What is the base set-up and what is an extra

The base set-up is whatever it takes to serve the banquet that was booked: tables, chairs, linen, service, and the dance floor if it is part of the offer. Everything else is an extra, even when the client assumes otherwise.

The distinction is not about price, it is about space. An extra does not just cost time to build: it takes up an area that is no longer available for covers, and that is the part that never comes up in the conversation until it is too late.

The four almost nobody charges for

They turn up at almost every wedding and in almost no quote. It is not that they are given away: they are assumed, and once they are built there is no conversation left to have.

  • The gift table. It looks like nothing and needs its own spot by the entrance, with room to walk around it.
  • The photo backdrop. Nine or twelve square metres and, above all, somewhere a queue can form without blocking the service gangway.
  • The sweet table. It takes little and needs a lot: a socket, a long table, and space for people to crowd round it at one particular moment.
  • The children’s area. It takes the most floor space and is the one clients who have it are most grateful for, precisely because almost nobody offers it.

How to justify the price with the plan

By showing both plans: the set-up with the extra and the set-up without it, each with its capacity. The difference between 150 and 138 covers explains the price better than any rate card, and more importantly it turns it into the client’s decision rather than the venue’s imposition.

When the capacity does not change because the room is generous, the argument is the other one: build time, equipment and staff. That gets shown too, and charged for too, but the two reasons are best kept out of the same sentence.

Extras that change the capacity: say so beforehand

This is the one genuinely important rule in all of it. If the client has booked 150 covers and then asks for a photo backdrop, a children’s area and a stage, they have to be told at that moment that the capacity drops to 130 — not two weeks before the event.

The conversation is awkward once and impossible later, when 150 guests have already confirmed. And the only way to have it with any confidence is to have worked out the capacity of the set-up with the extra in it, on the plan.

How it goes into the contract

One line per extra saying three things: what it is, what space it takes, and whether it changes the maximum capacity. The footprint looks like an unnecessary technical detail and it is what prevents the «I thought the backdrop was bigger» argument.

And one general sentence worth having in writing: the agreed capacity corresponds to the set-up described, and any added element may reduce it. It is half a line and it covers every extra that appears later.