Definition: When working with a wedding venue, Guarantee refers to the minimum number of guests that you are committing to hosting and paying for, regardless of whether all those guests show up.
Practical Use + Tips: This is one of the most critical elements in wedding planning because it helps determine your final wedding budget. It’s important to estimate your guest count carefully and understand the policies around increasing or decreasing your guarantee. The guarantee is essentially a way for the venue to ensure that they can meet your needs and that you’re financially committed to a certain number of attendees.
A few things to consider:
- We do our best to estimate and get you as close to your guest count as possible in the beginning but if you end up with fewer guests than the guarantee, you’ll still need to pay for that original number.
- Final guest count numbers are normally due a week or two before the wedding. Even if those numbers change all the way until the day of, you are still responsible for the guarantee amount.
- Normally when booking your venue there is a clause in the contract stating what your guarantee number is.