Thursday, April 26, 2007

Places : Flutie Cutie's research

Indie bride flutiecutie writes:

Venues/Catering
International House - Columbia area
$3850 for 5 hours, facility closes at 11pm. You must use their caterer, Flick International. Steve 212-316-8479. For a Saturday night, with 120 people, stationary H.D.s, open bar and buffet dinner would be $125pp plus tax and gratuity. Open bar and seated dinner $119pp plus tax and gratuity.

Pier 63
Outdoor pier/park can be rented out for dirt cheap, but they closed as of last spring. Scheduled to reopen spring 2007, but they wouldn't reserve dates until too late for us. $50-60pp for open bar and buffet dinner. Check back to see if the Pier is up and running again.

Riverside Church
They have several different spaces. We looked at the Assembly Hall, which is in a basement room. Would be great for a winter wedding but a little stuffy for any other season. $3000.

New York City Fire Museum
I loved this venue and wanted to use it, but fiancée thought it looked a little high-school gymnasium-ish. $3300 for a Saturday night, and you get the run of the whole museum, which is three floors.
Sarah Judd - NYC Fire Museum. She'll send you pictures. The ones on the website are terrible.
(212)691-1303 ext. 11

Gary's Lofts
Fiancee loved this venue. Gary has several different loft spaces, we looked at the penthouse on 36th Street. It's quirky and fun, with lots of antique furniture that you can choose to use or not. $4000 for any night of the week. The 10th floor space in the same building is really beautiful too. It would be an extra $2000. You can use any caterer you want.

Manhattan Penthouse
You must use their caterers, and they sound very flexible for winter dates.
Saturday night venue fee is $4500 + 115-145pp plus tax and gratuity Sunday afternoon venue fee $2700 + 95-125pp plus tax and gratuity Saturday afternoon venue fee $1900 + 85-115pp plus tax and gratuity All the above prices included open bar.

Staten Island Botanical Garden
The garden itself rents for $3000, and includes a small tented area in case of rain. Music has to finish by 11:30pm. You must use their caterer, Alicia Reinish 718-720-9737 or www.cateredword.com. I found her prices insane and she was completely unwilling to negotiate. She wouldn't to a cocktail reception with heavy H.D. within my budget of $14,000.

Hotel Wales
You can rent out their rooftop deck and a penthouse suite for $3000. The kitchen is very small, so it would be a catering challenge.

Housing Works Café and Bookstore
All proceeds benefit Housing Works, a charity helping homeless AIDS victims. Catering costs would have been about $11,000 for 120 people, including food, open bar, rentals, service, not including taxes and gratuity. I can't remember the exact cost of space rental because it varied depending on if they had to close the bookstore for your event. I think we estimated that for 5 hours on a Saturday night it would have cost about $5500. I didn't try to negotiate, but there may have been some room there.
For catering info email Katie McKenna McKenna@housingworks.org For space rental email Chaya Thanhauser Thanhauser@housingworks.org

Smack Mellon
The price for a 12 hour weekend rental is 7500. The price for a Sunday or a Friday of a month that has all the Saturdays already booked is $3500.
Contact Info:
Suzanne Kim
Director of Exhibitions
92 Plymouth Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
f. 718.834.5233
p. 718.834.8761
www.smackmellon.org
suzanne@smackmellon.org

26 + Helen Mills Theater
Our room rental rate for the event space is $3,900 (up to 11 hours), excluding December. Incidentals are as follows: security guard: $200, restroom attendant: $175 and cleaning: $250 - $350. Our theater is $2,500. If you wish to use our A/V equipment in the event space, our sound system is $250, plus the cost of an A/V technician and other items/services. Our projection system is $750. The rental rate for the theater includes our A/V equipment. Liquor prices, for up to five hours, are as follows: $20/person for wine + beer, $25/person for premium, $32.50/person for ultra-premium, plus staff and our 20 percent administration/fee. Champagne is an extra $3/person. NYS sales tax of 8.375 percent applies to all. You are welcome to work with the caterer of your choice. However, if you don't currently know a caterer, I can recommend many, many great ones.
Heather Bandur
26 + Helen Mills Theater
137-139 West 26th Street NYC 10001
T +1 212 243 6200, ext. 12 F +1 212 243 1325 M +1 917 674 0531 heatherbandur@26nyc.com www.26nyc.com

New Creole Kitchen (Catering Only)
Alphe Williams 212-864-5381
If we'd done a big wedding we would have used this guy. He went out of his way to help us find an affordable venue. We liked him because he's very artistic, and had lots of ideas for cheaply decorating blank spaces (like lofts) and adding special touches. He verbally estimated that he could do a buffet dinner, open bar, service and rentals for 100 people for $11,000. Actually, I proposed that figure, and afterwards I felt pretty sure he would have done it for less. I only tasted one dessert he made, as we didn't get far enough along in the process to do a “tasting”, but his food came highly recommended by the contact at the NYC Fire Museum. He does any kind of food you want, not just Creole.

Gradisca Restaurant
126 W. 13th St., New York, NY 10011
between Sixth and Seventh Aves.
212-691-4886
This is what we ended up deciding on. They are doing a family-style dinner for 60 people with open bar for $4000 plus tax and gratuity. They give a 5% discount if you pay cash. The private room holds up to 80 people for dinner, but there is NO room for dancing. It's not glamorous, especially if you go by during the daytime, but at night they have lots of candles lit and it actually looks fairly romantic. They also have the best Italian food I've had outside of Italy and some crazy good pistachio gelato in the summer. It's on 13th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues. 212-691-4886.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Photographers : Eva Dahl Photoshoot




This past Saturday we had a photo shoot with our wedding photographer Eva Dahl .
We chose the perfect day, my apt gets a crazy amount of sunlight and the weather was beautiful, unlike the Nor Easter we had on Sunday.

The photos taken were of my bridal party, and supposed to look like they were done in a photo booth.
So I set up a tension rod and curtain and we took photos in front of it.
Basically the whole time we tried to act like we were in a confined space.
We also used a bunch of props like a ball and chain and a veil etc.
I plan on using these photos for our wedding website.

From what I saw on Eva's digital camera the photos looked great :)
I should be getting the cd within a week, I can't wait!
Eva is so easy to get along with, I know she'll be great to have around on my wedding day.

Of course I provided snacks and mimosas ;)