Do you pay for tasting?

[DGG]

I just got an email from my wedding planner - we are setting up things for our site visit next week and are going to do a tasting of food for our reception. The form she sent me is of a set tasting menu and the price is $75 per person with a 20% required gratuity. I am so upset they are adding on this cost - doesn't it seem ridiculous that we have to pay so much extra just to taste the food that we are going to be spending a lot of money on for our guests? And isn't the whole point of the tasting to choose the foods we want to order, not for a set menu??

Maybe I'm overreacting but they keep adding on these fees - we signed a contract already and already made a huge deposit but I'm starting to regret choosing this place.

And this site visit alone is costing us almost $2000 including flight...

[drbrainfreeze]

Thats crazy! I don't have any advice as I am not doing a site visit. But I assume that you are eating at the resort anyways, so maybe just go off of that and choose a few items for your menu that you think people would enjoy?

 

We are flying blind, as we are not tasting anything before we get to Jamaica. We are just hoping for the best!

[YoursTruly]

WOW that is ridiculous. Can you push back at all? I would negotiate better and work with her superior? If you are unhappy I would change the venue of I could....

[DGG]

It's already booked so we are stuck with this place - although I still think we'll be happy with it in the end (even if we're broke ).

But - I left her a message saying I was very upset about it and was told we would be able to choose our tasting menu and that we are not going to pay extra money to taste the food we are going to order for our guests.. I haven't heard back yet, so we'll see

[ACA Amy]

The same thing happened to us today! We are having our site visit this weekend and were finalizing the tasting and was told that it only included 1 meal (appetizer, entree, dessert). We wanted to try at least 4 different options to see what we liked. We are trying to narrow it down to 2 dishes- 1 meat and 1 fish. It didn't seem unreasonable to try 2 of each but they want to charge us $40 for each additional meal. Aren't tastings supposed to be small bites of the meals so you get an idea if you like it or not This is now going to cost us $120 and I hadn't even thought about tipping!!!

[MarieSam]

Our tasting was completely free, but we're doing our wedding through a restaurant so I'm not sure if that makes things any different...

 

What we did first though is have dinner there on our own dime -- FI, myself and my daughter each ordered something different so we could taste a variety of items. We thought everything was delish, so then we took it a step forward meeting with the restaurant's owner who also doubles up as our wedding coordinator.

 

We spent plenty of hours talking to her, and when we told her we felt good about having our event catered by them ~ she suggested that the night before we left to go home we have our official "food tasting". She was so kind and really encouraged us to order anything on the menu so we could at get our menu set. There wasn't any limit to what we ordered in appetizers, entrees, sides or desserts. And believe me, we stuffed ourselves. I can't remember what the bill ended up being, I belive somewhere about $150, which is a lot considering most their meals are about $10 to $20. So we left the servers a $40 tip and left happy and stuffed, WITH leftovers

 

I would definitely see if there's some way around this "tasting fee", it seems so unreasonable considering you're already committed to having your wedding there. Since you're already going to be paying them a significant amount of money, you'd think they could at least give you a free meal...just my $.02

[Ayita]

We paid for our tasting - but first, we wanted to taste three different menus, and second, the price was very reasonable as we paid 65$ for the two of us for each meal (including the wine, and then you have to add taxes and service). This is cool as it is the price per person wine not included on the wedding night. So, overall, I was OK with that !

[tcuvicki]

Our tasting was only $15 each and that included tasting for our cocktail hour options, wedding dinner options, late night snack options cake, and cocktails

[DGG]

So in the end, I told the wedding planner we didn't think we would have to pay and it was implied before we booked that a tasting would be free --- so we got to do it all for free.. It all worked out great in the end - the food was delicious and we ate for about 3 hours straight - thankfully, my FI can eat a lot and doesn't gain weight b/c I would have gained about 10 pounds with all the food they gave us..

Thanks for the help

[boven]

One of the venues we are considering charges $65 per person for tastings however they will credit us that cost if we select them for the wedding. I feel comfortable with that arrangement knowing that they must have numerous inquiries for tastings without contracts in place. Your situation however is not ok given that you have already committed to that establishment. I hope they respond favorably to your email, if not, I would suggest asking for some other compensations. Good luck!