I am from Arizona, so cannot help specifically with places in NY. Here, though, there are botanical gardens, city parks, zoos, museums, pretty locations on a college campus, elk lodge or other fraternal organizations and sometimes even meeting rooms at a nice restuarant, a mall etc. All of which will rent the space and then let you provide your own food/drink. Having done this for two daughters weddings, it really doesn`t save much money though, just gives you more choices. Some of those places will provide tables and chairs, but otherwise you rent them. You`ll have to decorate, provide tablecloths, linens, dishes, glasses, utensils etc...and then the food/drink. Of course, you could have family/friends make all the food, and limit drinks to non alcohol or that plus a keg of beer or boxes of wine and you could buy paper goods at the party supply store for eating...it will be much less expensive that way than full catering at a hotel/ranch etc. Those are some ideas. IF you find a place, you will need a TEAM of people to handle it all on the day before the wedding and the wedding day, with someone assigned to head the team. I would give them really details written instructions about how you want it all to look. You, your mom and your maids will be much too busy those last few days before the wedding to be the ones handling all this. Our weddings were both at home...which is another idea, if you know anyone that has a house with enough outdoor room. We had 5-10 people show up on the set up day and EVERYTHING was written down for the lead person. A layout on paper, a mock set up of how the tables should look, where we wanted drinks and food located. We had the food catered only...and didn`t have to worry about that part. We had 100 guests each time and the per person expense was nearly as much as renting a banquet hall would have been. I am happy to answer more questions. JoAnne
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