is WAY over the max for the dining hall, so we are going to have to be very careful about the guest list. There are several things that are giving me ogeda already. One, possibly not being able to invite some people I would love to have at the wedding. Apparently, we have too many friends! Two, we really won't be able to invite +1s. Three, I have dreams of having lots of little kids running around and little girls twirling their dresses on the dance floor, but the reality that I count over 20 possible kids is making me try to figure out having a babysitter at a nearby place so we can invite more adults.

I can' t believe how stressful these things already are and we haven't even made that many decisions yet. Maybe once we make the decisions, things will get less stressful? I hope so!

PS - Still haven't heard back from my camp! Ha - good thing we are planning on the alternative!