This is a long, sort-of sad post about why we have not been able to sign a contract on our reception venue. You can read it if you want, but I warned you.
As you may know, Don and I found a reception venue that we really like in Ocean City, Md. The venue overlooks at the Sinepuxent Bay (sometimes called Isle of White Bay) on one side and a tidal marsh on the other. It’s a long room with windows on both sides and a perfect view of the Sunset. There’s a two level deck over the water and it’s a short walk from the ocean where we’d like to hold the wedding ceremony.
Twenty years ago (or more), the Sunset Room was a night club. However, many years ago the building was purchased by the Town of Ocean City and is run by the Convention Center (which happens to be right next door).
The Convention Center is the exclusive caterer for the venue and they contract with a national company called Centerplate. Centerplate is a huge company with contracts for lots of large facilities including ball parks (hence the name).
Initially this scared me. Trade associations, like the one I work for, are in the convention business so I’ve sampled quite a bit of convention food that’s left a little something to be desired. BUT, the chef at the Ocean City Convention Center was recently named Maryland 2008 Chef of the Year so I’m not too worried.
However, even though we’ve been working on securing this venue for almost eight weeks, we really haven’t made much progress.
First there was the dilemma about who really is in charge of the venue. I put a reservation on the space in July with the Convention Center staff only to be told a few weeks later that the calendar maintained by that staff isn’t the official calendar and that my date might already be booked.
After we cleared that hurdle, there was the debate about how much the room costs. I was told by the Convention Center staff that there was a $1500 room charge but if you spend $5000 on food and beverage, the room fee is waived. Then Centerplate told me that there was a $1500 room charge (that, I have been told on more than one occasion, essentially covers the linens and tables) and $5000 minimum food and beverage order. The $1500 fee is never waived. [Side note - both times I've seen the room it was set up to seat about 160 people. That's twice as many people as we expect at our wedding - twice as many tables, twice as many chairs, twice as much linen. If the room fee really is in place to cover the table and linen use then we're getting screwed big time!]
Putting everything else aside, we really like location. So we decided to pursue it. That’s when the phone calls began.
They continued.
And continued.
And continued.
Until finally, I asked my mom to go there in person and get some kind of response. Thankfully on the day she was to visit in person she called to find out where in the building she would find the catering sales office and amazingly got the caterer, who I have nicknamed Silent Bob, on the phone. He gave her some song and dance about how busy he is and then scheduled a meeting with us on August 1. [Another side note - We're busy too. The difference is that we have full times jobs that are not planning our wedding whereas his full time job is to plan events for clients of the Convention Center and Sunset Room.]
So, we met with him on August 1, a Friday. The meeting was very good as meetings go. We were sad to learn the $1500 fee is not going to be waived, but decide it might be worth it anyway. We discussed some specific food ideas we had and asked to have a menu drawn up with pricing. He told us that it would take about a week so we expected to hear from him on August 8.
On Thursday, August 7 I sent him a “thanks for meeting with us; looking forward to seeing your menu creations tomorrow” e-mail just in case we’d slipped his mind. No response.
The 8th came and went. There was nothing over the weekend. Monday slipped into Tuesday.
Finally, I wrote again. He told us he should be able to get us something the following day, or by the week’s end. Wednesday became Thursday, Thursday became Friday and we headed into the weekend with no communication.
Tuesday night, August 19 (18 days after our meeting, and 7 weeks after I placed my first call to the Convention Center to enquire about the space), we sent a final e-mail to Silent Bob. We said we needed to make a decision by the end of the week or move on to our second choice location. [Side note - We don't have a second choice location, really. There are some places that would be fine ... but nothing that felt as right from the first time I saw it.]
If I don’t have something from him tomorrow afternoon, I’ll make one final attempt to contact him via phone - our hail Mary pass.
Don’t worry though, when we run off and elope we’ll take lots of camera phone pictures and it will be almost as special.
Almost.
Cross your fingers that it all works out. We need all the positive thoughts you can muster.
