tasting fees?

[LabRatPhD]

Hi everyone!

We have finally booked our venue (yay!) and we were given a contract to sign to finalize it. We are required to purchase some of the venue''s catered food and we will also be purchasing some other food from a local Indian restaurant. The cake will probably be purchased from the vendor as well since I have heard great things about the pastry chef there. One thing we did notice in the contract is that our venue charges for all food/cake/drink tastings. I was surprised because I didn''t expect tastings to carry fees.

Just wondering if this is normal? We have not been told what the fees will be but we may want to have a couple of food tastings since we have specific ethnic dishes we would like the caterer to prepare.

Thank you!

 

[princessplease]

I have never heard if that, especially with it being required. To me, it seems ridiculous for them to charge you for food to taste when you''re paying for food at the wedding. It''s not like you didn''t sign a contract yet, either. Our caterer prepared 10 of her most popular dishes for tasting, and gave them to us before we even booked. She even said that if there''s something on the menu that we want, but wasn''t in the tasting box, she''d prepare it for us. I''d be really curious to know how much these tastings are though.

 

[elrohwen]

My venue didn't charge for tasting, but they also only let us taste things being served to another group. So we showed up and got to try the standard hors d'oeuvres, but for the entrees we got that party's choices of chicken, salmon, beef, etc. It was great to know what the quality was like and helped us make our decision, though honestly I would've preferred to pay a bit and get to taste the exact things we wanted. We also got to try all of the wines they had and a little dessert

The people at the venue were super nice (we even had four people and they didn't care; open bar for all! and a full meal)

For the cake, we only got to try 2 samples for free and after that it was a few bucks per sample. That didn't seem unreasonable to me.

 

[Smurfysmiles]

Ours was free and really yummy, I can''t wait to eat some more

 

[kama_s]

I think it''s bizarre they''re charging you for the tasting. We didn''t pay anything! Our caterer is a famous chef, and our tasting included two choices for each courses along with an appropriate wine tasting for each item (including icewine and a cheese platter at the end!) - the whole dinner would have costed us over 300$ plus tax but they didn''t charge us a penny.

 

[LabRatPhD]

Hmm, I thought it was strange that they are charging us for tastings too! I just didn''t know if I was out of touch with reality thinking they should be free!

We will contact the venue and see what they say. I don''t think we will change venues over this but it is definitely annoying!

 

[kama_s]

Save me some butter chicken!

 

[cindygenit]

We were charged 35 dollars per person for an entree, a main, and a side of salad and steamed vegetables. We also had a coffee each after the meal. I thought it was reasonable, considering that I had an all seafood meal and FI had a chicken parcel and filet mignon for his main.

 

[cleokizzy]

there are halls that do charge fees for tasting, specially if you request for a specific meal to be served. but tastings are usually an optional choice. does your venue require you to do tastings?