Wedding Ideas & Tips

Talking about money and budgets isn’t the most glamorous aspect of wedding planning, but it’s one of the most important parts because it means that you can actually get a handle on what needs to happen in order to make your wedding come to life.

Today I want to talk about one of the hidden costs in wedding planning - the plus/plus rate. I’ve talked about this before on this blog, but several of you are new here and it also seems that this topic continually catches couples off guard when it comes time to pay the bill.

Plus/plus stands for plus tax, plus service charge. These figures are in addition to the cost your venue or caterer will quote you for your wedding.

Let’s say your wedding venue and their in-house caterer is charging $100 a plate. (For some weddings this is an extravagant amount, while for others it’s a steal. Nonetheless, $100 is a nice round number to visualize and work with for our purposes here.)

The price on the quote you receive from your venue would look something like this:
Dinner: $100++

The plus/plus rates can range per city and per venue, but again for the sake of round numbers, let’s say that sales tax is 8% and the service charge is 22% (both of which are not too far off from reality in many places).

So while the quote reads $100++ what it really means is $100 + 8% + 22%, or $130.

That’s right, your $100 per plate budget just jumped to $130 per plate. This may seem insignificant while looking at the smaller numbers, but if you plan on inviting 100 guests, that’s an additional $3000 that needs to be budgeted for. If you’re inviting 300 guests (which is not uncommon for younger couples recently out of college), that’s an additional $9000 on top of your $30,000 food bill. 

Most venues and caterers will not volunteer what their plus/plus rates are in their sales literature. This number usually doesn’t come up until the fine print of the contract when you’re ready to book. Be sure to ask each venue or catering company while interviewing them for their rates so that you can make an informed decision when choosing a wedding location.