Practical Information
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Holding a date
Sorry, due to the high volume of inquiries, Roxbury Barn and Estate will not hold dates until your wedding is booked. It would simply create a gridlock for all involved. We don’t book sight-unseen; we appreciate an in-person meeting before accepting any bookings, so we’ll always invite you for a site visit first.
Booking & Payments
In order to reserve the venue for your event, we require that couples sign a venue contract and pay a non-refundable first payment of $5,000 plus 8% sales tax. We accept checks and e-checks only.
The second and final venue fee payment of $16,000 plus sales tax is due seven months before the event date.
Four months before the wedding date, 40% of the estimated food and bar invoice is due.
One month before the wedding date, final guest number guarantee and final food and bar payments are due. The balance for any extra services (such as a large-size bonfire) are also due at this point, as is a damage deposit of $1500.
Photo by Jean Laurent Gaudy
Event Coordination
All weddings at the estate are coordinated by one of our professional event coordinators.
Hosting events is teamwork, and one of our secret powers is our amazing staff. We would not be able to do what we do without our coordinators, service staff, bartenders, and drivers, who are all cherished for their collaborating talents, commitment, and kindness.
Right from the start, we offer couples a reliable and extensive vendor list, sample timelines, seating suggestions, and more. Five months before the wedding date, we offer couples access to our online planning platform, where we’ll help create an extensive timeline for the wedding day, and closer to the wedding day collaborate on an online guest list and dinner diagram.
In the months before the big day, the event coordinator will be available to answer questions, and host a walkthrough either by phone, Zoom call, or on-site: 3-5 planning meetings are included.
The event coordinator helps in guiding the ceremony rehearsal on the afternoon prior to the wedding day, and during the wedding day handles logistics, adjusts and safeguards the timeline, welcomes the wedding party and any external vendors, helps overcome any last-minute challenges that arise, and makes sure you have the best time.
All event coordination is performed by our in-house coordinator. As we’re the location where all other vendors come together to perform their services, we are effectively the glue that binds everything together. We do not allow for external coordination, and if a couple was to hire planner, a hired planner at our venue is typically the liaison between the couple and their outside vendors, and assists the wedding party on the day of the wedding.
Lodging
The Catskills’ central location (about a two and a half hour’s drive from NYC’s George Washington Bridge; 75 minutes away from Albany International Airport; four hours from Boston, Philadelphia, and Rochester) makes it a perfect weekend getaway for your wedding guests, and Roxbury and its surrounding villages and hamlets offer an abundance of options when it comes to hotels, inns, cottages, private home rentals and campgrounds for you and all your friends and family.
Though the time of Borscht Belt resorts and grand hotels is long over, the Catskills has become an unexpected haven for boutique hotels, swanky B&Bs and many gorgeous private home rentals. In fact, the Airbnb revolution has dramatically changed lodging in the Catskills in the past years, resulting in an abundance of wonderful vacation rentals to choose from.
All couples who book a wedding at our place receive our Lodging List: a comprehensive, detailed list offering insight into the best guest accommodations in Roxbury and its surrounding villages and hamlets (our list currently offers 150 lodging options). We invite couples to copy their selection of the many lodging options in our Lodging List to their wedding website or forward the handy PDF to their guests.
Photo by Forged in the North
Catskills Weather
Unlike coastal cities such as NYC, humidity in the Catskills tends to be low in the summer, because of the high elevation, and evenings tend to cool off nicely, even in July and August.
Spring and summer start about three weeks later than in downstate New York, with April typically bringing quite a bit of rain. But by mid-May spring has really kicked in, and everything has turned lush and green. That’s when Roxbury Barn and Estate starts hosting its first events of the year. The second weekend of October concludes our event season: evening temperatures start dropping dramatically later in October, whereas in earlier months evenings tend to be comfortable, and fall foliage also tends to peak in early October in the Central Catskills.
Rain Plan
We are prepared for whatever the weather brings our way. And with today’s weather and radar apps, it’s really easy for us to predict a local shower, and help plan around it.
If there’s a chance of rain before the ceremony starts, we’ll temporarily cover up the ceremony setup so chairs stay dry. We do the same with the bonfire. So once the rain passes by, it’ll take us just minutes to get the pine grove ready again for a dry and beautiful outdoor ceremony setup.
If it were to continuously rain during the ceremony time, you could have your ceremony in our pavilion on top of Spring Hill. It’s a beautiful roofed structure sitting on a 40 by 30 feet wooden deck, offering stunning mountain vistas. And our carriage barn offers plenty of space for a sit-down dinner for a party of up to 140, with space left for dancing, a deejay, or a band.
Photo by Magic Flute
Vendor list
We’ve named our vendor list the Green List. It’s a very extensive and solid list of quality vendors, and it’s made available to all couples who choose our estate for their wedding.
The Green List focuses on all local quality specialists (photographers, florists, hair and makeup artists, deejays and entertainment, transportation, etc.) and it gets updated frequently. Our Green List and any other recommendations we make are solely based on quality and experience – we will never offer or receive referral fees or incentives of any kind in exchange for favorable references. Period.
Bonfire
One of the unique features of a wedding at Roxbury Barn and Estate is the option of a large size bonfire on Spring Hill. We build the bonfire in the days previous to the wedding date, and our staff lights and monitors the bonfire. The bonfire comes with a s’mores table with chocolate, marshmallows, graham crackers, and s’mores sticks.
The latest time for the bonfire to be lit is 11 pm on weekends and 10 pm on weekdays. The fee for a bonfire is not included in the rental rate. In case a planned bonfire cannot take place due to weather circumstances, there’s of course a refund, as long as the bonfire was not lit.
Photo by L.C. Allison
Rehearsal Dinner & Brunch
Roxbury Barn and Estate is not available for rehearsal dinner or farewell brunch options. Quite honestly, we think it’s just not the best idea. You and your guests will spend the weekend in our area, coming from all over, and why limit yourself to one and the same location for your entire weekend?
There are some really great, affordable local options for rehearsal dinners and farewell brunches that we can tell you about, and this way your wedding weekend will be diverse, and the wedding day at our estate becomes a true milestone celebration, and not a place revisited multiple times. During your initial visit, we’ll gladly give you some great pointers on all the wonderful options our part of the Catskills has to offer.
Parking & Shuttles
Starting our 2023 season, guests enter and leave the property through our main entrance on 615 County Road 41, where a driveway leads guests to our parking area. There’s parking space for approximately 60 cars.
Alternatively, we suggest arranging transportation of your guests from and to their accommodation through a shuttle service, using 15-passenger shuttle buses and/or minivans. We’ll of course give you recommendations for transportation services in the area. Shuttle buses and vans use the same driveway to the parking area. Larger coach buses are not an option, as they don’t fit the property, and tend to cause nuisance and property damage at the different lodging facilities and their surroundings.
See our property map for the layout of the driveway and parking area.
Insurance
Obviously, we’re well insured. But as is common at all venues, couples are required to obtain event insurance for $1,000,000 in liability, listing Roxbury Barn and Estate and its owners as co-insured. Event insurance will help protect your investment and may help cover your costs if you unexpectedly need to cancel or if you’re found responsible for property damage or an injury caused during your wedding.
We also require general liability insurance and proof of liability insurance from external vendors, with a general liability policy covering property damage and personal injury caused by the vendor, its employees, or sub-contractors.