The 1893 at the Historic Grain Belt

we would have known. Vendors: It is not easy for external vendors to work with Entourage due to their strict vetting and requirements for the vendor to meet. Make sure to get in writing from Entourage that your vendor is approved before paying any deposits with you vendor. While we were hiring a band, we confirmed that the band had worked many times with Minneapolis Event Centers venues over the years, in fact they had even played at a MEC venue the weekend before. Great, we booked them! After letting Entourage know who our band was, they told us that actually that band was now on their "banned vendor" list and no they had not informed the band of this. It worked out in the end because the band paid a security deposit to Entourage, but it was a pretty stressful part of the process. The other thing that I will call out here is a warning against Entourage's "Preferred Vendor" list - which is a list of vendors that are pre-approved and vetted by Entourage. We ended up using both the bakery and the ceremony music vendors from this list and they were fabulous. The caution here is that Entourage reserves the right to change this list at any point, and we saw an example of this happening where Entourage sent an email saying a few of their preferred vendors were no longer approved and if you are already working with them to find someone else that meets the requirements. Thankfully none of our hired vendors were effected, but there was always worry in the back of our minds that Entourage could change their mind at any point and we'd be left scrambling to find new people last minute. Entourage requires you to use one of their day of coordinators. You are required to pay for their meal and it's recommended that you tip them, so make sure to factor both of these things into your budget. While common in the wedding industry, we were surprised to find out we were required to feed an entree to all vendors. We had 10 total vendors which was 1/8 of our guest list so those entrees quickly added up. Hidden fees: Entourage is up front with the 24% service charge in the contract you sign but it can be an easy thing to overlook when caught up in the excitement of reserving a date/location. If you have your ceremony & reception at the venue there is a $1,500 room flip fee. We were surprised to find out (and we forgot to ask upfront) that audio for the ceremony is not provided by the venue so we ended up needing to pay our band an extra $500 to do that for the ceremony. Alcohol: Entourage will encourage you to do a "bar package" where you pay per person during the cocktail hour for all-you-can-drink. We were not informed until our final planning meeting that the Friendship room (basement speakeasy) at the venue does not include a refrigerator so over half of what was advertised in the packaged drinks would not be available for guests during cocktail hour. Entourage did work with us to put 2-3 additional beverages on ice during the cocktail hour so that our guests had more than 1 cold option, but had we known in our early planning that this would be the case we would have just paid per drink consumed as we don't feel like we got the full benefit from the all-you-can-drink package. Entourage was able to custom order N/A beers and champagne for me which was great since I don't drink.