Archives for Wedding Receptions
Application Fees
January 21, 2008
I’m in the process of tracking down wedding locations. I don’t need to tell you how much it sucks. You know. You also know that these places are charging insane rates. Oh, I’m not talking about rental rates (I understand that 200 people can wreak havoc on lawns and gardens), I’m talking about application fees.
Yes, application fees. The non-refundable fees that locations charge you regardless of whether or not you actually get to hold your wedding at that location. I mulled this over for a while, pondering the other application fees I’ve encountered in my life, the ones for Grad School and College. And…oh, hey! It turns out that my application fees have been limited to applying to enter a school. Those fees are about $50 for each school. This makes sense because universities spend a lot of time and money trying to figure out who best to select for their incoming classes. There are steps like essay-reading and document-confirmation and meetings. Oh Lord, the meetings.
And then there are wedding locations. I’m going to start entering on this page the ones that I find ridiculous. Insane. Unbelievable. Let’s start with the gorgeous Los Altos History Museum.
Los Altos History Museum
This place is “A Community Jewel” and it comes with a price tag to match. The wedding rental rate (for 8 hours on a Saturday) is $4,000. Maybe you are choking right now. Maybe you are laughing about how cheap that is. I choked. Just a little. But the fee wasn’t the kicker because there are a lot of fantastic things included in the day (docent-led tours of the museum, bridal-changing room, chairs, “use of restrooms” [yes, that is a quote], etc.). And the $1,000 refundable deposit didn’t shock me either. After all, it is a gorgeous historic place and if your guests can’t respect it you need to pony up.
What made me gasp with disbelief was the $500.00 non-refundable application fee. $500.00 freaking dollars. Holy crap! Can you imagine if colleges charged 12.5% of the tuition as the application fee? The non-refundable application fee?
If there’s anything that’s really made me sick in this whole wedding-planning journey, it is the amount of deceit and backhandedness I’ve seen in the industry. Maybe I expect a little too much good from the human race. Or maybe I just expect people to have the decency to create rental schedules that actually work.
Dear potential wedding locations: please have the decency to charge me a sensible application fee. I’d never balk at $50 (hey, I know that somebody’s got to pay for that receptionist and the photocopying), but charging $500.00 that doesn’t go toward my rental and I’ll never see again? You obviously need to get a better administrator on board.
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