$50.00 bartender fee for the first three hours, $10.00 per bartender for each additional hour.

Wow -- that seems a LOT cheaper than the DC hotel, unless I'm misremembering.

I don't think we really want a full dinner, do we? Just finger food to nibble on.

I still boggle at thirty-dollar entrees. I mean, I know they exist, but it's still such a shock to see them. I've been a student for a very long time.

I think DC was something like $25 per hour, but no additional cashier fee. Could be wrong. Still, those figures seem reasonable enough all things considered. I can't see the menus because of my stupid browser. Once again, I'd vote to keep the food portion as minimal as possible, especially considering the city we're in - I'd like to use as little of my gorging allowance (both cash and stomach-capacity) on hotel banquet food as possible. Which isn't to say the food mightn't be quite good.

Dinner menu looks scrumptious enough, but I agree that a bit of finger food is more likely what we would want.

I think DC was something like $25 per hour, but no additional cashier fee.

Okay, then I'm just a flake, so nevermind. Still, under $100 for the bar sounds totally reasonable.

Yes, but the cost for the Hospitality Suite was quite a bit cheaper in DC.

The Hotel is supposed to have a very very nice restaurant in it, so if the food we're getting is from their kitchen then it would prove to be quite good.

I agree that finger foods would be the good way to go, however we don't know if that will increase the cost of the venue for the party.

Also, we need to know if they have rules of AV setup and if we can have music playing. The would especially come into play if we are adjecent to another party.

I don't remember either food or booze at the Chicago F2F prom. We headed either to the bar or our rooms to grab food or drink. We have many options depending on hotel requirements.

If we could have hotel bar and our own food (from grocery store) that could work nicely.

That's more or less what we had in Chicago, and it worked very well.

I believe the issue is that we don't get the room cheap/free unless we use their booze/food. Also many hotels don't want you bringing in your own booze even if you don't pay for the bar.

Oh sure. If it's what it takes to get the room reasonably, it makes all kinds of sense. In Chicago we lucked into a deal where they gave us the restaurant, which had direct access to the cocktail lounge where we got out drinks, and there was some small amount of bottle smuggling as well. It was great, but not a usual situation. What it sounds like is shaping up at the St. Louis I'm sure will be fab as well.