Where should we have our reception?

January 5, 2008 12:42 PM

Help us find a place for our wedding reception!

My fiancée and I are planning to get married next year, around May or June. We've decided that a nice restaurant would be good for our reception because it would concentrate a lot of the planning, and make it easier for us. Our problem is that we don't know of that many nice restaurants in the Boston/South Shore area.

Our budget is kind of undefined, as her father has told us not to worry about price, but her mother has been telling us to shop around. We're ultimately looking for a wedding that feels affordable and nice, but neither cheap nor over-classy.

Our criteria:

-A decent vegetarian menu. There will be meat as well, but we are vegetarians, and we'd like more than the token pasta primavera.

-Our reception will be approximately 70-90 people total.

-We would like to have the (extremely short) wedding at or nearby the restaurant, so a nice exterior is a big plus.

We had Barker Tavern suggested to us, and it does look nice. We're going to take a look next week, but we'd like more options so that we can compare and make a choice.

Bonus question: Is there anything we should be looking for, or remember to ask when taking a tour of a restaurant for a wedding reception?

posted by explosion to Food & Drink (6 answers total)

I'm not familiar with your particular area, but I can relate my own wedding reception story: Much like you and your fiancee, we'd decided to have our reception at a restaurant. Mind you, we weren't looking for the typical banquet hall with dance floor type of place. We were married in a private ceremony at a local pub in our favorite booth with an officiant we'd selected from the Yellow Pages. Prior to getting married, we fretted over where to have a small reception (70 people). One evening at dinner in one of our favorite local restaurants I noticed a table tent shoved back behind the condiment caddy. It said something about the restaurant having a banquet room and that they offered catering for weddings. We already knew the food was good, since we ate there often, so we inquired about the reception thing. They provided us with a large banquet room, unlimited salad bar, bread baskets, and three different entrees and unlimited beer and wine for just under $700 for 70 people (this was in 1994). We brought our own music (small stereo system with our own mix tapes; we didn't have dancing, but we had "sing alongs" once everyone had had enough beer and wine). Everyone raved about the delicious food for months afterward.

So my suggestion to you is to investigate some of your favorite dining spots. A lot of them mention "banquet rooms" or "catering" on their menus and advertising and most of us never pay attention to that. But I think you'll find a better quality of food and more competitive prices at restaurants versus banquet halls.
posted by Oriole Adams at 1:47 PM on January 5, 2008

Best answer: Congratulations!

We went through this process in 2006, although I was looking primarily in the Boston/Cambridge area. We had a short timeframe to work with (I dont plan ahead well), but a few of the places I would have loved to hold our reception at are:

Henrietta's Table in Harvard Sq. While their regular menu usually has only one vegetarian option, I've been to a rehearsal dinner there, and believe they worked with the bride/groom and came up with 3 vegetarian options for their guests.

The Harvard Faculty Club in Boston - beautiful surroundings, you can have the wedding upstairs and dinner downstairs.

There used to be a restaurant at the Museum of Science which offered private dining spaces as well - I can't find details online and I've deleted all the emails, but I had gone to visit and there was a really nice space with a gorgeous view over Boston.

I'll have a trawl through my email and see if I can find other recommendations...
posted by darsh at 9:06 AM on January 6, 2008

Just found the MOS information - it wasnt a restaurant exactly, more function space which they rent out. They work w/ Wolfgang Puck caterers and organise all the details for you - from what I recall , they were pretty pricey, but really nice. See here for details.
posted by darsh at 9:25 AM on January 6, 2008

In terms of anything you should be looking for: Pick up a recent edition of Bridal Bargains. It's not quite "Wedding Industry Confidential," but it does give you lots of pitfalls to watch out for, negotiating strategies, etc.

Best wishes!
posted by wintersweet at 2:23 PM on January 6, 2008

Wow, I just did a Google search for "site:ask.metafilter.com boston wedding restaurant", and here it is, an open thread.

We're just starting this process ourselves and haven't spoken to any restaurants yet. I'm not looking at banquet halls or any kind of catering venues -- I want actual restaurants that we've enjoyed.

I will say that most restaurants with private rooms seem to accommodate up to 50, so you might be looking at a larger kind of space. We're paying for our event so the smaller, the better!
posted by nev at 5:00 PM on January 15, 2008

Response by poster: As a follow-up for anyone who hits this thread:

We did decide on the Museum of Science, and while it's not exactly cheap, the space is nice, the venue as a whole awesome, and the price includes admission to the museum for all of our guests. The wedding's not for another 6 months, so I can't say how it went yet, but it looks like it's gonna be a lot of fun.
posted by explosion at 7:13 AM on November 6, 2008