Wow...What a party and what a mess!
At the end of the evening, when the bubbly is gone and your guests have gone home, the wedding night clean up begins. Some vendors refer to this as break down, some refer to it tear down. Either way, it’s important to know what to do. What happens and who does it will depend entirely on you. Here’s a list of all the items that need to be taken care of and what typically happens.
If you hire a full service caterer, they typically will help with cleaning up their dishes, flatware and linens. Some caterers will help with trash disposal. If you book a cater who offers a "drop off" service, then you'll be stuck cleaning up everything at the end of the evening. A drop off service essentially means they will drop off the food, drinks and paper products. You'll be responsible to throw everything away since there is nothing to wash or keep.
In addition to bagging up the trash, there are just a few things that the venue requires at the end of the evening in order to reduce any charges to the incurred expenses fee.
Return all of the benches, tables to their original position. The long wood tables are permanent and are not moveable without damage.
Stack the chairs 5 high in the decor room behind the yellow line
Sweep
Bag the trash from inside and outside the buildings and place the trash in the designated area mentioned in your walk-through. Don't forget the restrooms and send off debri.
(Food and bodily fluids left on the floor will be considered excessive cleanup by the cleanup company and will deducted from the damage and cleaning escrow)
Turn out the lights and lock the doors..Easy!
If you borrowed decor, clean and return it to the carts to be checked in the next morning. We inventory lanterns and a few other things after every wedding to make sure future brides will have them for their event.
However, if you'd like to hire a vendor to cleanup the ballroom for you, let us know in advance. We will email you some referrals. You'll contact them directly to make the arrangements. If you leave at the end of the evening without following the "end of evening" procedure, no worries, we collected a 400.00 fee from you when you reserved the venue to be used for these types of situations. This is the fee that was paid to the venue for excessive cleaning, damages from your guests or other incurred expenses. If you'd like to hire someone to clean up and take down, It's cheaper to schedule them in advance.
You and your wedding planner should stay until the end of your event and follow up with all the vendors to make sure this break down happens according to your plan. They typically help with making sure all of your items are sent home with the right person, the rentals are all accounted for and packed away for pick up, the florist picks up all their containers (and none were taken home by a guest who didn’t know any better), and to check if there are and damages you will be responsible for. If she has questions, have her call our after hours number given to you in the email you received along with the door code.
Here are some of the fees one of the cleaning company charges:
Stacking or restacking chairs 5 high behind the yellow line in the decor room-200.00
Glitter-650.00 (they rent a machine and stay through out the night to clean the floor) This has to be done before the wedding the next day.
Moving sweetheart table, cake table or vintage buffet back to their original positions- 100.00
Bagging Trash- 200.00
Cleaning and returning decor back to the shelves-200.00
Food dumped on the ground-150.00
Fake rose petals-150.00
This doesn't include damage that may have been done from family members while setting up or damage from guests during the event.
Cleaning companies are on a tight schedule with other venues to clean through the night. Sometimes additional helpers have to be brought in at the last minute in order to get all the venues cleaned at night before the next event that morning.
Our contract, online planner, FDA Questionnaire as well as open houses and final walk throughs help you and your event planner to prepare for any additional expenses. We understand that you've approved the expenses to be deducted from the escrow but, perhaps we can help you to know what to do at the end of the evening to reduce or eliminate damages and invoice overages.
This all factors into that “peace of mind” when hiring a planner to help with your wedding day, whether full service or as a day of wedding planner. We hope this helps you to understand what to plan for at the end of the evening!