I will be taking them to my paypal account - same e-mail as profile.

Do you have a pro account that can take credit cards? ND does if you would like us to collect.

A few things I've learned from event planning:

- if a suite is going to be used as a group gathering place but the people who are staying there are checking out on Sunday, ask for a guarantee of a late checkout; 3:00 is usually doable

- for the catering minimum, confirm that it is a combination of all three components (room, food, drink) and that there isn't a minimum for each; sometimes, the hotel will try to enforce a food charge minimum since that one usually provides the hotel with a hefty profit (people rarely eat as much as they think they will and generally drink more)

- try to get some idea of how the drink charges will be handled. Are you paying for a set amount and they'll close the bar when it is reached? Is there a set amount but you can arrange for someone to be asked before new bottles are opened? Will they just keep pouring and then present a bill?

Pix - I can take credit cards, so no issue there.

lcat - I will request a late check out for Sunday.

The contract language says "Based on the date of your event, location and number of people expected a minimum of $650.0 in food, beverage and meeting room rental will need to be spent at your function. This minimum does not include service charge, tax, labor or other miscellaneous charges. Should your expected revenue drop below the agreed upon minimum, the different will be charged to you as meeting room rental. You will be responsible for paying all applicable charges in addition to the minimum revenue agreed to above".

The room rental is $150, I can see spending about $200 on food after a quick look at the menu, and there are options for the bar. The bartender fee is $100. If I'm reading it right, we can do a hosted bar for $17 per person for the first hour and $8 per person for each additional hour. Or we could do a hosted bar where they track the drinks at certain rates for each up to an agreed upon total.

Seem like we would clearly hit the minimums that way.

So the group costs would be $250/night plus tax for the hospitality suite for 2 nights. Then the $600, plus 24% and any other fees. I'm not sure if the bartender fee falls within this or not.

Honestly, that total is lower than the minimum we've had many other times. I don't think it will be a problem.

Suzi, when I planned the NOLA F2F, I found it was helpful to do a grand total for the amount of money that the group was responsible for (hospitality suite nights plus Prom fees) and then divide it by the number of people coming so that people had a ballpark for how much they should donate if possible. We always have people who can't afford that amount, but there are others who will help fill in those gaps.

A rough estimate of the costs divided by the 18 people who said they thought they could make it, comes out to $85-ish.

That is very rough and based on the $600 minimum, which I can see us easily going over.

Should I ask about extending the time in the meeting room, or should we expect to retire to the hospitality suite after 10pm?

Do we still have 18 people? I think we lost a few voting bodies a few pages ago.

I'm curious, Suzi, what are the options for post-prom? Heading back to hospitality suite? Or are there other places to go at 10? Thanks for all of your work on this.

Suzi, I didn't see anything in the contract stating that the expense of the prom space was based on the number of hours that we used it. Do you recall if they stated anything verbally?

If possible, I think we should try to request the room until at least 11pm. If three hours total is what they're basing the cost on though, maybe we can push it out from 7 - 10 to 8 - 11pm instead.

(thank you, too, Nicole!)