Catering halls
Long Island catering halls, done the way they should be.
This is the one Long Island does better than anywhere. Call it a catering hall or a banquet hall, it's the same room either way, and the room is the least of it.
This is the one Long Island does better than anywhere. Call it a catering hall or a banquet hall, it's the same room either way, and the room is the least of it.
The per-head number is never the number. Check the facility fee line on every card before you compare. Run a hall? Correct your page free.
Marble, chandeliers, and a Great Neck name every Long Island family knows.
All-inclusive Woodbury mainstay with an inn on the property for the out-of-towners.
Country club name, catering hall machine, with grounds built for photos.
Package-and-production fixture with a serious sweet 16 game.
Baldwin hall overlooking Milburn Pond, a South Shore family staple.
Massapequa mansion with the bay at the back door.
Manor house on Jericho Turnpike with gardens that do half the decorating.
White-glove hotel wedding in the middle of Garden City.
Restored New Hyde Park landmark with ballrooms that photograph like a mansion.
Colonial-era inn and village that has hosted every kind of family party for generations.
The Lombardi family's Holbrook hall, one of their rooms across the Island.
All-inclusive stalwart running weddings and sweet 16s in the same week.
Ronkonkoma hall with the lake out the windows, big on quinceañeras too.
Wading River complex with ballrooms, a hotel, and room for the whole weekend.
St. James celebration grounds where the gardens come with the ballroom.
Patchogue room on the Great South Bay from the same Lombardi family.
Ballroom with the Great South Bay running past the windows.
Garden-wrapped venue at the gateway to wine country.
Rebuilt top to bottom, with packages to match.
Catering house in the vines, the turnkey way to get the wine-country look.
It's the cocktail hour with nine stations, the raw bar and the carving station and the pasta made to order in the wheel of parmigiano. It's the Viennese hour at the end, lights down, the whole dessert spread lit up. It's the maitre d' running the floor all night and the bridal attendant who's been holding your bouquet and slipping you a plate since you walked in.
The halls here run all-inclusive, which is the whole appeal. Food, cake, flowers, room, staff, one package, one number per head. You're feeding 200 people and half of them are cousins, and a good hall has done that a thousand Saturdays running. The Fox Hollow in Woodbury, Villa Lombardi's in Holbrook, Watermill in Smithtown, Windows on the Lake in Ronkonkoma.
On a tour, ask four things: how many it seats, how many weddings they run in a day, who your maitre d' will be, and exactly what's in that cocktail hour. The last one isn't a detail. On Long Island, the cocktail hour is what people judge the whole wedding by. Go back on a Saturday night when the hall is running three parties at once, because that's when you find out whether your cocktail hour shares a hallway with somebody's quinceañera and whether the parking lot holds.
Every hall on the Island will show you a beautiful room. The separation happens in the details you have to dig for. Ask how long the maitre d' and the chef have been there, because staff that stays a decade is the surest sign a place is run well. Ask when the room was last renovated, since carpet and lighting age faster than websites do. Notice how far the kitchen sits from your ballroom, because that walk is the difference between hot food and warm food for 200 people. None of this shows up in the brochure, and all of it shows up on the night.
Before you compare two halls, make the numbers comparable. Ask which months this hall counts as off-season, because they don't all agree. Ask what kids and vendors cost per plate. Ask the price of the on-site ceremony and the price of an overtime hour now, while you can still negotiate it, not at eleven at night in a tux. Find out whether valet is included, because your guests finding out the hard way is a bad last impression to leave on a great night.
Three of the biggest rooms in Nassau sit within fifteen minutes of each other on one road — the Jericho Turnpike corridor is where you go to make them bid against each other. That said, not every Long Island wedding happens in a catering hall. The North Shore mansions trade the turnkey package for stone, grounds, and a house you bring your own vendors into. It is a different day and a different set of line items, and for some couples it is the right one.
Singer-fortune Oakdale mansion running grand weddings with in-house catering.
County-owned harborfront mansion with a boathouse, catered by its exclusive operator.
Gold Coast event house on the old du Pont estate, run like a luxury hall.
The castle. Formal gardens, the famous staircase, weddings run in-house.
Westbury House and its famous gardens, the raw-estate route with the biggest payoff.
State arboretum with a Tudor hall in the middle, permits and caterers required.
The old Guggenheim castles on the Sound, booked park-style with approved caterers.
Eagle's Nest, the Vanderbilt estate over Northport Bay, booked through approved caterers.
County golf-course mansion in Great River looking over the water.