NBR: Party planning help

michelleaxo

I am planning a 40th wedding anniversary party for my parents in June. The party will be mostly family and not too fancy, but fancy enough where everyone will dress up. I need a venue for the party that is super cheap as I have to pay for the catering and the venue. We have about 30 people total.

All the restaurants I call want a ton of money to rent a small space and then like a $1,000 minimum. That is just too much money for me.  I thought about using the pool house in my parents subdivision, but I think that might be kind of weird and not fancy enough.

Any ideas?

GuavaGal

I had a birthday brunch for someone at Matt's El Rancho, and I just made a reservation for 20 people.  We were in a smaller room in the back, and there were a few other long tables full of other groups there, but it worked for us.  All I had to pay for was food, and it was REALLY cheap for brunch. Plus, the service was fantastic. Do you definitely want a private room?

ETA: Another option that's inexpensive: how about renting out a Lake Austin Riverboat and bringing in your own food & drinks?  I went to a rehearsal dinner on one of those--they rented the boat for after the rehearsal, picked up a cater order from Pok-E-Joe's BBQ, and also brought their own drinks.  It wasn't fancy, but it was fun.

BoxerMomma

i'm a houston girl, so i love pappasito's. we looked there for dh's 30th birthday party and they had private rooms and decent prices on food. some other places we also looked into: hoovers (i think they could hold up to 30 people and we had more), moonshine (good lunch/brunch prices). 

Tiffany5412

For my rehearsal dinner we did it at Texican Cafe off Lakeline and they gave us a room without a rental fee and I don't think there was a food minimum.  Their S.Austin one had a room the same.

 The pool house kinda depends on what it looks like but if it's like the Apartment club houses or what some neighborhoods have I don't see anything wrong with having it there.  My dad had his Christmas party at theirs and it worked out to be really nice and everyone was in church attire.

L L CG

Tiffany5412:

 The pool house kinda depends on what it looks like but if it's like the Apartment club houses or what some neighborhoods have I don't see anything wrong with having it there.  My dad had his Christmas party at theirs and it worked out to be really nice and everyone was in church attire.

Ditto.  We had our law school graduation at our apartment clubhouse in Lubbock.  We just rented long plastic tables, got some pretty linen tablecloths and put candles and balloons everywhere.  It was lovely.  We also called in catering at Rudy's and picked it up.  It was about $300 for 30+ people.