mdwest
AH ambassador
The wife really knocked it out of the park with the hotel this year.. she's been able to secure good rates in the past for friends coming into town, but never anything close to this.. They really hooked us up with very fair pricing on the event space and the food as well... and they threw in free parking for everyone (whether youre staying at the hotel or not).. thats huge.. they normally charge $20 a day for parking....
If you know anything about how hotels mark up food and what they charge for things like AV, meeting space, etc.. thats where they generally stick it to you hard.. they know that "corporate" clients generally dont care much about cost, they just want the venue to be "right".. so they hammer the hell out of you.. You can literally buy a full blown AV system for less than what a hotel will charge you to lease theirs for an evening..
The Marriott has really gone out of their way to support us this year.... if we were paying full retail costs, we simply wouldnt be able to do it.. we'd be looking at $8K or more out of pocket to throw a party.. possibly $10K... We'd be stuck keeping it at our house.. which has in the past always been great.. but then we'd have to limit the number of people that could attend.. after last year its just grown too big for our home to accomidate anymore people than we've already had..
Assuming Marriott continues to take care of us like they are doing this year, we could easily grow this thing to 150+ people, maybe more, before we'll have to look at another venue option..
If you know anything about how hotels mark up food and what they charge for things like AV, meeting space, etc.. thats where they generally stick it to you hard.. they know that "corporate" clients generally dont care much about cost, they just want the venue to be "right".. so they hammer the hell out of you.. You can literally buy a full blown AV system for less than what a hotel will charge you to lease theirs for an evening..
The Marriott has really gone out of their way to support us this year.... if we were paying full retail costs, we simply wouldnt be able to do it.. we'd be looking at $8K or more out of pocket to throw a party.. possibly $10K... We'd be stuck keeping it at our house.. which has in the past always been great.. but then we'd have to limit the number of people that could attend.. after last year its just grown too big for our home to accomidate anymore people than we've already had..
Assuming Marriott continues to take care of us like they are doing this year, we could easily grow this thing to 150+ people, maybe more, before we'll have to look at another venue option..
)... 
