Venue Guest Minimums

Hey Shielah,

Adding to my other comment. Have you consider a slight destination wedding option in Toronto? You can approach some hotels to offer you a group booking discount and spend 2 - 3 days in the city and make an adventure out of it while opening up your venue options.

As long as your guests all book by the deadline the hotel give you, it can save you and your guests 30 - 60% on each hotel booking. They may even throw you a deluxe suit if you book a minimum.

Just a thought. Best,

Veronica

Hey Sheilah,

We've heard of our competitors do this countless times from our clients. This could be for many reasons but many of which really comes down on how much food and beverage they can sell you for that day and if they can sell the space to someone else with more people = more $$$ for the venue. Even if they are outsourcing the food, they mark-up each dish up.

The issue with signing the contract at a higher guest count is you are locked to that pricing and the pricing per person may go up or you may be charged for those additional guests that "didn't show". Make sure to read your contract thoroughly regarding this before signing.

Our hospitality group's venues don't do this and instead offer a tier system that reduces the venue rental as the guest count goes up. This makes it much more flexible for the client that may be set on the historic appeal our venues have.

We would love to suggest taking a look at the venue I work at, Eglinton Grand or our sister venue The Guild Inn Estate since they have no minimum restrictions. If you are just looking for a ceremony venue, small groups work well in the Eglinton Grand's ceremony room on the 2nd floor or if you prefer the outdoors, The Guild Inn Estate offers both indoor and outdoor spaces for all sizes, especially <100 guests.

I wish you well and hope you find your dream venue.

Happy planning,

Veronica at the Eglinton Grand

I hated talking about guest minimums when looking for a venue! The one we went with had a guest minimum of 150 (we approached them with an estimated guest count of 110), so they reduced it to 130, and now our guestlist has actually skyrocketed to nearly 200. It's all been very frusterating and I feel like our guestlist has grown partially because of the minimum we were hoping to meet.

Hi Sheilah! How many guests are you planning on inviting? I'd also try looking at hotels and country clubs that might have smaller event rooms to choose from, or you can look at restaurants that have private dining space.

I definitely wouldn't lie about the guest head count! Like everyone else has said, you'll be responsible for paying to cover the minimum cost of food / booze / service for 100 guests no matter how many guests actually show up!

If there's a minimum guest count, its not really about the guests, but the money they actually get.

So really waht they're saying is if a dinner service/food costs $100 per guest. And there's a minimum of 100 guests, then they're really saying there's a minimum spend of 10,000. If you don't have enough guests who RSVP'd they will most likely still charge you the full 10,000 as if all guests came.

My venue has both a minimum and maximum per room capacity, luckily our guest count is dead middle so we're safe. But I understand why they do it, it is cost effective for them.

Maybe do what Tatiana suggested and look for not-hall venues: parks, barns, houses, things like that - might mean you have to travel a bit more. I know when we were looking for our venue in Toronto we found some not-hall places that were pretty nice looking. Maybe give that a try, but don't lose hope! I'm sure you'll find your perfect place

When I was shopping for a venue and found one I really liked, they had several banquet spaces but the one I like I needed to have a minimum of 150 ppl and I'm currently sitting at 130 ppl.

There are some venues like that sadly

Yes our venue also had a guest minimum, must halls do this days. Please read the final print because must venues make you pay for your minimum whether they show or not. We had 94 people come and still paid for the full 100, which our venue fully disclosed so we were expecting it, but please be weary. Or look for some venues which out of the box instead of a hall as a possibility. Hope this helps