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.

What ND said.

Also, it might be worth noting that we aren't doing "tickets" this year, right? We're just going to have a general donation pool so that those with more can give more and those who don't have the extra cash don't have to fret. I know we don't want huge costs in any case, but I thought I should remind everyone that we'd talked about doing it this way so people don't worry as much about individual costs if it seems like doing a bar and/or food is raising the price too much.

Edit: This message brought to you from the Department of Run-On Sentences.

Correct, I'm going to be starting up two donation pools as soon as we get some decisions on hotel made. One pool is to pay for the weekend/party and such. The other pool is to help our fellow Buffistas attend the event. This extra pool can be cash sent in via pay pal, or if folks want to donate Frequent Flier miles, etc. etc, they will be able to emai me and I'll keep track of it all, and anyone who needs to take adavantage of the awesome generosity that this board always comes forward with can pop a note to me and they'll get hooked up.

That is awesome. I skipped 800 posts so I missed that part.

If it's financially viable, I would much much much rather have nice pretty hotel food (that we didn't have to clean up, or worry about storing) than grocery store food.