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Weddings Just Outside The City (And A Question For You)

Q. Jordan,

I am a tiny tiny Jersey fish trying to plan my wedding to a NYC native and feel a li’l overwhelmed: we’ve got the beautiful love story…but not the NYC budget.

I was wondering if you could suggest some cool event spaces – any suggestions would be great!

Rachele

A. Congratulations on your engagement!

Truth: I don’t know a ton about the cost of event spaces in the city, but I suspect that this is a tough one because…well…it’s the city. Kendrick and I decided to get married at Clay Hill Farm in Ogunquit, Maine (wedding photo here) both because we loved the town and the venue, and also because we didn’t think that there was any way in the world that we were going to be able to afford a Manhattan wedding of the sort I was dreaming of (with, you know…food included). It was wonderful having an entire weekend to spend with our guests and felt very magical and special, but honestly, Maine is way far away, and it was kind of a huge pain for people to get there (people who didn’t have cars had to take a plane or a train + a bus + a taxi or a trolley, yikes).

In retrospect, I would probably have picked somewhere more easily accessible from the city so that people who wanted to come for the weekend could…but so that people who really needed to just attend the wedding and get back to their lives wouldn’t be excluded.

So. All of this is to say that my honest opinion is that if you’re working with a limited budget you might want to consider expanding your search slightly outside the city lines; there are still crazy-expensive castles and hotels and such…but there are also lots of amazing smaller venues competing for your business.

Last weekend, when Kendrick and I ate at the Iron Forge Inn in Warwick, N.Y. (pictured above; it’s about an hour and a half outside of NYC), I thought of your question and took a quick tour of the property, and I have to tell you: if rustic-country is your style, this is a perfect wedding venue. The place is a renovated 1760s farmhouse, so it’s got tons of small, cozy rooms where you could hold different events throughout the evening, a beautiful outdoor space, and an enormous old wooden bar upstairs (in addition to a super-cool Tap Room downstairs). I also had a quick chat with the owners, and they assured me that their weddings are very reasonable, and that they’re all about making it personal and special and giving the couple exactly the kind of day they’re looking for. Just something to think about.

All that said, if you want to get married in the city, do it! I personally don’t have a ton of great suggestions because it’s not something I have a lot of experience with, but I’m sure that there are reasonable, stylish places in the NYC area to get married.

So: I thought I’d post your question here to see if any readers have suggestions for you. …Anyone?

And stay tuned – lots of money-saving wedding tips are coming up in just a moment.



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February 27th, 2013 | Posted by Jordan | Lifestyle | 7 Comments »
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  • Olivia

    I don’t know much about the city (and to be honest, all my city friends get married outside of the city due the prices), but we did get married on LI, and there are some helpful tips…we picked a venue (the Three Village Inn, in Stony Brook) which normally is not cheap, but we opted for a Sunday at 11am wedding and it cut the cost in half! Also, like you said, Jordan, and we did this too–if you opt to spend the money on the venue, there’s so much you can DIY or just leave out of the wedding totally (did I need the personalized tissue packets I made 100 of? Um, no. They were cute, but not necessary!). I DIY all of my invites, and paper goods on Vista Print. Yes, my invites. My mother watercolored some flowers, and we designed the rest…all of my 150 invites, envelopes, return envelopes, invite add-ins (maps, etc) came to about $100. I printed out address labels, didn’t give a shit about the tissue paper inserts, and was good to go. I think the stamps cost the same as the invites! Anyway, point being, if you splurge on the venue, you can make up for it in many, many other ways! Good luck!

  • jordanreid

    “off” times are a GREAT tip – we went for a sunday night wedding rather than a saturday night because a) it was a 3-day weekend and didn’t really matter, and b) it saved a LOT of money. and agree re: cutting out all the stuff that doesn’t matter – we repurposed the votives in our centerpieces as favors, but easily could have just skipped favors entirely.

  • OhThatLaura

    Hi Rachele (and Jordan),

    My fiancé and I are currently in the thick of planning our wedding (just locked in a date, venue, caterer and photog), so thought I would brain-dump you everything I’ve learned thus far…

    There’s four things that you need to decide on concurrently: venue, guestlist (rough count of attendees), budget and date. These will all be locked in around the same time.

    Best to start with guest list and budget. Once you have a budget there are tons of template wedding budget websites out there, so just plug in your info into google and you can see roughly how your money will be spent. Again, some of these template budgets account for things you might not care about (e.g. –videographer, wedding albums, etc) and some costs might not need to be included in your budget, but again, this gives you a rough idea. From there, you know how much you can spend on a venue.

    Now, if you have $10K for a venue & caterer, and you have to have a 300-wedding, it’s going to be a VERY different event than if you’re having 100 guests. Wedding planning is all about compromise, so figure out what’s important to you and your fiance when you think about what your big day will look/feel like.

    As mentioned, “off” days and “off” seasons will definitely help with costs. You can get a lot more for your money if you’re not looking at a Saturday night in the “peak” wedding months.

    If you’re looking to plan a wedding in Manhattan, many venues
    are already booked up for 2013. I went to a venue on the UES last week and they already had “soft holds” (couple has “first refusal” on that date, but they haven’t yet put a down payment in to lock in the date) on 3 weekends in May 2014. Manhattan is crazy… crazy… but doable, if you want it!

    One other thing to think about is that if both of you are from around the city, you might be more inclined to invite more people if you have the event in the metro area, than if you moved the event outside the city. This isn’t a good or bad thing, but when budgeting, it’s something to take into consideration.

    A great place to start when looking for a venue is http://www.bizbash.com/venue-directory/. You can plug in your parameters on the side and they’ll show you all different venues. Then, you can visit their sites (most will have wedding or “private event” links) and then you can get an idea of price/etc.

    Also, if you sign up for Theknot.com, they have a good venue
    finder option on the site that gives some rough pricing details as well.

    All that said, happy to do another brain-dump on all the venues in the NYC-metro area that I like or thought did a great job when I’ve gone to events there. I know a bunch at a bunch of different size/price points, so just holler if I can be of any more help!

    GOOD LUCK in the planning process. The first few steps are totally daunting, but after you lock in a few details, it gets to be a lot of fun!!!

  • jordanreid

    amazing tips, laura – thank you!!! and congratulations :)

  • OhThatLaura

    Thanks! May 2014 can’t come fast enough!

  • WendyAtterberry

    I threw a budget wedding in manhattan in 2009 for less than $10,000. Here’s exactly how I did i (apologies if this too self-promotey, but hopefully it’s helpful in this case):

    http://dearwendy.com/how-i-threw-a-budget-wedding-in-new-york-city/

  • jordanreid

    Thanks, Wendy! Looking forward to checking out the post; sounds great.